Welcome to Gaia! ::

The three children arrive in a jungle. The air is warmer and more humid than on Gaia. It is dark here, and trees block out the starlight, but their path is lit by torches stretching into the distance.

A huge ziggurat rises above the trees, illuminated by firelight. Birds call from the canopy. Bass tones - a drum beat, or perhaps a massive heart, thrum in the air. A gust of wind pushes the trio towards the temple, almost as if the night itself is exhaling.

Nahuel landed second, with a feline grace amplified from his usual reflexes. Something felt strange about how his joints were connected when he stood back up. His shoes hurt, suddenly feeling constricting against his arches. He crouched again to take them off, but paused when his hand came into view.

It was more pawlike, the fingers shorter and missing a joint. Thick, glossy claws grew from the tips instead of normal nails. A short coat of fur had sprouted on the back of his hand, and it got thicker as he followed it up his arms. While it was the same color as his skin ordinarily was, the rosette patterning had spread.

He took off his shoes and realized his feet had undergone a similar pawlike transformation. A glance over at Garrett found his friend to be nearly unrecognizable.

"What happened?" he asked, though it sounded more like a growl than his usual voice.

At the last growl, Garrett springs into the air, flapping wildly, in a defensive sort of position. As if he knows what's going on! He's a .. hawk! A complete one! Head to toe, there's barely anything to distinguish the boy from a hawk he might have seen back on Gaia. The only remnants, in fact, of his human self, are two buckles attached to torn material around his skinny ankles, which tells that he's somehow, somehow, busted through yet another pair of boots. Lovely.

He lands and sort of glares, but not entirely because he wants to. His wings fold up against his body in a new sort of way, straight from his shoulders and against his sides. He chicken-struts under the cover of Nah, as he's quite wary of the canine girl and her short temper. In this form, he can make for a quick bite to eat.

Garrett doesn't dare try and speak again, after his previous incident resulting in a terrible screech. And while Regina's and Nahuel's voices have obtained a more attractive growl, his has seemingly mutated into an unpleasant screech, regardless of whether or not he can actually get words out. He tilts his head quite mechanically in that bird-like way up at his friend, pleading with his eyes.

Regina narrowed her eyes in return, barely blinking an eye at the bird that had squakked and seemed to spaz. Clearly, the two knew each other. She lifted her head when the wind picked up, briefly distracted from her 'companions', and inhaled. Something was calling her. Whether or not the other two felt it, she did, and she needed to follow it.

Barely hearing Nahuel's suggestion, Regina rose onto her feet and legs, starting to run in the direction of the wind, spurred on by curiosity. Whether or not they followed her didn't concern Gina, only finding out what that thing was and seeing if maybe, somehow it was all related.

In the back of her mind, logic spoke through. It had to be related. Nothing could be ruled out as coincidence in this strange place. But logic was something Regina was pushing away slowly but surely, more interested in finding out what that scent was then thinking about how to get back home.

Nahuel looked up at his friend and smirked. "Show off," he said. Walking on feet like these was kind of awkward. The girl seemed to be doing the four-legged thing pretty well, but as weird as his feet felt he wasn't sure if crawling would be easier. She was getting too far ahead of them...

"Hey!" he called ahead to her, "Wait up!"

He picked up the pace a bit, trying to close the gap, and found that running was a bit less awkward than walking. This was so strange... And that temple up ahead. It was certainly an adventure, but not like any adventure he'd ever thought to imagine.

"What's your name?" he asked the dog-girl-thing when he got a bit closer.

Garrett swoops closer to his friend's head than the strange dog-girl named Gina, though his instinct itself urges him to rise higher, much higher, than just several feet off the ground. He isn't able to glide much here on the delicious thermals, but certainly the mysterious wind is helping to keep the hawkboy from having to flap constantly.

He stares straight ahead, trying to get an idea of what they're blinding approaching.

As the children progress along the path, the jungle around them thins out. Suddenly, they arrive in an enormous clearing. The temple rises about them, threatening and grand all at once. The path continues, lined by shadowy figures alternately beating drums and holding torches. The children can catch glimpses of their faces here and there - this one's a sloth, this one's an otter, this one's a tiger, this one's a mangrove - but there is something alien about their forms. While their origins are evident, there is something eerily human about them at the same time. Such is life in Eden.

As the children approach the temple, three figures emerge from the mass of bodies and seize them. The trio is dragged roughly inside and through a maze of corridors and improvised, primitive elevators until they reach a grand chamber. They are dragged to roughly the center of the chamber and then released, only to be confronted by the strangest and most beautiful creature yet -

A young woman, her human features roughly Native American, but her arms sheathed in the feathers of a Blue-and-Gold Macaw and her hair replaced with the plumage, her mouth replaced with a beak, descends from a throne at the far end of the chamber. She circles the children, clicking her tongue appraisingly, and then turns to the guards who brought them here.

"These will do nicely," she said. "Take them to the dungeons."

The guards resume their hold on the children, and take them on another trip through the temple. This one ends in separate cells.

This is no good. No good at all.

Garrett has never yet suffered from claustrophobia, but something about this new form in addition to this frightening situation causes him to lose it. He flaps around frantically, losing feathers left and right, and screeching horribly. He slams himself against a wall of his cage only to be popped backward in a daze.

Calm down. Calm down, he urges himself, shaking his head and beginning to preen. Forget that this is a bird cage, and you're not even yourself anymore, and you're so very screwed, and Mum's going to be wondering what happened to you, and ohgodwhyamIdoingthiswithmymouth?

He forces himself to stop preening, finding it utterly disgusting but at the same time soothing. He pushes off with his talons again and, less frantically, circles his cage from the greatest height he can, as a new way to ease his nerves.