Welcome to Gaia! ::

And of course Taji did notice, her attention naturally drawn to anything bright and spazzy. She grinned brightly and, pausing mid-twirl, waved to Ashe through the window before immediately dashing off to retrieve her coat. She slipped her feet into her shoes too, and loudly announcing "I AM SNEAKING OUT NOW, I WILL BE HOME BEFORE LUNCH" to the house, she jumped at the doorknob and twisted it open and slipped through to the outside before anyone could protest otherwise.

"Daaa da-da-da daaaaaaaa!!" Taji sang the notes to a victory song to Ashe, hopping down the stairs to join her friend in romping around the front lawn. "Okay, okay, we hafta go quickly, before they set--" She paused for dramatic tension, before placing her hands on her hips and shrieking, "THE BEES! Upon us." Nodding for emphasis, she grabbed Ashe's hand and began leading her towards the park, breaking into a run.

"An idea?!" Clearly this called for an idea dance! Taji obliged with lots of spinning and stomping and jumping into the air, and finally came to an approximate standstill some moments later after scaring away nearly all of the immediate population of squirrels and birds.

"Tell me tell me tell me!" The star spirit accentuated each demand with a little hop, and looked as if she might burst on the spot with excitement.

Taji was with her all the way up to the last question. Think? Think? Nobody had ever expected her to do that before! "I think..." Taji began hesitantly, blinking bewilderedly at the giant tree Ashe had introduced her to.

She had good taste, at least -- the bark was, well, barky, and looked as if it would provide good handholds, and the branches were thick but plentiful, growing in such a way as to provide an easy climb to the top of the tree.

"I think very yes!" Taji finally declared, placing her fists on her hips and beaming up at their new conquest-to-be. Flashing a grin towards Ashe, she broke into another flailing sprint towards the tree (this time, thankfully, leaving Ashe and her limbs alone.) "I'll race ya!"

"I DID NOT CHEAT," Taji yelled back, accentuating this with a stamp of her foot. "YOU LIE. YOU'RE A DIRTY LIAR. You've got leaves in your hair, here." Leaning forward onto her tiptoes, Taji very delicately began picking and combing them out of Ashe's hair -- but before she could finish, the other girl had already begun climbing the tree.

"Haay, HAAY," Taji began whining, which was what she did best. "Wait for meeee!" She hugged the tree and began searching for handholds, digging her fingers into the bark and delicately pulling herself up. Unfortunately, she was too heavy for the bark to support, and it came loose very easily, sending the star spirit tumbling to the ground.

Clearly this was going to take a bit of thought. Dusting herself off and backing up a little, Taji took a running start and threw herself at the lowest overhanging branch. She managed, through a stroke of luck, to close her hands around the branch and, after a moment of struggling and kicking out her legs and swinging herself, dangling a precarious few inches off the ground, finally pulled herself up onto it. "Haaay! Hay, Ashe! I did it! See?!"

Taji thought about this for a moment. "You are fair," she decided -- Ashe did resemble a princess, after all -- "But you, madame liar, are not square!"

But even so, she was already higher than her, four whole branches as she pointed out. Taji stuck her tongue out at her friend and dug her fingers into the bark again, determined to scramble up after her like a squirrel; all this resulted in was the shredding of bark with her fingernails, leaving long pale streaks in the treetrunk. Surprised, Taji scrambled away along the branch she was resting on.

"Ashe! AAASHE! I think I hurt the tree!" She wailed, but her short attention span did not leave her much time to repent before it seized upon the prospect of a challenge (and, more importantly, her inevitable failure should she remain where she was.)

"I AM NEITHER ROTTY OR EGGY," she exclaimed back, slowly standing up on the branch, slightly crouched, and reaching up for the next branch.

It was much slower work for Taji -- for one thing, she was far less coordinated, and did not have a tail to help balance her as Ashe did. For another, she also weighed more, and the tree creaked in protest as she continued ascending.

But finally she managed to catch up to Ashe, wedging herself in an intersection of branches. "I am not a rotten egg," she began lowly protesting preemptively, and her tone of voice almost immediately perking up, giggled, "Haaay, look how closer we are to the sky!"

"Stuck?" Very slowly Taji began to wiggle her hands, and then her feet, then her arms and legs. No, no, she could move. It would be kind of hard to get herself out of this branch but she could probably do it if she needed to.

Or wanted to. Like, now. "DON'T DO THAT," Taji immediately wailed back as Ashe set the tree dangerously rocking with her panicked movements. "Just -- stay still! Do you know how to speak Tree? Maybe we can ask it to let us down...?!"