Lured by Temptation (Seven)

[Palla]

Timestamp: 26th Day of Winter, 511 AV
Location: Garden of No Return

Palla’s little clawed feet padded on the ground as she waddled through Alvadas’ streets. Her eyes were searching the ground for morsels dropped or misplaced. Nothing suited her fancy thus far, but the morning was young, and the sun was just barely stretching its rays over the horizon. There was not a sound besides the ones she made. No birds, no bustle or shuffle of feet. The early morning sleep slime still plagued the corners of her eyes. A growl issued from the pit of her stomach. It was breakfast time, and she wouldn’t cease her search until her belly was packed and satisfied.

The weak vines growing up the side of a nearby building caught her eye and she pounced her way over. She rose up onto her hind legs to grip at the mess and sniff, but there was nothing. No tasty shoots, just coarse, rough leaves beginning to die away. With a huff she dropped back down and sat on her behind.

This is harder than I thought it would be, She thought as she curled her furry little body. She picked up her tail and hugged it to her chest where she proceeded to lick and chew at the fur. As she groomed, the memory of the apple tree in the middle of the street last fall came to mind. It had been so simple. She wasn’t even looking for food, and yet there appeared an apple tree. When she had been so desperately looking for Seven and the Sun and Stars, it had eluded her. Perhaps if she began looking for something else, the promise of finding food would increase. Had she been in her two-legged form, she would have shrugged half-heartedly. Oh well.

Rolling back to her paws, she waddled on down the street, stopping only to lick at an ant on the ground. And then another. And another. At this rate, she could be full by the end of the day, assuming the city didn’t run out of ants. The street bent around, and as she rounded its edge, she looked up. A garden spanned out before her, with lush green hedges and strange flowers she had never seen before. It looked promising and it beckoned her to approach. As she neared, she could see where the hedges broke, creating a long hallway. Lifting up onto her hind legs, she sniffed and looked around before peaking inside. Nothing, no one. Following the narrow break in the hedges, she entered. The hall split into two separate directions, one way leading left, the other right.

The trail leading left was framed with little purple flowers, but when she looked right, there was a tree branch hanging overhead. Hanging from the branch was a peach. A single, ripened peach, dangling just above the tops of the hedges. The trunk of the tree, however, was on the other side of the hedge. How was she supposed to climb the tree to get to that peach if the trunk wasn’t accessible? She hobbled and bounded her way down to the branch and looked up. With a twitter, she raised up and sniffed the air. She would have to find the trunk of the tree. She followed the edge all the way down to the end of the hall, expecting to see it open up to form two halls as the first stretch did. But no, the only option was to turn left.

Sighing, and slightly dissatisfied, Palla made the left turn, and followed the greenery. This time, she could choose to go straight, left, or right. Hoping to make her way back around to the tree, she turned right, and ran along its length until she came to a dead end. She growled and plopped down on her behind. She huffed and rolled over onto her side as her stomach growled. As she began to weigh the situation, it seemed that the promise of finding breakfast in the garden wasn’t so promising afterall. But she had sighted the peach, and she knew that it would be there. Sitting back up, she ran back the way she came, and continued straight along the winding path until she was forced to make another decision: left or right? Right! And another fork: left or right? Right! And another. Left! Right! Left! Straight – oops, no, dead end.

Before she knew it, she was heaving and out of breath. Her little paws were sore, and her legs were tired. She frowned inwardly, decided to head back to the entrance of the garden. Which way had she just come…? Left, er, no, right. Or, was it left?

Oh no….I’m lost! She frantically took off running back down the stretch she had turned from, hoping to recall her every step up until she had given up. It was a blur. She had been led into the garden by temptation of food, and here she was in the very heart of the maze, without a clue of how to return. Her little heart swelled anxiously. She had hoped not to have to disturb Seven’s sleep, but she pushed the boundary of her mind out to him, calling wordlessly for his aid. Flashes of peaches, green, and odd flowers hurled his way to plague his dreams until he should wake.

[Seven Xu]

Beneath the Sun and Stars, Seven stirred. His lungs filled sharply with the cold air of his modest room on the second story of the tavern, and he groaned, rolled onto his back, and fought with eyelids clamped together by sleep’s unwillingness to let him go. “Gods,” he hissed, fingers mashing the corners of his eyes in an attempt to coax tears; it felt as if his lids were glued shut.

Verdant walls and the ache of fear had haunted him, roused him from an otherwise restful slumber and tossed him into the split-second of blind confusion that comes with one’s waking moments. Lucid, Seven kicked back a mess of sheets. Despite every muscle in his small body aching for another round with his feather mattress, he bid the second form wrapped snugly between a pillow and a wall a murmured farewell, scrounged the floor for trousers and an unsullied button-down (with little regard for ownership), and left.

Wisps of clouds licked at a sun that was making its ascent over the Kitrean mountain range as Seven began his leather-on-cobblestone shuffle across an empty street. His fingers stretched for the deepest reaches of his pockets, gathering what warmth was left from his thighs. A borrowed scarf clung to his neck, as red as the hue of his searching eyes. A sound broke the silence, and only after he sucked in a desperate breath, did he realize it was his own; “Palla!”

Why he yelled through the narrow street for the red panda, he could not have known. Why he was on the street in the first place was an even more vexing mystery. Again, he called her name, braved winter’s bite to cup his hands around his mouth and bellow. Was she to appear from ‘round some corner? He crested another bend, took a left, and shuffled his apprehensive feet towards the city’s center. At least, he thought it was the city’s center. The mountainous backdrop never changed; the valley and the sea were the only constants beyond Alvadas’ walls, and at times, the City of Illusions hid even them from its citizens’ eyes.

“Palla!” Seven called, his voice rasped, and a shambling gait turned into a jog. Buildings turned to lush, familiar green walls, and Seven’s chest began to heave its fatigue. Why Palla? Why rush headlong into toe-numbing cold to look for the animal? He shuffled to a stop, and bent forward to let his greedy lungs swallow their fill of air.

[Palla]

OOCSorry for the absence!! I’ve been on Christmas vacation, and classes just started back… Trying to get back into the swing!

Palla twittered as she pushed herself back up onto her feet. A sigh rippled through her little black nose. Her eyes surveyed the area as she groped for some sort of idea for which way she should try to go. She couldn’t possibly make her way out of the maze by running around aimlessly. She would have to go and go and go every possible direction until she came to a dead end. Then, she’d simply have to try again. Waddling on down the green hallway, she peeked around the corner. A dead end. She looked back the way she came, deciding to travel that way instead.

Palla!

She stopped and spun around at the sound of her name, but there was nothing. Heaving another sigh, she turned back around and kept walking. The silly maze must have been playing tricks on her once again. This strange city, with its many twists and turns, had spat her into quite possible the most unpleasant of surprises thus far. And then she stopped again. That sound, the two syllables came in a familiar voice. Seven!

In a burst of light, she found herself cased in pale, unclothed skin. Her mess of red hair fell in her face as she crawled forward, eyebrows raised, listening intently. She pushed herself up onto her form’s two legs. The sound did not repeat.

”Seven?” She called back, turning her head to listen for the echo. Had he come to save her from this horrible maze?

[Seven Xu]

Seven?

The halfblood straightened. “Palla,” he grunted, turning on a verdant barrier from where the girl’s voice had come. His lungs still cried for air, but his fingers dug deep between a gnarled mess of branches, leaves, and ivy. The ‘Garden retaliated, drew its red lines across Seven’s palms and threatened to drink of his blood if he proved more stubborn than the enchantment itself. “Open up,” a hiss of pain followed brief recoil. “Come on. Damn you, she’s scared.”

The wall had seen the blonde’s plight before, separated from what he wanted most between its walls. If a plant could feel pity, a rustle of leaves and a crackle of wood receding from the next lane proved the sentiment.

Seven softened at the sight of her: naked, shivering, ruddy brown eyes saucer-wide. It took a moment to unbutton his heavy coat, drape it over her shoulders, as he had done when they had met, before he could feel the discontentment that riddled her diminutive frame. A hand brushed back a gathering of red from those cold-pink cheeks; he pulled the wrap of black wool closed.

Stupid Palla, was what he thought; “You’re going to freeze,” was what he said. His brows rose, and a cautious smile tugged at dry lips. “If you have to explain yourself, do it quickly, and then put on your fur.”

[Palla]

The brushing of limb and leaf against one another brought Palla to look up with a startled expression. The man squeezing between the fissure was he who she had called – Seven. Her chill bump-rippled arms found themselves wrapped for the umpteenth time in his heavy wool coat before being wound around his waist. As he brushed the locks from her face, she sighed with relief. She explained, ”I-I’m sorry. I was hungry, and I was wandering around, and then there w-was this,” She pointed over the hedge. ”That way, I found a tree with a peach over the edge, but I couldn’t get to it. I turned and turned and ran and then nothing, a-and it was gone, and… And I was afraid I would never make it out.”

She turned her rusty eyes to his crimson ones, searching for some hint of pity. Hopefully he would not be entirely upset with this mess she had caused. ”I’m sorry. Can we go? Can we get out of this thing?”

Whether he should answer or not, she would slide his coat from her shoulders and toss it back over his own. She stepped back and in the familiar flash of smoky lights, her form melded instantaneously into dense, coarse fur and claws. The little panda bounded to his feet where she sat up on her hind legs and mewed at him.

[Seven Xu]

“I don’t know.”

That twittering mess of rust-colored fur was gathered in a slender pair of arms. Seven exhaled, turned on his boot heel, and squinted at ribbons of yellow sunlight streaming through an impassable wall of green. “You shouldn’t have come in here,” he muttered bluntly, fingers delving between knotted boughs, as if they would come loose at his request; they did not. “I got lost here, once. The labyrinth moves. It’s—” Seven was cut short by the rustle of leaves. A new path urged them forward, and he obliged, fingers taking up residence in the soft fur between a pair of round ears.

“… It’s easy to lose your way, even forget where you’ve been.”

Seven had little patience to humor this hedge maze, having been roused from sound sleep and compelled to scour the cold city in search of a lost animal. He’d found her, at least. Stupid, stupid Palla. Why he cared so much was beyond him. The girl—the cat-thing—needed protection, and for some reason, she had sought him for it; a greater mystery would have been why he hadn’t abandoned her, if not immediately, then after Roxanne’s throat had been opened on his bedroom floor. Inwardly, he lauded her for her ignorance; so long as she remained stupid to a skinchanger’s blood on his hands, she would be safe.

There was no use in mentioning the bend he chose to take. The russet beast pressed against the dip of his shoulder would only chirp and whistle in response, and she was already doing that anyway, with every bump in the road and sigh from the halfblood. “If we can find that peach tree,” he sucked in his bottom lip. “We may be able to get out. Keep an eye out for it.”

[Palla]

Palla’s dark eyes watched Seven’s as he spoke of being lost in the green maze before. Her fuzzy head cocked from side to side as two-legged words rolled off his tongue. If he had been lost before and made it out, then surely he could get out again…Right? It wasn’t until he explained that the maze moved that she began to doubt their success. How was anyone to escape the shifting labyrinth? The more she thought about it, the maze was a little like herself. She changed forms for different reasons, to communicate, mostly. Maybe the maze moved for a reason?

But she shook her head inwardly. These were plants. They couldn’t possibly have a message besides Get out! or It’s my peach! Instead, she peered over his shoulder at his request to search for said peach tree. It didn’t quite make sense, seeing as the peach tree had been near the center when she’d gone running after it. She dismissed the thought and replaced it instead with the knowledge that Seven had once escaped this burdensome hedge monster, and he could surely do it again. She twittered a low, anxious tune.

Palla glanced back over the back of his shoulder and rested her chin on the bend of his neck. A long, airy sigh rippled through her black nose and she shivered from the cold. Even a body amassed with thick fur couldn’t stop the chill entirely. Shifting in Seven’s arms to look around, she spluttered with a long drawling chirp. The peach tree! Wriggling around in his arms, she craned her head to try and see over the hedges. Only the topmost branches could be seen, but nevertheless, she had spotted it.

[Seven Xu]

Seven inhaled a pained hiss as scrabbling claws made work of his collarbone and shoulder. Hot pain cut through layers of linen and coaxed dots of red from pallid flesh, though the offense was soon forgotten in his haste to follow an anxious cat-thing’s gaze.

“That was easy,” he laughed, plucking Palla from his shoulder, where superficial pains were ebbing, destined to be forgotten. Tiny padded feet touched cool ground, and Seven set off towards the looming peach tree. Every second step, he’d check the ground for his companion, offer a smile if he caught rust-brown eyes, and once or twice, he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, trying to mimic her constant tittering.

Though had the entrance once been at the base of the old peach tree, it had since left, and replaced itself with an impassable verdant wall of vines and leaves and frustration. Seven’s nostrils flared. Easy, indeed. “Come,” he called after the trundling patch of black-and-red in the corner of his eye, before grasping for one of many low hanging branches. The tree was squat, its limbs fat with age; it didn’t offer much for height, Seven realized, as he pulled himself up on the lazy bough.

“I would have fed you.” Stupid Palla, he concluded; the thought of her scratching at his window brought a thin smile to his face. “Anything you want, we could have gone to market and bought fresh eggs and hard bread—” Seven’s stomach finished that sentiment, with a guttural groan of its own. He laughed, reached forward, and plucked a peach from a bouquet of green leaves, before wiping it on his leg and shedding his jacket to set between them: an offering, had the skinchanger found the urge to contribute to a one-sided conversation. “I’m content waiting this out, if you are.”

[Palla]

Palla excitedly pounced at the tree, thick nails digging into the bark covering the trunk. She twittered, tossing her little head back as she shimmied up the trunk after Seven. Nimble limbs pulled the creature up after the two-legged being. She spoke back to him in a sentimental chorus of whistles before realizing he couldn’t understand her. She shook her fur out and burst into a fury of lights and colors even as he placed his coat between them. Situating herself on a branch, she reached out to take the jacket, remembering how to put her arms through the long holes and wrap the front closed around her. Pale skin erupted with mountainous chill bumps, hair standing on end in a futile attempt to grasp heat and draw it in.

”I’ve always looked for my own food. I knew you might be sleeping, so I thought I’d go out and see what I could find. I didn’t mean to cause any trouble, honest.” Rusty brown eyes cast downward. She hoped he wasn’t disappointed in her for this little escapade. She snatched a leaf from its place at the end of a stick and stuck it in her mouth. Abruptly, she spit it back out and took the peach instead. Fruit was her favorite, and had been for as long as she could remember. The peach tree had taunted her in the beginning, but now that her stomach was rolling impatiently, she would eat just about anything. Snapping pearly white teeth into the crunchy skin of the fruit, the juice ran down her chin. She ate like a child, shoveling bite after bite into a greedy mouth without regard for the mess.

[Seven Xu]

He found himself passing Palla a second peach, laughing into the flesh-colored velveteen skin of his own. “You didn’t cause trouble,” he shrugged, immediately fishing through the previous few chimes for some sourness in his tone, some dismissive body language that may have thrown the animal-turned-girl off. “At least you learned something, right? The garden of no return is called the garden of no return for a reason.

“And what’s mine is yours,” Seven continued, teeth tearing the peach open. He winced at a pinch beneath his nose; hungry venom attacked the fruit, and fangs that could not extend shocked him with a vestigial reflex. He paused to lap sweet juice from his thumb. “When we get out of here, I think we should go to market. If you’re still hungry, I’ll show you what humans eat for lunch. We’ll get you proper clothing, too; not all two-leggeds are polite, and a woman wrapped in a coat is like to catch some attention you won’t want.”

The halfblood’s gaze drooped and he swung his legs, heels catching and scraping against the underbelly of the lazy branch each time they passed. “We’ll buy you a dress. You’ll like dresses. They’re easier to wear than pants.” Seven laughed. “You’d look nice, too.”