Spring Ball 01

A pitiless predator opened his eyes and saw mostly pink.

"Oh," he said, and sat up. He would have rubbed his eyes, but his hands were more gloved than he'd left them.

He was sitting on a green, turfy knoll in what seemed to be an indoor garden. He was surrounded by flowers. A stream somewhere close by was whispering watery nothings. Someone had left a basket of painted balls nearby. Nothing was familiar, even his attire.

"Last thing I remember, I was in that maze," he said aloud, hesitantly, "then... hey, this isn't even animal fibre, it'ss ssynthetic!" He plucked at his fluffy pink sleeves in disgust. They weren't even his shade.

He could feel something - horns? - affixed above his hood and moving whenever his head moved. He pushed the hood back - it was quite warm, in any case - and found the water source.

His reflection's hair had been dyed bright green. Weft yanked the hood back up with both hands. Better pink than a girly colour, anyway.

His ungentle treatment of the hood had transformed one of the attached rabbit ears into a lop. Whatever. He was more annoyed about the big fluffy feet. There could be no lightning dashes or deadly accurate karate kicks with those. Weft had always been sensitive about his feet to begin with, so the indignity of the fluffy white tail quite paled in comparison.

"Hello?" he called. If nobody was around, he could find some other clothes and change.

"Hello?" came not-quite an echo from the shrubbery, immediately followed by Sylvie.

She was wearing her hair green today, too, with a few tendrils bearing small, blue blossoms twined into it. The blue matched her light dress, and golden swirls painted around her eyes matched a bangle on her upper arm in colour and form, and her sandals in colour at least.

"Ah, Weft. How're you doing?" She smiled, even if she worried about the chance of an awkward day in case no-one else showed up.

"Hi Sylvie, ma'am. Um... really confused," the rabbit admitted. He looked it, too, with one fluffy pink ear up and the other down.

At least Sylvie looked like she belonged here. Weft preferred his flowers cut and arranged. He had some kind of vague idea they came from florists, where they got manufactured in pots ready for transfer to flowerbeds.

"So what are you doing... um, here?" he asked. And have you any idea what I'm doing here?, he didn't add, because there was a long list of people he'd rather not know about if they were involved. Uppermost on this list was one particular deity.

"Waiting for more guests to arrive." Looking for some way to spin small talk, she added, "I guess I'll have to start thinking of costume parties as a slightly-guilty pleasure."

So, "hoping to speak to anyone except you". Weft nodded, believing he'd just been put in his place. (Fortunately, that was how he preferred it.)

"Your costume is nice," he said.

"Thank you. Yours is cute. Looks warm, too." She sounded friendly enough. There were other people she would have rather met than Weft, but while they were both there, chatting was preferrable to awkward silence.

"Cute? Not manly?" Weft asked forlornly, with a tug at one of the shoddy, cheap sleeves.

Sylvie looked him, or rather his costume, up and down in confusion before answering.

"Looks neither particularly manly nor not-manly to me."

Weft seemed satisfied by that. "It's modest, at least, so it could've been worse. Did you make yours?"

"Oh, no." Her hand, hanging down by her side, plucked at the cloth unconsciously. "I can only mend clothes, never learned to make up a proper cut."

"A shame. Making a proper cut is useful in all sorts of situations." Weft subsequently bit his lip and looked as though he regretted saying that - at least in quite those words.

"Certainly. It's a shame there's only so much time in your life, so you have to decide what you learn."

"Oh. That must be confusing. Why'd you decide to learn wizarding? I mean, if you don't, um, don't mind me asking."

"I don't, just, hm..." she trailed off, thinking about the question for a bit, only looking at Weft again when she started the sort-of explanation.

"Honestly, I think the main reason was that I was offered the chance at an impressionable age." Her eyes crinkled with amusement, and she held her hand about hip high to indicate how small she had been. "Hearing that it encouraged curiosity made it sound great."

Weft smiled at that. "Like our novices," he said. "They're nice - well, for kids - well, once they've settled in a few months."

"Yes. Leaving home can be quite unsettling, for children. They did come to live with your order, didn't they?"

Weft nodded.

"Endless blankets, shirts, lost socks... I don't know how the babysitters cope. Not to mention the snotty noses, skinned knees, dead birds around the courtyard..." He huffed and brushed down a pink fluffy sleeve for show. "Brats. Embarrassing to think that we once were them."

"Dead birds?" Sylvie asked, before stopping to think if she wanted to know.

"Kids, you know," Weft said, shrugging dismissively.

"Not exactly. Bringing birds home for cooking, maybe, dropping them in the yard, not so much."

"Yours bring dead animals indoors? Oh, never mind..." Weft remembered the little wicker basket with its shredded-paper innards. He picked it up for a closer look.

There were painted ovoids in there, some covered in shiny foil. The smell from one or two of them was making him dizzy, so he put the basket down again, leaving it in Sylvie's reach.

"Oh, actually I have no children," Sylvie answered affably.

"I can't see why anyone would," said the romantically-coloured symbol of fertility. "I mean, you'd have to - with a woman, and - no offence."

"Oh, none taken."

She picked up one of the shiny eggs and turned it over and over. Small wrinkles in the foil made an interesting texture.

There was a tapping from inside the egg.

Sylvie froze for a moment, then very quickly put the egg back. Oh, no no no. Not another one. Not this time.

"I'll have another look around. Do you want to come with me?" She was already starting to walk away from the nest-basket.

"Okay," said Weft somewhat surprisedly.

To all appearances, unless perhaps you linked into the root system, the Hall was being grown in by new grass and spring flowers. Exploring it took more time than it might have, because the fluffy bunny insisted on padding ahead (and he moved remarkably stealthily despite his soft, soft fuzzy feet) and glaring at everything in deep suspicion.

Behind them, unheard, was a muffled "Isn't anyone going to get me out of here?"

"I don't think there are people eating plants here... this time," Sylvie remarked at some point.

Meanwhile the reason for her dislike of hatching eggs showed up. After stopping at one of the open doors leading out into the garden and sniffing the air, he made a beeline for the egg basket, softly growling in stereo.

"What d'you mean 'this t..." Fortunately Weft was distracted by the flappy little mimic. For a second he even reflexively fumbled for where an innocuous side seam ought to have been. Oh. Right. Different outfit.

The egg was saying further things along the lines of "Is there someone out there?"

The dragon nudged the noisy, shiny, edible-smelling egg once before the right tried scrabbling the outer metal skin off with its claws and take the first bite. The left head nipped at its permanent companion and hissed. Ayu-Asra started a fight with himself, over the question if the thing should be eaten or hoarded. The egg basked got shaken up quite a bit in the process.

Sylvie took a few steps back towards the scene. She had not heard the voice and thought it was something on the lines of a chick in there, and wasn't sure if she should bother trying to stop the dragon.

Weft had no such qualms. "Kill it!" he... egged the dragonling on.

The egg had gone quiet after it started being really shaken around.

Sylvie crossed her arms and rolled her eyes behind Weft's back, but kept quiet and out of the way.

The dragon's wild flapping wings nerly lifted him off the ground, until conflicting signals led to a minuscle crash, dropping him directly on the suspect egg. Its chocolate shell cracked.

"Your bird's a bit retarded, isn't he?" the pink bunny said to Sylvie.

"Blimey, did you have to..." said the inside of the egg, then gave up and groaned a bit instead.

"More than a bit," Sylvie said dryly.

She did not quite realise that the egg was talking, but the noise she couldn't identify made her curious, and she went to have a look.

Ayu-Asra shook out his wings and calmed down. His left head nuzzled a scrap of foil, while the right pecked a fragment of chocolate.

A gnome in a robe and smoking-cap was inside the egg, trying to shove a dragon head out of the way.

"That is the bleedin' last time I answer a call at a cocoa griffin's eyrie," she said aloud. "I tell you what, I don't care how good the bleedin' commission is."

Hearing someone speak there, Sylvie hurried over, and in one movement scooped up Ayu-Asra before he could bite anyone and sat down cross-legged.

"What?" she asked the tiny figure suspiciously.

The dragon squirmed, scratching her in the process, and she shoved him and a good-sized piece of chocolate fragment behind her.

"Swallered me whole, it did!" said the gnome. She reached back into the egg, almost overbalancing, until she retrieved her tool kit.