[Xanth]

"Lollipop, lollipop, ooh, lolly, lolly, lolly, lollipop! POP." The child's voice brought a smile to Xanth's face as the young girl, no more than six or seven, stuck her finger in her mouth and popped her cheek in time to the song. She was a vision of childhood, with her denim dungarees scuffed and muddied at the bottom and her pigtails fraying. Her red hair gleamed under the artificial sunlight and her eyes sparkled as she sang the same three lines of the song over and over. Indeed, she was the picturesque embodiment of childhood that Xanth herself emulated so frequently.

The girl had been chasing about the quadrangle where her mother had left her for an hour now. The frazzled young woman ordinarily would not have dreamed of leaving her cherished daughter alone in a place such as this. While the Underground made its claim to fame on the back of its purported safety, that security had been lost in recent months with one attack after another. It had been quiet recently but the mother was perhaps a little overprotective and it was easy to see why when watching the child at play.

Still, it had taken only a nudge from Xanth to convince the mother that the quadrangle was a safe place to leave her daughter while she finished her shopping. The young woman had forgotten several key items and was in a hurry; she did not have time to go back to those shops with her exuberant daughter in tow.

Xanth leaned forward on the bench to catch a falling petal in the palm of her hand. She need not watch the child's every move to know exactly where she was and what she was doing at any given moment, so she turned her attention to other things such as the study of the pink petal. It had come from one of the cherry blossoms that cornered the quadrangle and it occurred to Xanth that perhaps it was time for autumn in the Underground. But not today: Today this young girl enjoyed the summer sun.

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[Danube]

Danube thumbed idly through the pages of his book. He had read it before enough times to know the story nearly by heart. To be honest he wasn’t really reading it now, just recalling the story and turning the pages out of habit. The story was a favourite of his, a children’s story really, about a Dragon searching the world for his stolen mate. It had a happy ending, of course. Danube made it a habit to avoid stories that didn't have happy endings. As far as he was concerned, the happy ending was the most important bit of a story.

The book was particularly precious to him, though. It was old, so old it was a miracle it was still in one piece, and it had been his mother’s. One of the only things that he knew about her was that at some point during her childhood she had written her name on the inside of the cover.

The girl was noisy but not annoying. Background noise. The reason he was reading out here instead of somewhere quieter was because he wasn’t fond of the silence, it would be hypocritical of him to find the child’s singing an annoyance. He did not recognize the woman who was so kindly watching over the child as the creator. As far as Danube could tell she was a kind woman and nothing more.

"Are there any more words than that?" He asked with a chuckle as the girl came particularly close, putting the book down next to him carefully. "Or is that the whole song?"

[Amlai]

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Amlai wasn't really paying attention to what was happening around her. She was concentrating more on her drawing. At the moment, Amlai had been concentrating more on quiet and spacious drawings. The quadrangle was perfect. As well as drawing streets, Amlai would draw flowers and trees, and the underground had enough to content her for an afternoon or two.

Drawing made Amlai look at the world more closely, and it opened her mind to what was around her. It made her loosen up and think about things. The most niggling thought she had been thinking about was her parents. She'd never known them. Come to think of it, she didn't even know what their names were. All Amlai had to remember her childhood was a necklace with a crescent moon on it, which she wished was her mothers.

Amlai was unaware of the child rampaging around the quadrangle. Amlai didn't really like children. When she was living on the streets, children would point at her and laugh, like she was there for entertainment reasons. And she had memories of herself being bullied by other children too.

For some reason, Amlai didn't mind this little girl singing at the top of her lungs. She found it quite sweet, actually. She figured her mother was away, since the woman looking after her didn't look much alike the little child.

Out of the corner of her eyes, Amlai noticed the child going up to a man, not much younger than herself, and she heard him say something to her. "Are there any more words than that? Or is that the whole song?" he said. Amlai chuckled to herself and started packing up her sketchpad and pencils into her shoulder bag.

[Xanth]

OOC: I assumed Danube and Xanth were sitting on the same bench. I hope that's okay?

The girl stopped singing to stare at the Dragon with inquisitive green eyes. Her head was tilted into her shoulder as if she were shy, her sneakered toes digging into the pavement, but there was curiosity in her gaze.

Xanth leaned back in her seat with a soft smile, still studying the petal in her palm as she listened to the young man's words.

"I don't remember," the child claimed, though Xanth suspected she knew the entire song by heart and only sang the parts she liked the most. It was probably the POP that did it: It was such a dramatic noise and fun to make. Why bother with the rest of the song?

Xanth said nothing of this, though. Instead, she turned her gaze to the young Dragon and released the petal into a sweeping breeze that lifted it up and away - towards an artist who was apparently enjoying the serene beauty of the quadrangle and perhaps laughing at the exchange between Dragon and child. Xanth glanced across at the vampire with an amused arch of an eyebrow, before turning back to study the young man.

The Dragon's white hair was intriguing and reminded Xanth fondly of Kiril, though Danube's pale eyes made the effect vastly different than the red-eyed demon. She did so miss the retired Aide's irreverent humour. He had a way of sweeping the weight of the world from her shoulders for a short time, and his frequent clashes with Dazadi had been rather amusing in their way. Still, he had not seemed terribly happy after Sylope left, and when he had been called home to fulfill his duties as Naharar, Xanth had freed him of his oath to her.

Her own eyes were just as inquisitive as the girl's as she looked Danube over now, smiling wistfully as she reminisced. The normally light violet of her eyes was surprisingly dark beneath the short cap of blonde curls she had adopted today, with perhaps a hint of sadness that she quickly shook off to consider the young man before her.

However much Xanth might try to keep her nose out of other peoples' heads, the temptation to skim the surface was always too great, and her lilac-polished fingernails caught the sun for a second as she reached out to shake the Dragon's hand. "I, too, love a happy ending." She gave him a secret smile, nodding at the book without reading the title.

As Xanth was speaking, the girl apparently forgot her shyness and clambered up on to the bench on the other side of Danube. She kicked her feet, her sneakers scuffing the ground on each pass, and craned her neck to try and read the title on the book. Her face was a picture of concentration. "What's the book about?" she asked eagerly, sticking her finger into her mouth to POP her cheek once more.

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Moved my own thread because I'm a lemon.

[Amlai]

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As Amlai was packing her things up, she noticed a falling petal land by her feet. Amlai knelt down to examine it. It was a petal from the cherry blossom tree. She picked it up, slipped it into her bag and finished putting the rest of her sketchbooks and pencils away.

As she sat down again on the bench, to take in the last of the summer breeze, she noticed the woman hisper something to the man, then heard the little girl pipe up and ask a question about the book that was resting in his lap.

Amlai decided that she better go. But to where? She didn't have a place to sleep, or enough money to even stay a week in a hotel in fact. She needed to earn money. Enough money to buy a house.

"Maybe I could sell my paintings," Amlai thought.

Amlai lifted up her shoulder bag and started to head towards the woman, to ask if she knew of a cheap, or even a free place, to stay. Amlai stopped just before the woman, and coughed to bring attention.

"Excuse me, but do you know a place I could stay for free? I've just left my foster family and I don't really know where to go."

As she waited for a response, Amlai gazed at the little girl and smiled.

[Xanth]

Ah, the child's mother was returning, overburdened with her shopping bags and looking fraught. The girl had yet to notice but Xanth could see the abject exhaustion on the mother's face and, in a moment of charity, set about lightening the bags she carried. Immediately, her shoulders straightened slightly and there was a brief panic on her face as she checked the ground to make sure no items had fallen out.

Xanth turned to the artist when she coughed, smiling kindly. She might have simply given directions but she was no longer babysitting and the opportunity to wander appealed to her.

The child spotted her mother and jumped off the bench, dashing to the older woman who shot a grateful smile in Xanth's direction. Inclining her head in acknowledgement, Xanth stood gracefully and said, "Come, I will walk with you." Turning to smile down at Danube, she winked as she told him, "Enjoy your happy ending."

"Now then," she murmured to Amlai as she turned and gestured to the street that led to the plaza, moving in that direction herself. "You say you have not been here long. What are your impressions of the Underground thus far?"

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[Amlai]

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Amlai waited for a response, as she noticed an exhausted looking woman enter the Quadrangle. She had been shopping, Amlai noticed. As soon as the woman, possibly the mother of the little child, had entered, the other woman, who had been looking after the little girl, go up and help the mother with her mountain of shopping bags. Upon sighting her mother, the little girl nearly bounced off the bench and over to her mother.

The 'babysitting' woman came back over and gestured Amlai to come over. "Come, I will walk with you" she said. Amlai smiled and made her way over to the lady. The lady whispered something to the man, and started to walk towards the street. "Now then, You say you have not been here long. What are your impressions of the Underground thus far?" she heard her say.

"Thankyou for coming," Amlai replied back. "I haven't really been here long enough to comment, but it has been really inspiring for my work so far."

Amlai slowly followed the woman, trying to work out if she'd seen her before. not entirely sure where she was headed, but somehow trusting this woman with her life.

OOC: Continued in Take Her By The Hand.