The pale remains of her chrysalis sat at the base of the hill.

It had been several days, now, since she came out. The solid agate lay in pieces, littered with white petals bathed in Voidlight from strange, black crystals above. Where some might abandon their rock without a second thought, Niamh liked to visit on occasion-- not for any particularly profound reason, or to question existence as a whole, but for the tree.

She could always see it from where the chrysalis used to stand-- it stood tall atop the hill, covered in pretty pale flowers, surrounded by a blanket of petals like snow. Niamh liked to run back and froth through the silky blossoms, cloven hooves kicking up large plumes of litter into the air to scatter like dust. She'd roll in them, sometimes, too-- and she'd spend too much time picking little pinprick petals from her hair afterwards.

Today, though, the faun's eyes were set on the tree itself, rather than the litter it produced. Instead of skipping through an ankle-deep sea of white, she went for skittering around the trunk of the tree until she found the lowest branch. She ran, she jumped-- her hooves scratched against the bark, until her little hands caught it.

She affixed herself up there with some flailing and "wah"-ing before one blush leg was flung over the branch, and she sat with her belly to the wood, slowly snaking forward. The branch bent, even under her little weight.

No, that probably wasn't good... Her head craned upwards to the stronger, thicker branches up above as the platform she was on continued to curve dangerously underneath her.

Even without a concept of what isn't socially acceptable or not, the childhood instinct of being caught in the act rose in Niamh's belly as she saw a pale figure approaching. The branch bent and she started to peel herself back off the tree-- by the time Akane had come into speaking range, she was dangling from the branch with her hands, hooves flailing back and forth.

No reprimanding came, however-- just knocking, and an offer. An offer Niamh could not refuse.

"Yes!" she cried, legs kicking faster as she tried to haul herself back up on the (still bending) branch. "I have to go higher!"

No reason given, of course, but she had managed to haul her upper-half onto the tree, clinging to the creaking branch with her armpits. It was here, slightly more stable, that she took a look at the stranger lingering around the tree.

And her brow furrowed. "What are those!!" she wailed, pointing accusingly at the cloth around Akane. Why did she get to cover up all those soft bits with nice clothes, after all? What an injustice. "Where did you get them!"

The branch, meanwhile, cracked.

"I want pants," the child announced, as her little pink hooves fell still on Akane's hand. Her tail whipped, briefly-- she'd never been this high before! Akane was tall, was this what it was like to be tall? "I gotta get pants. From the Palace?"

She was rambling on as she ascended to the branch the Oni had picked out for her: her little hand clung to the branch, and she swung onto it-- "I've got it!" --perching with her legs on either side. This one was thicker, sturdier, and very high up. "I went there once and there was this scary lady," she went on, scooting along the branch idly. "Or, uhh, a lady and her three friends that lived on her butt. She seemed scary, so I just left again."

Niamh hadn't even bothered to introduce herself to Isra, in fact. Or to the three friends that lived on her butt. She'd barely even got within the threshold of the river, since. She snaked around the strange hut where some Purple People lived, sniffing around but never finding anything interesting enough to interact with, unless it was unattended food.

Back to the tree, of which Niamh was still scooting along the branches of. When this particular one split into a Y-shape, she stopped and reached out for one of the pretty pale flowers affixed onto it by a thin twig and pried it off. For a moment, the faun studied it, curious, and then pinched the stem gently between a finger and thumb.

A little spark of light-- a white glow from the agate upon her chest, before it fizzled out again. "It didn't work!" she exclaimed, distraught, without bothering to explain her newest predicament to Akane. Instead, she let the flower flutter down to the Oni below, aiming for the tippy-top of her head.

"Do you live in the Palace?" She asked, changing the conversation entirely, her palms on the tree branch. "You're a little scary-looking. Is it for scary people?"

Niamh took another flower from the twig and then twisted around to look at the Palace in the distance. "A mess?" She asked, trying to imagine what a mess was supposed to imply. In the meantime, she was pinching it by the stem again, pink tongue sticking out with concentration.

The flower gradually began to glow pink, a strange little aura emanating from it that went up the stem and eventually spread through its petals. "I can make things pretty," she offered as Akane ascended, and then promptly descended, leaning over to look at the Oni on the ground. "Everyone falls," she said in an unusual moment of wisdom. "It doesn't make people less scary."

She spent a moment adjusting herself on the tree-branch, shuffling to sit with both legs over the same side and tail folded along the branch to keep her from falling-- though, if she did, it likely wouldn't help much. Briefly she glanced down at her pink legs and miscellaneous soft bits before asking-- "are they supposed to be covered?"

Either way, Niamh was shaking her head. "I want my own pants," she said, as she tossed the glowing blossom down to Akane, too. "You should keep your-- your pants-bits? Your yellow."