[quote][sub][color=gray]"Yeah!  Let's go!"  Isabelle said, hopping on her feet a bit.  She looked around for a bit for the exit.  Well, the little girl and cat can't go anywhere if they don't leave the room, can they?[/color][/sub][/quote]

"Yeah!" Howl cheered with an equally excited leap in the air. He landed gracefully, did a neat little turn and a twitch of his tail, and raised his paws up against the wall, ears perked. "This is a very special room that has no door -- but you can push one of those buttons there! Do you see them?"

Carved among the intricate patterns on the coppery wall were a series of buttons with strange symbols on them:

[center][img]http://i.imgur.com/NUAWQUu.png[/img][img]http://i.imgur.com/7tOhboh.png[/img][img]http://i.imgur.com/d18c3Su.png[/img][img]http://i.imgur.com/CFUT97x.png[/img][img]http://i.imgur.com/CfdI35v.png[/img][/center]


[hr][quote][sub][color=gray]Riley most certainly didn't want to imitate that behaviour, so she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and pressed one of the buttons at random. It turned out to be the one on the far right.[/color][/sub][/quote]

The button lit up with a gentle green glow; the light spread quickly throughout all the carved lines that networked throughout the walls of the tiny room, until the coppery little room was full of angled patterns of dim neon.

[b][i]BRRRRRM CLICK![/i][/b]

Above Riley's head, a copper ceiling slid closed, sealing off the room from the water that had been floating overhead.

Howl spun in place and flashed a fangy grin up at Riley. "See you later!" He turned his back to her, coiled his haunches, and leaped through the wall as if he were nothing more than a ghost -- but the wall was completely solid.

The room began to shake and rumble like a very old elevator.

[i]DING![/i]

All of a sudden everything went still and quiet; the lights were gone and the shaking had stopped. For a tense moment, Riley was alone in silence -- until the wall behind her split open like elevator doors, revealing a chaos of muttering and clattering noises and buttery-sweet smells.

[i]"Make way, coming through, out of the way!"[/i] called a waitress as she sprinted through the crowd with an enormous tray of covered dishes held over her head. She rushed past the elevator door and disappeared among the filled tables to the right. The tables were all filled with enormous monsters with scales or feathers or fur or spines, all shoveling ravenous forkfuls of savory meats and sweet desserts into their fanged or tentacled mouths.

The waiters and waitresses that darted about, however, were very much human. They wore uniforms of pink and blue, which matched the gaudy decor that gave the huge restaurant a very particularly nostalgic feel.

Directly in front of the elevator was a worn red carpet, which led directly to the hostess' podium, above which glowed a bright green neon sign:

[color=lightgreen][center]welcome to[h1][i]Lilyrose House[/i][/h1][/center][/color]
The hostess was a teenage girl with flyaway black hair and a pink uniform that was slightly fancier than those of the other wait staff. She wore a patch over her right eye, but her left eye caught quick sight of Riley through the elevator door.

"Hey, [i]there[/i] you are!" she hollered, gripping the podium. "You're late!"

[hr][quote][sub][color=gray]"N-n-no!" He cried out as he twisted around and began to dig into the pillows in an attempt to escape this nightmare. "I just want to wake up!"

Deeper. "Wake up!"

Deeper. "Wake up!"

He made a small hole to climb into and began to blubber in it. "I want my Mommy!"[/color][/sub][/quote]

The black cat tilted his head and swished his tail, and for a moment he waited for this new visitor to finish being scared -- but when the boy showed no signs of anything but distress, the cat lighted up onto the disheveled pile of pillows and craned his neck to peer into the little cave the boy had made in them.

"What's a mommy?" he asked quizzically, triangle ears perked.