[color=gray][quote]He climbed out of the pillow hole he dug himself and grabbed one of the least heavy pillows. With all of his might he threw it up into the water just to see what would happen.[/quote][/color]

The pillow was flung upward, and with a quiet splash a few droplets fell down on Arthur's forehead. The pillow, for a moment, floated upside-down on the watery ceiling until the fabric had soaked through -- then it rose above the surface and continued to float along into the dark watery depths above. Anything more that he might choose to toss into the water would not come back down again.

The cat watched this peculiar behavior with a swishing tail and a twitching ear. Whiskers quivered, and it blinked its big eyes, silently waiting.

Just as the dark silhouette of the pillow had begun to fade into the deep water, something else moved. A sinewy shape swam closer, snatched the pillow and darted away again, silent.

[hr][color=gray][quote]Within sat the little creature, shivering from its near miss with death. Riley reached in to pet the little creature. [/quote][/color]

The little critter blinked and breathed rapidly, watching as Riley's hand drew closer. Its pink nose quivered, and slowly -- cautiously -- it shifted forward to sniff her outstretched hand, whining, hopeful for her assistance.

Suddenly something big and fleshy grabbed Riley around the middle and yanked her high into the air; one of the monsters had spotted her, and now had her in its scaly grip. The monster held her up to the light, examining her with glazed red eyes for a moment before it tipped its head back and parted its tentacled face, revealing a round mouth lined with rows of razor teeth.

"No eating the help!" the hostess roared in the distance, but the admonishment was too little too late.

The little white critter, meanwhile, skittered up the monster's leg, scaled its putrid back, and crawled along its outstretched arm with flurrying speed. Riley's new furry friend opened wide its big toothy jaws and clamped down on the hand that held her.

The monster gurgled a scream of pain and dropped Riley into a half-empty bowl of custard on the table. The critter dropped down beside her -- and all the monsters at the table, poised and quiet, were now staring at them both.

[hr][color=gray][quote]"I'mma try pressing this one!"  Isabelle declared, pressing the middle button that had two swirls on it.[/quote]

The button lit up gold and blue and swirling; the light spread along the patterns in the metal walls of her little room. With a bump and a click and a hum, the room began to vibrate; the water above rippled before a metal panel slid suddenly over the surface of the water, securing Isabelle's room into a solid coppery glowing trembling box.

The cat's whiskers twitched, and it grinned fangily. "Good luck!" it called in a voice that almost sounded mocking, and it turned its back on Isabelle and walked cleanly away through the solid wall -- as if the cat had been nothing but a spirit.

The room hummed and creaked and shuddered, the lit-up patterns flashed.

Suddenly, everything went still and dark.

A whining, creaking noise vibrated in the walls. A seam of bright sunlight cut through the wall before her and grew wider as the elevator doors slid open. A cool fragrant wind swirled just outside.

Once her eyes adjusted to the light, Isabelle would find that the elevator was perched upon the sprawling grassy, rocky top of a cliff. The wind whistled and howled, and the sun shone brightly on the waving green grass and jutting stones.

To her right was an old stone windmill, spinning rapidly, strung up with strings of little brightly colored flags that flapped in the wind. The windmill towered high above, and if Isabelle listened carefully she might hear the squeak and grind of machinery inside.

Attached to the windmill was a little stone house with a thatch roof and a cozy porch, presumably where the windmill-keeper lived. On the porch was a bench swing, a rocking chair, and a rather rusty looking robot. The robot was sitting on the porch floor with its legs stretched out and head drooped to its chest. There was a big turnkey in its back. It was about as big as Isabelle herself.

There was only one window on the house, but it was fastened and the curtains were shut inside. The door was closed, but unlocked.

To Isabelle's left, the rocky landscape sloped down, toward the edge of a thick scraggly forest in the distance.

Behind her was the cliff's edge, and a sheer drop from an unknown height; the bottom was hidden behind a mist, and birds flew far below.

Straight ahead, directly across from the open elevator, a winding path led past the windmill and along a narrow stone bridge that stretched across the abyss. On the other end of the bridge -- in the far distance, was a floating island, and on this island was a massive, shimmering mountain of angular pink crystal. The crystal seemed to glow and spark in the sunlight, its size impossible to determine from this distance, only that it dwarfed the spinning windmill.