a/n: Pascal! except i don't think i did him justice. eh.
please read and review :)
Chapter Four: Sheet Bend
Joins ropes of unequal size.
She was surrounded by a rainbow of color—blues, pinks, purples, greens, tans, yellows—all contained neatly, nicely, in little round mugs that had been one of her first creations after Mother had managed to bring her a pottery wheel. Some were cracked up the side, and the plain, brown surface on most all of them was covered in spatters and drips of paint. She carefully pushed her hair into a neat little pile and bent down to dip her brush into the nearest color. It came out periwinkle, light and lovely. She bent forward, towards the small space of wall she was attempting to cover, and ran it heavily along the side, leaving a trail of purple in her wake.
Mother was gone for the afternoon, as per usual. She'd be back before the sun set, as per usual also, which meant that Rapunzel had all the time in the world to finish her current masterpiece.
Which was good, because aside from the heavy purple line she had drawn nothing. Because she had no idea what to draw.
She bit her lip and, picking up her hair, stepped out of the circle of paint, throwing her brush in one of jugs haphazardly and wincing as she realized it had landed in the light yellow without her wiping off the periwinkle. The colors bled a little, creating another tan that she didn't need. She sighed, one strand of hair looping in front of her eyes. She threw the rest of the mass down in frustration, not even paying much attention to the length (nearly ten feet of it, on the ground) as she walked quickly up to her room. Rummaging through the pillows mounted on her bed, she pulled out her reading material of last night—the botany book, again—and flipped through the first few pages.
"No, no, no," she muttered under her breath, as she passed picture after picture of incredibly detailed flowers. She'd drawn them all, or some caricature of them at least—she could see one now, lying serenely next to her bed, and the star flowers the book talked about were there, right over her head, and she knew a dozen more were covering her armoire and mirror and stool downstairs. She gave a groan of annoyance and tossed the book back into the mass of pillows. She'd have to re-make her bed again before Mother got home, now.
The botany book was out for ideas. That left the geology book (rocks, in her gallery? no thank you), the cook book (hm, pies would be kinda go—no, what was she thinking?), or the math book (N.O.). Which really left no books at all to use, because that was the current extent of her library.
She scooped up the botany book and ran back into the main round room to place it in its proper spot on the book shelf next to the others, and then raced back upstairs to tidy up her bed. She'd have to use animals, then, her fall back. "But that's the trouble," she mumbled to herself as she sat another pillow up right and straightened out the blanket, "I've only ever seen birds. Birds, birds, birds." She peered sideways at the bird family sitting above her bed. She liked birds, she really did, but she didn't like them quite so much after Sun Flower had flown away.
She kicked at the floor with her small bare feet as she headed back downstairs. The paint circle was mocking her. She could tell from across the room.
Aside from the fact that she was currently suffering an extreme case of artist's block, it was also raining. Not a hard rain, just a light splatter, enough to be annoying and damp but not enough to flood. (She couldn't imagine why on earth Mother was out in it.) Mother had told her to shut the window and put on slippers, and she hadn't really followed suit on both accounts. She had left the window open just a crack, so she could hear the rain tap-pattering along the valley floor. Which is how he got in.
She sidled passed the paint, avoiding eye-contact with the monsters, and headed to the kitchen for an afternoon snack. That morning she had made cookies, chocolate chip and delicious, mostly because Mother had requested them but secretly because she had been craving them. Her mouth watering at the thought, she reached towards the tray she had left on the small counter.
And her hand hit something smooth. And slightly cool. And scaly.
She screamed, and it echoed around the empty tower room, before jumping back a few feet, just barely avoiding the outermost paints in her circle. She tipped awkwardly to one side, trying to save her hair from an early blue-green-pink death and trying to save her battered pottery from even more abuse. She ended up hopping over the circle and tumbling to a stop near the open window, her eyes still fixed on the cookie tray.
Something green was eyeing her from on it. Something green and small and unnatural.
"Ok-it's-ok-it's-fine—" she panted, scrambling to her feet and diving for the nearest hidey-hole she could, which became a mix of the end of the kitchen counter and her hair. She tucked up in a ball underneath it and began throwing pots and pans out of the shelves she was staring at, looking for a suitable weapon and a-ha!
"Right, on the count of three." The handle was slippery in her grasp and her heart fluttered against her chest. She didn't really get a good look at the thing, but it had skinny legs. Maybe a spider? Well, that was no big deal, she'd killed plenty of those before.
Though, never one this big. Or boney. Maybe it was an alligator! She bit her lip, for the millionth time that morning, remembering the story about the man who was eaten whole her mother had told her about. Eaten up by an alligator.
"One."
Crocodile? Wasn't that a distant cousin of the alligator?
"Two."
She had it. It was a bear. Mother said they were fearsome. Oh! A snake! That made much more sense, but why did it have legs? Frog, then?
"Three!"
She sprang out from behind the kitchen counter but slipped a little on her hair. Her head came crashing into the wooden corner of the cabinet and blackness dotted her vision. "Ow." She moaned from the floor. She lay there for a second, proposed weapon useless in her hand, and frowned. This was, so far, not going according to plan.
Something nudged her elbow and, screaming again, she pushed herself to her feet, swung up and around, and threw the frying pan she was holding in the direction of the nudge. It hit the floor with a loud clatter, metallic and gleaming, before bouncing, with a few more clangs, to a slow stop. Breathing hard, she peeled open her eyes to survey the damage.
The green beast was giving her a deadpan sort of look.
She backed up into the window frame, sinking to the floor. "What. Are. You?" she panted. "A monster? Thug? Alligator? Are you here to take me outside? Well, it's never going to happen! Oh no. You're here to eat me, aren't you? I don't taste good. You can have my cookies instead—"
She let her eyes slip to the tray on the counter top and she found, sitting there, nothing but empty air.
"—which you already did."
The green thing shrugged, hunkering back on its hind-legs. The whole picture was so outlandish. And adorable. She smiled. "Aw, you are kinda cute. And small. You wouldn't eat me."
He shook his green head and stepped forward. She held out her hand and faintly remembered a bird but pushed the thought out of her mind as he pattered quickly up her arm. She gasped, because it tickled and because it was cold and also because it felt a little strange, and shot to her feet. The green thing settled itself onto her shoulder and burped.
"Well, I'm glad you enjoyed my cookies."
Chirpsqueaksqueak.
"Of course I made them. But I can't make anymore right now, I want to paint. I just…don't know what to paint."
She picked up the frying pan, examining it for cracks or breaks, and, pleased to see the cast iron in perfect condition, placed it on the counter. All the while the little green thing clung to her shoulder in a companionable sort of way. She smiled. Inspiration struck.
"I'll paint you!"
She grabbed up her hair and jumped into the circle of paint, ignoring the squeaks of protest coming from her shoulder. Dumping the pile of gold in her arms she reached one hand up towards the little creature and the other towards her paintbrush; wiping off the now ugly brown color on a rag, she set the green thing right next to the spot where she was going to decorate.
"Don't move, ok?" She reached the brush into the green paint.
When she looked back up he was gone. "Hey!" She frowned, eyeing the spot where she had left him. If she looked very, very closely she could just make out—
Pink. He had turned a bright pink to match the flower he was standing in front of.
"You can change color." She stated, torn between being awestruck and afraid. He chuckled dryly and turned back to his original, leaf green state. She blew up a loose strand of hair and said, "Ok, I'm going to try this again. Just stay green, ok?"
She moved to put her paint brush back against the wall but he had suddenly changed to a pale periwinkle. Wiping off her brush, muttering under her breath, she quickly reached for the light purple mug but not quickly enough for him—he changed from purple to blue to red in quick succession, each time just after she had dipped her paintbrush into the pot.
"Two can play at that game," she reached for the rag and dipped out a drop of blue and green onto a clean spot on the grimy surface, swirling it around until it was a nice, aqua sort of color. "Ha!" she held up her creation next to the little lizard, who, within seconds, had turned a nice aqua sort of color as well.
She mixed blue with purple, periwinkle with red, orange with yellow; she was looking at colors she hadn't even known existed, colors too bright or too garish to even consider putting up on her walls yet still, still he matched every single one until finally, in a flurry of movement, she tipped a little too far forward and brought the paint brush, full of some variant of cerulean, crashing onto the blank surface of the wall she was working on.
Right above the strip of purple, a blue dot.
She ended up painting a flower.
"You can match any color, huh?" she huffed, sitting back on her hands and surveying her work which was, understandably, not the best.
Squeaksqueak.
"Me? I can't change colors. I can't even go outside. Think of all the colors I'm missing."
Chirp.
"Well, Mother doesn't want me too. She says it's too dangerous. I like it fine in here, anyway. Just…it just gets a little…quiet, is all."
Squeaksqueak.
"Do I make cookies a lot? What kind of question is that?"
Chirp.
"Yes, I do. Mother likes them."
Squeakchirpsqueak.
Rapunzel sat up quickly, hitting a few mugs and sending their contents spilling over the hem of her dress and her hair and her hands. "Really?" her heart pounded, but not, as it had earlier that day, out of fear but excitement. The little green creature sat still, back to leafy green, and nodded resolutely.
She sprang to her feet, ignoring the color circle completely now, and bent down to put the little thing on her shoulder again, but not before she gave it a bone-breaking hug. "Thank you so much! Thank you! We'll have so much fun! And I'll make cookies! A lot of them! Just," suddenly her stomach hurt and she didn't feel so excited at the prospect of a friend. Sun Flower flashed briefly across her mind. She continued after a pause, "Just don't let Mother see you, ok Pascal?"
Squeakchirpchirp.
"What's a Pascal? You are, silly! Isn't it a great name?"
…chirp.
"You'll love it, trust me. I read it in my math book, it's the name of a man who came up with some triangle…but you just seem like a Pascal to me—" suddenly she could hear echoes up through the ground from the passage below and the sing-song voice she knew so well was saying, "I'm home, my flower."
She gasped, racing to the window and peaking through the crack. The sun was setting. She'd completely lost track of time.
"Quick," her paint-splattered feet slipped on the smooth stone as she ran to her room and dropped the little green thing—Pascal, as she dropped Pascal into her pillows, "don't let her see you, just hide. I'll be back with dinner."
She made it to the bottom of the stairs just as her mother was coming up the ladder and pushing the stone in the floor all the way to one side. She caught the tail end of what she was saying.
"…had the longest day, Mummy cannot wait for you to sing to her to…" Gothel stuck her head up, clamoring into the room, basket in hand, as usual, and her sentence trailed off. Only then did Rapunzel consider what it all must look like.
A rainbow of colors. One giant rainbow in her hair, on her feet, on the floor, on her hands, on her face—none of the mess matching the single, purple and blue flower she painted.
"Rapunzel? What's this?" her mother's voice was quiet, a little menacing, but she couldn't quite seem to care.
"Mother, have you ever heard of an animal changing colors?"