Parenthood'z Nightmare

Chapter IV - The Pancake Pandemic

Awakening in strange places was nothing new for Alice, but this place was different than any she'd roused in before. After a dreamless sleep she'd awoken in a soft bed and as she began to move she heard rustling and then noticed the plastic bag laid underneath her, placed there by Sephiroth to protect his mattress from any 'accidents'.

The room was not polished in metallic sterile colours and it lacked that chemical smell, rather, it bore a refreshing floral and fruity scent, the same scent was in her hair. As she sat up she examining the large orange T-shirt she wore and the white bandages wrapped around her feet, she pulled her hair, it was free of tangles, platinum blond locks falling to her shoulders rather than piled on her head resembling a bird's nest.

This was a piece of life she had subconsciously longed for, even though it was grandeur beyond her imagination.

Wriggling off the bed she struggled to stand on her sore feet, unused to the bandaging wrapped on them, making her feet appear Wutese in the way some girls had bound folded feet in tight cloth.

She hobbled to the wardrobe, tugged its door open and a large sack fell out, spilling stuffed toys onto the floor, pooling around her in a puddle of dusty fluff. She sat on the soft seat of toys and pulled a buried treasure out from underneath a purple bear. The alluring toy was a rabbit, once white and soft it had become grey, matted and stained. Its inner ears were lined pink; its eyes were embroidered black and it had a pink narrow mouth and nose. It was clothed in a terrible blue jacket and its matted tail was barely attached. It was the worst toy of the bunch! Yet it soon found love, cuddled and squeezed by a child once as ill-kept as it was.

This was the scene that greeted Sephiroth as he entered the room, holding his phone to his ear, staring at the mess on the floor and the child sat in the centre of it. At once she held her newfound friend defensively and glowered at his approaching feet. "She's fine," he said into the phone. "The noise was simply..." He looked at the scene again, wondering how to describe it. "...her becoming adventurous." He frowned at the rabbit in Alice's grip... it was looking at him. "Anyway, she has large open wounds on her feet... Yes, I'll bring her in tomorrow." He flipped the phone shut and stared at Alice once again.

She was continuing to sit amongst the teddies, looking afraid and stubborn as she squeezed the toy rabbit. Her legs had sunk down into the teddies and stuffing.

"I won't take him from you." Sephiroth assured her.

She watched him warily as he checked his bed for wet patches and smiled when he found none. He turned his attention towards her again as he remade the bed. Alice was holding the rabbit up by his large, dilapidated, floppy ears and rubbed her little nose against its own as she mumbled words Sephiroth couldn't understand, snorting at himself when he wondered if the toys could.

"Pancake!" That was the one word she spoke intelligible to Sephiroth's ears.

"I don't have any pancakes." He told her as he finished making the bed, walked around it to the teddies and began throwing them into the sack they'd tumbled from.

Alice climbed over the mass of teddies, tripping over a few as she left the room and wandered into the sitting room; curious of her new environment and observed by Sephiroth whose curiosity of her behaviour matched her own.

She stood in the middle of the living room, continuing to hug her cotton-tailed companion as she looked around.

The lounge had wood flooring and white walls. A bookcase housing empty photo frames sat between Sephiroth's room and another door, as did the bookcase next the front door opposite his bedroom. On the left were two windows with green tie-back curtains and a small dining table with two chairs between them.