[Mousen]

Lottie considered this for a moment. "It might, I mean, there's a chance it'll get us back to a main path or something..." As she trailed off, Fredrick's voice could clearly be heard and she sighed with relief. Thank goodness for that. The last thing she needed would have been to traipse around a park for three hours looking for her friends.

"Lottie!"

"Nice to see you! I was worried you'd gotten lost!"

"That's really not funny."

Lottie was out of the patch of woodland in a moment and stood beside her two co-workers and the trio of kuhnas.

"... A giant wooden cheese?" She echoed, nonplussed by the idea.

"Yup! Swiss cheese, or something with holes in, anyway. Well, I'm assuming that's the case, otherwise it'd just be a block of wood."

[Freezair]

"Yeah," Shelly explained. "You can climb around inside it, and hide, and all that stuff. It's real fun! And since people like to hide there, I imagine eggs like hidin' there too. Let's go!" Shelly strutted herself into the lead, and started heading off towards the cheese. She didn't use her psychic hands or anything similar, but she seemed to have a tether-like effect on her friends anyway. Mary and Fredrick followed immediately anyway.

"There's a lot of strange things at this playground, aren't there?" Fredrick observed. "Look. There's also a giant wooden stegosaurus to climb on. Who designed this place? Is this really what children enjoy playing with?"

"I think it's what you call... 'whimsical,'" Mary nodded. "And children like whimsical things. Is... am I using that word right? I'm not sure I am. Whimsical... Whimsical..."

[Mousen]

"Huh, In my local park the most interesting thing was a horse on a spring." Admittedly, it had been about a decade since she'd last stepped into that little park.

"The most interesting thing in my local park was the fact that we never worked out how to break the round-a-bout."

"You delinquent, Gabe."

"Former delinquent, if you don't mind. Anyway, aren't we supposed to be looking for Easter Eggs in a giant wooden cheese?" There was a moment of horror after he'd finished speaking, when Gabriel realized what he'd just said. The craziness was catching.

Thursday was already looking between the spines of the wooden dinosaur for eggs, managing to completely miss the yellow egg by his feet. "Whimsical is good, yeah."

[Freezair]

"Our local park never had enough swings," Shelly groused. "On busy days, there was no getting into 'em. And even if you did, if you went for more than five minutes, the rest of the adults glare at you. Bleh. What good's a swing if you can sit there for half an hour, swingin' your feet? Nothin', that's what!"

Fredrick grinned at Gabe. "Yes, that's exactly what we're doing... my friends are catching you, huh? I know it's frightening at first, but you grow to enjoy it, I promise you. As a matter of fact... I do believe we've arrived at the cheese!" With a sweep of his paw, he indicated the large, holey yellow structure. Several small children were poking in and out of it excitedly. "Who wants to wiggle in first?"

Mary smiled. "Good... glad to know I got it right. Uh... I'll go in, if nobody minds... anyone want to join me...?"

[Mousen]

"It was the same where I grew up, I think that's a universal problem, actually. Then you get those kids who's parents stay right next to them and you never dared ask them to move because there parents were always stood right there. I remember getting grounded for a week for pushing Susan Allans off of a swing, it was totally accidental, of course. Just like she accidentally stepped on my magnifying glass when I was looking for fairies." Lottie giggled. She'd been the type of child that on weekends spent her time looking for evidence of fairies and aliens, and occasionally alien fairies.

Gabriel nodded. "It's not that, I'm more worried about my siblings finding out, as silly as that sounds. I'm never going to live this down." There was enough humour in his voice for it to be obvious that he wasn't too worried about that.

"Well, I'm the one who has to hoover the really small and dark and generally horrible spaces in the bookstore, so I guess it'll have to be me! Though, hopefully, they'll be more eggs and less of the horrible... ness." As he moved to go join them by the giant wooden cheese, his foot knocked against something. "Oh! Found an Easter egg!"

[Freezair]

"Darn tootin'!" Shelly swung her paw. "You'd think those people who design playgrounds would learn! You need a good fifteen sets of swings, at least!"

Mary hadn't been paying much attention to the playground conversation, and instead noticed Thursday's egg. "Oh! Good find... Let's head inside." With a fluid, catlike leap, Mary tossed herself into one of the lower holes of the cheese and started sniffing about inside.

There might have been a little horribleness in there. Just a little. The place smelled of too many people in too little space; of the bottoms of dirty shoes and sweaty clothing. Mary sniffed, and, for a moment, looked as if she wanted to retreat. But she crawled further into the slightly dark, yellow-orange space, ducking around the other kids. A hole appeared above her head, and she climbed up to a higher level. Her feet nudged something. Another egg! She added it to the basket, and looked around, to see if Thursday had made any other discoveries.

On the outside, Fredrick chuckled. "Well, my parents found out, and they still respect me, for what it's worth."