A snicker escaped from the street urchin's throat, swelling with a greedy giddiness. Riling up the little girl didn't quite soothe the sting in her cheeks, but Charley would take what she could get. Apparently Little Flower didn't think the same way, and stood up all by herself. So be it, Charley didn't really want to help her anyway! Her arms folded themselves across her chest and she reared back up to her full height, watching the little girl with a smirk tugging at her lips.

"Fine, you're a tiger," Charley threw out a mocking claw-fingered hand toward her, cat scratching the air in front of the Little Flower. No, not a Little Flower, a Tiger Lily. The urchin's grin cracked her lips, and she drew in another breath to cackle at the quip.

Something snagged in Charley's throat, making her cough. Another breath drew in more of the cloying, dense cloud that surrounded her and the little girl now, a colorful haze that blotted out the gardens around them. "What the—"

She coughed so hard her lungs ached, drawing in a rasping breath between the pollen stuck to her lips and nose now. They were stuck everywhere else as well, painting the street urchin in brighter colors than the dirt and grime covering her unwashed clothes. She coughed as her lungs burned with the same, singular, command as her mind: less color, more air! Charley couldn't stop to admire the new hues of blue and yellow and purple on her costume, she had to get out of here.

Her feet turned in the direction she thought was safety, relying only on her mind's eye inside the opaque haze of pollen. That wasn't about to stop her! Relying on memory, Charley willed her feet to run, and ran...headlong into the smaller form of Tiger Lily instead. The two went down in a tangle of limbs, sending more plumes of the colored pollen up into the air like a dust cloud.

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