Though they're dreadful and Cthonic, they're still weak when embryonic...

[temptingtarget]

As dawn approaches in the Wood, something rolls across the landscape like a thunderstorm - it comes with a sense of pressure, a soundless roar that shakes trees and earth briefly before moving on. It may wake some of the newcomers to the Wood in their beds; others may notice it only dimly, roll over, and return to sleep. Whatever it is, it doesn't

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[saveme_barry]

Nathan dropped his heavy, leather shoulder bag down onto the floor in front of a particularly well endowed stalk of corn. Standing, he pulled back the covers of one of the ears.

Regular Corn. Forget that.

He tried another, pulling back the leaves with a little huff of annoyance.

Still regular corn.

This was so boring. How had he let Tommy convince him that what was essentially farming could be a good use of his time? What was worse, was that they'd been doing this all day. This had to have been his fifth corn gathering run of the day! (Not including the first two, which they had attempted to do together. After the first one ended in a corn fight, and the second one ended in an exciting - and in Tommy's case, unwilling - chase through the corn, Tommy had insisted that they work apart). Tossing the worthless food over his shoulder, Nathan grabbed a third ear, this time pulling the leaves back to reveal exactly what he'd been looking for. Candy corn! Tossing it down into his bag, Nathan grabbed another ear, his spirits

[only_a_doll]

Esme, for her part, had been keeping more or less on the down-low since the less-than-enjoyable experience she'd had when first arriving; after that abrupt and unpleasant demand for teamwork, things had lulled and her natural dislike of new people had had her keeping herself to herself. When she had felt that something, though - unavoidable, she felt everything, she didn't sleep - she had been quick to investigate the random apparition of the cornfield. Since then she'd been back every so often, tracing the paths in a cloud of dust, paying more attention to who else was showing up than to the crop itself.

And now she was watching a teenage boy looking for sweets. She'd coalesced somewhere behind Nathan and she looked on in bemusement as he threw away (maybe) perfectly good food in favour of candy. He'd shown up, gathered a haul, gone away, come back, repeat several times. Why was he bothering?

An ear of actual corn rolled over and nudged her toe.

"You should probably be saving these."

[saveme_barry]

"In case you hadn't noticed," Nathan replied, cheerily plucking another ear of (...yes, candy corn again!) down from one of the stems of corn, "there's like, an entire field of this stuff. We're not about to run out."

Yes he sort of knew the logic was kind of unsound, but he figured everyone else could run around harvesting the boring crops. Dropping the candy into his bag, he finally turned around to face whoever had made the suggestion, and promptly froze.

Oh this wasn't right... she, wasn't right. She didn't even look human. Nathan edged back slightly, if worst came to worst he could always just run off through the corn, go looking for help or something. Swallowing, he cocked his head slightly, and pointed at the woman, "You're one of those things, aren't you? One of those weird vulcan mind rape forest things?"

[only_a_doll]

Esme gave him a weary look, picking up the corn at her feet and turning it over in her hands. It'd been a long time since she'd been expected to cook for anyone and she'd since become disconnected from notions of what was or wasn't good to eat, but it seemed alright.

"One of those weird Vulcan mind rape forest....no. No, as a matter of fact, I'm not. I was dropped here at the same time as everyone else."

[saveme_barry]

Nathan folded his arms across his chest, giving Esme a look which clearly broadcast the fact that he'd found a hole in her story, "Then why are you grey, and bald, and have no vagina or nipples?"

Riddle me that, mysterious creepy Barbie doll!

[only_a_doll]

So it was threatening to be one of these conversations. God, she missed being known about. Back at home you could tell people you were extranormal and you could look however the hell you liked; nobody would question it.

"It's a very long story."

[saveme_barry]

"Yeah, but right now it's just this really tantalizing, really disturbing mystery. Like, right now I can only guess. Grown in a jar, maybe? Really bad idea in a tattoo parlor? Horrible advice from your plastic surgeon?" Nathan could feel his initial fear delicately drifting away. She didn't seem to be particularly aggressive so far, just sort of faintly irritated by him. It was a far milder reaction than he usually garnered.

"So come on then," Nathan idly plucked another ear of corn from one of the stems, giving it a disdainful look, "Give us like, the edited highlights?"

[only_a_doll]

Well. She didn't often - there was a lie in the making - she didn't frequently go in for being a dick for the sake of it, but she was bored and he'd felt the need to point out she didn't have any genitalia as if she hadn't noticed. So abruptly she dissolved, slipping between the stalks and leaves to re-form behind him, her mouth at his ear, her fingers curling around his throat.

"You were closest with the first idea."

[saveme_barry]

Nathan's mind took a couple of bizarre leaps between seeing the figure before him just dissipating before his eyes, and seconds later feeling her breath against his skin and her hand sliding around his neck. It took a split second for panic to set in, and he let out an incredibly unmanly scream, jerking forward abruptly only to be inconveniently reminded that there was a hand blocking the escape route which his neck had been hoping to take.

[only_a_doll]

Esme laughed - not entirely pleasantly - and stepped away, lacing her fingers behind her back. Several of her more foolhardy colleagues back home had tried to convince her not to use her powers to freak out the newbies; none had succeeded.

"I don't remember there being a jar involved, though."

[saveme_barry]

Nathan made the fastest scramble to the other side of the corn that he could reasonably muster. Once he'd put what felt like a reasonable distance between himself and the... the thing. He didn't even really want to think of it as a woman now, it wasn't like it could possibly have ovaries trapped in that anatomically incorrect, weirdly ephemeral body. He stared at her hard, trying to ignore the very slight trickle of piss that had escaped down his leg before he'd pulled himself back together,

"You know, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, there! Like, letting you cop out and say you were just some weirdo who fucked herself up on a eurotrash body modification fetish trip! I was doing you a favor!" He hesitated then, still staring. The thought had just crept into his mind that she might actually attack him if he was too rude to her right now. After a couple of moments of obviously deep thought, he spoke again, his voice a little more in control now, "So, what? Are you like, a government thing?"

[only_a_doll]

Yeah, this was how she preferred her teenagers. Panicky and frightened.

"I'm a golem." Not strictly true - not Jewish, for starters, and the word in English didn't even exist back then - but there were no other words going for 'magically animated lump of clay'. "I was created about five hundred years ago by a magician."

All this in the blandest tone possible because, well, she didn't know the first thing about his world. Maybe it was fucking paved with sorcerers. Or maybe he was going to accuse her of being a bodymod fetishist on drugs (which, let's face it, were conditions with high comorbidity rates). She just watched his face

[saveme_barry]

All the panicking in the world wasn't going to keep the look of sheer incredulity from Nathan's expression. "Oh bull-shit! I'm stickin' with grown in a jar by the government." That was a far more believable story than hers. Nathan clicked his fingers a couple of times, as thoughts came to back this up, "Because, right, first of all? There is no way a man would make a woman without a fanny, unless there was some kind of government intervention involved, and I happen to know for a fact, that they don't just slowly seal over with age." He paused to let his argument sink in, before adding, "Even if they should."

[only_a_doll]

She was about to ask what he thought the world's governments were up to that would make 'grown in a jar' a more compelling theory than 'magic clay doll' but there was a more immediately interesting subject being raised.

"....how many old lady cunts have you investigated to know this as conclusively as you say you do?"

[saveme_barry]

Nathan's face might have made a split second journey towards the land of 'oh shit' before he quickly covered his horror at almost being caught, "You ever see a little straight to dvd number known as Two Cougars One Cup? I was thinking forty year old's maximum, but you know what the porn industry's like for false advertising."

He gave a shrug, smiling beatifically.

[only_a_doll]

"Since we've established the fact that I don't have genitals, how much porn do you think I watch?" She gave him a look. At least the infantile obsession with female bits was keeping him distracted. "Don't answer that. What's your name?"