Florence lies on her back, staring up towards the distant sky. A strand of drool drips from her slackening mouth.
Something is wrong.
She feels too much; distantly, indistinctly, like oil slowly dripping through gauze to infiltrate the wounds beneath, but FAR TOO MUCH.
A scream winds its way through the endless corridors of her throat and dies before it ever reaches her teeth—but her teeth are everywhere, aren't they? Shot all through her body, running in tiled rings along hallways and across warm floors ...
So it's more like the scream dies on her teeth.
Caught in them and torn to shreds before it ever had the slightest hope of escape. Claimed by the structure it sought to rebel against and taken back into it as sustenance.
She needs more if she is to grow, and her body provides.
As she flexes her throat and fills it with meaningless songs, the echoing hymns of tooth and hunger and nameless worship, fresh screams grow within her; some quiet and some loud and some struggling against the surface of her skin, against her many sealed eyes and locked pores—
So, so many!
And they're all so delectable, so delicious—
And they all die in her hungry maw, their body slowly winding down into her stomach; a mass of hot blood and fresh death, fuel for growth and change and all that she will need to be if she is to continue.
Somewhere deep inside her the glass rod, that beautiful gift, hums with power; a tuning fork struck and slowly building, a lightning rod drawing the attention of what she once was—
What was she, she wonders, lucidity intruding like an unwelcome pest. Was she always this?
Something little pounds against her chest, each impact shaking her to her core; words she can't understand, hands shaking something that was never her body; the seed of her true existence straining against its roots, exhorted to betray her true-self—
Her hands tumble down and pluck it away.
Silly little thing. Doesn't it know who she is?
Still, that was almost cute of it.
Perhaps she'll keep it.