Utterly Mad

People were watching her and Jennifer didn't even notice. She was too busy explaining the items on her plate to someone that only she seemed to be able to hear and generally sounding like a crazy person. Lyle, the chef, watched her from the small kitchen window opening out to the cafeteria. She'd ordered the basic breakfast; eggs, bacon, toast and for her he'd brought out the good stuff. Real pork bacon, chickens eggs, and fresh white bread with real butter. In the old days, such a simple meal would have run no more than a few bucks. Nowadays though, it was all fairly valuable stuff. Pigs were only just being captured and redomesticated, chickens were scarce since the farm that once produced them had been burned and looted, and butter...  Butter was expensive as hell, the only source being from that asshole Hoyt up north. Lucky bastard had got himself twenty head of cattle. They just showed up in his orchard one day and since then he'd run the entire beef and dairy market in the region. The man was breeding them too, but you could go fuck yourself for all the intention he had of selling any off to the center unaltered. A cornered market was a cornered market.

The meal was expensive to say the least, and Jenny was just picking at it. He couldn't hear what she was saying, not entirely, but the way her lips moved and the occasional snatch of words that came to his ears through the chatter of all the other people. To top it off, she seemed to be salivating uncontrollably. Every few moments, she'd reach over and grab a couple napkins and wipe her face, or swipe at her chin with the back of her wrist. Something had happened to her out there, he was marking the change even now. The sharp looks she sometimes shot at strangers who walked by, the little tensing in her body whenever someone greeted her, and the way her tail darted back and forth behind her. The fact that her tail was out was another thing that added to the impression that there was something altogether wilder about her. When she did finally dig in, she did so with a hardly restrained eagerness. The food vanished as quickly as it had come out of Lyle's kitchen. He couldn't help but frown. People shouldn't just vacuum down their food like that. Especially not food as luxurious as that, and certainly not ladies like Jenny. There was a bit of reassurance to come when Atomos settled in. Her shoulders sagged and her tail curled around her chair comfortably.

"So," Lyle asked as he took the dishes away, "did you even taste it?" Jennifer looked up at him and blinked.

"Yeah, fantastic, really good Lyle. Where'd you get butter?"

"Oh, so you did taste it? Wouldn't know it by the way you shoveled it down." He mused jokingly, "It came from that Hoyt prick up north. The cider man. He wants an arm and a leg for the stuff."

Jenny knew who Hoyt was. A thoroughly unpleasant man she had encountered during several of her scouting trips. He wasn't a gross man. Not a slob, but there was definitely a sense of menace or arrogance in most of his speech. The man had authoritative ways, big ways, and Jenny got the idea that he might just be crazy as well. There was also the drugs. Aside from the harmless products he peddled at exhorbitant prices, he was also a drug dealer. Cheena saw all this in Jenny's memories as they flitted by and Atomos felt her feelings on the matter. Confusion and trust for her assessment.

"Whatcha got there Ms. Jenny?" Lyle asked. She'd brought a pair of forms with her to breakfast and had been filling them out here and there while talking to her breakfast. They were a bit rough, but professional enough for documents that had been gone over with white out and stickers to turn them into a different sort of document, then run through a copy machine. At the top with ever so slightly crooked letters, Jennifer had placed the words "Letter of Resignation."

---

By the end of the day the woods north of the road, and by extension north of the hall, we're littered with Branches work. To the casual observer they looked like oddly vertical dirt mounds, but to people in the know they were crude golems. Simple but effective watchers of the woods like all-natural security cameras. Watchers. There were larger ones too, short and squat or lean and tall. These were branches wardens. Over time the elements would take their toll but as with all magic of this sort, it would get stronger with age. Moss and vegetation would take hold in the soft unfired ceramic of the wardens and watchers, making them blend in and look natural in the process. For now though, they were as bald as freshly dug stones.

That of course was the first half of branches day, or maybe two thirds? The homunculus didn't rightly know, it had spent so long on the project and wasn't sure if it should do more or not. Instead, Branches went for a dive. The stuff it had used thus far was relatively common sandy silty clay mud. It would hold together well enough, and it was ideal for growing plants in, but even Branches automatons were poor imitations of what they could be with real clay. To that end, Branches needed something special. Not for golems, but for itself. What it needed was good old fashioned new england stoneware, and for that it needed to find the original bank of the river. Normally this would have been a hell of a task, navigating the underwater forest of fallen trees and debris, but there was one thing branches could count on; Sharlene's Cabin. The cabin had been a half hearted stones throw from the river, and even now it's chiminy poked up just above the newly formed lakes surface. All the homunculus had to do was point itself at it and walk.

The clay near the sunken cabin was exactly what branches needed. A foot down, it hit the good stuff. A solid thunderstorm grey earth untainted by sand or silt that Branches hauled up in sticky clumps that stuck to the hands and the shovel and the canvas shopping bags used to carry the stuff out. Aside from the clay, there was another thing Branches wanted to grab that would save it a bit of time, and that thing was coffee mugs. There were many broken mugs in the cabins murk, cheap broken cryolite, Bakelite, and porclain mugs. There were very few it could use as Branches didn't want any of those. Branches needed stoneware. Mugs of a suitable type were found after a little searching, broken shards anyway, and Branches hauled it all back to it's side of the lake.

The mugs were pounded down into dust and mixed with the fresh clay. Then, Branches began to sculpt. Laying the new fire clay on was the easy part. Moving it evenly and getting the proportions right was not. Golems came and added water or more clay when necessary until all of branches save for hair and eyes were covered in it. The homunculus could feel the magic bound to the powdered mugs infusing into the clay and into itself, being absorbed by it's core and powering the process of addition. You couldn't have something for nothing when it came to quality. When it was satisfied, Branches instructed it's servants to put the clay away in a cool place in the hut and waited. The itch came on slow and steady, the feeling of the clay drying. It would have been more severe had Branches been a hairy creature, but fortunately it wasn't. The evening sun had dipped behind the trees and left long shadows on the lake before Branches stirred again.

There was a satisfying little crackle as the now thin layer or clay cracked and fell away from what Branches had wrought upon itself. Herself. Shallow curves, narrow hips, and distinctly feminine features. The choice had come down to a feeling. Something Branches caught from that tiny part of itself that was Illiana's essence. She spent a long time staring down at her new features reflected in the lake, grinning like an idiot child.

For the rest of the day, Branches lay or sat on her new bench (one of the days side projects) and played around with her new breasts until it became too dark to see them. It was time for pretending to sleep and later in the morning, she would gorge herself on fish and prod at her new chest some more.

---

Catnip and Kathrine listened politely to Roxanne, passing around biscuits or cookies and tea or coffee when appropriate. There were a few questions, but Catnip decided not to tax Roxanne with them. Roxanne was after all one of her three. Roxanne, Floyd, and Hector could be trusted despite their occasional foibles. As to meeting places though, Catnip could think of a few.

"Well," she said thoughtfully, "There's the chapel, when it's not in use. If you want something a little more private, then there's a big old room in the quarry under Walkerville. Oh! And that one place across the river. You know the one? It used to be a part of a larger bunch of buildings full of beds and stuff until they burned down. Now it's just one building. It's got a lot of space and one big meeting room."

Roxanne had to strain a bit to remember what Catnip was talking about. "The hotel?" She asked finally. Catnip nodded enthusiastically. The hotel wasn't a bad choice, not badly located either and certainly more private than the chapel. Catnip went on.

"The big room in the quarry was there when we got here I guess. You'd need to clean up a lot of broken glass and do something about the flooding... Floor is crooked too... Maybe not the quarry then. It's pretty cramped, only fit for Mislings and Catnip's to squeeze through. You can use the chapel until you decide though. Oh oh, oooor... We could ask the center to build you something!"

Roxanne thought about everything the center and the Arizona migrants had done already, and nixed the idea. They'd done enough as it was and had their own stuff to get on with, probably. There was an interim silence broken by small talk here and there while Roxanne thought about her choices. It felt like a draining kind of silence, the sort of thing that makes one lethargic and bored. What was odd was that she could see it in her companions too. Kathrine served energetically while Catnip served the role of chatty Kathy. Her accent, her nonsense filler words, and her nievete tinged with experience worked hand in hand to make her a somewhat charming conversationalist. So what was with this strange lethargy. Roxanne frowned as she remembered other times she felt this way. It hadn't been so extreme then though. The real reminder came with Mica, crashing through the back door and howling for her sister.

"Kat-nyp! Lizard won't help My-ka!!" She called, rebounding off the doorway under the stair case and rolling to the floor. She seemed to have been wrapped in up in hundreds of gossamer white and grey threads which bound all but most of one arm. "Roks-zan! Help My-ka! Lizard left My-ka hangin' and says My-ka's too crazy! Help My-ka!!"

Roxanne recoiled from the prone mutant. If Mica touched her, she had no clue what would happen. To add to her trepidation and fear, the threads Mica was wrapped in seemed to share some of her null properties. Mica wasn't just a null wrapped in that stuff, she was a vortex sucking in and nullifying any magic she touched. Catnip was giving some instruction to Kathrine and the maid disappeared to the kitchen for a bit. When she came back, she had a plain opaque jug that Roxanne correctly guessed contained vinegar.

"Eh!! No stinky vin-gurs! No vin-gurs!!" Mica squeeled. She flopped away from Kathrine and rolled or crawled back the way she came. Catnip rounded the table and grabbed Mica's feet while Kathrine splashed the vinegar onto her sister. At the slightest touch of the acidic stuff the threads started to separate and unravel, the adhesive properties completely lost and the muting property with it. Kathrine gathered up the silk and carefully spun it onto a dowel.

"What's this about?" She asked, "who did this to you sweetie?"

"She did it to herself." Kathrine said simply, "Mr. Dervish says he doesn't know if she could always do it or if it's a hormone change."

Kathrine stepped further back from Mica when her hands were free, and it was a good thing she did. Mica made grabby hands for the maid, and everyone saw the strands that formed between her fingers.

"When did Roks-zan change eyes? Eh? Why does Roks-zan smell dif-rent? Eh? Eh?" Before she could get out of the way, Mica sprang up onto two feet and launched herself to Roxanne, close enough to smell. She smelled like apples and smoked fish, an odd combination to be sure. "Hugs for My-ka? Eh?"