Sleepy, yet not asleep.
She lay in bed, dreaming, dozing.
She wanted to stay where she was. To just lie there in place, and not be moved. To breathe in and grow…
Ugh, but she was thirsty. So thirsty… and why were the lights off? Her eyes were closed, but she knew the light were off, and she couldn't rest properly without lights…
Lazily, she reached out, looking for water, for light… and maybe a little snack…
She felt something groan beneath her, as of something bearing a great weight…
AH! Light! Sleepy, yet not asleep, dozing, almost dreaming, she reached for the light…
Something was wrong. She could feel the light, but she couldn't bask in it… something was in the way…she reached for the light, and felt the thing in the way start to bend…
…? What had happened? Why couldn't she reach anymore/why was her arm on the floor? Confused in the way of strange dreams, she reached for the light again/she tried to root so she could reach for the light again…
…?! It happened again! She couldn't reach/her arm was on the floor/her arm was on her arm on the floor! What was going on? Confusion disturbed her dreams, and almost against her will, she forced herself to wake up…
(something…)
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Tammy found her eyes stiff and heavy, and she almost went back to sleep, to dozing, to dreaming. But she couldn’t, she was too confused. She kept reaching, but her arm kept falling short/falling on the floor/falling on her arm trying to reach/falling on her arm trying to root… and she was so thirsty…
(something was...)
She though she felt something crack as she forced her eyes open, her vision dark and swimming. She tried to use her other arm, the one not reaching for the light, to rub her eyes to try and clear them, but her arm didn't want to move. It felt weak and lethargic, in a deeper sleep than she was as it rested on the wall next to her bed/curled over her head/lay at her side, reaching for the footboard/tried to root between the bed and the wall…
(something was wrong…!)
Her other arm was shuddering. She could feel it shuddering/being stepped on/WATER!/being kicked away even as she tried to reach for the light. Her body felt so heavy, and her head didn't want to move, but she needed to see, she was so confused.
Her vision brightened, and finally she could make out shapes, light and shadows. She saw the light she was reaching for and saw the familiar shape outlined against it… tall and sweaty (WATER!), Willy's face set in concentration, the arm nearest Tammy holding something steady. The other armed moved up and down in a robotic, repetitive motion, the stained machete from the tool shed methodically hacking off Tammy's reaching arm, which fell twitching to the floor on top of the pile of other growing, twitching arms trying to root and reach for the light…
Tammy stared at the absurd image in front of her, not comprehending. She kept reaching for the light, her arm getting closer to the window, but her cousin kept hacking at her arm with the machete, and her arm kept falling off, joining the pile on the floor…
Willy paused and turned to her. "Oh good. You're awake." Then she turned and went back to hacking at Tammy's arm with the machete…
One morning, as Thomasina Olivarez was waking up from a deep sleep and strange dreams after days and nights of tending to her cousin who had become a strange thing of water, she discovered that in her bed she had been changed into a monstrous inhuman tree, being pruned by her cousin so she wouldn't break the window.