You think about her answer for a moment and ask “Why?” You walk all the way to the edge of the pool and stop, your chocolate toes an inch away from the smooth marble floor. Your body pauses, as if hesitating, you feel fear rush into you. It’s not you who are afraid, but the woman controlling you. She is reluctant to cross from chocolate to the solid ground. You don’t understand why this woman will not leave the pool. She was able to overpower you so easily, but she won’t make you walk onto real land!
You ask her, “Can... you not leave?”
You hear her answer in your mind. “No. I am bound here, as are the rest of our people.”
You are shocked to hear what she is saying. “People? There are others in this pool?”
“Yes…”
You ask her, “Where are they?”
“Home” She replies as your eyes look back towards the deep end of the pool. “They have fled deep into our world and stay far away from it now, as your world hurts us.”
“Our world? Hurt us?” You ask, now quite curious as to what is really going on. What can hurt a chocolate person if they feel no pain?
We come from a world not unlike yours; it has all of the features of yours but once major difference. Everything is chocolate. The land, the sea, the plants, the animals, the people; we are all chocolate. Other materials compose our world too like caramel, marshmallows, and cream. Your people call our world ‘Candyland’ if I remember… To us, it is our home.”
She pauses for a while, still staring at the shore of the pool, still hesitating to step into ‘your world’ before continuing her story.
“When this portal was active, it let let both humans and chocolatians… our race... cross over freely between worlds. Humans would step into the portal and become chocolatians, and when they left they would return back to their human state. It was the same way for us. Because of the portal, a resort was built here so that we could enjoy each other's worlds. That was before this pool was built and began to suck our world into yours and our people were being pulled in with it. Ever since the portal has become damaged and its magic no longer works. Everyone who has left our world has never come back. The portal is one way now and our world is being pumped into this pool and flows into some sort of machine back there" She points to a large structure further back from the pool. It looks like some sort of factory." You can hear fear in her voice as she says, "The pool is designed to keep the extracted chocolate from our world molten and then drag it into the machine through the vents in the pool, our people were unable to swim away in their molten state as this world makes us inanimate; they would be helplessly sucked into the machine, I can still hear their screams.”
She stops to remember her fallen brothers and sisters before she speaks again.
“I do not know what happened to my kin once they were extracted from this pool and Chocolate cannot live in this plane as it curses us with inanimacy. If the portal's magic were still active, we would become human upon entering your world... Our people are immortal and do not pain; but inanimacy is a scary concept to one who is living and is able to move… You know what it is like"
You remember your terror at the bottom of the pool and fee sorry for this poor woman, she speaks again to you before you can reply. "Being eaten alive is an even scarier thought - even for those made of chocolate. When we were in our world, we would eat ourselves, and each other, all the time... it would just grow back as quick as we could eat or we would merge together. If we merged, we could just separate again... But in your world, our inanimate forms are incapable of doing anything. I fear that my kin who were dragged into this world flow into this machine, shaping us into tasty treats for your kind and are being eaten alive..."
She continues “Are not tri-natured like the humans of your world. Our minds, souls and bodies are one being. Once we are gone, we are truly gone. We cannot die in our own world, but if we died in your human world we would return to ours and would have reformed. Now that the portal is closed, this isn't happening as we are still chocolate in your world. If we die here as chocolate, we never come back..." "The last one of my kind who was extracted told me before they were pulled into the machine told me is that he was the last male, and if we do not restore the portal soon, our race will go extinct. He then released all of his seed into the pool so that those who where dragged into this world may yet be able to live inside this pool and avoid its vents of death... He then was pulled into the machine, I distinctly remember his screams while he was pulled through the vents and the pipes." She seems as if she is going to cry, but no tears drip from her face as she continues to tell her tale...
A male chocolatians seed is the only thing that can turn a human into our race. And because his seed is mixed in with the pool, this pool was able to turn you into chocolate. You are lucky you came when you did as his magic is beginning to fade. You are the first person i have ever seen try to enter the pool, i can tell now that you are only half-chocolatian, as your mind and soul are still human. His seed was not potent enough to fully turn you. Our last male is gone and there is no one left who can breed among our people. With no more males in our world, no new eggs will be made and with no new eggs, no new little chocolatians will be born. There were others in this pool too, but they surrendered to their fate and were fed into the machine... If you had been male, I would have tried to drag you into our world by any means i could. You might have given our species might have a chance to survive; but you were female, so there might be another way to end this and save our people.”
She pauses one last time before saying fearfully…
“I might be able to leave this pool while i am in your body and enter your world as you have not fully turned.”
The woman’s story is absolutely tragic. You you are mortified by her story... How could someone so openly exploit another species, no... a SENTIENT species, and drive them to extinction so freely? You wonder how long this has been going on for, you never remember hearing anything about a portal to a chocolate world in your life. How many chocolate PEOPLE have you eaten unwittingly? All of this makes you feel ill, even though you have no stomach or organs. You think on her tragic story and you decide you want to help this woman in any way you can.
You ask the chocolate woman, “Who is doing this to you? Who runs this place? How can I help.”
“She’s the one who built and owns this place, I do not know where she goes but she lives in this complex. I’m going to kill her if I can and try to restore the portal between worlds. If I succeed, all of the chocolatians who have have not died as of yet may still be able to return. And... You are already helping...”
You look down at the marble floor and can tell you are shaking, your body is scared to death of what the real world will do to you. The woman says to you “Your world scares me as it has claimed so many of my kind… I… I'm scared... I don't want to leave the pool... I... I fear for my life…”