You know, this one's almost funny?

[And of course Lila doesn't bother to introduce herself. No, even though she's only popped up on the network a couple of times before, she can pop up in media res and everyone will know who she is because of course they will. She's herself.]

[In this particular moment, she's herself holding up a flimsy-looking doll that bears a vague resemblance to one of her fellow imports. She dangles it from two fingers by a boneless wrist, and the way it's poised above her sharp white grin makes it look like she might just drop it into her mouth at any moment.]

It's cute, you know? A little too Goosebumps for me, kinda kitschy, but I like it. See, this one looks like whatshisname. With the brows and the neck.

Anybody else found one of these things? Show me, c'mon.

[Lila's used to weird dreams. Too used to them, maybe; they've come from an artificial or at least abnormal face for so long that she doesn't treat them as a potential warning of anything much anymore. Nothing dire, just a tooth-rattling annoyance, like sandpaper brushed against the dermis of her unconscious mind.]

[She's used to waking up screaming most nights. Since she got here and her work was ripped away from her, the nightmares have subsided a little (a little), and anyway this one would barely register. In her dream, she hears the sound and bats a lazy white paw in its direction, opens her mouth to say shut up, shut up, but all that comes out is a soft feline vocalization.]

[That, not the noise, is what startles her awake--and when she sees the doll facsimile of herself hanging above her, she reacts with anger, not fear. The fear goes somewhere else, buttoned down, as the anger propels her into an animal snarl, a reflexive clamping down of too-sharp nails into the arm of her sleeping companion, and a leap upward to snatch at the thing in a vain and vicious effort to drag it down.]