Maize

Tiffani had no idea where she was in relation to the cardinal directions. After that crazy dream about self-animate corn and other things now at the limits of her remembrance - and after chatting up a rather loquacious waitress at the Maize Cafe - she was growing ever more certain that this town needed to be put into her "Been There, Done That, Never Again" file. There was a lurking danger here, an intangible threat to herself and all outsiders though ... she suspected she was the only outsider in town. This was a town that was on the way to nowhere. She didn't even want to guess how far away the nearest motorway, err, interstate was.

Wait, what was that? People talking? Tiffani definitely heard it - faint, like voices on the wind. But voices, nonetheless. Was there actually someone - no, two someones - out here in the freezing cold looking at a dead cornfield?

"Who is out there?!" Tiffani shouted at the ocean of corn spread out before her. Was doing that a wise idea? Probably not, she thought, but the cold and desperation were taking their toll. This place was haunted. Not that long ago, such an idea as haunted cornfields would have been ridiculous. Ever since her durance, however ....

Besides, "it" was starting to get on her nerves. She hated "it" so much that she wouldn't name it, not even in her own mind.

"Answer me!!"

And Tiffani stood there, her hands balled into fists without even realizing it, waiting to see if the cornfield actually answered her back.

Imogen had visions of corn and the like in her dreams as well, although she imagined that might have something to with her assignment than some ominous meaning. She had already wasted much time wandering the streets and getting her bearings of the place. There weren't much connections to be made here with the local people. Thankfully, she still had her work to keep herself busy.

The cold and lightly snow-frosted stalks of corn weren't exactly the ideal image of the American ideal of homegrown farmlands but it was better to come back with something than empty-handed. When Tiffani wandered into the clearing, she had set up her camera on a stand and was also quite bundled for the weather with a scarf wrapped around her face. She said nothing at first, allowing to have her moment. Whatever it was, it was quite the trip...

Click!

She took a quick snap of Tiffani with her film camera and wound it to the next unit of film. "Do you feel better now?"

Tiffany turned around at the sound of the clicking shutter - her acute senses made it sound like a firecracker going off.

"You don't hear that?" she asked - and demanded - of Imogen. "There's at least two people talking out there. There might even be more, I don't know. I can't understand what they're saying, but I heard them not long before you decided to ambush me with that camera."

She took a handful of steps toward Imogen, but Tiffani's posture and body language werre in no way hostile. "Or maybe it was just you. Have you been out here with someone else at all or have you been alone the entire time?"

"Oh, sorry about that," she said with a faint smirk on her lips as she covered the lens of her side camera and adjusted the strap on her shoulder once more. There was something in her tone that said she wasn't entirely sorry. "I was just driving around in the area and stopped to take some pictures. I might stick around long enough to take some shots around sundown to get some more ominous vibes..."

"As actually seeing anyone else, you're the first person I've seen out here," she said as the eyes atop her head seemed to gaze about. For a moment, they seemed to look over Tiffani up and down, taking in who and what she was. It seemed plenty obvious that she didn't expect to run into someone of their kind around here. She thought it was just a coincidence but it might be more than that now.

"And probably the third one of us that I've seen in the area in two days. That peculiar. It's just me, myself and corn stalks around here. And you, of course." She said with a gesture to her solo camera setup on the fields.

"Figures I'd end up standing in one of the most isolated and remote towns in North America and still find someone shutter-happy with their camera. " Tiffany continues advancing on Imogen to shorten the distance over which they have to shout at each other. "Do you ever get vertigo or lose your sense of spacial awareness when you look through all of those eyes?" Her tone was matter-of-fact and seemingly a legitimate question - from TIffani's point of view, at least.

"Name's TIffani, by the way. And this place gives me the creeps - or the screaming heebie jeebies I heard someone say once. And if you were here last night, I'm wondering if you had a series of weird dreams - maybe about, you know," she gesturers toward the cornfield, "dreams about corn. Tell me that's just a coincidence. And now this place seems to be attracting the Lost like honey attracts bees."

Imogen couldn't help but smirk when she brought attention to her eyes. The mass of eyes and tentacles seemed to slither subtly against each other at this. "I think I manage well enough with what I have. I get a good sense of things around me that it should be hard enough to get a jump on me." As much as she wished she was all-seeing, the truth was probably closer in between. During her time away, this was natural but she became accustomed enough that it was a slight advantage at the very least.

"I'm Imogen," she said with an extended hand should she take it.

She frowned faintly at the mention of corn, now that was peculiar. "I have dreams of corn, now that you've mentioned it. Here I thought it was just the town starting to get to my head. There isn't much that inspires imagination here. Corn seemed natural...Wait, what did you hear earlier?"

"I can't say with any certainty that all of this corn isn't going to your head - but if it is, then it's going to my head, too." She turned her head to look at the vast, seemingly infinite expanse of corn over her shoulder. When she did, it was as if the corn had captivated her somehow. There was an uncomfortable length of silence as Tiffani simply stared over her shoulder at the corn.

But eventually she snapped out of whatever reverie she was caught in. "Sorry about that. It's just ... every time I look at it, I'm filled with this unnamed dread ... like ... there's something in there inching its way closer to the town every night when everyone's asleep. And when it reaches the edge of the field like, right there," she points to the very edge of the cornfield, "it will simply unleash. I know I'm probably sounding a bit beyond the pale right now, but mark my words: Something is about to happen."

She paused for, perhaps, half a minute to let her words sink in, waiting for Imogen to say she has felt the same way - or for the other woman to laugh at her and call her crazy. Neither reaction would have surprised her.

"As for that other thing - I really don't know what I heard. Except I know I heard talking. The sound was coming in on the wind so it was nigh impossible to get a fix on its origin point. It did sound as if it were coming from within the field, but .... that doesn't mean it was. The edge of this field has a lot of curves and bends, meaning two people could've been talking like we are but on the other side of a corn peninsula, making it seem like they were 'in' the field."

Tiffani had to come up with some kind of rational explanation and there it was - at least - it was the best one she could come up with. "It wasn't like I heard wolves howling or ghosts wailing or a witch's cackling laughter. I didn't mean to worry you - assuming I had."

More often than not, a dream wasn't just a dream among their kind. Imogen could grasp that something peculiar was going on but the substance and weight was something that eluded her. It was perhaps clear that they weren't haven't the same dream or shared the same conviction. She wasn't quite prompted like Tiffani to go out and hunt their would-be stalkers or monsters.

"Okay..." Imogen said at first with a touch of skepticism evident in her tone. "So let's just say that something is coming from the fields. Are you so sure that you have the right one? There are a lot of cornfields here. Other than the town, this place is practically nothing but out-of-season cornfields. It would be hard to catch it happening."

She would consider entertaining the idea of a stakeout but it was far too cold and watching corn was far less interesting than watching paint dry, if there was such a contest of what was more fun. For a moment, she stood high, trying to see if she could see over the stalks. "I don't know if anyone is working here, either. It would probably be a good idea to get a lay of the land from the locals. There is far too much land to cover on foot."

"To be honest with you, Imogen, I'm just as skeptical as you are about all of this. It probably doesn't seem that way, but ..." Tiffani reaches down, grabs some snow and shapes it into a rough approximation of a ball. Then she heaves it as far as she can into the cornfields.

"All your points are valid ones, to be certain. Even the presence of so many Lost in town seemingly overnight doesn't necessarily add up to a monster in the cornfields." Now that the snow made her hands cold, she jams them into the front pockets of her white leather jacket. "I don't have the slightest clue what's happening - if anything is happening at all. Being so far from the rest of civilization and surrounded on all sides by endless miles of cornfields can be a little unsettling if you're not used to it."

"And yet ..." She sighed then, her breath visible as a puff of steam in the frigid air, "No matter how much I try to rationalize it away, the feeling that something terrible is about to happen just won't dissipate. Tell me, Imogen - do you feel nothing? Nothing at all?"

Imogen let out a slow sigh, a warm breath into the cold air. She mentally hunkered down and tried to find some validity to Tiffani's claim. Giving another look at the corn stalks, it was hard to see the individual corn from the field. At the end of the day, that's all there was really in front of her. It wasn't that she didn't believe Tiffani, as it was in her seeming's nature to question the unseen, the point wasn't very tangible at the moment. Admittedly, she was stronger in seeing than sensing.

"No, I don't," she said on a disappointed note. "If half of what you're feeling is true, I'd rather not wait until it's too late. There is some advantage to peculiar happenstance, there are other Lost we could involved on this matter. Some of them came here as a vacation, some just wandered in. I'm sure they could use something to keep them busy after visiting the bar for the umpteenth time. There's even a legitimate full-time private detective."