( The click of stones at his hip, and he looks through the chamber, takes steps between swollen, near empty cocoons and their cries and laughter and pleading. Echoes and memories. Always the echoes and memories, hardest to shake off, longest to linger. )

Or transformed them.

( The grim smile, flicking fingers to another murmuring cocoon. )

Like silkworms to moths. Only humans aren't made to change that way.

( Again his old blade out, pushing aside a cocoon, then lashing forward with precise consideration. Half the bottom falls groundward, connected by the back end of the cocoon's material, spilling out nothing more than another set of stone engraved tabs. The smallest funeral tablets he's seen in any world, but as good as marking the dead. )

And we've seen the greed behind the dark water and the mirrors. The dolls were one kind of metamorphosis. What if this is another?