Bowl of lillies Party Guests/Snacks (choice adventure) chapter 3 by sotired

After a brief walk across the tabletop, you reach the ladder leaning against the bowl, and climb on. Step after step, you continue to the top of the ladder, now able to examine each green brush stroke against the glossy, off-white ceramic up close, also finding a few pale floral patterns that weren’t visible from afar. You climb past a few locked hinges, this is probably one of those collapsible ladders, meant to be folded away to be carried in a purse or a pocket.

Once reaching the top, you gingerly position yourself on the lightly rounded edge of the bowl, with your legs dangling in. The rim is roughly ten metres across, and it’s deep enough that the people are piled on top of each other, filling about three quarters of the bowl. After a few false starts, you lean forwards, beginning a brief slide-fall onto the mass of lillies.

It’s not a hard landing, but you struggle to stand on the ‘surface’ of the lillies, eventually you resort to crawling, making your way towards the centre of the bowl. Many seem to have dozed off, but the majority of the ones you can see are awake, if a little stuck. A few are stumbling around near the edges, leaning on the ceramic walls for support. You notice most of the lillies here are wearing orange wristbands, betraying their roles as Ingredients, lillies who signed up to be packaged and bought to be eaten. As well as the ‘professionals’, you find many of your fellow party guests, mostly free to move around, chatting animatedly, in various dresses and outfits. 

Without warning, a hand flies overhead and dips into the bowl behind you, selecting two, three lillies, including one partygoer, who yelps in surprise. The trio are swiftly taken upwards, and are dropped into a waiting mouth, to be gulped down just as quickly. Rachel swallows twice, and washes them down with a sip of champagne. Wordlessly, she looks back down at the lilliputians in the bowl, and decides. She reaches down towards where you stand, fingers spread like claws.