Cocoons

Jill and Puck reach the low fringe where the fog settles against the earth and pause to hide. Spent, Jill sinks down and finds herself facing rows of swollen sacs clinging to the ceiling of a cavern. Puck prods one, recoiling at its slimy texture, and light through it outlines a vaguely human shape within. A moist tearing sound draws them to another sac as it splits and disgorges one of Rosine's elves, leading Puck to grasp that each dangling orb is a cocoon.

Rosine's voice descends from overhead. This, she explains, is the birthing ground where human children are reshaped into her elves, and she chides Jill for having fled. When the girl protests the savagery she witnessed, Rosine dismisses it as mere play, insisting that all human children stage wars and that the fear only lifts once they turn. Her elves, she says, are simply playing at being human, whereas a return home would mean beatings, cold, hunger, and eventually real human warfare. She renews her offer of a painless paradise, gathers the weeping girl into an embrace, and vows to make her a beautiful elf beyond anyone's power to harm. Her wings enfold them both as threads begin sheathing Jill, and the girl drifts contentedly toward sleep inside a forming cocoon.

Puck cries out for her to resist. Rosine rounds on him, calling him Peekaf and blaming him for planting odd notions, then lashes with her forehead antenna. He dodges, and the strike splits a nearby cocoon, spilling a half-formed lump of flesh that makes Jill scream. Fire then erupts through the depths of the nest, consuming the sacs, with Guts barely visible behind the flames, torch in hand. As Rosine commands her elves forward, he shears a support pillar so the burning cocoons above rain down and ignite the swarm. Watching him through the blaze, Jill sees Guts as the most monstrous thing in the cave.

Jill and Puck discover the cocoon chamber where children become elves. Rosine reveals the nature of her nursery and coaxes Jill into the beginnings of a cocoon. She recognizes Puck as Peekaf. Guts sets the nest ablaze and collapses a pillar to burn the attacking elves.

Featured in Young Animal issue 22 on November 14, 1997, this twenty-one-page Conviction Arc installment reunites Guts with Rosine as Jill teeters on the edge of transformation.