»Of Godhuman Nature« [Five Nights At Freddy's]

Chapter IV - Skinless

_____________

Thirty minutes too early. Guess I took the phrase 'right on time' to the next level.

The factory towered over Lily as she stood before the main gate, her eyes ever drifting to take in all of the impressive & undoubtedly pompous architecture that - although it was quite literally around the corner of Fazbear's Pizzeria - had somehow gone unnoticed for the longest time. The two buildings were connected by what looked like a tunnel made of white bricks, yet somehow separated by a giant wire fence that circled the entire factory like a snake; multiple security cameras every ten meters or so, spinning their heads to scan the entire area while on each corner a thick white pole protruded from the concrete floor, reaching for the skies before splitting at the top to transform into a floodlight. The security standards seemed oddly high for a normal factory, at least to her, but perhaps negative experiences had been made in the past & all of this was now necessary.

Unsure of what to do until the official meeting time Lily let her eyes wander along the front fence leading up to the security booth Miss Davis had mentioned earlier to find it rather abandoned except for one middle-aged man in a light blue jumpsuit, sitting behind a wall of glass & staring at the PC screen in front of him; he was the only person on the whole factory site, at least the only one that she could see. 

She gazed down at herself next, analyzing & contemplating her choice of clothing for the meeting ahead with a suddenly much more critical eye than before. Out of almost two full hours of preparation tasks, picking the right dress had been the most time consuming one. She failed to explain why finding the appropriate outfit for each & everything was such a challenging undertaking, professional events in particular, but given her fairly unusual attire it really wasn't that much of a mystery.
Having spent most of her time in presence of either the forest & mountains, she enjoyed the embrace of a long, vintage-kissed dress over that of a pair of fancy pants or shirts any day of the week, no matter the season. Her long, hazelnut coloured hair was either braided or pinned up due to its enormous length; last week it had officially grazed her waist for the first time, more or less asking to be cut, but if there was one part of her body that she happened to cherish more than anything else, it was her hair.
No scissors for me.

Back home in Norway people - kids in particular- liked to playfully refer to her as Huldra, a female forest spirit in Swedish folklore, known for her love for the solitude of the woods & the magic that inhabited it. Frankly, she never minded that nickname, at least not until the amount of time she spent in the forest became suspicious to a handful of townspeople, resulting in the bizarre rumor that she - much like the infamous Huldra - was actually luring men into the woods in order to seduce them. Clearly it had been more of a casual joke than a serious rumor, yet she couldn't fathom how absurd it actually was... Especially now upon looking back. In the past eight years she hadn't seen a single man in her free time, let alone felt any noteworthy desire to change that. For over a decade it had just been her, her three Norwegian forest cats & her secret project within the sanctities of her wooden cabin. 

...& several years before that, her beloved brother.

" Lily?? What on earth are you doing here on a Saturday afternoon? "

A warm, sonorous voice stopped her random train of thought & drew her frozen stare away from the factory to the security booth from which a medium-sized young man came stumbling her way, his hair brown & skin pale, almost a bit sallow, & as he was close enough for her to recognize him she noticed the large dark bags under his usually pretty eyes. He clearly had seen better days, yet vainly tried to distract from that fact by flashing a wide, radiant smile.