From a distance you notice a strange hill rising from the grass. It is golden, layered, and curved like a giant pastry. As you approach, the smell reaches you first: warm butter and freshly baked croissants. The mound is covered in flaky spirals of pastry, some the size of your hand, others as large as chairs. A few of the largest croissants even have tiny doors carved into their sides.

Steam rises gently from the hill. The ground around it is scattered with crumbs, and dozens of croissants lie across the surface like pastries cooling outside a bakery.

One of them looks perfect. Golden brown, warm, slightly glossy with butter.

You pick it up.

Still warm.

You take a bite.

Crunch. Flaky layers break apart.

Then the croissant twitches in your hand.

Tiny legs unfold beneath the pastry. Two small antennae pop out. The half-eaten croissant wriggles angrily between your fingers.

You are holding a croiss-ant.

Behind you, the hill begins to move. Dozens of croissants shift. Hundreds. The golden mound ripples as tiny pastry creatures crawl across its surface.

The croissanthill is waking up.

And the colony seems very unhappy about your snack.