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The Doll

  Inside the shack, the hollow bodies of ornate dolls filled every corner. Where their eyes would normally be, instead were large black holes. The dolls varied greatly. On a small corner of a workbench was a clockwork butterfly with wings that actually beat. Against a wall was an incredibly realistic wooden doll of a fae princess in a dress made of colorful flowers and foliage, with fluffy ears like a doe's and a short black nose to match; her long slender legs ended in hooves. Each doll was so real that it seemed they had lives beyond this shack. Instead they were trapped here, in a single-roomed museum of every living thing that was or could be.

  Among the dolls was a living girl who looked nineteen years of age. Her doll-like appearance fit next to them quite nicely. It wasn't until she had been moving for some time that you could tell she was flesh and blood. A neutral expression shown on her face through draping long straight white hair. Her skin was delicate and as white as the snow shining through the window, Her gesture and hands were graceful and frail. When she moved, she seemed to glide from place to place and her touch was gentle, but precise.

  Sewn along her back and into her skin with a crimson red thread was the front side of a doll that mirrored her own likeness. When she turned her back, it appeared that a doll version of herself more crude than the others had replaced her. Its expression featured the same hollow black eyes but the mouth curled up into a slight grin and bright red color covered its lips and painted a soft blush on its cheeks. Their upper arms were sewn together, but the puppet's arms branched out on their own at the elbow until their forearms were completely separate except for small red threads that ran between them. This continued until the waist, when a purple skirt ran down past her feet, obscuring the bottom half of her body entirely.

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  As the girl worked on one doll, the other girl (the doll side) worked on another. Together like this, they worked year after year, hour after hour, creating one doll after the next. Outside, the same blizzard that had flurried for hundreds (or possibly thousands) of years kept her solitary company. Ages had slowly blended together for the girl in this place. She wondered sometimes if she deserved to be here, but didn't care to reach an answer. Even so, there were days she could forget her imprisonment and sit quietly next to the window admiring the snow.

  In her small world, there was one treasure. At this moment it sat upright looking out of the only window. The doll of a seventeen year old girl gazed out of hollow eyes into the snow and darkness. With short jet-black hair and a tattoo of a two-headed snake wound around its bicep. Its expression was very slight and warm. Even with empty eyes, when it looked out far into the distance, the girl felt as though the doll could see something she couldn't. On nights like these, that were especially cold and lonely, she looked at the doll often.

  As she worked, the girl's eyelids became heavy and soon began to close on their own. Taking the doll with the short black hair from the window, she climbed into bed and had a dream about someone she knew long ago.

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