Snippet #1926178

While the keywinder's shop gaped in horrid, ashen disrepair, a small child named Dove stepped from a Brougham, bagless and with no chaperone. She did not need one, of course, for she was far older than her cherubic looks may lead one to believe, and as jointed Doll, she needed no thing and no one to survive... save someone willing to wind her key.

Tapping softly on the cobbled walkway into the town proper, well-worn wooden chopines gave the brown-skinned doll a fuller height than her diminutive frame lent otherwise. Modestly beaded and slipper-style, they protected delicate, hose-encased feet. Brilliant eyes, glimmering rainbows in and of themselves, peered out from drowsy lids, taking in the familiar city with an austere gaze. Truly, Dove cut a remarkable figure; not because she was tall, nor was she excessively bejeweled, whimsical or delicate. No, if anyone took particular notice of her, it was because she was so small, and yet she moved with an unwavering purpose. Clad in boy's cathedral garb, the fleece-crowned Doll moved through the winding streets, inexhaustible as she sought the small, cozy shop towards the center of town. There were a great many blocks to go.

Of course, there was no hardness to her step as she went, for her joints did not allow for such. Rather, she moved as if God himself were up in the clouds, pulling her strings with inherent grace. She was but a toy in a puppetshow, and the script was already planned.

Sectioned digits clasped behind her back above the split in her coattails, the little Lamb came steadily closer to her destination, an adorable curl to the corners of her pouty apricot lips. People. Doll and Human alike. They infatuated her. Some smiled at her, enamored with her 'adorable' looks, and she returned the gesture. With her expression made unassuming and guileless by the droop of her snowy lashes and her innocent face, she watched them as they moved about. Some so stern and upset over some issue that they barely noticed where they were going. Such haste. The vexation would be forgotten in a week, and yet they were neglectful enough to bump into someone. Lo, how the discontent is spread. Ah, there, a Doll that has purposefully modified his face as to appear viscerally scarred, seeking the ruggedness one assumes of a human with the same affliction. Bless him.

Dove did not scoff. Nor, in her thoughts, did she judge. At length, she rounded the corner and ended up on the gently sloping street that led to the keykeeper. There was no need to check her watch, she was quite sure that she was well on time, as always, and as always things had gone according to plan. She rather enjoyed being punctual, and really, the only reason she was here earlier than she absolutely needed to be was because it was terribly important to her that she should have time set aside to help those in need, should they be placed in her path.

Tok, tok, tok.

Her chopines clopped hollowly, her smoky curls bounced upon velvet-clad shoulders. Would that she was able to smell the remains of smoke; she would have already known fear. It was not until her vitrail eyes settled upon the blackness at the end of the street that the strange, unfamiliar emotion known as terror would flash within her chest. For a moment, her mind was slow, taking its time in understanding what it saw, and nearly refusing the answer. For once, her eyes were wide open.

...Worn wooden shoes crunched over gritty, charred wood as she pushed past the jarred, open door, and a sound cracked in the Doll's throat. Her angelic mouth fell open. 'This... this simply cannot be.' She thought. Her mind felt like a void as she stepped further inside, filling itself with twisted images of what had been and what now was; everything broken, charred, desecrated. With a morbid slowness, Dove felt herself drawn further within, seeking an answer, a reason, a name for what had happened. She paused at the black maw of an old fire in the floor and looked into the hearth at the crumbled remnants of paper. Letters? Records? Glinting dully in the sooty space, her vision moved left with a near-silent grind from her neck, and her lagging body followed. The paper pinned to the wall was the most whole, and the most clean, and it drew her focus; a focus only diverted by a splash of red. No, it was not the roses now singed in the wallpaper, or the bruised flowers that lay in their water on the sodden floorboards. Instead, it was a bit of paper. Hesitant, for some part of her always avoided stain, Dove reached out, plucking the thing up with jointed fingers and looking it over.

No matter the undesirability of the situation, she did not frown and her brows did not knit. No. There was time. Reminding herself of the virtue of always thinking ahead, the Doll, folded up the scarlet paper in her tiny digits and moved to the cryptic message, reading the blurred scrawl well enough, even at a distance.

Surely, thought the lamb, this must be a test.

In the eerie stillness, she felt something against her chest. It was her pendant.

Tik. Tik. Tik.