Absentia mumbled as she paced in slow, clumsy circles, because her limbs were still not used to their own weight. "Okay, let's recapitulate: my body is literally porcelain, I woke up from a dream I can barely remember, I don't know who I am, and for some reason, there's a deep itch in my brain whispering I was once a cat."
She paused.
She pressed her palm to the mirror, trying to feel something. "What kind of life ends and begins again in a toy body, between fur and porcelain."
...
She stopped, tilted her head, and squinted at her reflection in the towering mirror.
"...Yup, I got nothing!"
She pulled back and caught sight of a lipstick resting on a vanity like it had been waiting for her.
"I need to call myself something." There was this hunger for knowing what she was, and the first thing it asked her to do was a name, "Being absent of one won't make me feel any more whole."
"..."
She hesitated, then grabbed the lipstick and knelt on the polished floor, scrawling names in looping crimson letters:
Marionette
Noches
Isolde
Nocturne
Debussy
Manchuria
Vivaldi
Paganini
Each name glowed for a second in her mind, then fizzled— Wrong, too fragile, too old, too used.
Her tiny brows furrowed. "I don't like them... I'd rather be Absent from one than wear them."
She squinted at it.
Then grimaced.
"Absent... "After a few seconds, she mumbled, "No... it sucks. It's just a word. It would be like calling myself Οὖtis."
She rolled onto her back with a faint clack as her joints struggled to move naturally.
"Absent..." she muttered again, that strange little noise leaving her lips, "Hia..."
...
...
...
"Oh..."
The word had crackled like static in her head.
"Let's just go by Absentia, perhaps I'm being paranoid, and someone else will know my name, but as for now." She struck a dramatic pose and smiled with a little more sincerity than she'd expected. "THY NAME IS ABSENTIA!"
Still grinning, she spotted a green lipstick on a high shelf. "Now for a second name!"
With a graceless and really miscalculated jump, she slammed forward onto the floor, her hands, stiff and unyielding, failed to break the fall.
No pain...
Just a memory of it.
"Guess I won't have a second name."
"..."
She wandered the dollhouse.
Each room was neatly arranged, lovingly decorated, imitating a Shakespeare theater at some prestigious university, a stage built for a play no one would ever perform.
Her journey took her to a wardrobe, in which she found countless outfits, with an absurd variety. A magical girl costume, a mermaid tail set, a clown ensemble, a velvet princess gown, a jester's full regalia, queenly robes, and the corseted dresses of Victorian aristocracies.
She settled for a maiden dress with surprising practicality as it was one that allowed incredible mobility, and had quite the strong fibers, even some metal plates intricately stitched to the ensemble and hidden weapon compartments.
"Woah! I could hide some knives in there... Uh?"
Her eyes switched from the wardrobe to a cabinet. She opened it, hoping for more clothes, but to her surprise, what awaited was really... weird.
There were brushes, paints, and replacement doll parts— hands, arms, legs, eyes.
And... organs.
Yes.
Tiny toy organs sat delicately in compartments. Hearts with smiling faces, spleens with cartoon eyes, pink intestines coiled like party streamers. She swore some of them glistened wetly.
"Are those white things... bones?"
She leaned closer. There were artery-shaped strings, disconnected spinal columns, and a kidney with a bowtie.
"I think this has everything that is supposed to go inside a human, except—" She continued her search for a few minutes, but it proved to be futile, "Except a brain."
She reached out, picked up a tiny liver, and squished it lightly; she could swear they felt viscous and gross like actual organs. "Ugh... I wonder if you taste like an organ..."
She paused.
"INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS! NO! SIMPLY NO! I AM ¡NOT! GONNA EAT IT!"
She shut the cabinet, her clumsy, snappy pace quickening. The thought was so stupid, so bizarre, she didn't even wonder why the cabinet existed, or why there were so many. Her gait brought her to a library just a few meters away. Hundreds of books lined the walls, a uniform army of clean, unread soldiers.
A few turns later, her gait led her to a library. Inside, hundreds of books lined the walls like soldiers standing at attention, in a speckless state.
Except for one.
A gray, tattered book sat crooked on the shelf with a blank cover.
...
...
...
She eyed it for a long time.
...
...
...
"Now, common sense dictates that WE BALL!"
She dragged over a stool, wobbled her way up, and reached for the tome.
She nearly toppled over, but caught herself. She landed on the ground with a thump and sat cross-legged, book on her lap.
Now with the old book in hand, and hopes of satisfactory answers, "Let's see what secrets you hold, old man."
She tried to open it.
It didn't budge.
"Okay..."
She stopped her struggle, trying to get a better grip.
"One... two... THREE!"
"HNNGHNNGHNGHHNGHNGNH!!!"!' escaped her lips as she pushed against the immotile object.
"..."
It refused, it refused to be open.
She tried from every angle. Turned it upside down. Twisted its frame. Smacked it against her hip. Even did the lever strategy. Nothing.
It denied her the right.
And no, this wasn't because she was weak. To prove her point, she grabbed another pristine book nearby and ripped it in half.
"I'm really sorry, Mr.Book, but I had to do this for science."
The gray book was simply standing there... menacingly.
"Fine! Be that way! I'll find answers elsewhere."
With some excitement and fear crawling up her spine, Absentia got in front of the door of the house. The only place that actually felt 'Normal' and by normal, she means just less uncanny.
"This shall be... unless I did something really bad? Is this a purgatory?!
"..."
"..."
"..."
What if she went to the past, what if she was reincarnating, what if she wasn't real, what if this is a digital prison, what if this is hell, purgatory, an ironic heaven from a deity—
"Hiaaaa..."
"I need to stop questioning everything... or should I?"
And with sudden courage, she grabbed the handle.
*Creak*
She took a deep breath, leaned back and let a primal roar, "INCOMING!!!"