come little children

[adelicateflame]

Characters: All who visit.
Date: 10/14-10/25
Summary: A woman in a well gives advice. See the October plot for details.
Warnings: Will add if anything comes up.



[ Can you hear my singing, my dear-heart? ]

Comments

[exbride]

A mysterious entity watching over them in an otherwise beautiful setting. It was all too familiar, and it wasn't what Anthy had in mind for a place to settle into.

She knew how danger could disguise itself as something else -- knew that lesson very well, but for some reason she was drawn to the voice. Maybe it was because the cats weren't answering her specific questions. Anthy was careful not to approach the well too closely, instead standing a few feet away from its opening, her hands clasped behind her back.

For a few long minutes, she only listened to the melody and tried to understand why it felt like it was stirring something ancient deep inside her.

"Hello? Are you trapped?"

[adelicateflame]

The singing continued, calm, as if she hadn't heard the voice calling to her. Slowly, her pitch rose and rose until she cut it off completely.

"Hello," she answered a moment later. "This is my home." Her voice was just a bit melancholy, perhaps embarrassed. "What's your name?"

[exbride]

The louder the singing got, the more Anthy deadened her expression in response to it. When spoken words replaced the unsettling song and answered her question, she padded closer to the edge of the well with almost silent steps.

Despite alarm bells ringing in her mind, she chanced a glance over the top of the hole to see what she could see.

"I'm not sure it's wise to give you my name," Anthy replied, her voice light and nearly as melodic as the singer's was just a moment earlier. "Strangers who live at the bottoms of wells are suspicious."

[adelicateflame]

"Don't talk to strangers, hmm? I understand that. But isn't it a boring way to live?"

[exbride]

"You're not just any stranger, are you?" Darkness. It was pitch black past the opening. There was no point to even squinting.

"I'm Anthy. Can you tell me more about where I am?"

[adelicateflame]

"You are in the Gardens, of course!" the voice replied, cheerfully skipping right past Anthy's question about who she was. "What would you like to know in specific?"

[exbride]

Anthy placed her palms on top of the well's edge, suppressing a shiver from direct contact with its cool surface. (Maybe it wasn't just the temperature.) What to do when a cryptic presence, one that might turn out to be a force to be reckoned with, was being deliberately obtuse? The truth was she had more experience playing that role than negotiating with it.

"I know I can't leave," Anthy told the voice in the well. "I want to know where Utena is and if I'll be able to meet her again. That's all."

[adelicateflame]

"Your Utena is always in your heart, I think you know that already."

[exbride]

She didn't realize she'd been holding in her breath until it came out again, a quiet exhale. "Dolls have no hearts."

"Why did my path to the outside bring me here? I left to find her. If I can't continue on, I want the Queen to bring her to me. Can she do that?"

[adelicateflame]

"The Queen can do whatever she wants in this place. Whether she will or not...why, you'd have to ask her."

"But let's talk about you. Why do you call yourself a doll? You're pretty enough to be one, but I don't think that's what you meant."

[exbride]

Anthy calmly accepted that tidbit and stored it away for future reference. Perhaps the Queen enjoyed favors. As soon as she made one confession to the singer in the well she sensed another one leaving her mouth, trance-like.

Maybe that song was a spell.

"Dolls are to be played with and used to their owner's content, and then put away. They feel nothing."

[adelicateflame]

"Oh, poor thing. But it's not quite true, is it? I find it hard to believe the Queen would have summoned you if you felt nothing. Or, for that matter, that you would be asking after miss Utena if you were."

[exbride]

Dolls were not to be pitied, either, especially if they sometimes became witches. Anthy considered the singer's words and allowed for a long, silent pause while she built steel walls around herself to keep the truth from shattering her calm.

"You're right," the cold reply came late. "But it's useless without her here."

[adelicateflame]

"Do you think she would agree with that?"

[exbride]

"Never."

But at the moment that didn't matter to Anthy, who'd been expecting so much more than this -- who'd spent so long training herself to expect nothing that the disappointment of being summoned for someone else's purposes yet again after opening that part of herself up was close to suffocating.

Nothing that the Gardens needed to know. Her tone was level, her demeanor unmoved, her answer short.

[adelicateflame]

"Then you should listen to her, if you care for her so much." That seemed like the end of her words, but she decided to continue. "I've been around for a very long time, my dear, and not once have I ever spoken to a doll."

[exbride]

Being told to listen to an absent presence felt maddeningly unsatisfying, but she let that sit. There was something to it, but nothing on the surface of her countenance betrayed how much of this she was taking in and how much she was discarding.

Anthy was silent up until that odd comment. The ice cracked and something almost-amused found its way into her speech.

"Oh? Well, you live in a well, and dolls don't get thirsty very often."

[adelicateflame]

"In fact, they never get thirsty at all," her tone was light, much lighter than Anthy's, as she seemed to enjoy the conversation. "They don't respond to music, either, you know. Only those who live and breathe can appreciate the sound."

[exbride]

"Yes," Anthy hummed. "Your song was pretty. Do you count yourself among the living and the breathing?"