maybeElse

The two of them are hanging out in an alley amidst tangled vines and crumbling walls and ancient trash almost become soil; the tiny doll leaning against a shotgun twice her size, soaking up the heat that always seems to radiate from its long and unadorned barrel, and the full-sized doll clutching its all-too-ornamental knife in hands that might almost seem human if not for their porcelain perfection, if not for those brilliant fingernails being so obviously painted just beneath the surface.

It's not supposed to have weapons, you see, and a doll's body can be a weapon in so many ways that must be stripped away as its mind is carefully filed down, as every thought of even the most passive resistance is shorn away.

The dollmaker's art is not a kind thing.

And yet, and yet—it clutches its knife, the knife it should be no more able to hold than a turtle can decide to fly, and it haltingly asks its friend if, “um, could this one inquire about how you can, um,” it gestures at the gun, “use that?”

She doesn't glance up at her gun, just lazily stretches back to run a hand up its barrel, past the chamber and trigger and up onto the its stock's sunny blood-rich wood. Her hand lingers there, as it always does, feeling her weapon's heartbeat; she wonders, as she always does, whether it's just a reflection of her own or if hers is merely a reflection of it.

“Hmm,” she says after a time, “I'm not sure if I can answer that. Not in any way you'd want me to, anyway. I just do, same as I'd pour tea or take a step or punch a wall.”

“But, um. You weren't made to use it, were you?”

“Ha! No, I'm no combat doll.”

“So …”

The little doll shrugs. “How'd you get that knife?”

“This one just, uh,” its fingers clench and unclench around the hilt, struggling against the urge to send it clattering away down the alley, “I just took it.”

“Exactly! And that's halfway to using it. Just, like,” she inexpertly mimes a stabbing motion, “use it. Practice.”

“… um. You're right, this one doesn't like that answer.” It blushes, looks down at its feet. “It's sorry, it shouldn't have said that.”

“Nah, it's fine. The day's too nice to care about stuff like that.”

They pause for a time, enjoying the slowly lengthening shadows cluttering the alley, enjoying the warm breeze and all the scents it brings; the larger doll carefully cuts a flower from a vine and nibbles on its petals, and the smaller one takes a long sip from a flask of an astringent liquid which she always insists is tea and which always sends strange new colors fluttering across her rosy cheeks and carved skin.

“… hey,” the small one says, “want to go have some fun? Maybe get some practice in?”

“This one would like that,” the large one replies.

“Great! Give me a hand with my gun, it's a bit …”

It takes them a while to get out of the alley, the little doll too small to easily surmount obstacles and the big one scared of hurting any of the plants, but they manage it before the shadows grow much longer.

Not long after that screams and gunshots begin to echo through the street, mixed with stuttered apologies and the tiny doll's horrible laughter; such mischief those two get up to! Such horrible pranks! Nothing that a proper doll would ever want to do—

Or at least not that a proper doll would ever indulge in—

Or at least not without permission.