Porcelain Doll

You were the first person who was kind to me.

When I gazed upon you, an enigma contrasts itself to where I see you.

I then sat down to think whether I wonder or not wonder.

What will it take to understand?

Understand what you desired, understand what you understood, understand what made you outstood the sun, as if how its most brightest when settling.

Everything. Then everything, take everything.

I want more than nothing for to have watched you all over.

I will prospect everything in order to give it away to you for me.

Father, please come home.

One's strongest fear can be abandonment. It is usually something beyond one's discipline, on the chronicle side of an oblivious person, unable to comprehend they are not cherished. Which is better, not knowing or knowing it was?

Most would prefer not knowing.

The fewer left would prefer knowing.

I, however, did not understand what neither of those meant.

I couldn't acknowledge that when an epiphany belabors, the worst kind of grief will escort.

Reminiscing the things I acted upon, I now find them to be ridiculously average, what a world I had. No— what a world we had. We never had a chance to breathe, but it was alright because together we made it to breathe. I think we were marvelous.

I want to breathe in that air, just to rethink the times I had nothing and appreciate the things I do.

I was…nothing.

When I had awakened, my eyelids opened within unwillingness. I was told to have umber-tinted irises and lengthy lashes that cast shadows on my cheeks, whether it meant a compliment or a critique, I consider them descriptions.

I speculated myself tucked in bed, a fitting bed, my feet nearly reached the brink, with the cover hovered to the torso midway.

This body got stuck, the pulses had issues accumulating blood to stimulate any movement, or, the nerve-system had complications subsisting with the brain. So I stretched, arching the spine, and as I did, my breathing halted and lips sealed, causing a voice to drone out "Mmph!"

That came from me, it attached me to it. Was that vulnerability? It was sloppy, hoarse, and unusual.

I operated the hand up to investigate the throat, "Ah. Ah. Ha." Was that my voice? I came to the conclusion that it was in further attempts. My voice…

Could it be discerned as peccable?

Then to investigate the lips, the salted fingertips grazed the cracking sensation of the dehydrated epidermis, both the nether and upper lip, I was in no obligation to unhand the invitation, causing me to utilize the teeth in biting away the shedding skin.

If it is not serviceable and incoherent, I needn't to maintain it. The line I constantly reminded myself.

Then, with the lick of the tongue, blood began to drizzle, I didn't know.

I didn't know it might damage nor affect the route of any hereafter presentation, I must admit I had cowered under the irresistible urge— to peel it. That was a flaw I must decipher immediately.

Although, even after so, I became inattentive on each body part to another, little by little a fruition arrived into my trail of thoughts. The hands, as I evaluated it above my sight in every angle viable, it reasoned me to notice that the entirety of the body was hued in the color-type of pale porcelain; accompanied by some freckles splattered until at my scapulas, not that I could see it.

The fingernails were stained with dirt and even the most portable pebbles, stuffing as much to no accommodation in the gaps between the nails. What had I done to these hands?

I saw definite of everything.

Even though the lack of lightings where only a gas lamp irradiated atop the nightstand; growing dim and ail by an anonymous breeze. A room with a short ceiling, all assembled of dark oak woods, creaks were heard just from shifting with an unexacting strength.

During the time, I was not the least bit unsettled as much as I could not reminisce even a bit of memory.

All I knew when I had arisen was plainly curiosity.

I only wondered about the aggregation in orthodoxy details, without assumptions, without knowledge, without awareness.

And it never hedged me to say— where am I? This feebly lighted room. Indeed, now this perplexed me.

Yet, what else will?

Then it struck me.

"Who…am I?" I voiced, spreading all the fingers widely midair as if it would answer anything.

Who am I? No background documentation, no identity delineation, no memory to corroborate.

Who…am I?

I dashed off the bed in a thread of heels by thudding creaks, it seemed the spinal cord lacked protein to proceed positions, because the knees were wobbling balefully to erect, then fell onto the cold rusty floor.

The energy— for this body— drained to its boundary.

And I did not access any sufficient information.

As the frozen palms sprawled on the crouched up lap, with all my mentality nudging to find out when it will ever budge, it did not comply at all.

I blinked, examining up ahead at the surroundings of this unspecified place. I caught a full-sized mirror against a wall, (I needed information, and the only way to see oneself is through a doppelgänger complexion) the expedition might be intricate due to this sickly cell cooping me within, but fortunately, this will not take awhile.

The taps of every finger pressed the floor, thrusting the torso to arisen, "mmph!" Again, the hoarse and infirm guttural sound, I would need to expect that here on out.

I failed.

I tried it again.

Unfortunately, the process improperly became a perpetual failure.

In the glimpse of my sight, a slice of light flickered as if a photon of blood-red scintillated right past me, I began to undergo what 'the speed of light' meant when they mention the gait to be expectedly brief.

It was a blood-red shaded gemstone. It was the same size as an eyeball and shaped like a diamond. The light increased brilliantly than the gas lamp itself, or anything else within this room, even my sight could not apprehend this one shone spot as the rest were submerging darkness.

Knock. Knock.

I joggled my attention away from the gemstone towards the sound.

An intruder? Or an ally…

No, I knew nothing of their existence, yet, I had been tucked behind a blanket, perhaps they knew the reasoning for my heedless plight and identity? It didn't seem like I was held under confinement, nor their fault, no implement in sight to call it leaving me 'defenseless for their advantage'. I was to be…rather regularly comforted.

"C-Can I come in?" A staggering voice of a prime youth-year-old male? These foreign words, this spotless intonation, this language, he just spoke Lastrevane.

At that moment, I answered none. Perhaps I found no moral to wander at all, which was why I did not ponder anything at all. Even so, I had no proficiency in what to say. This defective vocal, this impractical and indisposed physique, this unidentified guise. What was to say when I cannot recall anything to even went off wording situations? Vocabulary would jumble up my operation, with how I was currently, I was at an effort to figure even the slightest bit of knowing, however…

It was, in fact, another perpetual failure.

From beneath the ajar threshold of the slim bamboo door, a silhouette of someone configured where my vision shifted to meet it.

"Darling, what absurdity are you thinking of doing?" A loud whisper interrupted my concentration on the adolescent's voice, another had accompanied. However, it discerned as a man, much mature, calling this thirteen-year-old boy a 'darling'.

I listened.

"I want to guarantee her safety…" Darling retorted with uncertainty.

"Darling, you know what type of people she is? The sort to be endorsed by the monarch, no matter what is it to harm her body, we shall not touch it. It's a must!" The matured one asserted his statement.

"But—" "I know with a fate that we of all people discovered her. But it is a brute idea to think we own any rights to act welcomed." The man qualified to make his statement sounded reasonable which made it inarguable. Darling fell into a heaping silence.

Were they talking about me? Who was I to be endorsed by the monarch?

I could not recall the answer to my knowledge in the Lastrevane conversation, because somehow, my focal language was Vongoly.

At the time, I could only manifest the oddity where these languages originated. Vongolial— was a wholly separate realm from Lastrevania (the nation which occupied our continent: Julia), beyond the other region, and belonged to a unique sovereign polity.

The Empire of Lastrevania regulated more than twenty nations within discreet regions and was predominant to most of Julia. The Vongolial Realm was essentially an exception, it was its own cultured role within Julia. Although it did not authorize several nations like Lastrevania did, Vongolial was just a singular monarchy government state, although, its longitude measured in an almost exact magnitude as all the Lastrevania Empire combined.

Due to that, whatever the supreme authority Lastrevania had upon various nations, Vongolial would evermore be its individual motherland under its idiosyncratic regime. In conclusion, Vongolial had an identical recognition to the Empire as a whole, which lead the affinity between Lastrevania and the Vongolial Realm to become allies for centuries.

That prompted me to think that Darling and the mature man were speaking Lastrevane, not Vongoly. So we were in Lastrevania? If my focal was Vongoly, how was I here?

Perhaps if another story that in fact, we might be inside the Empire, whether Lastrevania couldn't have been their local nation, which reasoned their current vocabulary to just have been a second language counseled by the sovereignty. Shouldn't that be the decree for all the nations of the empire, I assumed? Then…what nation was I in?

There was no other way to find out without any proper interrogation. Which meant interactions would be the only route to guidance. Thus, I must idle this very feeble physique, awaiting it to serene in order for us to leave past the door.

In approximately thirty minutes or more, if I proceeded to grapple up each foot by utilizing the wall, each time I collapsed, I merely needed to emboss. Until I could detect the sole of this barefoot coasting across the wooden flooring, and discerning the grates of it if louder enough than should be, it will justify how I might succeed in treading once more.

Beneath this method, my erect posture enabled.

Cautiously approaching the mirror, I saw a presumed doppelgänger of myself, amidst this very condition, the first thing I acknowledged was how much I resembled a porcelain doll. I am a young woman embellished in an oversized robe (torn), I am svelte and have massive rounded eyes which replicated a doe, blinking, and blinking. The hue of its epidermis was of waxen porcelain, indeed. Transparent freckles plastered over the roseate cheeks and cheekbones, I could barely note it had cheekbones at all due to its heart-shaped sculpture; cracked bleeding downturned lips zipped shut. The— hair. The unbounded hair was exceedingly long, reaching around thigh-length, and curly at the crispy edges.

Was I authentically born this way? Appearing disheveled and scruffy, yet somehow immaculate and exquisite as if I were an aristocrat, floundered into a pool of mud and dissipated to where I was now.

I extended a hand to sweep its reflection, uncertain whether I was parallel or unparalleled, my elegant physiognomy seemed like I had transmitted from a painting. This body was well hydrated and cultivated, mushy and faultless, fair and evenly toned. Nonetheless, the sore throat and fiery scleras notified me I had not drunk water in days.

Who— no, what precisely am I?

"Albert, I could've sworn I heard some creaking in there..." Darling's faint Lastrevane voiced, my attention abruptly altered to it, he sounded distraught or scared.

Was simply strolling the floor scary? I did not think I should be wary of such a peripheral aspect. Very well.

I subsided my steps, coiling the toes, and stood on it every time a squeak was almost to be heard; fingers wrapping the knob and twisted it.

As soon as the bamboo door unlatched, the moonlight illuminated through the glass casement constructed against an unreachable loft of this cottage, soaring my sight up ahead to observe it, realizing how it exhibited in between the starless inky sky. It was so beaming, an exclusive lamp torching the sightseeing night.

A blaring gasp intervened, composed at my left. It belonged to Darling— my belief was in contradiction, Darling was not a young man, however, a woman.

She was garnished in a rather wrinkling brownish petticoat with a stained apron as an overall, medium-length hair swept inside a white mob-cap, expression seemingly stammered or petrified before my presence.

Was I the one confining them?

"L-L..." Darling staggered, her bottom back ramming onto the tabletop behind her, quavering the bowl of soup in her hands.

Bowl of soup? As in liquid, the scent pulped between truffles and cream, a fare which was rigged and anew.

"G-G-Good evening, ma'am!" Hollered Darling, descending her chin instantly, I could indicate how she crossed her wrists behind her arched spine once she neatened her stance.

I should not advocate to her uncommon greet, hence, I was no soldier nor a higher-up, then was saluting as a paltry damsel tolerable? Within The Empire of Lastrevania, intersecting one's wrists behind one's body was deemed a salute only upon toilers under the regiment of the monarchy or the monarchs themselves. The mannerism for men.

On the contrary, women's mannerism was entirely curtsying, could be an exception if she acquired an insignia; although that pondered as profoundly illegitimate.

The bowl had long been cast aside, every brink of my fingers blenched beneath the smell, sore throat had been parched all along.

I approached the table, knees balefully tottering as it went, I reached in to cup it then downed the entire thing unblemished. Gulping lumps after lumps, a few droplets of the dense soup roamed down over the jaw and neck.

I assumed during the phase I was not acquainted of Darling eyeing me startlingly as if I were to reproach her, she still did not know I lost my memory, I think she immersed into a mass of relief once she realized I purely yearned to consume nutriments.

My first impression was a bit— unladylike?

Unfortunately, albeit all these things I implemented, bringing chagrin upon my image, I was unsympathetic and emotionless with zero consciences or virility to work on, facial expression remained uninvolved, I was an exact replica of a porcelain marionette.

Deep down inside me, perhaps I overlooked it, but the heart and I could already notion that I did not lose it anywhere, it was solely who I am.

An insentient individual.