fluff

She wanders into the kitchen midway through your preparations, drawn by the warm scents of cooking meet and browning bread and your heartbeat's happy rhythm. You tug the blackout curtain closed as she does, walling out sunset's last beams before they can touch her grey skin.

"Hey!" you cheerfully greet her sleep-mussed hair and hollow eyes, "do you want some coffee? It'll be ready in a minute."

She grumbles at you and shakes her head; not a surprise, since things like her don't really need to eat, but you like to offer anyway.

Each day you walk past the dollmaker's store, past those wide glass windows full of carefully constructed cages. They almost look like they're not cages at all, just dollhouses, but you know better: you've spent enough time watching to notice the bars.

The dolls gambol and dance, climb their furniture and nestle in little display cases almost like they weren't alive at all; sometimes you even pass by as they're having a tea party, a matched set drinking in unison.

Every few weeks one or two of the cages sit empty.

"I'm sorry you had to see me like that. I never wanted you to know that side of me. I wanted," a drop of blood slides down her perfect teeth, "I wanted to keep you safe."

This isn't when the doll found her in the woods, covered in stolen blood. This is some time after.

When doll slips from the confines of her bed-box and stumbles downstairs, there's an odd rectangle waiting at the table: a folded sheet of thick, creamy paper. It's for her, obviously—why else would her miss have put it there, next to her oatmeal and tea?

But doll isn't sure.

"Miss, what's this?"

This week the witch is living in a half-destroyed warehouse right on the edge of one of the impact craters, close enough that your phone won't stop interrupting your conversation with alerts about impending exposure. She says it's fine, though, so you just swipe them away.

The city is always a bit too aggressive about geofencing their alerts, so it's not like you're unused to being told to ignore them by people who really should know.

Besides, it's nice here. It feels abandoned. Hardly like part of the city at all. It's just comfortable.

“Hey babe”, said the witch, “mind helping me with this? I think I cracked a bone the other day.”

The doll looked up from her book. “Sure, but isn't that the third this month?”

”... yeah.”