Bone
“Stop touching that!”
“But missssss, it’s so much fun, all nice and smooth with those jagged edges, and it’s oozing! Look at it ooze!”
“That’s fucking gross.”
“You’re just jealous that no one wants to break your arm!”
“Why would I—ugh, dolls …”
They’re stumbling, leaning against each other; one drunk on pain and the other simply drunk. The street isn’t making their lives easy: the undulations which drove them off the sidewalk have begun to spread across it, soft snakeskin ripples pressing up against their soles. Probably there’s something wrong here; probably the ground is angry at the bloody marrow dripping from her arm or the silver cursework carefully threaded through his leather jacket. Probably their minds are too hazed, too lost, unwarily willingly poisoned—
But neither of them can say for sure, and truth so often lies discarded behind the urgency of purpose.
“Oh goddess, where the fuck are we?”
“I’m … right here! And you’re right there! It’s so simple, silly~”
Doll laughs as he clutches his head. He’s so obviously overwhelmed by the purity of her logic, despairing that his riddle fell so easily; such a silly witchling! If he even is one; Doll’s not sure, thinks that maybe he’s just been posturing in hope of an easy hookup. She wouldn’t mind; that’s what she wants too.
… it’s what she wanted, anyway. Before her arm was broken for her. Now she’s not so sure; maybe she’d rather just go home and play with it until her own witch’s hands deign to become real for long enough to repair her? It’s certainly an appealing thought …
“No, but seriously. I don’t recognize any of this, and we haven’t walked that far, have we?”
Doll tilts her head, stares at him, glances around at glossy yellow-white buildings and blood-streaked streetlights. Maybe … maybe that wasn’t a riddle?
“… it looks os-, ost-, uh …”
“Osseous?”
“No!”
“Then what—you know, fuck it, it doesn’t matter. I really don’t like here.”
Doll can practically hear the unease curdling the alcohol in his veins; adrenaline hitting like a hammer, his heart beating faster, an illusion of sobriety that’s just a different sort of intoxication. She thinks it’s probably the hottest thing his body has done all night, though still not quite up to the standards of the curly-horned butch who broke her arm. If only she’d stayed with her, if only she hadn’t let this witchling—her date—bundle her off into the night. Ah well.
“Hey! What if we knock on a door? Maybe someone inside knows where we are!”
He cranes his head, looking for streetsigns, but the seven-pointed intersection they’ve found themselves at the heart of is bereft of such concessions. “Maybe, yeah. Stay here, okay?”
Doll nods.
A laugh nibbles at the back of her through, a cheeky little giggle blending in with her broken arm’s fascinatingly vivid pain. She takes a moment to poke at the marrow again as her date, now so obviously not a witchling, apprehensively approaches the nearest door.
His knock echoes around the street, far too loud, far too forceful—but he wants to get attention, doesn’t he? So scared, so uneasy, so eager to be told where to go …
Perhaps he’d be a better doll than Doll—but no, Doll thinks to herself, that’s ridiculous. She’s the BEST doll.
Ten, twenty, thirty feet away from her the door opens, and the door closes, and Doll finds that she’s alone. That’s okay, though—maybe that butch is still at the bar? Doll’s pretty sure that she remembers the way back …