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Chapter Text

Alice's cottage smells like the things of country living and dollmaking: Tea and paint, firewood and ink, dried herbs and newly-fired porcelain. The evening sun still shines through the windows of her workshop, but she's already lit several candles, giving everything a slight orange cast.

She needs the extra light, because tonight, Alice is making dolls.

In front of her is a wooden body that has already been assembled and enchanted during a previous night's labor: A featureless, but delicately curved, torso. Two legs, with ball-jointed knees and ankles so precisely-made that they'd make a watchmaker jealous. Two arms, with similarly articulate fingers on the hands. And, a bald little head with an empty face. The surface has already been sanded far smoother than any skin, and covered in a pale, almost-white, coat of paint.

Alice reaches down and taps the doll's head with a single fingertip. In response, the little figure pushes itself up to standing, with its blank face peering forward. Alice gently cups that tiny chin, and with her other hand, retrieves two blue glass eyes from a box and slides them into the empty sockets on the doll's face. She subtly adjusts them to make sure that both eyes are aligned, then lifts a fine-tipped brush and dips it in a pot of black paint. After years of doing this, she's quite dexterous, but she still takes her time as she paints a perfect dainty mouth.

When she's done, Alice pulls the paintbrush back and tilts the doll's head side to side to inspect her handiwork, then gently blows on it for a few seconds to help the paint set. With that, she pats the doll on the head. "Go on, go sit over there until you're all dry."

The doll stiffly turns, then totters over to the corner of the desk, with its little wooden feet tapping out a series of clicks as it walks. By the time it sits down, Alice has already picked up another body and started painting it.

The doll doesn't think, but it has awareness—enough to respond to orders, at least. Now it has eyes, so it can see the rest of the room. There are several more dolls just like itself sitting to the side. It stares forward without purpose, simply waiting for a command to give it a reason to move.

Two hours pass. More and more dolls line up next to it, and then the others start walking away one by one. Finally, Alice looks to the doll with a smile and beckons it with a bent finger. "Your turn."

The doll stands up and tap-tap-taps across the desk again, then stands in front of Alice. The magician reaches down to tilt its head for another inspection, and the doll does not resist. Seeming satisfied, Alice grabs a tiny mop of hair and secures it on top of the doll's head. Golden strands of hair pass in front of its eyes, and Alice brushes them back with her fingertips.

From a small box to the side, Alice lifts up a doll-sized black dress, with stitching so fine that it's barely even visible, and holds it above the doll's head. "Up. Up—there you go." The doll raises its hands in the air, and Alice pulls the dress down onto its body. This musses its hair up, but she patiently smooths it out again, then pulls it back into a bundle and deftly ties a red bow at the base. With the addition of a pair of black shoes to its feet, the doll is done.

Alice slides one hand beneath the doll and lifts it up to her face for a final inspection. Her fingers brush over its clothes, smoothing out miniscule wrinkles, then drift over its hands, where tiny fingers clench against hers in response. She smiles. "Welcome, little one. I'm sure you'll make a fine addition to the family."

With her inspection complete, she sits the doll aside moves on to the next.

When her work for the night is done, Alice leads the new dolls into the next room and directs them to rest on the shelves. Alice goes to sleep, and the doll continues to sit. From this vantage point, it can see dozens of its sisters, in dresses of all the colors of the rainbow. The doll doesn't sleep, but it doesn't notice the passing of time, either. Its glass eyes just stare ahead blankly, waiting for orders.

Several days pass. A week. A month. The doll does its duties. The doll helps cook. The doll makes Alice's bed with a team of six of its sisters. At night, the doll stares blankly ahead, waiting for orders.

Months after the doll's creation, it's a day like any other. The sun rises, and Alice with it. Other dolls float down from their shelves and busy themselves with making breakfast, while she oversees the process. The doll stays on the shelf, until Alice walks into the room and claps her hands twice, as if trying to draw attention to herself. It isn't necessary, but Alice likes to pretend. "Okay, everybody, it's time to get to work!" She lowers a basket of miniature tools to the ground.

The doll rises to standing and floats down to the floor. It and its sisters form two lines, one on either side of the basket, as Alice speaks her orders.

"Today is cleaning day! I also want a few of you to trim the hedges, so if you get a pair of scissors, please line up by the door so I can let you out." The doll patiently waits for its turn to get to the front of the line. It does not get a pair of scissors. Instead, it gets a cloth. Alice's will comes through clearly, though, and it hovers up to one of the windows. One of its sisters joins it, while another hovers behind them with a spray bottle.

Through the window, the doll can see the outside world. It is much greener than the inside of the cottage. This doesn't concern the doll, because its job for the moment has nothing to do with the scenery, and everything to do with the window in front of it. The other doll, with the spray bottle, douses the window with water, and the doll leans forward and presses the cloth to it with both hands, then swipes it around to clean up any smudges or dust. It takes a long time to clean an entire window, even with three of them working on it. But the doll doesn't get bored.

The first window is cleaned, and the doll hovers over to the second one. And a third one. After that is the mirror on the vanity.

The doll lands on top of the vanity and approaches the mirror. There's a face peering at it from mere centimeters away. It lifts its cloth, and the mirror-doll does as well. The doll hesitates. It is here to clean a mirror, not a doll.

The doll reaches forward to push this obstacle away, and its fingers press against smooth glass.

The doll is not smart. The doll does not think. It is merely carrying out Alice's will. But, as part of this, it needs to have some slight decision-making skills to execute her orders.

The doll reaches forward again. So does the mirror-doll. The doll pauses.

It's a scenario that other dolls have gone through dozens of times before. Every other doll has hesitated for a moment before cleaning the mirror normally anyway. But somehow, this doll is ever-so-slightly different.

The doll raises its hand again and watches the mirror-doll do the same. And again. And again.

The doll has figured it out: The doll in the reflection is itself. It's never seen itself before. It hadn't even really been aware of its body. It had never needed to be, really. This sudden awareness of its own existence threatens to make the doll's little head pop, and it stands still, staring at its reflection for almost a full minute.

But the doll isn't here to clean itself. The doll raises the cloth again, far to the side, and very carefully wipes around its own reflection. It's hard, because the mirror-doll keeps following it, but it tries its very best until the mirror is clean, then moves on to the next window.

After cleaning, Alice lines the dolls up for inspection. A few of them have torn their clothes during the day, and she settles them into her lap to mend them. The doll's dress has a little dust on it, and Alice picks it up to brush it off.

When everybody is fixed, the dolls return to their shelves, and Alice settles in to read. After some time, she slides into bed and drifts off to sleep.

The doll stares blankly ahead, waiting for orders. And then, its eyes turn toward the other doll to its left.

For the second time in a day, the doll's rudimentary decision-making skills are overwhelmed. Now it knows that these other dolls look like it does, but they don't feel like part of itself. But neither did the doll in the mirror.

It reaches out and gives the doll to its left an experimental poke. It doesn't feel like the mirror did, when it touched its reflection. The other doll keeps staring ahead, sitting stiffly. The force of the poke makes it slowly tilt to the side, and it falls against the next doll over. One by one, the other dolls in the row topple like dominoes. A few even fall to the floor with a clatter.

"Mmh?" Alice had been sleeping, but she's awake now. She pushes herself up to sitting and glances around the bedroom. Even though there's no illumination but the moonlight, her eyes settle onto the mess almost immediately.

Alice walks over and frowns at the dolls on the floor, but carefully picks each one up, brushes its clothes off, and sits it back on the shelf neatly. Afterward, though, she peers over them. "Now what knocked you over...?"

Six identical pairs of eyes stare forward blankly, and there's nothing moving in the cottage. Alice gives up with a yawn. "Well, I suppose it doesn't matter. Good night." She slides back into bed and is asleep within minutes.

The doll glances over at its sisters again. That does settle one matter: It is a doll, but it exists separately from the other dolls. It is its own thing. There is a new category to the ordering of the universe.

Another week passes. The doll's epiphany about its own separate existence doesn't change much. It is still a tool for Alice's will.

Alice sits the basket on the floor again, and orders every doll to take something and start cleaning. The doll chooses a cloth on purpose this time. It has cleaned before, so it will be better at cleaning than the other dolls. Besides, it is curious to see itself in the mirror again.

When it reaches the mirror, the doll sees that its reflection has a little dust smeared on its forehead. At first, it tries to wipe this off of its mirror self, but every time it pulls the cloth away from the mirror, the dust is still there. Finally, the doll turns the cloth around and wipes the dust off of its forehead. The doll is clean now, and so is its reflection.

The doll doesn't wipe around itself when it cleans the mirror this time. It's made of wood and cloth. The mirror-doll is not. The mirror-doll is only a mirror. It's just one more thing in the growing list of objects that the doll realizes are not itself.

Once the cleaning is done, Alice has the dolls line up for inspection again. Several of them have torn their clothes or gotten dirty. The doll watches as she deals with them. It has cleaned itself already. It carried out Alice's will better than any other doll.

More days pass. The doll is vaguely aware of this. It notices the passage of time now. It especially notices it when Alice is asleep. When Alice is asleep, the doll doesn't have any orders except to sit on the shelf.

The doll doesn't like sitting on the shelf. It's Alice's will, but the doll has noticed that Alice is pleased when a doll cleans well, or helps create a particularly tasty dish. Alice never seems pleased that a doll sat on the shelf all night.

The doll wants to carry out Alice's will... but maybe that isn't the same as carrying out Alice's instructions. Alice doesn't ask for it to clean itself when it's dirty, but it does that now. That is serving Alice's will.

How else can it serve Alice's will?

The light of the rising sun shines through the window. Alice will get up soon. Every day, when Alice wakes up, she sends dolls to bring her clothes, gets dressed, cooks breakfast with the help of several dolls, brews tea, has breakfast, and then reads for a while before getting down to the day's business.

The doll can't make breakfast, and the filled tea kettle is too heavy for it to carry alone. But it can do one thing.

The doll floats down from the shelf and hovers around the cottage until it spots its targets, then drags them across the floor one at a time. When it finishes, it settles back into place on the shelf.

When Alice wakes up this morning, her slippers are already waiting by the side of the bed. She barely notices. But Alice's will has been served. Even if she doesn't know it.

The next morning, the doll sits Alice's slippers out for her again. Again, she doesn't notice. The morning after, it also sits a plate, cup, and silverware on the table for breakfast. When Alice wakes up and sees this, she seems confused and a little upset. The doll isn't sure if Alice's will was served or not. The doll decides not to set the table again.

A few days later, a human comes to visit. The doll has seen the human before, but the other times, it didn't pay any attention, because it wasn't directly relevant to Alice's will. Now, it watches. The other human has yellow hair, like Alice, but wears a black dress, like the doll does. The other human also has a big floppy hat with a point on top.

Alice and the other human sit across from each other and talk for a long time. The doll spends this whole time sitting on the shelf. This is better than sitting on the shelf at night, though, because the other human says things and Alice smiles. Alice's will is being served. The doll pays attention to try figuring out what the other human is doing to please Alice so well. It isn't intended to understand conversation. But it tries.

Many more days pass. One night, Alice leaves her slippers very far away. The doll sits them by her bed like it's been doing. When Alice wakes up in the morning and sees her slippers, she seems upset and confused again, like she was the time it set the table.

The doll stops setting out Alice's slippers, but Alice starts asking for them first thing in the morning again. The doll is no longer certain that it was serving Alice's will. It goes back to doing only the things Alice orders it to, but this has problems too. Now that it's learned to anticipate Alice's will, doing nothing about it is anathema to its nature. Now that it's learned to anticipate Alice's will, it's aware of just how long the nights of doing nothing on the shelf can be.

The girl with the pointy hat comes to visit more. Other people do too, but the pointy hat girl visits most. The doll watches this and studies the things that Alice smiles at when people say them. It's an uphill struggle, but it starts to recognize words, like 'tea' and 'me' and 'magic' and 'doll.' Alice usually smiles when she says 'doll.' The doll takes this as a sign that Alice is pleased with her dolls, and for the first time, it feels pride.

Now that the doll knows a few words, its vocabulary quickly explodes. It's voracious for more, and it carefully takes note of what words Alice uses for things around the house. The shiny thing where it first saw itself is a "mirror." The dolls in dark blue dresses are "Hourai dolls." It, and its sisters in black, are "Shanghai dolls." The things that Alice wears on her feet in the morning are "slippers." The things that she looks at in the evening are "books."

Sometimes Alice talks to herself when nobody is around, and the doll learns new words. Sometimes Alice sings to herself while she works. It seems like Alice is happy when she sings, so the doll is happy when she sings. The doll learns new words from her songs, like "sunshine" and "flower" and "dear" and "dance." The doll doesn't know what these words refer to, but they make Alice happy when she sings them.

The doll wants to make Alice happy too, just like the things those words describe, and it's coming to the slow realization that it needs a name to refer to itself. So, one day, it silently decides that its name will be Sunshine. Weeks later, it learns that "sunshine" is the light outside during daytime.

Sunshine understands so many more things now that it knows words. One night, it tries setting the table again while Alice sleeps. She wakes up, gets dressed, and when she sees the table, she glances around. "I didn't ask any of you to do this yet, did I?" she asks the dolls that are preparing breakfast. They, of course, don't respond. "... hmm." Alice lifts a fork and inspects it. "Strange."

Sunshine can understand Alice's words now. Now it knows that she doesn't get upset about the table being set because she doesn't want it to be. She gets upset because she doesn't know who is setting it. Alice's will is clear.

The next morning is like any other. Alice wakes up with a yawn, then sits up on the edge of her bed. After a moment to orient herself, she stands and beckons to a few Hourai dolls on the shelf next to her. "Clothes, please."

The magician raises her arms, and two dolls float over to tug her nightgown off over her head. By the time it slides free, two more dolls are already hovering in front of her with a dress picked out, and Alice steps into it. A small squad of them button up the back of the dress, while two more lower her hairband into her place. Alice makes a few adjustments, but seems pleased. "Good work, everybody. Now, let's start breakfast. Today will be porridge, and I'll have milk in my tea."

The dolls hurry into the kitchen, with half a dozen of them hovering around the stove and measuring oats, spices, and dried fruit into a sauce pan. Two more hover off to get water, with the kettle held between them. Alice walks over to the stove to supervise the effort.

Now is the time for Sunshine to make its move. The doll flies across the room, opens the cupboard, and grabs a plate. It will set the table, and it will do it in front of Alice so that she won't be worried when she doesn't know who did it.

Sunshine sits the plate on the table, then lands to push it into place. The sound of the plate settling onto the table makes Alice turn around. She watches as Sunshine flies back to the cupboard, retrieves a knife, sits it next to the plate, and flies back toward the cupboard again.

This time, though, Alice holds a hand out in front of the doll, and Sunshine stops in midair. "I... didn't ask for anybody to set the table yet. ... did I?" Alice frowns in confusion, and Sunshine isn't sure what to do. She should be happy now, since she knows that there isn't a stranger sneaking into her house and setting her table. Right?

Alice frowns at the doll for a few seconds, then sighs and pulls her hand back. "I must be getting forgetful. Go on, finish what you were doing," she says. Sunshine resumes flying without hesitation. Once the table is set, it hovers back to sit on the shelf and await orders. Alice watches it go.

The next day comes. Alice wakes up, gets dressed, and starts breakfast. Sunshine sets the table without incident. Alice watches the doll attentively this time. Sunshine is pleased that Alice knows it is carrying out her will.

After breakfast, Alice normally reads, but today, she walks over to the shelf and peers at Sunshine. "You're the doll who set the table today, aren't you?" Sunshine nods, and Alice reaches up to slide one hand beneath it and pick the doll up. "... right, let's have a look at you."

The magician sits down with the doll in her lap and performs a thorough inspection: Pulling its clothes off and looking over its body, looking into its eyes, even pulling out a thick book and reading a minor cantrip from it. Sunshine waits patiently through all of this, until Alice sits it back down on the table in front of her.

Alice taps her chin as she looks at the seated doll, and finally, says, "I know that I didn't ask anybody to set the table this morning."

Sunshine looks up at her, with its face as expressionless as always. It understands the words, but Alice's will isn't clear.

"So why did you?"

Sunshine continues staring upward. It set the table because Alice was going to want the table set, of course. The doll raises a hand and points at Alice.

The magician blinks, looking quite surprised, and blushes slightly. "If you're a youkai and this is your idea of a joke, I ought to haul you in front of the shrine maiden," she says. And then, a little more softly: "... but if you're not..."

Alice stands up and crosses over to a shelf, then pulls out one of her boxes of dollmaking supplies. It doesn't take her long to find a white ribbon. She unties the red bow from Sunshine's hair, then replaces it with a white one. "... there. Now I can tell you apart from the others, at least." She looks upset. Anxious. Sunshine feels bad that it seems to be the cause of this, but doesn't know what it did wrong.

Alice pats the doll on the head. "Go back to your shelf, little one."

Sunshine complies. Alice seems worried. She pulls several very thick books off of the shelves, and reads. She reads all the way into the night, until the candles start burning down. Only then does she go to bed.

The next day comes. Alice wakes up late. Today, she dresses herself. She heads into the kitchen, and she cooks her own breakfast. From its spot on the shelf, Sunshine can see all of this, and knows that something out of the ordinary is going on. Alice has never done any of this by herself, but today, all of the dolls stay on the shelf.

When Alice finishes breakfast, she pulls out a box that Sunshine has never seen before and sits it on the floor. "You three, and you four," she says, gesturing at a few dolls. "Please, come get ready." The dolls comply. From the box, each one grabs a weapon, long pointy things and short sharp things that Sunshine doesn't know the words for. Once they're all prepared, Alice slides a few rings onto her fingers, and from these, extends thin, almost invisible, wires and attaches them to the dolls' joints, giving her direct moment-to-moment control over them.

Alice approaches the shelf, now with an armed guard around her, and raises a basket, with the top held open. "Climb in, please." It's directed at Sunshine. This is also out of the ordinary, but it's Alice's will. Sunshine climbs into the basket.

The inside of the basket is lined with fluffy cloth. It bounces around as Alice walks across the cottage, and then Sunshine hears the familiar sound of the door opening and closing. Through the gaps in the sides, the doll can see little flashes of the outside world, and the armed dolls that are walking in a protective ring around Alice.

Alice takes off flying, and the basket bounces around even more. Sunshine digs its little fingers into the material of the sides to stay in place, and keeps watching the outside world. It is much, much bigger than the cottage, and there are many more green things than Sunshine had expected.

Alice flies for a long time, then lands in an area that's less green than most of the other places they've passed over. During the flight, the cloth shifted up against the walls of the basket a bit more, so the doll can't see much. It feels Alice walk, and somebody says, "A-ah! Miss Margatroid, hello, we weren't expecting you. ... you didn't come for a fight, did you?"

"Ahh, no, no, they're just a precaution." Even without being able to see her, Sunshine recognizes Alice's voice. "Could you please check if Patchouli has some time to talk?"

"Just a moment, let me flag down a fairy maid and send a message. I'm sorry, but I can't let you through if she says no."

"Of course. I haven't had a good fight in ages, anyway."

"Eh-heh. Please don't say that."

There's a very long wait. Sunshine uses this time to pull the cloth down from the sides of the basket and peer outside. There is a woman it hasn't seen before, with green clothes and red hair. There is a very big house. It's far bigger than the cottage. It's bigger than Sunshine thought the entire world was until today.

There's another brief discussion, the gate slides open, and Alice starts walking again. Soon enough, Sunshine sees the inside of the house. Some of the rooms are bigger than the cottage too.

After a long walk, Alice stops again. There is a lady with silver hair. Her clothes make her look kind of like a doll, herself. She politely gestures to the door next to her. "Miss Patchouli will see you now. I've already prepared some tea for the two of you." She looks down to the basket, and it feels like she is looking directly at Sunshine. "Would you like me to look after your parcel?"

"Ah..." Alice lifts it up. "It might be best if it's not in the room while we talk, yes." The silver-haired lady grabs the basket and carries it off, then puts it somewhere dark.

Sunshine sits in the dark for a while. An hour, at least, but this is nothing compared to waiting every night while Alice sleeps. Finally, the silver-haired woman returns and packs the basket back, then sits it on a table.

Through the walls of the basket, the doll can see Alice on one side, and a very lavender-colored girl on the other. The lavender girl is wearing clothes like Alice wears to sleep and a hat that looks like a bag. The lavender girl opens the top of the basket and peers down at Sunshine. "This is the doll?" Her voice is quiet and flat. She sounds like Alice does just before she goes to sleep.

The lavender girl reaches down and grabs Sunshine, then lifts it up. Sunshine can see the whole room now. It, too, is bigger than Alice's entire cottage, dark, dusty, and filled with books. Seeing a room in such dire need of cleaning is an affront to most of the doll's sensibilities.

The strange girl inspects Sunshine, rather more roughly than Alice did yesterday. "I am not a dollmaker, but the construction looks similar to your others. You're sure that you did nothing out of the ordinary while making it?"

"It's been months, but... yes, I've checked her out, and she looks like the others."

Oh. Sunshine hadn't known she was a she. She takes care to remember that.

"Hmm. Well, if it is moving on its own, there are several explanations. The animating enchantment could have faded enough to—"

"I already checked that." Alice sounds almost offended.

"I am merely being thorough. It isn't a tsukumogami. You haven't used it for anything special?"

"No."

"Then it is doubtful that it has grown unique enough to develop a genius. Genii are rare in Gensokyo, anyway. Have you left it anywhere where it might be exposed to strong vectors for the element of wood?"

"Well, no..."

This conversation goes on for some time, and while Sunshine pays attention and tries to learn new words, most of them go over her head. Finally, the lavender girl lowers her back into the basket and shuts it again. "Then I don't know. I can give you a better idea if you let me dissect it and determine its elemental balances..."

"That's out of the question." Alice rests a hand on the basket and subtly pulls it closer to herself.

The other girl shrugs. "The animation of constructs isn't my specialty, and you've read what few books I have on the subject."

"Right." Alice sighs. "Well. Thank you, Patchouli."

There's another long walk back out of the mansion, a flight, and a shorter walk. Alice lands somewhere rather greener this time. It's just like the first time: She waits a while, and then she says a bunch of big words that Sunshine doesn't understand to a woman with silver hair, in a blue and red outfit. The silver-haired woman turns Sunshine over in her hands, more carefully than Patchouli did but still less gently than Alice.

And then it's back into the basket for another trip. This time, when the basket opens, she's looking up at the blonde girl with the pointy hat. Her name is Marisa; Sunshine figured that out weeks ago.

"Huh. This one?" Marisa reaches into the basket and lifts the doll out. Sunshine's used to it by now, and waits patiently as the magician turns her over in her calloused hands. She's the roughest of all of them, giving the doll's arms a few experimental tugs before sitting her down on the table.

"Yes. Patchouli and Doctor Yagokoro have already looked at her and can't tell me much."

Marisa gives a low whistle. "You trust me more than Patchy and the Doc? I'm flattered." She rubs the back of her head and grins, laughing, while Alice frowns.

"No, but I thought that another set of eyes couldn't hurt."

"What's the big problem, anyway? You wanted a doll that can think on its own, didn'tcha?" Marisa reaches down and lifts Sunshine's skirt to peek beneath it, and Alice almost reflexively slaps her hand away.

"I do, yes, but I wanted to make sure it wasn't a youkai trick, or something else. And now..." Alice looks uncomfortably at Sunshine. "... well, I still don't know if that's what I'm dealing with."

"What, you're still not sure if she thinks stuff?"

"Well, no. Consciousness is a notoriously difficult branch of magic, and determining if something has thoughts is one of the harder types of it. This would all be easier if we could contact the satori, of course. I've been thinking about experiments I might run, and..."

Marisa doesn't seem to be listening. She glances over Sunshine, then says, "Yeah, well, how about this experiment? First..." she reaches toward the doll, with a rather frightening leer on her face. "... we tear off her arms!"

Sunshine freezes for just a moment while all of this plays out in her head. She wasn't designed to have many self-preservation instincts—Alice does use her dolls as shields and walking bombs when necessary—but she still finds herself unhappy at the idea of having her arms removed. She rises to standing just as Marisa's hands are closing in, then scrambles away to hop back into the basket. Once inside, the doll tugs the lid down and holds it closed.

"..." Alice pinches the bridge of her nose. "Marisa. You are not tearing off her arms."

"Hehe. Well. That wasn't really the point anyway. She ran away."

"Yes. And?"

"She was scared, dummy! You didn't tell her to run away, did ya?"

"... well, no." Alice slides the basket toward herself and opens the top just a crack. She finds the doll peering up at her. The magician offers a hand. "Come here, little one. I... won't let her hurt you." She blushes slightly. Giving orders to her dolls is nothing new. Reassurances, not so much.

Sunshine reluctantly climbs out of the basket, and Alice lowers her onto the table top. "There. But no more threats."

"Ah, I didn't mean anything by it. Point is, you don't need crazy experiments to figure out if she thinks or not. I mean, you never performed experiments on me, and you know I think, right?"

"Do I?" Alice crooks an eyebrow, and the witch sticks out her tongue in response. "... but maybe you're right." She turns back to the doll and fidgets for a few seconds. "... can you understand me, little one?"

Sunshine nods.

"Hmm. I guess that doesn't prove much, though." Alice purses her lips. "I... give you permission to do whatever you want for the moment. As long as you don't hurt anybody."

Sunshine freezes, overwhelmed with choice. While she's made some decisions before, they've all been to further Alice's will. And now Alice wants her to... do anything? Anything at all? The little doll wobbles as she struggles with her sudden absolute freedom.

"Uh-oh. Think you broke her."

Alice reaches out to steady Sunshine, with a hand under each armpit. "Okay, so maybe we should start more gradually than that. Hmm. This would be easier if she could talk..."

"... hold on." Marisa stands up and walks away, disappearing between two of the towering piles of junk that form semi-stable walls in her house. There's the sound of her digging for a few minutes, and when she returns, she sits a piece of paper, a pencil, a pot of ink, a paintbrush, and a quill on the tabletop. "There."

"What makes you think she knows how to write?"

"Eh, it's worth a shot. Hey, pipsqueak, lookie here." Marisa grabs the quill, dips it in ink, and draws a stick figure on the paper, then taps it. "See that? That's a person. Do ya get it?"

Sunshine leans over and stares at this, then glances between Marisa and the picture a few times, comparing the two. Art is not something she has much experience with. But she can kind of understand this. Marisa is a tall thing with a ball on top and four thin things poking out of its sides. Just like the picture. Well, almost. It's missing some things. The doll toddles over and crouches down to heft the pencil with both hands, then stands over the stick figure.

Alice goes wide-eyed. "What is she...?"

"Eh, just let her draw. Not everything's gotta be an experiment."

Sunshine spends several minutes glancing between the stick figure and Marisa. She presses the tip of the pencil to the paper and walks backward, dragging it along to draw a line running across the figure's head. When that one is done, she repeats it twice more, adding two slanted lines on top of this that come to a point. It's a slow process, and the lines are wobbly, since the pencil is almost too big for the doll to hold. When she finishes, she stands over the stick figure, then points down at it, and up at Marisa.

Marisa leans over and peers at the picture. "... 's that my hat?" She points up at her head. Sunshine nods, and Marisa beams in response. "Heh. ... well, she's not much of an artist, but I think you've got yourself a thinkin' doll on your hands, Alice. You're a mommy!"

The puppeteer looks like she's going to faint.

Chapter Text

Alice bundles Sunshine back up in the basket, says hurried goodbyes to Marisa, and rushes home. When the basket opens again, she takes a step back. Sunshine can see that the magician's eyes are red. She looks down at the doll almost reverently, and stands there in complete silence for several seconds.

"I-I'm sorry about... look, I've just been trying to do this for years, and this is all kind of sudden!" She laughs. "Sorry, I must sound like an idiot. I'm happy. I am, I'm... I'm really really happy."

Alice sits heavily in a seat, right in front of the basket's opening, and wipes her eyes with the back of a sleeve. "Please, come out and let me get a good look at you."

This is all still a bit above Sunshine's cognitive pay grade. The doll worries that she has made Alice sad somehow. Or sick. She's never seen the magician with her eyes red and dripping like this. But she climbs out of the basket and stands at attention.

Alice reaches down and gently pets the doll's hair with a fingertip. "So, you can think, huh?" Sunshine starts to nod, but Alice smiles tiredly and cuts her off. "You don't need to answer that. You made that pretty obvious." She settles back into her seat with a thoughtful look on her face. "Wow. I just. Um. I don't even know where to begin. I should make you new clothes, so I can tell you apart from the others. And I should get to know you, and... a name, you'll need a name. And, and..." Her eyes had drifted down as she rambled, but now she looks back up in sudden realization. "Do you need anything? I'm sorry, I haven't lived with somebody else for ages. Er. Somebody... sapient, that is."

Sunshine freezes again. It never really occurred to her to want things. All of her attention had usually been focused on Alice's needs. It's another overwhelming question in an already-overwhelming day. She almost shakes her head, but pauses and reconsiders. Well. There is one thing that might be helpful. The doll holds out her hands, arched together into a circle shape, and wiggles them in front of her.

"You want... um. A bowl?"

Sunshine shakes her head.

"A rope?”

Another headshake.

"Oh! A pencil?"

Sunshine nods, and Alice glances around. "Hmm, let me see..." She steps away for a moment, and when she returns, she's holding a thin, leatherbound book in one hand, and a pen in the other. She opens the book to a blank page. "This is supposed to be my diary, but I think that anything you write will be more interesting than my entries, anyway.” She offers the pen over. "And this is just like the pencil. Go on. Just don't draw on anything except blank paper, okay?"

Sunshine grabs the pen, then stares at the blank sheet in front of her. She asked for this, sure, but she still doesn't know what she should draw. Still, it was useful enough before. After some thought, the doll touches the tip to the paper and starts etching out a line. Alice watches, fascinated. "Well. Pencils in your size, that would be a good start. That looks difficult. ... what are you drawing?"

Alice leans forward to watch, and the picture slowly takes shape. A triangle, with two lines coming out of the bottom and two coming from the sides near the apex. A ball on top completes it.

"Another person?" Alice smiles.

Sunshine shakes her head, then points up at Alice. It takes the magician a moment to get the meaning. "Oh. You drew me." She laughs softly, and for the second time tonight, Alice Margatroid cries tears of happiness.

Eventually, Alice has to go to sleep. It's been a very busy and emotional day. It's not the first time that she's regretted her decision to keep sleeping despite her youkai nature, but old habits are hard to break.

Sunshine has a very busy night. Dolls don't need to sleep, and for the first time, she's free to do what she wants overnight. At first, she just draws stick people: Dozens of stick Alices, but a few stick Marisas, and Patchoulis, Eirins, and even a Sakuya. (The stick-Sakuyas initially look pretty similar to stick-Alices, which makes Sunshine spend most of an hour refining her art style.) She rips a piece of paper out of the book, sits it on the vanity, and draws half a dozen self portraits in the mirror. She drags another to the floor in front of the shelves and draws Hourai dolls. Later on, though, she moves on to more experimental fare. She looks out the window and draws the moon and trees. She fills an entire page with nothing but pictures of slippers, and another one with forks, knives, and spoons.

She's still drawing when Alice wakes up, and there's barely a flat surface in the cottage not covered in paper. Sunshine hadn't even realized that there was light outside again. The sound of Alice sitting up makes her look over, and she feels guilty for not preparing the magician's slippers and setting the table. Alice just laughs, though. "Productive night?"

Alice carefully tiptoes over papers, occasionally looking down to inspect the pictures as she makes her way into the dining room. Sunshine sits the pen down and hurries off, then returns with Alice's slippers. The magician smiles and takes them. "Well, thank you." She settles down into one of her dining chairs and slides them on. "But you don't need to do that, you know. I can get the others to do menial jobs like that. You're different."

This is another hard concept for the doll's mind to process. She's known that she's different for months, of course, but the idea that she could have something better to do than help Alice is still a tough one to grasp. She looks down at her drawings in confusion, and Alice frowns thoughtfully at this response. "Well. Don't worry about it for now." She picks up one of the drawings—one of Sunshine's earlier ones, a bunch of wobbly Patchoulis with lumpy hats. Alice smiles. "How about, after breakfast, we pick a name for you, then we can make you a new outfit? Something to make sure that nobody ever mistakes you for just another Shanghai doll again."

Sunshine nods.

Breakfast doesn't take long—even to Sunshine, it's obvious that Alice is trying to hurry through it. She asks the doll not to help prepare it, and instead to do whatever she wants, but what she wants is to help out. In the end, she stands at the table, and bustles about as the other dolls set a place for Alice, straightening up the pieces of silverware so that they're perfectly parallel. It's almost frustrating, knowing that she could do the job better if Alice would just let her.

Once breakfast is gone and two Hourai dolls hurry off with the dirty dishes, Alice folds her arms on the table and smiles at Sunshine. "Hmm, so, first, how would you like a name? It feels like I thought about it for half the night, but I'm still not sure what I like. Just calling you Shanghai would make it too easy to confuse you with all of the others. I feel like your name should be something even more regal than Hourai, too. Hmm. Anraku, perhaps?"

Sunshine frowns. Sunshine already has a name, after all. She shakes her head.

"No good? Sinai?" Sunshine shakes her head again. She doesn't even know what these words mean, but they are not her name. “... oh!” Alice blinks in sudden realization. “I'm sorry, I got so caught up in thinking of names that I didn't—well. I've been calling you a 'she' all along, but I didn't even think to ask. I don't know if that's what you feel like, or if you prefer to remain genderless, or if you feel like more of a male—I'm sure I have some patterns for suits in your size somewhere. Er. If necessary.”

She realizes she's rambling and clears her throat. Sunshine is staring up at her in stark confusion. Alice blushes slightly. “Well. I guess you've never even seen a male, so it might be hard to say. We'll keep calling you a girl for now, and if you find out that you don't feel like a girl, we can switch later, okay?”

Sunshine has no idea what this is about, but nods.

"… right. We'll stick to girl names. Hmm..."

Sunshine lifts the pen again, and starts drawing as Alice considers this. The doll works very carefully this time, and draws an almost perfect circle, then surrounds it with wiggly lines and points at it. it takes a few times to get Alice's attention.

"A... ball? An egg? I'm afraid I don't understand."

The doll glares at her drawing, frustrated. She's only been doing this for half a day, so more abstract images are difficult. She draws a few lines extending from the ball, then speckles dots over them and points at those.

“... water?” Alice frowns thoughtfully and tries puzzling out the image. “A... the Sun?” Sunshine nods excitedly and taps at the lines. “Oh. Light? Ray? Beam? Sunlight? Sun... shine?”

The doll nods enthusiastically and points at herself.

“It's... you're sunshine? Is that your name?”

Sunshine drops the pen and nods, while Alice laughs. “Sunshine, hmm? I, well.” Honestly, it screws up her naming scheme something terrible, but the little doll just looks so excited that she can't argue. “Well. Okay. If you say that's your name, then Sunshine it is,” she concedes with a wry smile. “Now, let's make you a new outfit.”

Alice clears off the table, then retrieves a very big box of sewing supplies and sits it to one side. She pulls out at least a dozen cloth samples, all in different colors, and arrays them in front of her. “Go on, pick a color. Which one do you want for your new dress?”

Sunshine looks over the cloth. It's another choice she doesn't really know how to deal with at first. Aesthetics have never been of much concern to the doll. She wants to do this right, though, and considers the question seriously. Several of the colors are off-limits because they're already being used by entire classes of Alice's dolls. And then, suddenly, she realizes: The color of sunshine is yellow. She taps that swatch.

Alice hmms. “Well, yellow is a low-powered color. Are you sure you wouldn't like something in indigo or violet?” When the doll nods without hesitation, Alice lets out a slightly exasperated laugh. “I can already see that I should be careful to never start any arguments with you. Okay then, we'll go with yellow.” She puts the other cloth away, then spreads the yellow cloth out on the table, retrieves a pattern from the box, and starts pinning it into place. Sunshine crouches down and watches the process.

Alice hasn't started cutting the pattern out yet when Marisa bursts in the door. The sudden entrance makes the drawings that cover the floor flutter around, and the witch laughs as she closes it. “Redecoratin'? I gotta say, I didn't think stick figures were your style.”

Alice doesn't even look up from her work. “Good morning, Marisa.”

“Hey.” Marisa walks across the room and kisses Alice on the cheek. Her footsteps crinkle on paper the entire way. “How's our little girl?”

“She's not a—...” Alice looks up, and finds that Sunshine has gone missing. It's not exactly a hard case to solve, though: The doll is crouched down behind the box of sewing supplies, cautiously peering over the top toward Marisa. “... you see, you scared her. She's probably terrified that you're going to rip off her arms.” She lowers the sewing and looks to the doll. “Come on out, she won't hurt you. Marisa's a good person, when she's not being a belligerent moron.”

“Hey!”

Sunshine reluctantly stands up and walks around the box to face Marisa again, and Alice resumes her sewing. “Her name is Sunshine, and she likes to draw.”

“Aww. See, she got the drawing from me! She already knows I'm her other mom.”

“... right.” Alice does not sound convinced. “If you want to pretend that you're being responsible, why don't you take her outside and play while I finish sewing her new outfit? I doubt it's interesting for her to watch me working.”

“Play, huh?” Marisa glances down to the doll, then holds out a hand. “What do ya say? Forgive me for the arm thing?” Sunshine shies backward and glances over to Alice, and the magician nods in encouragement. After that, she hesitates for a moment, but steps forward to sit in Marisa's palm.

Once the pair are outside, Marisa lowers Sunshine to the ground and looks down at her thoughtfully. “Hmm. What kinda game does a doll play?”

Sunshine is no help in answering. Even if she could talk, games are a new concept to her. She stares up blankly.

“Not the talkative type, huh? Oh! Oh! You know what game I always thought was fun when I was little? One person's a dragon, and the other person's a knight tryin' to slay them.” She crouches down closer to the doll conspiratorially, and says, “Bein' the dragon's more fun, because you get to roar, but I'll let you be the knight, 'cuz the knight always wins.” She glances around and finds a small tree branch on the ground, then snaps off a short length and offers it to the doll. “There. That's your sword.”

Sunshine takes the twig and swings it side to side experimentally, while Marisa rises to standing, then spreads her feet and stomps on the ground. “Alright! Are ya ready? I'm a big dragon and I'm gonna eat ya!” Before Sunshine even knows what's going on, Marisa charges toward her. The tiny doll scrambles across the grass for a few steps before taking flight.

Sunshine might have been made with combat in mind, but it's not really something she's ever done. Or seen, for that matter. This is all very new to her. After fleeing almost a full lap around the cottage, Marisa slows down and stands in one place, stomping and roaring. The doll stops and eyes her. This is all very confusing. She does not know what a dragon is, and she doesn't want to get stomped or have her arms pulled off.

But Marisa seems to be waiting for something, and Sunshine feels obligated to deliver. After a little thought, she hovers up and almost hesitantly smacks the magician in the stomach with the stick.

“Oww! Now you've made the dragon angry, y'know. Roooooaar!” Marisa charges again, and the doll takes off fleeing.

The two come back inside forty-five minutes later. Marisa is grinning and slightly winded, and Sunshine's formerly-black dress now has dirt smudges all over it. The doll is sitting on the brim of Marisa's hat, with her hands wrapped around the conical part for support.

Alice looks up from her work. Thanks to the team of dolls gathered around her, all cooperating to sew lace trim onto the new dress, her distraction barely even slows things down. “Have fun?”

“Yep! I was a dragon n' she was a knight. Then I was a youkai exterminator and she was a mad human-eating youkai.”

“Did you play any games that didn't involve throwing things or hitting each other with sticks?”

“Hey, I played fair! She was the one hittin' me.”

“Right, well.” Alice looks to Sunshine and raises an eyebrow. “If this keeps up, you'll need a few changes of clothes. Yellow stains easily.” She starts measuring out another length of lace. “Marisa, why don't you take her outside and rinse her off? By the time she's dry, this should be ready.”

“This is startin' to sound suspiciously like work.”

“Marisa...”

“Fine, fine. C'mon, squirt, let's go get you clean.”

Marisa carries Sunshine outside and sits her on the ground next to the well, and before the doll knows what's going on, upends a bucket of water over her head. She's drenched, with her clothes clinging to her and her hair plastered to her head. “Heh. Um, hmm...” Marisa crouches down and rubs a few spots of dirt off of her face, then nods. “There. All better.”

Sunshine spends the next half-hour sitting on the ledge of an open window, with the breeze slowly drying her off. It's more interesting than sitting on the shelf, because she can see outside, and listen to Marisa and Alice talk. It's less interesting than drawing, though, and she feels bad for not helping Alice with her sewing. But, she takes the time to fuss over her clothes, smoothing out wrinkles as her dress dries and trying to rub out the dirty spots.

When she is dry, Alice carries her over and sits her down on top of the vanity, with the mirror in front of her. Sunshine studies her reflection, and even in her old black dress, she can tell the differences between herself and the other dolls—apart from having a white bow in her hair, she also has a few ink smudges on her hands. And... her eyes move around. Back when she was still trying to act like the other dolls, she'd started to notice that they never looked at anything except what they were working on. Now, Sunshine wants to look at everything.

After telling Marisa to look away, Alice pulls her old dress off, fans the doll for a minute or two to get her completely dry, and then slides the new one on. In addition to being a color that no other doll is wearing, the new dress doesn't have an apron on it, and has lace trimming the sleeves and the lower hem. The yellow dress is very nice, and Sunshine is proud and happy that Alice had made it for her.

“How do you like it?”

Sunshine freezes and looks up. Alice's reflection is smiling down at her from the mirror. But how does she answer that? She considers grabbing her pen, but doesn't know what she could draw that would convey her reaction. But there is a thing she saw Marisa do once.

The doll turns and ran across the table, then leans against Alice's tummy for a hug. Her arms are too small to come anywhere close to wrapping around the magician, but they get the job done.

Alice and Marisa are sitting on a bench in the shade behind the cottage. Through a window behind them, they could see Sunshine busily drawing if they were to turn around, but right now, the two are looking at the setting sun instead.

“She's pretty neat, huh? You did good.”

“Mmhm.” Alice looks up with a smile. “Although I didn't do much. She just kind of... happened. It was an accident.”

“Yeah, that's what my parents said about me.” After seeing Alice's half-annoyed, half-shocked expression at that, Marisa sighs and adds, “Come on, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Still, it's kinda like that, right? It kinda is like you're a mom now.”

“I... suppose so.” Alice turns her head and looks back into the cottage, then winces when she sees that Sunshine is using a very expensive grimoire as a writing surface. She quickly turns forward again to save herself from watching anymore. “It's not like I thought it would be.”

“What, havin' second thoughts already?”

“Oh! No, no no no.” Alice brushes her hair back and adjusts her hairband. “It's not like that. It's just that I've been trying to make a thinking doll for so long that I... well, I never really thought about what it would be like afterward. It was a goal of its own.”

Marisa shrugs and leans backward, with her eyes closed and both hands behind her head. “Yeah, well, you plan too much anyway. You're having fun, right?”

“... well, yes...”

Marisa grins. “Then that's all that matters. You're a youkai anyway. You're gonna live practically forever. Now you'll have somebody to keep ya company.”

“I thought that was your job.”

“Nah. I'm gonna blow myself up in some freak magic accident some day. It'll be pretty cool. Big fireball and everything. They're gonna name it the Kirisame Memorial Crater, y'know. That's in my will.”

“Marisa...”

“What? You think that's too flashy?” Marisa keeps up a defiant grin for just a moment, then relaxes it. “... c'mon, I'm just trying to cheer you up.”

“That's how you cheer people up?” Alice crosses her arms. “By talking about explosions?”

“Well.” Marisa sighs and scratches the back of her head. “If you wanna make it simple, you could just confess what's got you all brooding.”

Alice glances back into the cottage again. Sunshine has thankfully moved on from drawing on top of books, and is now using the paintbrush to draw extra large stick figures. Even from this distance, Alice can see some paint already smeared on her new dress. She winces and turns back. “I'm just worried about her. It's just like you said: I'm sort of her parent, and I don't think anybody knows the right way to raise a sapient doll.”

“Eh.” Marisa shrugs. “Normal humans raise kids all the time, and they seem to do okay at it. And you're a magician! If anybody can figure this stuff out, it's you.”

That finally manages to coax a bit of a smile out of Alice. She relaxes again and lowers her hands to rest on the bench. “I suppose you're right.”

“Besides, she's not a human, so you don't need to worry about feedin' her, or teaching her to walk, or changing diapers, or making her go to bed, or any of that. Seems to me like you've got this kid thing pretty easy.”

“That's true. I've just been worried that I still won't be able to handle everything.”

One of Marisa's hands is already resting atop Alice's, and she gives it a squeeze. “That's why you've got me around, dummy. You don't have to do this alone.”

“... you mean that you're actually going to...?”

“Huh? What?” That obviously isn't quite the reaction that Marisa was hoping for. “You think I'm gonna break up with you just because one of your dolls moves itself now?”

“... well, no, but.”

“But nothin'! I think she's pretty neat. Besides, I'm the one who figured out how to prove that she thinks.” Marisa taps her chest proudly. “So you need me around to keep you from getting your head so far up your butt that—”

“Yes, yes, I get the idea,” Alice cuts in curtly; Marisa remains unabashed. “You still seem suspiciously easygoing about what's likely to be a lot of work.”

“Eh.” Marisa yawns and stretches, then pulls her feet up to sit crosslegged on the bench. “She's a tiny little thing and well-behaved. How hard can it be?”

Eventually, Marisa flies home for the night, and Alice and Sunshine are left alone. The dollmaker starts gathering up the many, many pictures that are now scattered around the cottage, and once Sunshine realizes what she's doing, she joins in to help out. When they're all collected, Alice neatly piles them on the table, then slides into one of her armchairs to relax. Sunshine lands on the chair across from her, looking a bit comical seated on a cushion that's ten times bigger than she is.

The magician smiles and pats her lap. “Come here. I'll straighten you up before bed.”

Sunshine obliges and hovers over to land in Alice's lap. Alice gently unties the bow in the doll's hair, then starts combing it out with her fingertips. The two sit in silence like that for several minutes, with the only sound the ticking of the clocks that are scattered throughout the cottage.

Alice finally breaks the silence. “I spent years trying to make a doll that could think, you know. It's why I was so flustered yesterday. I suddenly had my life's goal handed to me.” She bundles Sunshine's hair back up, then starts wrapping the ribbon around it again. “You just came out of the blue and... well. I was surprised. And to be honest, I wasn't really prepared for this. So.” Alice pulls the ribbon into a bow, then lets go of Sunshine. The little doll turns around to face her. “Please forgive me if I make any mistakes. While you're learning to be a person, I'll be learning to be a...”

The magician trails off. Sunshine's still looking up at her, and while her house is full of staring doll eyes, this pair is different. Even with her nearly-expressionless face, Alice can see the intelligence behind them. So, most of the other words don't feel right anymore. There's only one way she can finish that sentence.

“A, um. A mother.”

Alice blushes profusely and finds herself suddenly unable to meet the doll's gaze, but she smiles. Sunshine doesn't know what some of that meant, but it seems very important to Alice. She steps forward and presses her arms to the dollmaker's stomach for another hug.

Alice goes to bed. Tonight, Sunshine doesn't want to stay up drawing all night. Drawing is important, but today was a very busy day, and it wasn't like any other day she remembers.

Sunshine needs some time to think. So, as Alice drifts off, the doll slides into bed next to her and squirms in close, using the dollmaker's arm as a pillow. She's close enough that Alice stirs her hair with each breath. It feels nice. Sunshine feels better sitting here than sitting on the shelf, and she isn't sure why.

There were a lot of things like that today, actually. Playing the “game” about “knights” and “dragons” (these are all new words to Sunshine, and still hard to think about) was a good thing to do, because it was Alice's will, but she also enjoyed it in its own right. It's a lot like drawing.

Sunshine is glad that she enjoyed these things, but also worried. What if she comes to only enjoy other things, and forgets how to enjoy serving Alice? What if she forgets about Alice entirely? She squirms in a little closer just in case, until she can feel the magician's heartbeat. It's reassuring.

Marisa is confusing too. Not just because of the game and because she's scary sometimes, but because Sunshine also enjoyed it when it seemed like she was happy. It's strange being happy about people other than Alice.

For the first time ever, Sunshine feels uncertain where she belongs in the universe.

Chapter Text

Over the next few days, things fall into a sort of pattern. Alice gets up in the morning, has breakfast, and then reads while Sunshine sits in her lap. Marisa comes over and plays with Sunshine for a few hours, and then the two of them talk together while Sunshine draws.

Sunshine is getting much better at the dragon and knight game now. She's still not sure what a dragon is, but Marisa has patiently explained that a dragon is big and breathes fire, so Sunshine is okay with letting Marisa be the dragon. She's much bigger, and being the knight is fun anyway. Marisa is much less scary now, and hasn't threatened to pull off her arms anymore.

Today, though, it's raining, and Marisa doesn't want to play the dragon game. That makes sense to Sunshine. She doesn't like being wet when she gets dirty and has to be rinsed off. When Marisa walks in the door, her pointy hat is drooping under the weight of water. Judging by her expression, she doesn't like being wet, either.

Instead, Alice makes Marisa take off her wet clothes, until she's only in an undershirt and a puffy pair of white bloomers, and the two sit on the couch, with Sunshine sitting on the coffee table in front of them. Alice fidgets, while Marisa scratches at the back of her neck and Sunshine looks up expectantly. The three sit in this awkward silence for a full minute, with Marisa and Alice occasionally mumbling back and forth, until Marisa finally speaks up.

"So! Uh. Me and your mom were talkin'..." Alice blushes slightly at being called this and glances away, but doesn't argue with it. "... and we think you're pretty smart. Really smart, actually. Humans your age are only able to, like, poop an' eat, and you're here already drawing and able to run around and play."

Sunshine gives a nod of confirmation. She's figured out that doing this helps people know that she's listening to them. It would be even easier if she could talk, but she can't.

Marisa continues. "So, I guess it's probably getting pretty boring for you just sitting around in the cottage and drawing all day, huh?"

Sunshine barely considers this for a moment before shaking her head. It's not boring at all! She's learning new words every day. She's still not sure where Marisa fits into her world view, but she enjoys the dragon and knight game. She's running out of things to draw, but that's about the extent of her problems.

Marisa laughs, and Alice looks surprised. "You aren't?"

Sunshine shakes her head again.

"Well..." Marisa leans forward and rests her forearms on her knees for support. "Okay, so you're not bored, but... how'd you like to see some new stuff? There're a whole lot of things in the world that aren't in this cottage, you know. If you're ever gonna go other places, you need to hear about some things first. How's that sound, huh?"

Sunshine freezes as her little mind struggles with this idea. She has to learn about things so that she can... leave? Are they going to get rid of her? Maybe they are going to get rid of her because she's been drawing instead of carrying out Alice's will. She never wants to leave the cottage or be away from Alice. So that must be it. She has been a bad doll and now they're preparing to get rid of her. Sunshine can't cry or speak, but her eyes go wide, and a tremble runs through her little frame.

"Er, is she s'posed to do that?"

"... Sweetie, are you okay?"

Good doll. Good doll. Sunshine has to prove she's a good doll. She can't think of anything that she can draw to fix this. Maybe drawing is what got her into this situation in the first place. She looks around frantically, trying to find something that can prove her worth. Alice hasn't made her will clear, but it's her fault for not anticipating it like she used to. She spots the tea kettle. Tea! Yes. Alice likes tea when it's cold or she has company.

Sunshine takes off flying toward the kitchen, as fast as she can, and Alice and Marisa watch in surprise. She grabs the kettle in both hands and sets off toward the door. It's heavy. Even unfilled, it's a burden, making her lose altitude as it swings slowly beneath her. It gives Alice and Marisa enough time to stand up and hurry over toward her.

"Y-you were watchin', I didn't do anything!" Marisa says, almost defensively.

"Yes, I know. I..." Alice steps forward and reaches out to grab the handle of the kettle, stopping the doll in her tracks. "Er. It's okay, we don't need any tea right now..." The doll wilts, and Alice realizes that she's said the wrong thing. "... well. Here. I have an idea." She bends down and presses a gentle kiss to the top of Sunshine's head. "Why don't you and Marisa make the tea together? I have something I want to do."

"You know I brew it way stronger than you do, right?"

"Steep for forty seconds. No longer. Now get to work."

The combination of the kiss and being given orders relaxes Sunshine a little. Marisa shields her from the rain with her hat while the pair carry the kettle out to the well to fill it, and soon the cottage is filled with the smell of brewing tea.

While the tea steeps, Sunshine can hear Alice in the other room, giving instructions to the other dolls. She hasn't been using them as much over the past few days. Once again, Sunshine grows afraid that she's being kicked out, and Alice has already found a replacement for her among them. But she has been ordered to make tea, and that's what she's going to do.

When it's finally ready and the pair carry the tea pot back in, things are different. Alice has already set out a pair of cups and saucers for herself and Marisa, but in front of them, sitting on the table, is a tiny chair, and a much smaller table. It's even got a doily draped over it for a makeshift tablecloth. Marisa looks at this questioningly, but Alice gestures to the little chair and smiles to Sunshine. "Please, have a seat."

Sunshine settles into the seat uncertainly. She's never actually had a chair in her own size, so it takes a little getting used to. She looks over at how Alice is sitting, and does her best to mirror the dollmaker's posture. Alice gives two soft claps of her hands, and a Hourai doll settles down on the table. It walks up, bows to Sunshine, then settles a doll-sized cup and saucer in front of her and slides her chair in.

"... wait. Alice, why'd you already have a table and cups the right size for a doll? Were you seriously havin' tea parties?"

"I used to," Alice says, with an almost defiantly prim tone. "And I think you'll agree that they're coming in handy now, so I don't want to hear another word about it." She lifts the kettle and carefully pours a little dash of tea into Sunshine's cup. "There. Now everybody matches."

Sunshine looks down at the cup uncertainly. She's seen people drink before, but never done it herself. But it seems simple enough. She lifts the cup, like she's seen Alice do plenty of times before, and raises it to her face. The lip makes a little click as it contacts her painted mouth.

"There," Alice says, smiling with satisfaction. She takes a sip of her own tea, then settles the cup into her lap. "Now, what should we talk about today..."

"Oh! Let's tell her about the time we saved the moon!"

"I really don't think that's educational."

"Sure it is!" Marisa sits her cup down and looks to Sunshine. "So, you know the moon, right? That big ball in the sky at night? It got kidnapped, and me n' your mom saved it. It was great. The doc thought she had it hidden pretty good, but we busted in just like, "Nope!" and PSHOOOOOOOOO—" She raises her hands and mimes firing off a Master Spark, and Alice reaches over to grab one of her wrists and lower them.

"... at least start at the beginning."

"Oh. Yeah, that makes sense. ... Okay, so one day, Alice shows up on my porch..."

The stories last for hours. A lot of it goes over Sunshine's head, but she still listens attentively. The stories are very interesting, and sound a lot like the games Marisa likes to play. Sunshine's tea is still untouched, although she was careful to keep pretending to drink it all afternoon.

After the stories end, Marisa and Alice sit on the couch and talk, while Sunshine draws. She isn't out of things to draw anymore. She's not sure what a hell raven or a moon rabbit look like, but once she starts drawing them, Marisa realizes what they're supposed to be and gives her a few pointers. She makes a drawing of a stick-Alice and stick-Marisa fighting a dragon, and Alice hangs it on the front of the icebox.

It's still raining by the time it gets dark, and for the first time in a long time, Marisa doesn't go back to her own house at night. She sleeps in the same bed as Alice, and Sunshine rests in between them. If anything, it's even more comfortable than when it's only Alice.

As usual, Sunshine spends the entire night thinking. She realizes that, in her excitement over the stories, she had stopped thinking about being abandoned. About how she is a bad doll. Sunshine gets worried again.

It's still going to be hours until Alice wakes up, but Sunshine gets up and starts looking for Alice's slippers. It will give her a little peace of mind, knowing that she's at least done her most basic of duties. The cottage is a bit messier than usual, though, and she has to look around.

The drawing pinned to the icebox catches Sunshine's eye, and she pauses to look at it. She's very proud of the picture. Marisa has given her several pointers on drawing dragons over the past few days, and Sunshine thinks that this is her best picture yet. The dragon has big pointy teeth and fire coming out of its mouth, and Marisa is hitting it with her broom, while Alice holds a sword, just like she gave to the other dolls that one time. Apparently Alice likes the picture too, since she hung it up.

Sunshine considers this. The picture made Alice happy, so maybe that was what Alice wanted. Having other dolls serving her tea was strange, but Alice has only ever had the dolls serve tea to her friends. Maybe Sunshine is even more special than she had thought. Maybe she is the best doll. None of the others have made pictures for Alice, after all.

Maybe Alice doesn't like her serving tea and cooking breakfast because she wants Sunshine to do the things that no other doll can do.

Sunshine finds the slippers and drags them to the bed anyway, but she rests much more easily tonight.

Once Alice and Marisa wake up in the morning, the two have breakfast. Alice sets up the tiny table at the dining table, and Sunshine sits with them, pretending to drink her tea and listening to their conversation. She can understand most of it now. She's learned a lot of new words since Marisa started coming to visit every day. This conversation is boring, though, about books and stores and money, and Sunshine doesn't pay much attention to it.

After breakfast, Marisa gives Alice a kiss on the cheek and leaves, but Alice doesn't read like she normally does. Instead, she hurries around the house, gathering things up. Sunshine sits on the floor and draws, but it's halfhearted. This change of routine scares her a little, especially when Alice grabs that basket again, crouches down in front of her, and opens the top. "Would you like to see the village?"

Sunshine eyes the basket. She's heard the word 'village' a few times, but she's not sure what it is. Part of her still thinks that Alice might be trying to get rid of her... but no. She has to remember that she's the best doll. Alice wouldn't do anything to hurt her.

After a moment's deliberation, she climbs inside, and Alice looks down at her. "Now, we're going to be around a lot of other people. I won't let them hurt you, but if you get scared, you can hide in the basket. Just stay close to me, okay?" Sunshine nods in response.

Alice flew on the last trip, but this time, she walks. It's a long walk to get to the village, but she keeps the top of the basket open this time, so Sunshine is able to see all of the scenery on the way. Half a dozen other dolls are toddling along behind Alice, but only Sunshine gets to ride.

Eventually, buildings come into view. Lots of them, more than Sunshine has seen in her entire life, although none of them are as big as the Scarlet Devil Mansion—she knows the name now, because Marisa told her about fighting vampires inside of it. And a lot of people, too. Some of them hurry out of the street and shut their doors when they see Alice's retinue of dolls, but for all Sunshine knows, this is normal.

Alice goes inside a dozen buildings, almost all of them filled with things Sunshine has never seen before. In one, she grabs a small pile of books. In another, she picks up a bag full of pieces of wood. In another, a very thick stack of paper. Every time she grabs things, she hands over a bit of money, then hands the new purchase off to one of the dolls to carry.

A few people comment on Sunshine, and one girl even reaches out to touch her. Sunshine shies back, but remembers that Alice will protect her. The girl pats her head and says that she's pretty, and Sunshine is pleased.

Finally, when almost all of the dolls are carrying things, Alice walks into a store full of even stranger things than the others, and looks down into the basket. "Would you like to pick out a toy?"

'Toy' is a word she knows, at least. She's not sure what most of these things are, though. There are balls, which she's seen before, but she doesn't want one of those... and then she spots it. A wooden toy sword. Sunshine hops out of the basket and floats down to the thing. It's as tall as she is, so she has to heft it with both hands, but she was made to be strong. Strong enough to carry a doll-sized metal sword, and to almost carry a filled teapot by herself. She swings it down, and the blade clacks against the floor as she slays an imaginary dragon.

Alice laughs. "Don't you think it's a little big for you...?" But Sunshine is already flying back toward the basket, with the sword dangling beneath her. "Ahh!" Alice holds up a hand to stop her, then gently pulls the sword out of her hands. "You have to pay first. Here." She holds up a coin, then gestures at the shopkeeper, a wrinkled old woman who's watching this whole exchange with a mixture of amusement and anxiety.

Sunshine's never seen somebody with a wrinkled face before. It's a little scary, honestly, but she hovers over and offers up the coin with both hands. The woman takes it, then hands back a smaller coin. "There. All yours."

The doll nods and takes a few steps slowly backward, then turns and hurries back to the basket. Alice stows her sword inside with her for the walk home.

Once the two are back home, Sunshine swings her sword around for practice while Alice puts her new purchases away, until the magician calls her over to the table. There's a new book spread out in front of her, with colorful pictures in it. She feels a little bad that these pictures are way nicer than the ones she can draw, but Alice smiles. "How would you like to try to learn to read and write?"

It takes Sunshine a few hours to really understand the idea of writing, but once she realizes that it's just talking with drawings, she gets excited. If she could write, she could tell Marisa stories too, and she could ask questions when she was confused.

It's not quite as easy as Alice and Marisa make it look, though. Alice reads a story to her from the book, and occasionally points to the words in it. "You see, this one says 'i' and this one says 'nu'. 'I-nu'. Do you see him in the picture?" Understanding other people's drawings is harder than understanding her own, in Sunshine's opinion. They don't draw the same way she does, and give everything colors. But she points at the dog, and Alice nods. "Right. I-nu."

The lesson lasts for an hour or so, until it's time for Alice to go to bed. This time, Sunshine doesn't follow her. She has too much to do. She runs around and swings her new sword until Alice asks her to please be quiet so she can sleep, then settles for drawing. She saw plenty of new things in the village today, and draws most of them. She draws the little girl who patted her head. But she also draws the little talking-pictures from the book, filling page after page with them: I-I-I-I-NU-NU-NU-NU-I-NU-I-NU-I.

The day after the visit to the village, Alice takes some of the things she bought into her workshop, and when she comes out, she gives Sunshine a doll-sized paintbrush to write with. It's not as good for drawing big pictures, but she likes being able to write without dragging the giant pen around.

Sunshine has never been busier. Now that she has a sword, she insists on playing the dragon and knight game every time Marisa visits, slaying the scary beast day after day, and afterward, Alice and Marisa tell her more stories. Sometimes about times that they fought things (she makes them tell the story about going underground and fighting cats and ravens until they're sick of it), and sometimes less exciting stories about their everyday lives. Afterward, Alice reads to her from one of her books and makes her point out the animals and the characters that make the words for them, and sometimes, Alice makes her write the characters down instead.

The first words that Sunshine learns to write are "yes" and "no." She could always just nod or shake her head for those, but writing them is more fun.

"So am... I... a rock?"

[NO]

"Are you a rock?"

[NO]

"What about your mom? Is she a rock?"

"Marisa, what did I say about giving her meaningful questions?"

[NO]

"Is she a jerk for not givin' me the last slice of cake?"

Sunshine hesitates for a moment before writing, [NO]

"Heh. Darn."

"... you're not seriously trying to use her to guilt me into letting you eat the rest of the cake, are you?"

[YES]

"Hey! Don't answer that, she can't even see—" Marisa turns away from the paper to shout over her shoulder toward the kitchen, where Alice is making tea with the help of a contingent of dolls. "This is just purely academical over here, you know! Umm." Marisa turns back toward the paper. "Alright! Bonus round. Let's try the words we did yesterday. Can ya write 'dog'?"

[YES]

"No, I mean, go ahead and write it."

Sunshine stares at the paper in concentration, then crouches back down and draws the painstakingly memorized characters. I-NU. [DOG].

"Heh! Good." Marisa reaches over and ruffles the doll's hair. Sunshine almost immediately drops her paintbrush, making a splatter in the middle of her newly-written word, then rises up and fussily straightens it. Marisa pays this no mind. "I think that's enough thinkin' for tonight, don't you? Go on, go play with your stuff." Sunshine nods and hefts one of her picture books up off the floor, then carries it off into the next room.

Alice comes into the room and settles down, flanked by dolls hauling everything necessary for afternoon tea, and Marisa grins up at her. "She's gettin' pretty smart."

"You don't know the half of it." Alice settles into the seat next to her and kisses Marisa's cheek, while the dolls set cups out in front of the pair and begin filling them. "She's learned most of the kana already."

"Heh. Pretty soon, we'll have trouble keeping up." Marisa picks up her cup and drops in, in Alice's opinion, far too many sugar cubes.

Alice goes for a small splash of cream instead. "That's what I'm afraid of."

"Well, I mean, it's like I've said before. I could move in, and then we'd have two people here keepin' an eye on her all day."

"It... might not be a bad idea." Alice blushes and glances aside, then forces her mind to return to the topic at hand. “I think the stories have helped, but we can only tell her about so much."

"You think she needs to get out of the cottage more?"

"I do, yes." Alice sips her tea, then glances toward the next room, where Sunshine has laid down her picture book and is now stumbling around, swinging her sword. Alice sighs. "I think she needs to be around children. She sort of is one."

"Well, uh. Sending her to the school in the village could kill both birds with one stone, but..."

"Right. I've thought about it, but it's too risky. Even if we could convince the villagers to allow it, she's... a bit too small to play with normal children."

"Mmhm. There's not much that—" Marisa is cut off, as from the next room over, there's the thump of wood hitting wood. Both magicians freeze and look up instantly, but before they can budge, it's almost immediately followed by a crash of splintering wood and glass.

"O-oh no, oh no, this is my fault, I shouldn't have left all of this here...!"

Sunshine had been leaping around with her sword, stabbing imaginary dragons and rescuing imaginary damsels like she does every day, when she'd bumped into the shelf. It was a tall shelf, and like most flat surfaces in Alice's cottage, it was covered in boxes of dollmaking paraphernalia, clocks, books, dolls, and decorative knickknacks. Before she'd known what happened, the sky had come crashing down on her.

It doesn't hurt—she can't feel pain to begin with—but she can't move, either. There's a shattered clock directly on top of her, along with most of a vase, a Shanghai doll, and a picture frame. This doesn't last long, though. Within seconds of when she hears Alice's voice, all of the junk is pushed aside, and she can see again.

"Are you still okay?! Come here, let me see..." Alice picks her up, and Sunshine immediately knows that something is wrong just from the expression on the magician's face.

"Um. Can ya fix that?"

Sunshine finally follows Alice's gaze downward, and the problem is immediately clear: On her left arm, where her delicately-crafted elbow joint should be, her arm instead ends in a splintered mess.

Alice shakes her head, with tears already brimming in her eyes. The other times that Sunshine's seen her cry, she was happy, but she's perceptive enough to know that that's not the case this time. "I... I don't know."

"—don't know what to do, Marisa! So if you have any suggestions...!"

"Yeah, well, I dunno what to do right now, either! But right now, she needs to know everything's gonna be okay! Just calm down, okay?"

"Calm down? Calm down?! Her arm snapped off!"

Sunshine has seen Alice and Marisa disagree before, but this is the first time she's seen them shouting at each other. The doll is seated on the floor in front of an opened book, while the two pace around the room and shout. She's not getting much reading done.

After Alice pulled her out of the pile of smashed knickknacks, she'd tied a scrap of cloth over the end of Sunshine's broken arm, so she at least doesn't have to worry about getting the splinters snagged on her dress now. She glances down at it and gives her arm a wiggle, then looks back up at the two of them. She really wishes they wouldn't fight, but with her limited vocabulary, it's kind of hard to do much about it.

But still. Sunshine grabs one of her discarded papers off the floor—this one has a picture of a cat that she saw in the village on it, but the back is still clean—and her doll-sized paintbrush. Writing without a second arm to rest against the paper is a big difficult, but she manages. [STOP]. It's written in doll-sized characters, but maybe it will help.

Sunshine picks up the paper and hovers up into the middle of the ongoing argument.
"... and if you hadn't taught her all of this roughhousing in the first place, then...!" Alice trails off as she spots the sign, and practically wilts. "Sweetie, we're not... I... Rrgh." Alice pinches the bridge of her nose in frustration, then shakes her head. There are tears in her eyes again. "I... need some fresh air." With barely enough time to slip on her shoes, she storms out of the cottage.

Marisa gives the doll a wan smile. "She's just mad because she's worried about ya, you know." She reaches up to ruffle the doll's hair, then slides the sign out of her hands. "I don't think she knows how tough you are. This is barely gonna slow ya down, I bet. Now c'mon. Let's go to bed. Alice'll be back when she's ready."

Alice does return during the night, but breakfast is still quiet the next morning. The pair eat in near-silence, and the first complete sentence of the day comes when Alice crouches down and gives Sunshine a kiss on the forehead. "Why don't you go read in the other room? Just... no roughhousing, okay?"

Sunshine nods and toddles off, and Marisa raises an eyebrow. "What's up?"

"Look, I'm... sorry about the things I said last night. It wasn't your fault that she got hurt. ... it wasn't mine, either."

Marisa stares into the depths of her tea and swishes it around a few times before swallowing the last of it. "I'm probably not who you should be apologizing to. I think the shouting scared Sunshine more than losing her arm." She looks up with a smirk. "She's pretty tough, y'know."

"She's... no, Marisa, she's not tough. She's brave, and smart, and... but she's just a little doll."

Marisa frowns. "So, what? Come on, I've seen you block punches from oni with your dolls before."

"Yes. When I'm strengthening them with magic during combat. Otherwise, they're only as strong as the materials they're made out of."

"Oh. I guess that explains the accident." Marisa glances toward the other room, but Sunshine's being good and reading. Although, judging by the glances she keeps giving toward the dining room, she's trying her best to eavesdrop too. The kid's a fast learner. "Well, you can fix her, right?"

"I've thought about it, but no." Alice gestures absently with one hand, and two dolls drift down to gather up the dirty dishes and haul them toward the sink. "She's not a person. She can't just heal. ... and she doesn't have a brain. The enchantment that animates her is spread across her entire body. Presumably, that's where her intelligence comes from, too. All of her is... her." Alice would normally be frustrated with such a vague explanation, but she's not exactly in the mood for in-depth discussions of magical theory at the moment.

The color slowly drains from Marisa's face as she considers this. "So wait, you're sayin'...?"

"Yes. Normally when a doll breaks, I... disenchant it and use it for parts. In her case, I'm afraid that trying to repair her arm could disrupt her consciousness. Or, more importantly, she could die entirely if she gets hurt again."

“Oh.” Marisa lets out an anxious laugh. “Guess we've gotta have a talk...”

Chapter Text

Marisa was right on most levels: Life with one arm has barely slowed Sunshine down. She can still write and look at books. She can still have tea and listen to stories. She can't hold her sword with only one arm, but she can still hold a big enough twig to play the dragon and knight game. If they'd just let her. The day after the accident, Alice had tried to make her cottage as safe as possible by taking all the heavy objects off the shelves, confiscated her sword, and banned her from playing outside. After days of being kept indoors and sheltered from everything even vaguely dangerous, the little doll is starting to get rather antsy.

The only benefit to all of this has been that she has hours of extra time every day for reading and writing, and has expanded her vocabulary to a few dozen words.

[DRAGON GAME]

"I already toldja no."

[MOM PLEASE]

"Nah."

[I OKAY]

"We can't let ya get hurt again, you know that."

[MEAN]

"I'm just lookin' out for ya, kiddo."

Sunshine flops down on the table to glare up at Marisa, and drops her paintbrush in what she imagines is a very dramatic manner. A little paint splatters onto her leg, and with a sigh, Alice licks one finger and reaches over to rub it off. "Why don't you play some other game with her? You could draw some more, or..." The little doll shakes her head petulantly.

Marisa glances out the window. "Well, it's a pretty nice day today. It'd be a shame to just waste that."

"You are not roughhousing with her."

"I didn't say that! Jeez, let me finish. Maybe we could go for a walk. Or go visit some people."

Alice frowns at this, while Sunshine looks up with cautious interest. It has been a week since she went outside, and as much as she'd like to hold out for the dragon and knight game, at this point, she's ready to take what she can get.

"Who?"

Marisa shrugs. "I haven't gotten out much lately, y'know? Could go visit the shrine, I haven't seen Reimu in a while."

Alice nods thoughtfully at this, and glances down to Sunshine. Sunshine has heard the name before—the girl pops up quite a bit in Marisa's stories. The doll nods excitedly, and Alice's face relaxes into a reluctant smile. "Well, okay."

Riding in the basket is coming to be a routine experience for Sunshine. Alice cleans up her paintbrush, then stows it, a little pot of paint, and a small pile of paper in the basket as well, so that she can communicate when they reach their destination.

The trip is even longer than the one to the village, but the pair fly, so Sunshine doesn't get to do much sightseeing. When Alice opens the top of the basket to let her get a good look around again, they're standing in front of the shrine. Sunshine is a little disappointed. After all of the stories Marisa has told her about Reimu beating up youkai, she'd pictured the girl living somewhere more impressive.

The shrine maiden is outside sweeping when the three land, and she looks over, surprised. "Both of you today? This is rare. Did something happen, or...?" She trails off as her eyes settle onto Sunshine. "Oh! Is that her?"

"Uh-huh." Marisa grins. "She's a big fan of yours, probably ask for your autograph and everything."

Sunshine's still frozen from having Reimu look at her. It's the first time she's met a stranger in a long time, and the first time altogether since she started writing. Plus, it's Reimu, the topic of every one of Marisa's stories that aren't about her and Alice. She shrinks down to hide behind the side of the basket as Reimu approaches and crouches down to smile at her. "She's pretty cute. Hi there!" Sunshine shrinks even further down at this.

"Eh-heh. She'll warm up to ya. Let's go inside so she has room to write."

Sunshine is seated on top of Reimu's table, with a paper, her paint, and her brush all sitting in front of her. The shrine maiden, behind her, is busy weaving a tiny crown of flowers on top of the doll's head.

Marisa fakes a pout. "You never give me presents when I visit."

"That's because you're a freeloader, dear." For the first time since the accident, Alice has allowed herself to relax a little, with a dish of sake sitting in front of her. Reimu hadn't offered, but since Marisa had coaxed the concession out of her... well.

"And nowhere near this cute." Reimu gently twists a final flower into place, then smiles. "There. All done. I bet the shrine would get a lot more visitors if she lived here."

"You can't just bribe people with cuteness."

"Of course you can. Nobody wants to visit a youkai extermination shrine, but I bet they'd be willing to walk up here from the human village if I made charms guaranteed to bless you with the cuteness of a living doll."

"Can you even make those?"

"Well... I could try. Since I don't know what the shrine's god is good at, it's as likely as anything else, right?"

Alice raises one eyebrow and tilts her dish back for a sip. "I never knew that being a shrine maiden was such a shady business."

Reimu flushes, and Marisa spots an argument brewing and decides to head things off here. "H-hey, uh! Sunshine, you oughta thank her for the flowers, you know."

Sunshine glances back over her shoulder toward Reimu, then grabs her paintbrush, dips it in the pot, and carefully writes, [THANK YOU].

"O-oh!" Reimu blinks in surprise at this. "Wow, I didn't think she could actually... I mean. You're welcome."

The doll doesn't stop writing, though. [PLEASE STORY]

"Um, I'm afraid I don't...?" Reimu glances to Marisa and Alice in confusion, and Alice explains, "She wants you to tell her a story."

"Oh. What kind of—" Reimu trails off. Already, Sunshine has started writing the answer.

[MOON STORY] She pauses, then expands this. [MOON STORY WITH MOM]

"Aw, jeez."

Reimu looks up with a thoughtful frown. "What? I still don't understand."

"Remember the incident with the moon? That's one of her favorites."

"So? I can tell her about that."

"I think she wants to hear you tell about... you know. That time we fought. We told her, but I kinda... embellished a bit."

Reimu glances between the two. "How do you mean...?"

"She says that we won." Alice pushes her now-empty dish across the table, hoping to coax a refill out of Reimu. "Did you know that the mighty Marisa Kirisame defeated the fearsome Hakurei shrine maiden during the moon incident?"

"What?!" Reimu blinks and sits upright. "But I kicked your butt!"

"Y-yeah, well, but, I didn't really mean anything by—"

"Nuh-uh. You're not getting out of this one." Reimu smiles slyly, then turns Sunshine to face her. "Okay, let me tell you how the eternal night incident really went down..."

It's hours later, and Marisa and Reimu are catching some fresh air. Or, at least, that's what they told Sunshine before they stepped outside.

"... and ya didn't need to tell her about Nitori!"

"Why not? You and Nitori were dating during the geyser incident."

"Yeah, but I didn't wanna mention that to Sunshine!"

"Hmm." Reimu's had a few dishes of sake now, herself, and there's a definite red tinge to her cheeks. "Isn't that why she broke up with you? Lying all the time?"

"No, I broke up with her because—look, that's all beside the point. The point is, I didn't wanna confuse her."

"With the truth?"

"No, with... look, Sunshine's months old. Okay? Months. She probably doesn't get all this relationship stuff yet. As far as she needs to know, me n' Alice have been together since the beginning of time."

Reimu defiantly holds her gaze for a moment, then sighs. "Fine, fine. I'm sorry. Now can we please go back inside? It's chilly out here."

Marisa crosses her arms and scowls, but reluctantly agrees. "Alright."

The two head back into the shrine, where Alice has been talking to Sunshine and trying desperately to keep her from paying attention to the conversation outside. Alice gives a knowing smile. "Did you settle your differences?"

"Yeah. We did." Marisa slides down to sit and rests her elbows on the table, while Reimu settles in as well, then brushes Sunshine's hair back and starts braiding it.

The shrine maiden leans forward and glances at the paper in front of the doll. On it is a half-record of her conversation with Alice. [YES NO YES FIGHT? OKAY R E I MU REMU REIMU REIMU REMU REIMU] "Oh! You were teaching her to write my name?"

Alice nods, and a little dryly, says, "You two were out there for a while. I had to keep her entertained somehow."

"I think it's cute," Reimu says. She looks down to Sunshine and adds, "You have very pretty handwriting."

The doll lifts her paintbrush. [THANK YOU]

“It's too bad about your arm...” Reimu reaches down to run her fingertips over the cloth that's tied over Sunshine's broken elbow. “It must be scary being so little in a world made for humans.”

Sunshine doesn't really know about that. Some of the things in Marisa's stories are scary sometimes, but the most frightened she's ever been was when Marisa threatened to tear off her arm, and that turned out okay. Alice looks down at her with a frown, though, and says, “You're probably right.”

“And won't grow up, either.” Marisa slumps down a bit more. “Even if we could send her to school, it might get a little weird watching all her friends grow up while she's still stuck as a tiny l'il doll, y'know?” She forces a smile and looks down to Sunshine. “Not that it's a bad shape for ya, kiddo.”

The three sit in silence for a few minutes, with Reimu still braiding the doll's hair and Alice and Marisa looking glumly into their drinks. Sunshine busies herself with practicing the hiragana for “nu”, because the curly bits always mess her up.

And then, Alice sits up. “Wait. Growing up. We could—“ She trails off as her thoughts race ahead of her mouth, then abruptly pushes herself up from the table. “I... I need to go home and check something. I'll see you two when you get home, okay?” She steps around the table and crouches down to press a kiss to Sunshine's forehead, then to Marisa's cheek.

Both Reimu and Marisa look a bit surprised at this, and Marisa starts to stand up too. “Er. Everything okay? Hold on and I can pack up our stuff and—”

“I think it's better if I go alone. Everything's fine, okay?”

Marisa starts to respond, but Alice is already hurrying toward the door. Reimu gives a slightly weak, “Um, well, it was nice seeing you...!” as the door closes behind her, then looks to Marisa. “... what was that about?”

“Eh, I'm sure Alice's got her reasons.” Without asking, Marisa leans over far enough to grab the bottle of sake and pour herself another drink. “She doesn't like askin' for help unless she has to. Now, c'mon, where were we? I guess the flyin' boat was next, right? Go on, Sunshine loves that one, and I don't really know your side of it.”

Reimu gives one last glance toward the door, then gives up and goes back to storytelling. “Well, it was right around the end of Winter...”

Sunshine doesn't really know how to feel about Reimu. Her storytelling is more descriptive than either of her parents', but she doesn't illustrate the story by reenacting the attacks as she tells it like Marisa does, which is half of the fun of storytime. Her stories also always seem to involve fighting far fewer enemies than Marisa does, which would probably be less confusing if Sunshine had ever been introduced to the concept of exaggeration. The message she takes away from this is that Reimu is powerful, but nowhere near as strong as her mothers. Even if she did apparently kick their butt that one time. But that makes sense. It's hard to imagine that anybody could be more powerful than them.

After another couple of hours, the three say their goodbyes. Marisa packs up all of Sunshine's writing materials, and Reimu lets her keep the flower crown. The doll waves as Marisa lowers her into the basket, and then they fly home.

When the two enter the cottage, they find that Alice has covered the entire table in books and papers. She doesn't even look up as they enter. Marisa frowns at this and lowers Sunshine down to sit on the edge of the table, then leans over to peek at the book that Alice is reading. Sunshine turns around and tries reading one of the opened books too, but it's no use. Very few of Alice's books are written in Japanese to begin with, and the ones that are are still usually filled with words she doesn't understand.

Alice marks her spot on the page with her finger and looks up. “I know what we need to do,” she says with a tired laugh. “We can fix this. We can fix everything.”

After a short conversation—most of which goes over Sunshine's head—with Marisa, Alice goes into her workshop, with a stack of heavy books, a Shanghai doll, and the naked base of an unfinished doll. Marisa stays outside, distractedly reading stories to Sunshine, for an hour or two, then scoops her up. “C'mon, kiddo. Let's go to bed. Alice'll catch up.”

Sunshine lays awake in bed all night, as usual. She can hear Alice working for hours. When she finally comes back out, she's carrying the Shanghai doll, and the unfinished doll is limping along behind her. Even in the moonlight, Sunshine can see that she's smiling.

Alice sleeps in. Marisa makes herself breakfast, without the benefit of dolls to help her. Sunshine doesn't eat, and only knows how to cook by rote memory, but she is pretty sure that Marisa isn't as good at cooking as Alice is. Sunshine is almost certain that Alice takes great care to keep her food from turning black like that.

When Alice wakes up, she looks happier than Sunshine has seen her since the accident. She settles down at the table as dolls fan out and begin preparing her breakfast... and after she gets a look at the sink, two more enter the kitchen and start scraping the charred remains of Marisa's out of the skillet. Marisa looks up from her own reading. “Well, good mornin', sleepyhead. … are you ready to calm down and explain what you were workin' on last night?”

“Enchantment transferal. It's an almost useless field of study most of the time, so I hadn't even thought of it. I can't fix Sunshine's arm without breaking the enchantment that maintains her consciousness... but we could transfer that enchantment to a different body.” Alice smiles and absently stirs a little cream into her tea as a pair of dolls start setting the table in front of her. Sunshine is already in position to fix their mistakes, but pauses and looks up. This conversation sounds important, and slightly more comprehensible than the one last night. “I tried last night with a Shanghai doll. I was able to transfer her enchantment to a different doll, and she continued carrying out orders I'd given her beforehand.”

Marisa takes a moment to absorb all of this, then matches Alice's smile and reaches over to ruffle Sunshine's hair. “Hear that, kiddo? We can give you your arm back!”

“No, we can't,” Alice says, and Marisa trails off with a frown. Alice gives a reassuring smile, though, and continues. “Not immediately, I mean. We'll do something better.” She turns to look down at Sunshine. “How would you feel if we made you an entirely new body? It could be as big as a human, and we could make it so tough that you'd never need to worry about getting hurt again. And it would be able to talk, and have a sense of touch, and all of those nice things. … I was so fixated on trying to find ways to fix her arm, and then Reimu made me think about putting her in a bigger body last night and made me realize...”

Alice and Marisa fall into chatting about the idea, while Sunshine considers all of this. Put her into a human-sized body? She kind of likes being little. But... but being able to talk. As much as she likes writing, that does sound really useful. And she could play outside again! And could carry the teapot by herself! She couldn't even do that when she had both hands.

It doesn't take long to reach a decision. Sunshine hops down to the floor, grabs her writing materials, and settles down on the table to start writing frantically. [YES BIG. BIG. MOM PLEASE. MAKE ME BIG]

“Well, I think that's a yes. Let's get started.”

The dolls are setting breakfast down in front of Alice, and Sunshine nearly tramples them in her hurry to run across the table and hug Alice. Even if she still had both arms, she'd be too tiny to pull off a proper hug.

But maybe, soon, she won't be.

It's easier said than done. After breakfast, Alice clears off the table, and with the aid of half a dozen books, puts together a very large shopping list.

Doll Base

• 2 sq. meters wood

• 5 liters lacquer

• 4 lg. jars paint, skin

• 1 m. jar paint, skin details

• 1 sm. jar paint, blue

• 1 sm. jar paint, red

• 2 glass spheres, white, 2.4 cm

• 1 linear meter 1 mm diameter steel rods

• 1/2 linear meters 2.5 mm diameter steel rods

• 1/4 kg. kaolin

• 1/8 kg. China stone

Sunshine kind of understands this part of the list. She knows most of the ingredients, at least. It's kind of weird now, realizing that these are the things she's made out of, though. She's not sure what humans are made out of, but she's never seen Alice build a human. That's probably the difference between humans and dolls, she decides.

The other ingredient lists, though, make less sense to Sunshine.

Doll core for sp. enchantments

• 3 grams gold (Shou????)

• 10 linear cm. 2 cm diameter cylinder, granite

• 1 sq. meter rice paper

• 5 deciliters blood, fresh drawn w/ silver knife (knife from Sakuya)

Enchantment (Fortifying)

• 10 grams cinnabar (Senkai?)

• 2 grams silver (Sakuya)

• 5 stalks Edelweiss

Enchantment (Fireproofing)

• 12 sticks incense

• 1/2 kg. phoenix-fire ashes (Mokou)

• 1/4 kg. sulfur

• 3 liters water, blessed (Sanae)

… and so on, with enchantments for good luck and blessings and protection from specific types of danger going on for pages and pages.

As Sunshine leafs through it, Marisa glances over it too, and gives a low whistle. “Wow. We're gonna owe half of Gensokyo favors after this, aren't we?”

“Probably, yes,” Alice agrees from her workshop, where she's already preparing the most basic tools. “And we'll probably need to fight some of them, too. Sakuya doesn't let her silver go easily.” She leans out the doorway, and despite the slightly grim sound of her previous statement, looks more cheerful than she has in days. “But I haven't had a good challenge in a while, anyway. Let's get started.”

The days fall into a new pattern. Alice and Marisa wake up—Marisa is only going back to her house occasionally to grab things, now—and have breakfast, then one of the two grabs one of the many lists and sets out for a day of ingredient-hunting. Usually, they return with a basket of loot. If it's Marisa, occasionally she has a new fight to tell a story about. If it's Alice, occasionally she just returns with fewer dolls than she had when she departed and speaks nothing more of it.

As the ingredients start piling up in the workshop, Alice also starts working on assembling them. It keeps her tied up for hours, and Sunshine doesn't get to spend much time with her. She sits and watches, though. Alice has cleared off a shelf in the workshop, and she likes to sit up there and read while she watches Alice work.

Occasionally Alice asks for her input. Does she like this color of hair? How old does she think she should look? Is this tall enough?

Making the torso alone takes days. Alice starts out with a big block of wood and slowly chips it away, carving it into pieces and fitting them together to make a body. Unlike everything else she does, she doesn't have dolls help her with this, and even turns down Sunshine's help.

Once the torso is generally shaped, Alice takes a big cylindrical-shaped rock and writes things on it with a chisel, then very carefully fills the shallow symbols with molten gold. When it cools, she wraps it in rice paper. And, then, she asks Sunshine to close her eyes. Sunshine pretends to, but she's too curious to not look now—Alice draws a knife across her palm, holds her hand over a bowl, and red stuff flows into it. Oh. So that's what people are made of. Sunshine is fairly certain that she doesn't have any of that inside her, since nothing came out when her arm broke off. She's kind of glad. That looks gross.

Alice uses the red stuff to write even more things on the paper. As more and more ingredients come in, the strange tube is the focus of at least a dozen rituals, mostly performed by Alice, but some performed by Marisa. Having spent her entire life in a magician's household, these don't strike Sunshine as much more interesting than cooking breakfast, and she doesn't pay much attention to them.

Alice is taking one of her now-rare breaks from studying and working in the workshop, and is sitting on a blanket on the grass outside, while dolls bustle food in and out of the house. They are having a picnic. Sunshine doesn't care about the food, because she can't eat, but she's glad to be outside for a change, and even more glad that she's able to spend some time with Alice outside of the workshop.

[HOW LONG?] Sunshine has mastered the art of writing with one hand now. It's not too much different... she just has to be careful not to lose her balance while she's leaning forward to write. Using human-sized pens and pencils is a bit more of a challenge, though.

Alice leans over to look down at the paper, then smiles. “Soon. The torso is almost ready. It will take a few days to make the hands, and another couple to make your face... Are you looking forward to it?”

[YES. WANT TO BE BIG.]

“Good.” Alice picks up a checkerboard-patterned cookie and takes a delicate bite of it. Sunshine usually doesn't pay attention to such things, but today, she watches intently.

[CAN I EAT?]

Alice blinks in surprise, then glances sidelong at the cookie in her hand. The magician chuckles softly at this. “Yes. It was an interesting challenge to design, actually. Very few people have done research into giving constructs a sense of taste, and—er. Anyway. You'll have an alchemical chamber in your chest that can convert food and drink into magical energy. Your new body will need it, since you'll be too large to power yourself through ambient magical energy alone.”

Sunshine doesn't understand some of these words, but that's a yes, she thinks. [IS EATING FUN?]

“Eating is very fun.” Alice smirks. “Perhaps a little too fun at times. But, you'll have plenty of time to discover that for yourself.” She waves a hand, and a few dolls swoop down to haul the dishes out from in front if her, then she gestures Sunshine closer. “I brought you out here today because there are some big things that we need to talk about.”

Sunshine stands and drags her piece of paper across the blanket, then plops down closer to Alice. The dollmaker reaches over to straighten her hair with a smile, then says, “Let's talk about the easy one first. I know she's already around a lot, but how would you feel if Marisa came to live with us forever?”

[YES. GOOD.] Both parents around at once? Sunshine can see no downsides.

Alice laughs gently at this. “Well, that was easy. With three of us, and you being bigger, we'll probably need to add some room to the cottage. Maybe we can make you your own room, with your own bed, hm?”

Hmm. Sunshine feels kind of bad now: They're offering her her own room, but Alice and Marisa will still have to share the same one? That doesn't seem fair. She likes sleeping between them anyway. It makes her feel safe. [MAYBE]

“Well, just keep thinking about it, okay? You still have some time before we're ready to do any work on the cottage. We definitely won't do it until after your body is ready. Now, for the other one... once you're used to your new body, would you like to go to school?”

Sunshine stares down at the mostly-blank paper in front of her in deep thought. She's heard of the concept enough times to know what school is, and that there's one in the human village. But the human village is kind of strange and scary, even though it has a toy store, and the drawings of school in her books always had more people than she's ever seen before.

“You could learn new things every day,” Alice prompts her gently. “And you could make new friends.”

Well... when she puts it like that, it sounds a little less scary. Sunshine lifts her paintbrush to write, while Alice adds, “And Marisa or I could fly you there and come pick you up every day, so you wouldn't need to worry about going through the forest.”

Sunshine freezes, with her brush still dripping paint on the paper. They'd just leave her there alone every day? With a bunch of strange humans? That settles that. Almost frantically, she writes, [NO. NO SCHOOL.]

This obviously comes as a bit of a surprise to Alice. “But why?”

[WANT TO STAY WITH YOU MOM.]

The magician reads over those words a couple of times, and pieces them together with a thoughtful frown. “Oh! You've never been away for that long, have you?” She reaches down to gently lift Sunshine with one hand—the one that's not bandaged, the doll notices—and cradles her with one arm. It's been a while since either of them picked her up like this. But it feels kind of nice. She feels safe. “I won't be able to do this once you're human-sized, you know.”

Without her paper at hand, Sunshine can't really answer, but she nods. It seems to be enough for Alice, since the dollmaker continues. “And Marisa's right about you. You're brave and strong. So, I think that even without us around, you'll be able to handle it. You are a daughter of magicians. I'm reasonably certain that you taught yourself how to think from first principles. If anybody gives you trouble, I know that you can find a solution.” Alice reaches down to poke her belly. “And maybe make sure they never want to bother you again. You are practically half-youkai, after all. … just don't let Marisa know that I said that, or I'll never hear the end of it.”

The show of confidence makes pride swell up in Sunshine. It's been a while since she stopped worrying about doing only whatever would make Alice happiest, and sometime since then, she came to even put her own needs first sometimes. But being praised still feels nice. She sits up to half-hug that hand that's poking at her, and Alice kisses her forehead. “So, will you please think about it?”

Sunshine lowers her eyes, and her hand anxiously grips Alice's sleeve. But after a few seconds of consideration, she gives a hesitant nod.

True to Alice's word, over the next few days, the larger body starts taking shape. The core is fully enchanted, and after sliding it into a perfectly-sized hollow and sealing it in the torso, Alice makes it a part of the whole with a simple enchantment.

The body stays like this for days, while Alice assembles arms on her workbench. This part, Sunshine watches more attentively than the others. Dozens of little finger sections, with delicate joints at the end, which Alice assembles into fully-articulated hands, even more flexible than her current one. Sunshine raises her hand and flexes it, marveling for the first time at how many pieces of it move. And the bigger hands have even more pieces.

After the arms are added, it's barely another day before the legs are ready. The decapitated body hangs on its stand, looking a little creepy now, while Alice works on a head.

This head, this is different. Everything that Alice makes would shame all but the most skilled mortal dollmakers, even before it starts moving, but for the head, she sets out to make a masterpiece. She spends days just carving out the gentle curves of the face and jaw, then sanding it all to perfect smoothness. Half a day is spent on the eyes alone, Alice wearing a magnifying monocle and painting minute details onto the iris, with delicate red blood vessels that could have come straight out of an anatomy textbook on the sclera. The teeth, she individually crafts out of freshly-fired porcelain. One by one, they're popped into their places in the head and jaw, and Alice fixes the two together, hinged on a joint that moves so subtly that Sunshine can barely even tell that they're separate parts. The eyes slide into place, and with them, fragile-looking eyelids. When it's complete, she uses a spell to merge it all into a single piece, giving the wood the same texture and pliability as human flesh.

Finally, Alice settles the head onto the body, and all that's left are tiny details. Alice goes over the entire body, adding subtle differences of tone to the paint to make it more closely match natural skin. A set of porcelain fingernails complete her hands, and little black hairs give her eyelashes and eyebrows. Last of all is her hair. It's one of the few things that Sunshine had a strong opinion on: She wants her hair longer, like Marisa's. So, that's what she gets, a mop of yellow hair that's taller than she currently is, reaching almost down to her butt.

And with that, her new body is done.

… but not quite ready for her to move into yet. There are still final enchantments to be cast and, almost as importantly, she needs clothes. So, today, Alice sits at her sewing machine, with yards of yellow and white cloth in front of her—a yellow dress, too, is something that Sunshine insisted on—while the doll plays on the floor between them. Her collection of toys has grown since she was barred from playing outside: A top, a small bag of marbles, an orange pinwheel, and a tiny little doll, barely centimeters tall.

By this point, she's used enough to being waited on by dolls that this doesn't seem strange to her.

At the moment, it's the much bigger doll that interests her, though. Sunshine walks over to the stand and looks up at the bigger body. Her future self. She can't wait. Being able to play outside again will be great, and so will having two arms, but she can't even imagine what speaking will be like. Writing is nice, but she can tell that talking gets things across much faster. And she wouldn't need to carry her brush everywhere, or be limited to only the words she can figure out how to write... From her spot on the floor, she can just barely reach the larger body's dangling hand. Her own hand can't even wrap all the way around a fingertip.

This is all interrupted by the sound of the door of the cottage opening, followed shortly afterward by Marisa shouting, “Yo, come help carry my stuff!” In all her excitement over her new body, Sunshine had forgotten that today is the day that Marisa moves in for good.

“Coming!” Alice finishes the line that she was stitching, and the two walk out into the main area of the house. In the barely ten seconds since she's arrived, she's already made the place look like a minor disaster: Two big boxes full of books are sitting on the dining room table, already sagging down enough to spill some of their contents onto the floor, and there's dirt spilled all around a wooden crate full of soil, in which mushrooms are growing.

Through the open door, Sunshine can see a hand cart parked outside, still overfilled with Marisa's belongings. She's on her way back for another load when Alice approaches her. “Th-that's way too much! Didn't we agree that you'd only bring the essentials right now?”

“Yeah! These are the essentials.” Marisa hefts a box full of jars of colored liquids out of the cart and starts packing it in, only for Alice to block her.

“Why don't you start putting things away, and I can stay out here and decide what stays and what goes?” Alice eyes the box in her hands. “... like that, that goes.”

“Aww, c'mon! This is for my experiments. I've got to have this around. Why don'tcha just trust that I only brought the important stuff, and we'll put it away once it's in, okay?”

Alice crosses her arms, momentarily looking like she's prepared to push the issue, but relents. “Well... okay. But, anything I don't see you use in the first week goes in the trash.”

“Deal.”

It's still easier said than done. Marisa's belongings would easily fill one of the smaller rooms, and Alice's cottage is a bit cluttered to begin with, if neatly organized.

An organization scheme which is now in danger from this influx of new stuff. Fortunately for Alice, some habits die hard, and Sunshine is just as disturbed by this threat to the house's tidiness. She flies around, helping clean up the messes and scoot things into their right positions, putting new books into their correct, alphabetical spots on shelves. Marisa is content to watch this phase from the comfort of the couch.

“Shouldn't you be helping?”

“Hey, I had to pack all that stuff all the way over here. Besides, you're all particular about where you want it.”

Marisa does help out a little, after Alice puts a potted plant in what is apparently a less-than-ideal spot. After hours of work, everything is put away, even if the cottage is now even more cluttered for it, and the three flop down on the couch. Alice is obviously tired, and while Sunshine doesn't really get tired, she definitely welcomes the change of pace.

No sooner has she settled in than Marisa reaches down to ruffle her hair. She knows that Marisa knows that it bothers her to have her hair messy, but this time, she resolves to not give her the satisfaction of seeing her fix it. She resists, leaving half of her hair hanging over her face... for about two seconds, until Alice starts idly straightening it up. Marisa just grins. “Tomorrow's the big day, huh? Excited?”

Sunshine nods, and Marisa leans back. “Gonna be pretty noisy with three of us livin' here and you able to talk. Think we'll drive your mom crazy?”

“You say that like you haven't already,” Alice says, then softens her tone. “But this has its advantages. I haven't gotten much research done lately, but... it's more fun this way, I think.” Marisa fakes a look of shock at hearing Alice say the word 'fun,' and the dollmaker retaliates by prodding her side with an elbow. “Besides, it's like you've pointed out before. I'm immortal. I can afford a distraction now and then.”

“Heh. If you really wanna see distracting, just wait'll we have our own bedroom and we can spend all day screwi—” Marisa is cut off as a deeply-blushing Alice reaches over to cover her mouth with a hand. She gives her a very pointed look before withdrawing it, and Marisa glances down toward Sunshine for just a moment and mumbles, “Right, yeah, eh-heh. Talk about that later.”

Sunshine has no idea what that was about, and Alice makes sure to not give her time to dwell on it. “Right! Well. Why don't you go finish straightening your things, and I'll have some dolls start dinner. Sunshine, let's go put the finishing touches on your dress.”

The dress is finished, and Sunshine helps Alice slide it onto her larger body. Afterward, she inspects it again. Now, it looks like... well, her. The hair is longer, the face looks almost fully human, and everything else still has far more detail, but it's identifiably her. It's kind of like looking into a mirror. Which is probably the point, but still.

After dinner, everybody goes to bed, but even though Sunshine never sleeps, tonight feels especially long. She stares at the ceiling and notices every tick of the clocks, one second closer to tomorrow. Finally, she can't stand it, and she flies in to look at her new body again. After half an hour of staring at it from a shelf, the doll hovers down and tugs the arms up from their resting position. The joints glide almost frictionlessly, but the enchantments that will allow her to move herself keep them from sliding out of position.

Sunshine tugs the wrists up so that the palms are cupped together, and in her own giant hands, curls up and rests until morning.

By the time Alice and Marisa get up, Sunshine has already prepared a small arsenal of signs.

[CHANGE NOW?] [MOM PLEASE] [PLEASE MAKE ME BIG NOW]

Alice doesn't even have her slippers on yet, and gives a sleepy chuckle as she takes them from a helpful Shanghai doll. “Let us have breakfast first, okay, sweetie?”

Marisa's sitting on the edge of the bed, blinking blearily as her eyes adjust to the light. “Yeah, spellcastin' on an empty stomach sucks.” She yawns and stretches. “If you wanna speed it up, you could start counting out the sugar for my tea. Five cubes.”

Well. That's something. Sunshine hurries into the kitchen, and by the time the pair arrive, has already arranged the cubes into a little pyramid by Marisa's place at the table.

The entire meal is like this. Sunshine sits in her tiny chair, and watches every time one of them takes a bite of their food, gauging how much more is left. It's all she can do to keep herself from flying across the table and stuffing the last slowly-vanishing piece of toast into Alice's mouth, but finally, the meal passes, and the two head toward the workshop.

… only for Alice to hold out her hand and look over Marisa. “Are you really going to carry out the ritual looking like that?”

Marisa looks down at herself: A puffy pair of white bloomers and a baggy undershirt. “What? I do all kinds of magic dressed like this.”

“That's... that's completely like you.” Alice sighs, then redoubles her resolve. “But I'm not having you casting spells for half the day in your underwear. Go get dressed, and then we'll start.”

“Fine, fine...” Marisa walks off toward the bedroom.

Alice gives Sunshine an apologetic glance. “It will just be a few more minutes, it seems. Come on. Let's get you ready.”

'Getting her ready' apparently means standing in the center of one of the enchanting circles that the pair have been perfecting for weeks, and Sunshine does this with gusto. She tries to maintain a little decorum, standing with her arms hanging straight at her side, but still squirms anxiously and watches as the pair move everything to place.

Alice finally finishes fussing over a few pages of incantations, though, and smiles down at her. “I think we're all ready. We're going to be concentrating for the rest of this, so please hold still, okay? We'll see you when it's done.”

With that, the ritual is underway. It's the most serious Sunshine has ever seen Marisa, reading from the pages and intoning strange languages gravely. Alice, well... she's seen Alice do this dozens of times, and she's treating it with the same precision she gives everything, from sewing a new doll's dress to making dinner.

And then, the world goes black.

Alice's cottage smells like the things of country living and dollmaking: Tea and paint, firewood and ink, dried herbs and newly-fired porcelain.

It's the first sensation Sunshine notices, and it's an utterly alien one.

As she opens her eyes, even more new sensations come flooding in. The feeling of the soft cloth of her outfit pressed against her. The slight heat of the nearby candles radiating onto her skin. The pressure of her own weight on her feet. The subtle movements of a jaw she didn't have before. Vertigo, as she notices that her viewpoint is way, way too high off the ground.

The doll wobbles, overwhelmed by all of this, but she's still resting on the stand. She—her new body is resting on the stand. It worked!

“She's awake!” The sound draws Sunshine's eyes across the room, where Marisa is seated in a chair. Out the door, she can see the window. It's dark. Marisa rushes over to her, and Alice is inside the room within a second.

“G-give her room, just stay back! She has a lot to adjust to, so...!”

That's an understatement. Sunshine's eyes dart around, and she feels dizzy from the new scale of the world. She raises her hands and flexes her fingers, watching as the joints work in perfect unison to clench her fists. The joints that she just watched Alice piece together days ago.

On the floor, off to the side, is a tiny yellow thing. A dress, wrapped around a one-armed doll. The doll is laying on its side, still and limp. That's her. Or. Or was.

It's all far, far too much for her to process at once. She wants to just settle back onto the stand and adjust to it for days, but her parents are watching her expectantly. This is Alice's will, and she'll be damned if she's gonna fail her now.

Carefully, the doll steps forward, flooding herself with more strange sensations as the cloth of her dress brushes across her leg. Her foot makes a soft thump, an unfamiliar weighty sound, as it settles on the floor. Alice and Marisa watch every motion, and she can tell that they're holding themselves back from rushing forward to help her. She shrugs her shoulders to slide off of the doll stand, and feels a new rush of dizziness as she balances this new, impossibly tall body.

But it's not so bad. She can do this now. The doll rushes forward, almost stumbling, and lands against the two for support. She reaches around them, and is pleased to find that her arms are now almost big enough to hug both of them. They're warm. She never knew that before.

Already, she can hear Alice crying, and Marisa murmurs, “You did it, kiddo,” and ruffles her hair. She wants to fix it, like always, but there's something she needs to do first. Sunshine's jaw pivots on its joints, and she opens her mouth experimentally a few times, getting used to the feeling of it.

It feels weird, having her face move. But she can do this. She is a daughter of magicians, after all. And there's just the one thing she needs to say.

The doll takes a shuddering breath, and when she opens her mouth again, she says, “I-I love you.”

Chapter Text

“Are ya okay?”

“Don't push yourself. We can...”

Despite her parents' protests, Sunshine keeps stumbling forward. The balance of this new body, with its much more human shape, is weird, but not totally alien: It's no more awkward than carrying her sword was when she was small. It's not until she's taken half a dozen steps that she realizes she could tell them that she's able to do this alone—she could tell them! She doesn't need to wait until she can write it!—but one thing at a time.

Sunshine reaches her destination and slumps into a chair in the living room, with a rush of relief as the storm of new sensations from walking fades. Alice and Marisa approach her cautiously, and she takes stock of herself again. The unsteady gait has left her hair hanging over her face; without thinking, she brushes it back, then almost recoils from the strange feeling of it against her fingers.

“How are you feeling...?” Alice asks quietly.

Sunshine looks up, and her first instinct is to hunt for her pen and paper. She stops when she realizes that she doesn't need it anymore... but it's hard to figure out a response, too. Her first sentence, that was easy: She decided on it a week ago, and spent days rolling it around in her head and thinking about how it sounded. Speaking on the fly is a bit more daunting.

But she knows how to put words together. It's just a matter of gathering her thoughts enough to do it. Sunshine takes a moment to calm her nerves and settles her hands into her lap. The hesitation is long enough that Alice starts looking anxious again, and she forces herself to speak. “I.” Hearing her own voice is still a shocking novelty, and she almost stops there. “Feel... okay.” Sunshine looks up and tries to smile. Smiling is another thing she's spent hours thinking about lately. The feeling of her face deforming as the corners of her mouth pull up is almost surreal, but judging by the smiles they give in response, she did something right.

“You were unconscious for almost a full day. W-we were starting to get worried...” Alice settles into a seat on the couch across from Sunshine, without taking her eyes off the girl for a second. “The ritual... does take some time for the bonding to finish, but we had no idea...”

“She was bawling her eyes out. You should've seen it.” Marisa grins and flops down next to Alice, and the other magician shoots her a glare.

“Says the one who was ransacking a library to double-check her work within the first ten minutes.”

“Eh-heh.”

With the brief argument over, the two of them turn back to Sunshine. She realizes that they must be expecting her to say something, but after a lifetime of communicating through charades and painstakingly slow writing, the newfound freedom is daunting.

Fortunately, Alice doesn't let the silence hang for long. “Is there anything we can do for you...? Anything you need? I know this must be a lot to adjust to.”

“Um.” Sunshine lifts her hands again and flexes her fingers. It's still so overwhelming. She just wants to relax and—Relax, right. That's what she needs. “Um.” Sunshine looks up, and her parents' expectant expressions make her feel even more embarrassed about the petty request she has in mind. “Can... you... tell... me...” Her eyes drift down in concentration as she forces the words out one by one, but she looks back up at the end. “The m-moon story?”

They both look surprised, and for a moment, Sunshine thinks she's made some horrible mistake. But soon enough, Marisa chuckles. “Sure thing, kiddo. But y'know... you're not so short that you've gotta stay over there.” She pats the spot between herself and Alice on the couch. “Do you wanna sit with us?”

Sunshine nods sheepishly, then stumble-runs over to flop on the couch between her parents.

Sunshine was plenty used to sitting in laps before. Tonight, her embarrassing clumsiness makes her feel like she should keep her distance, but before she knows it, she somehow ends up leaning against Alice. It's an entirely new sensation by itself: She can feel the slow, rhythmic movements of her mother's body as she breathes, coupled with warmth and a comforting hand fussing with her hair. Between that and Marisa telling the familiar story for the thousandth time, she's soon a little more relaxed, and the din of new sensations fades into the background.

“... so then I blasted Reimu again, and she just smashed through like three kilometers of bamboo. Left a really long skid mark on the ground. You can still see it if you know where to look.”

“You...” Sunshine's voice is soft, but Marisa instantly stops talking and waits for her to finish. She feels embarrassed for speaking up, because it takes her a moment to assemble the rest of the sentence, but there's no turning back. “You lied again.”

“Heh. Did I?”

“Well, I don't remember any skid marks,” Alice says, with practiced neutrality.

“And. Before. Um.” Sunshine's face crumples up a bit in concentration. This may be the longest sentence she's ever composed, speech or otherwise. “When you told it. You said that. That you shot her to the moon. A-all the way... to the moon.” She lets out a little huff of mental exhaustion at the end, but pride swells in her chest.

“Yeah, well, see, she punched through the earth an' popped out the other side so hard that she—“

“Let it go, dear,” Alice says. She gently pulls away from Sunshine, and the doll is surprised to find that this upsets her a little. She was comfortable like that. Comfort is another new concept, but one that she understands innately. Alice smiles down to her. “That sounded tiring. How would you like to take a break? We prepared another surprise for you.”

“Oh!” Marisa looks up. “The cake!”

“... yes.” Alice sighs, as her surprise dies a premature death, but the disappointment doesn't last long. “The surprise is cake. Would you like to try eating?”

Sunshine wants to go help slice and serve the cake, but her mother is having none of it, so instead she sits on the couch and experimentally wiggles her fingers. Behind her, she can hear the ongoing struggle as Marisa tries snatching an early bite and is held off by a brave contingent of spatula-wielding Shanghai dolls.

The two return from the kitchen, and one of the dolls dutifully sits a saucer down in front of Sunshine. On it is a hefty piece of strawberry shortcake, held together by a thick layer of white icing down the middle. Sunshine is immediately struck by the smell. She lifts the saucer in both hands and stares at it, almost intoxicated by the new experience, until Marisa's eyes pointedly meet hers. Once Marisa has Sunshine's attention, she cuts off a bite of her own cake and pops it into her mouth.

Sunshine studies the helpful example, then examines her cake again. After grabbing her fork, she stabs the tip of the slice, mimicking Marisa's movements as exactly as she can. The resulting bite is a bit larger than she'd anticipated, and in the process of stuffing it in her mouth, she smears icing on her lips and sprinkles crumbs on her dress. Normally, she'd immediately clean herself off, but—

Taste is a totally new thing. The girl freezes, as the sweet-and-tart flavor dissolves in her mouth, threatening to make her pass out from its intensity. A little squeak comes from her lips, and Alice looks at her with such concern that she reminds herself that people are supposed to chew food. Sunshine forces herself to scissor her jaws until she can swallow it, then coughs a couple of times and stares at the cake in awe.

“Is everything okay? Do you need a drink?” Without waiting for her answer, Alice gestures toward the kitchen, and a doll hovers off to fetch a cup.

The taste is still lingering, making it almost impossible for Sunshine to focus for long enough to string an answer together. “Y-yes...” The doll returns, and sits a glass of water in front of her. At least drinking is something she's mimed before. Sunshine tilts the glass back and takes a few inexperienced gulps. It's loud, and some of the water dribbles down her chin to leave damp spots on her skirt, but it mostly extinguishes the taste.

Judging by Alice's expression, this wasn't the intended reaction. Sunshine feels a pang of guilt. “Sorry. It was... ” Strange? Overwhelming? She struggles to find a word that won't sound vaguely insulting. “... new.”

“... I understand,” Alice says, with a relieved smile. She reaches over and brushes the crumbs off of Sunshine's dress. “Just take your time and get used to it, and if you still don't like it, we can cook something else, okay?”

“Yeah, we're not in a rush,” Marisa agrees. Her own slice is already half-gone.

Sunshine nods and looks down at the cake again, then cuts off a smaller bite. This time, she's more hesitant, but now that she knows what to expect, the taste of the cake is only a minor shock. She shivers, but makes herself focus on the flavor as she slowly chews. Now that she's not being taken completely off-guard, she's a bit surprised to find that she likes it.

Bite by bite, Sunshine gets accustomed enough that she can eat without feeling overpowered by the taste, and the cake slowly disappears. The last of it vanishes down her throat; Marisa grins and shoots her a thumbs-up, while Alice pats her back and has a doll usher the fork and plate away. “How do you feel? I know this is a lot to adjust to... If you want, we can let you rest for a bit.”

Sunshine looks down at herself again. Even sitting, she still feels a slight rush of dizziness when she sees how far away the floor is is, but she's getting used to it now. And, now that she's not under constant bombardment from new senses, her earlier excitement is returning. That's right! Once she's used to this, she can talk and run and play every day.

So, she might as well get started now. “Can we... talk?”

“Well, I've already said plenty for one day,” Marisa says as she leans back. “Do you want to say anything?”

That's a good question. Back when she couldn't speak, it constantly felt like she was bursting with questions; now that she can, she suddenly finds herself at a loss for conversation. “I... don't know.”

“Well, how are you feeling?”

"Um. I'm okay." Sunshine takes her time and says the words carefully so she doesn't trip over them.

"Oh!" Marisa jolts up to sitting. "First, I've got a surprise for you too!"

This is obviously news to Alice. "Er. You do?"

"Yeah!" Without further explanation, Marisa hurries across the room to one of the cabinets and throws the doors open. Sunshine hasn't seen anybody open the cabinet in weeks, but she immediately recognizes the contents: clocks, vases, framed pictures, all the knickknacks that Alice pulled off the shelves after the accident. Marisa digs through it, nearly spilling some of the contents to the floor in the process, then reaches all the way to the back of the highest shelf. With a triumphant grin, she pulls out Sunshine's toy sword, then walks over and holds it out hilt first. "About time you got this back, isn't it?"

The doll's eyes go wide. She looks to Alice questioningly, and although she looks slightly annoyed, Alice nods her approval. The hilt feels both familiar and strangely new—she can feel the subtle grain of the wood under her fingertips, and it feels far too small. But it's still hers.

Sunshine rises to standing and gives the sword a few experimental swipes through the air. It's so tiny now. It used to be a weapon as large as she was, a thing to be held with both hands and swung with the force of her entire body behind it. Now, she could throw it across the room if she wanted.

Her face feels weird again. She realizes that without even meaning to, she's smiling.

Marisa is smiling, too. "The sun's coming up. Wanna play?"

"Ah..." Alice speaks up before Sunshine can. "We really should test some of the wards and defensive spells before you do anything too rough..."

"M-mom, please...!" Alice looks surprised at hearing herself called that. Sunshine's just as surprised as she is. It's the first thing she's said without spending ten seconds in thought first.

The blush only slowly fades from the dollmaker's cheeks, but she has a smile on her face despite herself. "Okay, okay,” Alice says, throwing her hands up in defeat. “But try not to break anything."

Outside, the sun has only barely risen. Sunshine is immediately struck by how chilly it is. Every time Alice and Marisa breathe out, she can see a little cloud in front of their mouths. She reaches out for one of the clouds that trail behind Marisa, and her hand passes through it. Sunshine doesn't need to breathe except to speak, but she takes a few deep breaths and blows them out, and is disappointed when nothing happens.

"Er..." Alice had been spreading a blanket under a tree, but now pauses and watches her questioningly. "What are you doing?"

"How do you..." Sunshine stops huffing air and points at Alice's face. "Make clouds?"

It takes Alice a moment to realize what she's referring to. "Oh. It's because we're warm. See?" She puffs out a few thin wisps. "Since your body doesn't make heat like ours, you probably can't do it." Sunshine hangs her head, and Alice adds, "Sorry," with a soft laugh.

"And now the dragon can look like she breathes smoke!" Marisa tilts her head back and blows a much bigger cloud into the air.

"You seem more excited about it than Sunshine does."

"Heh." Marisa doesn't seem ashamed of this in the slightest. She turns to Sunshine. "So, are we doin' this?"

"Um." Sunshine isn't quite sure how she wants to hold the sword, but she raises it and points the tip toward Marisa. "Yes."

Marisa nods, pushes her hat down, and settles into a wide stance that Sunshine readily recognizes as her dragon pose. Sunshine does her best to get ready as well, and floats a few centimeters off the ground so she can dodge.

"Alright, here I come!" Marisa stomps her feet a few times. "Raaaaaawr!" She charges forward, her feet pounding on the ground imposingly, but Sunshine's used to facing this down by now. She stands her ground, and as Marisa draws near, dodges to the side, then smacks her over the head with the sword.

"Oh, ow."

Sunshine leaps atop Marisa and starts beating her over the head with the weapon. "O-ow!" Smack. "Okay, ya win!" Smack. Marisa's hat goes flying. "Oy!" Smack. Sunshine pauses as she realizes that Marisa usually doesn't respond quite like this when she's playing the enraged dragon, and she lets up on the beatings. Marisa lets out a relieved sigh. "You're pretty strong now, aren't you? Uh. ... I guess we need to have a talk about... you know." She hooks her hands under Sunshine's armpits and lowers her to the ground, then rubs the spot on her head where the girl had been hitting her. "Not playing too rough."

Sunshine only slowly puzzles out what this all means. Before, she used to flail and beat on Marisa with impunity, and Marisa even teasingly urged her onward. Never before has she had to consider that she might hurt somebody else. Her eyes go wide with the dawning realization, and she drops the sword as she trips over herself trying to apologize. "O-oh! I'm sorry!" She rushes over and hugs Marisa, hiding her face against the front of her dress. "I'm really sorry, mom!"

"Ah, calm down, you didn't hurt me that bad." Marisa crouches down and pulls her into a hug, and Sunshine clings to her. "Just no hittin' people in the head, okay?"

Sunshine nods, and Marisa rises to standing and hefts her up, with one arm hooked beneath her. She picks up the sword, then offers it up to Sunshine. "Now, let's try that again."

Sunshine has the sudden realization that something is weird. She's laying down, and something hard is under her head. Her eyes are closed. The last thing she remembers is sitting down under the tree with Marisa after playing for hours... but that seems like it was a long time ago. She can't remember anything that has happened in between.

It's almost like the nothingness she experienced while changing bodies. Sunshine fearfully opens her eyes, and finds that she's still on the blanket under the tree, laying on her side with her head in Marisa's lap. Marisa's leaning against the tree trunk, snoring softly with her hat pulled down over her eyes. There's a second blanket draped over the two of them.

Sunshine sits up, and the blanket slides to the ground. It's not chilly now that the sun has been up for hours. From her spot under the tree, Alice is nowhere to be seen.

Sunshine turns and shakes Marisa's shoulder a few times. She keeps sleeping, though, and Sunshine has to remind herself that she can speak now. "Um. Wake up, mom. Hey." The quiet, tentative way she's been talking doesn't seem to be doing the trick, so a bit more loudly than she really intends, she shouts, "Hey!"

"Mmh?" Marisa grumbles sleepily, but she's awake now. She pushes her hat up away from her face and rubs her eyes. "Oh, hey. What's up?"

"Um." Sunshine looks around again. How does she explain all of this? "I... don't know. I don't know what happened."

"... what do you mean?"

"We were sitting, and." All these words Sunshine has never needed to use before. "And then. Then it was now." She's quite aware that she's not conveying her thoughts very well, but the right words aren't coming to her.

Marisa stares at her blankly for a good ten seconds. "Are you talkin' about sleeping?" Sunshine tilts her head in confusion, and Marisa continues. "You fell asleep after we finished playing, remember?"

Sunshine frowns. She hadn't known that she could fall asleep. And she'd never imagined sleeping as feeling like that. "... no."

"Well, you did." Marisa yawns and stretches. "Probably means you're a little hungry. ... let's go see if Alice has made lunch yet."

Alice hasn't made lunch yet. She's sitting at the table and studying a thick book, but looks up with a smile when the two enter. "Welcome back. How was your nap?"

"... sleeping is. Um. Is weird."

"Oh." It's apparently not the sort of conversation topic that Alice was expecting. "Well, I'm sure you'll get used to it soon enough. With three meals, you'll still need to rest for about seven or eight hours a day, if our math is correct. Conveniently enough." Sunshine doesn't think this sounds very convenient at all. Night is her drawing and reading time. "Although unlike a human, if you eat more, you can be active for longer."

Sunshine ponders this. She's not really sure how long seven or eight hours is, since she's never had much reason to worry about time, but it sounds like forever. Before she can reach a decision, Marisa crouches down and hugs her from behind, interrupting her train of thought. "I think I could use a few more hours of sleep," she says, with a yawn at the end. "But we'll play together some more once I get up, okay?" One hand slides up to ruffle Sunshine's hair, and she leans forward to kiss her cheek.

Sunshine pauses. Now that she has lips, is she supposed to return the kiss? Alice usually does when Marisa kisses her. She turns around to do so, but Marisa's already standing up, and walks over to kiss Alice goodnight. It's not like the kiss Sunshine got at all. Just one more thing to try figuring out. "Oh! Um," she blurts out once they finish. "Good... good night." It's what you're supposed to say when somebody is going to bed. Sunshine knows that much.

"G'night," Marisa responds with a grin. She stumbles off toward the bedroom, already shedding clothing as she goes. Sunshine wants to tidy up after her, but fortunately, Alice has the same instinct; within seconds, dolls are working in teams to fold the discarded garments and ferry them to join the rest of the dirty laundry.

"Sorry," Alice says, as she closes her book. "We took turns watching you all night, so she's probably still tired." Sunshine nods, but her eyes aren't focused on Alice. They're pointed at the table, where something yellow is sitting in front of Alice... a shade of yellow that she'd recognize anywhere. It's her shade of yellow. She slowly approaches, and Alice holds it up: her older body. "It didn't seem right to leave it laying on the floor...”

Sunshine reaches out to cup the doll-body in her hands. It's disturbing, seeing herself laying limply like that. She does her best to push the body up to sitting, with the hand resting neatly in its lap, and brushes its hair back, but it still looks strangely lifeless. Sunshine instantly understands why they were so protective of her, at least: Now that she's getting used to this scale, her old body just looks so tiny. The arms are barely as thick as her fingers are now. "Can I... keep it?" She's not sure what she'll do with it, but it just feels right.

"It's yours," Alice reassures her with a smile.

After lunch (tea with sandwiches—the sandwiches are okay, but now Sunshine understands why Marisa puts so much sugar in her tea), Alice sits down with Sunshine on the couch and has her read from one of her picture books. It's plenty to dull the rush of energy from the food—she's gotten pretty good at reading, and she's learning how to speak, but doing both at once is just so hard that it's tiring. Educational, but tiring.

"And... so... the girl... b-beat... the..." Sunshine frowns at the book. "The... um."

"Look at the furigana," Alice prompts her gently.

"The... fair... ies." She pauses for a moment and stares at the characters on the page in an attempt to memorize them. "A-and. They. Never. Bo-ther-ed. Her. A-again." Sunshine lets out a sigh of relief as she reaches the end of the final sentence. At this rate, she'll need another nap soon.

"Very good." Alice pats her on the back softly. "... although it's important to keep in mind that this book was written by a human. Actual fairies aren't quite this stupid. Usually. ... sometimes."

Sunshine nods and commits this to memory... although it seems contradictory, since half of Marisa's war stories involve blowing up hapless fairies. She's seen them in the distance, playing in the forest, but never up close. It's a little disappointing. She sets the book aside, and Alice pats her back. "I'm impressed at how quickly you're picking up speech, though."

"Talking is hard."

"I'm sure you'll get used to it in no time," Alice says. "What would you like to do now?"

“Um. I wanna visit Reimu. And draw. And play. And um. Um.” Never before has Sunshine needed to plan more than a few minutes into the future, but she finds the ideas piling up faster than she can say them. “And help you. And am I. Big enough to... fight youkai now?”

Alice looks equal parts amused and concerned at this question. “... maybe when you're older,” she says, then gives Sunshine a squeeze when the girl droops. “Fighting is dangerous, so we'll keep you safe until you can handle it.”

“Okay...”

Sunshine might still be figuring out speech, but she has this pouting thing perfected already. Alice smiles and brushes her hair back. “Right now, all you need to do is take it slow and get used to your new body. New Year's is coming up soon, and then we'll go visit the shrine and see Reimu. Next year, you can start learning magic, and go to school, and do all of those things you've been wanting.”

“Promise...?”

“I promise,” Alice says, with a firm nod of her head. “For now, though, why don't you focus on the 'drawing and playing' parts?”

And for the rest of her first day in her new body, that's exactly what Sunshine does.