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One day in the middle of Alice’s living room there was a pit. Now, that pit had not been there the day before, nor should it have been there at all. The pit was two metres in diameter in the form of a perfect circle. How deep it was, Alice could not tell. As it were, Alice’s living room, which was pristine and exhaustingly immaculate, had no need for such a pit. Most living rooms didn’t, and a living room like Alice’s especially did well without a big dark and quite impractical pit. Everything in the room had its place, and stood there, not a centimetre off its intended spot. Maybe Alice’s need to keep everything fastidiously ordered was a little excessive, but she did believe that not wanting a pit in the middle of the floor was reasonable. Reasonable or not, the pit did not go away; she had hoped it would, after all it had appeared for no reason, so she had figured it might also disappear for no reason.
Naturally people asked about the pit. “Alice, why is there a dark, gaping, creepy pit in your living room?” they would ask, and Alice would reply, “Why wouldn’t there be a pit.” To herself she would admit that she did not know why there was a pit, had not wanted the pit, or appreciated the pit, but it wouldn’t do to admit such to someone else.
Not that many people asked. Surrounded by the depth of the forest, Alice lived her life quietly and in solitude, mostly in company of her dolls, who could not speak or think, nor do much else that Alice did not want them to. These dolls, all made by Alice herself, were aside from her studies, which did end up involving dolls more often than not, one of the few things Alice cared for. Her patience regarding things irrelevant to her, a category that ran vaster than it probably should have, was low. This was likely the reason most visitors, human ones and those not human, who stumbled into her house once in a while rarely returned for a second visit. Of course, regardless of her disinterest and distaste for interruptions, Alice, raised to be polite above all, would, unless they were a solicitor of unwanted newspapers, always welcome a guest who sought refuge from the darkness of the forest.
Of course, politeness also had its limits. A cup of tea, maybe even a meal if wanted or needed, the guest room or the living room sofa if so preferred, was all she offered to such guests. Maybe a word or two about the rules of the house, not to touch things that were not meant to be touched, but otherwise Alice would continue her night, as most guests, especially the human ones, came across her cottage in the late evening. She would return to her studies with nothing but the silence she herself was used to. There was no need for conversation, since she and those who happened to get lost in the forest rarely had anything in common. Humans especially had little of interest to say to Alice who had not been human for some time now. Alice, very much like her dolls, only looked human, and only looked human in that superficial way that left those who were human unsettled, perturbed by something created to look so much like something it was not. It might not have been the best comparison. Her dolls were crafted from porcelain, wood, or other mostly unliving materials (everything else tended to make quite a mess), unlike Alice who had been human once. Though she probably was never meant to be. From the moment she had been born, she had carried an aptitude for things that sooner or later would have stripped her of her humanity in one way or another. Or at least she told herself that after she had followed said aptitude into obsession until one day, she found herself living far away from the place she had called home, in a cottage where nothing could distract her from that very obsession. Well, until one day, there was a pit in said cottage’s living room. Alice was undecided if the pit was something she should care about, if it was something that interrupted her interests, or if it should have been of interest in itself. After all, at the heart of all of Alice’s obsessions was a desire for knowledge pertaining to everything one could consider supernatural, occult, arcane or in the simplest term magic. And the pit for all its plain dark depth, was most definitely one of those things. Yet so far Alice had preferred to ignore its existence as much as possible, walking around its edge and continuing on with her life like there was no pit. In fact, she tried to avoid looking at it entirely.
No lost human had visited since the pit had appeared, and as visits from those not so human were rare, as they understood that she cared little for whatever entertained them, neither had they. So, the only person who actually ended up asking about the pit was a thief who had entered her home uninvited, like she had many times before.
Uninvited as she was, Alice had no desire to explain herself to the thief, who very much unlike a thief often announced herself loudly before entering through the front door, sometimes even in the middle of the day. Marisa, as the thief was called when Alice was in a better mood, took off her shoes and flopped down on the sofa. Her pointy hat, a point of pride for Marisa who liked to call herself a witch and chose her fashion accordingly, was left with her coat hanging over an empty chair. Alice found the insistence to play into every witch stereotype a little tacky. They were magicians, not witches. Witches were an assortment of cliches found in fairy tales for children, not dedicated researchers of their craft with a thriving academic tradition. Not that it mattered to most who did not practice magic. To them, Marisa and Alice were witches all the same, regardless if one of them wore a conical black hat and flew on a broom cackling loudly, something Marisa admittedly did. And if someone spotted Alice sometimes riding along on the broom, sitting behind Marisa during, for example, a particularly nice full moon, it was out of practicality and despite her distaste for such crude displays that fed into ridiculous stereotypes.
“Seriously, what’s with the pit?” Marisa asked again, her feet, with dirty socks and all, propped up on the coffee table.
Alice, with an appropriately wrinkled nose, sat down a tray filled with snacks and tea as far away as possible from Marisa’s feet. Contemplating how to answer, or whether she might ignore the question all together, she poured them tea. She could be truthful, admit that she did not know, maybe even ask for help, after all Marisa, a fellow collector of any and all occult curiosities, was well versed in the arcane arts.
But first things first. She placed down the tea pot and with a quick snap of her wrist slapped at Marisa’s feet. It was a bad habit to indulge in such squabbling, just as it was a bad habit to serve tea to a notorious thief, but Alice did it anyway.
“The pit has nothing to do with you,” Alice said after a while, and then pushed one of the mugs towards Marisa. Marisa had not asked for tea, she never did, but a good host anticipated the needs of her guests, even unwelcome ones, and the runny nose and wet coat hanging over a chair near Alice’s hearth were about as subtle as the pit in the middle of the room. Eagerly Marisa grabbed the mug, foregoing the handle to cradle the hot porcelain with her bare hands, her fingers stiff and the tips still coloured deep red from the cold wind. Alice grimaced into her own mug as she glanced at Marisa happily wiping a mixture of steam and snot, mostly snot, off her face with her sleeve. Absent-mindedly she ordered her dolls to precur a handkerchief, as well as a towel for Marisa’s still wet hair.
Her dolls were, unlike her title puppeteer often let people believe, not controlled by the strings attached to them, at least not mechanically. What the magic string connecting her fingertips to her many dolls did, was transmit her very will to the inanimate dolls. It was a strange concept for most to wrap their head around, because to Alice who was used to it, her dolls sometimes felt more like limbs, a thousand unattached fully articulated limbs that did not need to be in the same room as her, or even close to her, which was not a sensation many people were familiar with and therefore hard to describe to those who had yet to experience this. Making her dolls do things was like raising her arm. She did not have to think about it much, all she needed to be able to was imagine it, to will it, and it happened. This of course meant Alice needed to be able to imagine a lot of things, all of the time, concurrently, in detail, but if anything people had always told Alice she had too much imagination when she was little, so she supposed this suited her.
Since the dolls were just an extension of her will, they could do much more than most dolls. They could move gracefully like any human, could move their tiny glass eyes around and do so many things that would be impossible by just pulling on strings attached to limbs.
It is why most people found it to be disquieting when they entered Alice’s house. The doll’s eyes would turn and stare at them, slowly moving, following their steps. At least that used to happen; many people had unconscious habits, fiddling with things or tapping their feet, and watching her guests through the many glass eyes of her dolls was simply Alice’s variant of that. But after having been made aware by Marisa, who kindly enough one day took her aside and told her about this, according to Marisa, frankly unnerving habit, which did explain the few times some of the humans visiting had immediately bolted, taking their chance with the monsters of the forest instead of staying, she had made a conscious effort to specifically not look at the guests with the doll eyes. This could result in even stranger movements of the many dolls neatly lined up on shelves and cupboards but she was getting better at it, again, according to Marisa. For a supposedly normal human Marisa was rather easy going about interacting with the dolls Alice cared for. Alice was sure most humans visiting still weren’t very comfortable with the dolls, especially at night when Alice was so deep in thought, focused on her research, she forgot to keep the dolls perfectly still.
Marisa never had much problems with the dolls. As a fellow magician, albeit a human one opposed to Alice who left that part of herself behind sometime ago, Marisa was so fascinated by the technique and research behind her dolls that it must have overshadowed any possible feelings of unease. She was one of the few people who were never fooled into believing they were autonomous or alive, regardless how human or natural Alice made the dolls act. Marisa was always aware that the dolls were not much more than an extension of Alice, which is why when she took the towel and handkerchief from two dolls, Alice’s newest creations whose faces were the most detailed to date, painted on with rare magic pigments allowing a range of expressions in an mimicry of emotions, Marisa patted one doll on the head and said “Thank you” all the while holding eye contact with Alice.
Then Marisa flashed her that smile Alice suspected was the reason that Marisa, despite being infamous for stealing from people far above her weight class, was still alive, likely having charmed her way out of an unfortunate early demise, no matter how deserving she was of that. Alice was almost convinced that the charm was not just the smile, but might have been a real functional charm Marisa employed, even if she couldn’t prove that just yet.
Of course this smile was immediately interrupted by Marisa blowing her nose into the handkerchief with no restraint, undoing any possible cast charms in an instant.
“You sure it’s a pit?” Marisa asked and stuffed a crumbled handkerchief into one of her apron’s pockets. Alice reckoned she would not be seeing it again, not that she wanted to after that display, but maybe one of the books that she had mysteriously misplaced might just appear on her bookshelf again. It tended to happen once in a while when Marisa visited for a cup of tea, that or a book would go missing, a risk that came with treating a thief as a guest. Alice tolerated it, Marisa never took books that were in use in her study, nor did she take important magic items from her collections. She was in some ways a polite thief, who was smart enough not to take things Alice would miss or notice and return them after some time without a word, most of the time at least.
“What else could it be?” she asked and made sure she sounded sufficiently annoyed by Marisa’s insistence to involve herself, like she had not known that telling Marisa to leave it alone would only make her more curious. But like the theft and returning of the stolen items, this too was part of a game they liked to play.
Marisa slurped her tea, loudly, more loudly than she normally did. Then, after what Alice assumed was supposed to be a dramatic pause, Marisa said, glancing up from her mug meaningfully, “A gap.”
Like Alice hadn’t thought of that. She rolled her eyes. Like it hadn’t been her first thought, when one morning she came downstairs from her bedroom to find a gigantic hole in her living room, that it might actually be a gap instead of a pit. Which was a difference that mattered, after all if it were a gap, she would have known who to blame. Gaps were the domain of one specific person, known for her mischief using her oddly specific and broad powers. Anything related to gaps, and with that the very concept of a gap was meant, were it a gap in time and space, or a gap in perception or even reality itself, it was most likely that woman’s doing. Her name was Yukari Yakumo, and she had been Alice’s first suspect.
“It is not a gap,” Alice replied, though she was not completely confident, because definitions were quite flexible, especially with supernatural powers in the mix. And unfortunately with powers based on definitions of abstract concepts, understanding the difference between a gap and a pit could mean the difference between being alive or not by the end. “A gap would be between two things, no? You can move through a gap.” Alice explained, which wasn’t completely accurate, ignored several other ways people used the word gap, but would suffice in the case of one Yukari Yakumo messing with her living room floor. “Where would this gap in my living room lead?”
“Former hell, maybe?”
Aside from the fact that Yukari’s powers did not need to take physicality and space into the equation, and that this gap pit could lead anywhere in existence if it were her doing, Alice did not believe the pit led anywhere, especially not former hell. Which did indeed exist underground right under their feet but was mostly abandoned, therefore ‘former hell’ and not hell.
“Wouldn’t hot air rise up through the pit then?”
“Nah,” Marisa replied, “remember, they got the nuclear furnace under control, so I doubt you’d feel it all the way up here.”
Under control was debatable, but she did have to concede that it was unlikely she would have felt the hell fires roaring in the deepest depth of the underworld. That didn’t make Marisa right though.
“It is not a gap,” Alice insisted.
“How’d you know? Have you gone down there?”
“Of course not,” Alice said. A ridiculous notion. And also should it really lead all the way down to the underworld would have gotten Alice in all kinds of trouble, legally speaking.
“Hm,” Marisa mumbled, “let's see.” She started rummaging in the pockets of her apron, until she pulled out a fist sized rock. With a broad smile she sprang to her feet and walked to the edge of the pit. Alice hurried after her, she almost knocked over the tea mug while doing so, feeling quesier with every step towards the pit. She wondered why Marisa did not seem to harbour any apprehension towards the pit. Did she not feel that uncomfortable twinge every time she looked at it, deep in her gut, squirming with anxiety, like she would be pulled into it should she look at it too long? Or was that just Alice?
“Why do you have rocks in your pockets?” she asked.
“In case I need to prove to people whether something’s a gap or a pit,” Marisa said. “Comes in handy more often than you’d think.”
“You are odd,” Alice said, wondering what other things were hidden in that apron, some mushrooms and twigs most certainly.
Marisa shrugged. “You know what you shouldn’t do in glasshouses with these, right?” she said before leaning over the pit, her hand holding the rock stretched out. Alice cringed, and almost reached out to grab Marisa by her skirt, just to make sure she couldn’t fall into the pit. She refrained from doing so of course. If Marisa wanted to fall to her death into the pit, that was her own fault then. In any case Alice was sure that that weird cat from said former hell would come by to pick up Marisa’s corpse post-haste anyway, so it would clearly not be Alice’s problem. Either way, Marisa dropped the rock right into the pit, listening closely for the tell tale thud of it hitting the ground.
It didn’t come. “See!” Marisa said. “It’s a gap!”
“That proves nothing.” Alice turned back and sat down on the couch again. “It could be just a very deep pit, and if it truly were a gap you might have just dropped a rock on someone’s head, maybe even someone you know.”
“Eh,” Marisa exclaimed and plopped down directly beside Alice. “If I know ’em they can dodge stuff.” Which was probably true, if not a little callous. “Look, if it’s a gap, I’ll just ask Yukari and get it fixed.”
Alice shoved Marisa to the other end of the couch. “How generous. The pit, and it is a pit, got nothing to do with you.” The longer they kept talking about it, the less comfortable Alice felt. Any polite and attentive guest would have picked up on that by now and would have pretended that the pit wasn’t there. They would have changed the topic, maybe talked about the weather, or other meaningless things all unrelated to the pit. “Maybe I don’t want to get it fixed.” In fact Alice simply didn’t want to think about the pit at all.
Ignoring that last statement Marisa asked “What if it becomes an incident?” She was now draped all over the couch, not bothering to sit up again after being shoved, leaned against the arm rest, still way too close for Alice’s comfort who would have gone ahead and changed seats to the armchair if that hadn’t meant losing to Marisa somehow.
“Then I will notify you first,” Alice said. Incidents, as they were called, were an almost formal category of anomalies that happened once in a while when those who could live thousands of years grew a little too bored and caused trouble in ways that affected everyone else a little too much - or to be precise anomalies that annoyed the people who resolved those incidents enough to do something about them. They were mostly solved by humans, two in particular, one sitting right in front of Alice at that moment, though recently it seemed that more and more people tried their hand at resolving incidents. A fact that probably bothered Marisa whose competition grew each year. “You just want a headstart on solving it, don’t you?”
Marisa frowned, but Alice continued, “So far, the pit does not do anything but being there. And if it led somewhere, don’t you think someone would have come through by now?”
“Wait, how long has that pit been here?” Marisa asked. She pulled herself upright by the armrest, giving Alice some more space which she appreciated, just like she appreciated the use of the term pit.
“Well,” Alice said, trying to give herself some more time to think. The pit had just been there one day and as someone who lived quite unrelated to time, as most of her kind did and she had recently started, she had no idea how long it had been since that pit appeared. It hadn’t been there last time Marisa visited, which was probably weeks ago, so that was Alice’s best guess. She simply had no need to track time obsessively like humans did. What did a year matter to someone who could live basically forever? She kept track of seasons for her garden, sometimes she made sure to remember people’s birthday, but then there were times Alice sunk into her studies and forgot what was around her. And now that she didn’t need to sleep or eat, which was something she still habitually did, these times just grew longer and more frequent. She could just stay awake for a week, studying without a break, without eating or sleeping. And then she could also just sleep for a week, it wasn’t like anybody would notice.
“A few weeks, probably,” she admitted.
Marisa groaned. “Just let me fly down there and check,” she said.
“Absolutely not.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” Alice struggled to find a reason, especially one that would convince Marisa. “because it is my pit. And that’s my final word on the matter.” The thought of Marisa flying down that pit caused Alice something like distress, not out of worry for Marisa, let her burn at the stake for all Alice cared, the thought was just unsettling.
Before Marisa could even open her mouth in protest, Alice cut her off “I said final,” she said. Without looking at Marisa she picked up the teacan and filled Marisa’s mug again. “And now drink up your tea.”
Marisa didn’t stay long after that. She drank her tea, nibbled on some of the snacks on the tray, and then took her coat, broom and hat to be on her way. It was a relief after Marisa had so rudely ruined the mood with that pigheaded attitude of hers. They didn’t say much to each other for the rest of the visit, in fact Marisa barely mumbled out a quick “see you around” when she trotted out the door.
A gap, what utter nonsense, Alice seethed even hours later, in fact her ire had only gotten worse since Marisa had left and Alice had not a lot to do but to stew in her indignation. To have the audacity to sulk the rest of the evening as well, honestly, how childish, Alice thought while she paced in her kitchen. Around her the dolls hurried back and forth, scrubbing the tea stains from the porcelain and putting away cleaned dishes. She had thought about making herself some proper dinner, she still liked to eat a proper meal once in a while when it struck her fancy, but her appetite had been thoroughly spoiled after seeing Marisa pout her way through her goodbyes. To make such a scene just because Alice wouldn’t let her stick that snotty nose where it did not belong, it was insufferable, really.
It was then, during an incessant internal tirade, that was of course very much justified, when suddenly one of the mugs crashed to the ground. Right next to Alice it shattered into pieces. Alice flinched, the noise was so high pitched and so unexpected in her house that it made her stagger backwards in surprise. A doll hung in the air, its arms limb. It stared at the mug that had slipped from its grasp. In fact all of the dolls had stopped, they too stared motionless at the remains of the mug.
The kitchen’s wall clock, which ran an hour late and was mostly for decorative purposes, was the only thing that had not frozen, the only source of noise. Tick-tock it made, a spiteful sound that did not stop as Alice stood in her kitchen staring at the shards of the mug. She could not remember the last time one of her dolls had broken something, had in fact just dropped something so carelessly.
“Well,” she barked at the doll, “clean it up already!”
Surprised, the doll teetered in the air, its limbs swaying back and forth. Then it helplessly looked around. “On with it!” Alice clapped her hands, the noise startling herself and in turn her dolls. They stood at attention and then finally started moving again, two dolls immediately getting the dustpan.
Too upset to sleep that night, Alice shut herself inside her study, hunched over her books trying her best not to think about the pit waiting for her in the living room. A task that was made impossible by the army of dolls she had lined up around the pit’s edges, standing to attention, vigilantly guarding the pit. Of course, this was just a precaution, and of course it was not to prevent anything from climbing out of the pit, it was a pit after all, and not a gap., Ibut it was a mere precaution for theforin the more likely case that a certain witch with a predisposition for breaking and entering decided not to heed Alice’s wishes.
This turned out to be unnecessary. The whole night, Alice kept rereading the same five sentences, constantly keeping her dolls on task in the back of her mind, but Marisa never came. She also didn’t come the following night. Or the one after that. And with each night Alice was sure that that one was the one, that Marisa would sneak through a window, broom in hand. She knew Marisa too well, a stubborn oaf who had little regard for others, she was bound to try and investigate the pit.
Very much convinced that she knew her fellow magician colleague, Alice made her dolls guard the pit every night. This in turn meant less sleep for Alice, not that she needed it, a nifty benefit of not being human, but she would rather keep watch, instead of resting a little more and setting up automated guard dolls. As much as Alice loved designing elaborate automata, drafting sheer endless state diagrams until all walls of her rooms were covered in possibilities, she could not leave this to chance. Automata were wonderful for repetitive, monotonous tasks, with expected input and expected output, but sadly humans and everything else alive often behaved in ways Alice could not foresee and tended to break her elegantly designed systems. Another reason to avoid them in Alice’s opinion, people that was, not automata. Making an automaton that could handle the unexpectable input that was Marisa, well Alice was sure making a real autonomous doll was easier than that.
So, Alice, the only autonomous inhabitant of the house, had to keep an eye out. Drinking coffee and black tea to stay alert, as not having to sleep did not mean not having to rest once in a while, a fact Alice pointedly ignored, she always kept the pit in the back of her head, her guarding dolls always at the edges of her thoughts. And maybe, just to distract herself, she might have started designing an automaton for this task anway. As time passed, and exhaustion made more complicated research a hassle, she realised that if she only crammed enough if-else cases into the doll she was bound to cover all possibilities. If that led to every wall in her study and workshop covered in paper, diagrams squiggled all over, it only meant she was on to something, and getting closer to her goal. Only when the thought “Maybe, Marisa has a point with her brute force strategy” popped into her head, just for a split second, she had reconsidered, but then continued anyway having nothing better to do.
She had just prototyped her new doll; it had, to Alice’s immense confusion, immediately thrown itself down the pit, when Marisa showed up again. Not at night, not by climbing through the window, but by knocking at the door. “Wow, leaning into the crazy witch look, huh? Suits you,” Marisa had said, before she strolled into the living room after Alice opened the door. She ignored the army of dolls surrounding the pit, and in fact even ignored the pit, she just made herself comfortable on the couch.
This either meant Marisa had learned some manners ( impossible) , or it meant Marisa was trying to throw Alice off her game. Such tactics might have worked on Marisa’s other marks, but Alice just knew her too well. Even as Marisa left after some tea and a talk about her current research, something ridiculous involving mushrooms, Alice was sure of it. She doubled the dolls on watch that night, and moved her research into the living room, so she was closer to the pit.
Marisa did not appear that night, no, she appeared a few odd days later. Again she did not mention the pit, she just drank tea and ate some snacks, before leaving. This pattern repeated, and each time Alice grew more certain she had looked through Marisa’s plan until at one point Alice spent the nights sitting on the couch waiting for Marisa herself. The frequency of Marisa’s visit had increased, every other day Marisa came by for tea now which meant Marisa had to be planning to strike soon. At least Alice thought so as she stared at the pit every night waiting for the inevitable.
Her new doll, still a little useless, would be ready soon, Alice told herself. Sure, it still ended up running against walls, and sometimes tripped down the pit, but it wouldn’t be long until it was finished and Alice could rest. Not sleep of course, she had no need for that, just some respite. Get some quiet, some peace, and she wouldn’t have to think about the pit ever again, except when she moved around in the living room and had to watch out not to fall into it herself, but otherwise the matter could be laid to rest.
It didn’t take her long to realise how ridiculous that was. In fact it only took one knock on her door one morning, for her little house of dolls to crumble. Because as she opened the door to be faced with someone unexpected, she realised just how many important eventualities she had forgotten.
In front of Alice stood one of the other humans that tended to resolve incidents, in fact it was the one person who was actually supposed to deal with them. The shrine maiden of the Hakurei shrine, Reimu Hakurei herself, dressed in red and white, holding her staff, the one with the white paper streamers attached, at the ready, stood before her. The staff, Alice thought it might be called a gohei but she was not sure, was one of the many weapons Reimu used to exterminate those who opposed her, and Alice, who had lost to Reimu too many times in the shrine maiden’s short life so far, felt her blood run cold.
What a fool Alice was, so incredibly stupid, she reprimanded herself. She had completely disregarded the possibility that Marisa would use her friends, and worst of all her best friend that cursed shrine maiden, as a distraction in her schemes. Such an oversight could have cost Alice dearly. While Alice started estimating how much longer she would need to finish the automaton, speculating for who and how many of Marisa’s friends she would need to account for, then deciding that since Marisa was friendly with almost everyone, it would only make do if she accounted for everyone, Reimu pushed forward into the living room not waiting to be invited in.
Still a little dazed and distracted by dozens of half baked ideas to quickly cover so many people in her contingency plans for the automaton, Alice rushed after Reimu into the living room. Going from basically sitting for weeks, to running after Reimu, was strange. It felt like a bucket of cold water was poured over her, a chill spreading from the back of her head down to her shoulders and spine. One option Alice considered was just blowing up the whole house in case someone tried to enter it. This would cover the pit in debris and wake her up when resting, killing two birds, and possibly a lot more in the explosion, with just one very large doll filled with gunpowder. No matter how many people Marisa asked for help that would probably do the trick, though it would also mean Alice had to build a new house. But a new house wouldn’t have a pit, so that option became more attractive the longer this went on.
When Alice caught up with Reimu who stood two feet away from the pit and was looking around the room, she could have sworn she heard a faint whispered yikes . Surrounding them was Alice’s new research, neatly scattered all over the floor and walls, and if you had asked Alice, she would have insisted that it had a system. Even if it took her half an hour or four to find a specific sheet of notes. The papers and books covered almost all of the surfaces, leaving not a lot of the once immaculately ordered room visible. The upstairs was not much better, neither were the study and workshop, in fact they were a lot worse. Maybe some of the lost humans would have been a little more comfortable now that the dolls were covered up with sheets of paper.
After a quick glance at the pit, Reimu turned around to face Alice. “Aren’t you gonna offer me some tea?” Reimu said, twirling her gohei in one hand.
“What do you want?” Alice asked. With the sound of ruffling paper, many of her dolls dug themselves out Alice’s research, some looking for their weaponry buried underneath some more paper.
“Just checking on you,” Reimu replied. Which was all in all one of the more ridiculous lies Alice had heard in a while. It was up there with the time Marisa had said the same after Alice had demanded to know why she kept visiting so often. “Look, it’s my job to keep an eye out on things like that.”
“This has nothing to do with you,” Alice said. The dolls who readied their weapons twitched, their little heads whirling around between the pit and Reimu. Keeping her attention on Reimu, on moving the dolls, while trying to figure out what Marisa was planning, how this was gonna play out, it was difficult. Her thoughts felt transient, hard to grasp and control, the image of a cotton ball came to her mind and went, only leaving behind the feeling of her skull stuffed with it. Her throat was dry and she swallowed. “This is not an incident,” Alice said finally.
“You are right,” Reimu admitted and Alice was glad that finally somebody spoke some sense. But of course, a but always had to follow, a curious word that always ruined Alice’s mood and usually whatever the person had said before. “But,” Reimu continued, “just because it is not an incident doesn’t mean it is not concerning.”
Alice scoffed, “As long as the pit stays in my house, it’s my business, or am I wrong?”
This was a common mistake Alice seemed to make. There were not a lot of answers to the question ‘Am I wrong?’, and rarely had Alice received the answer she hoped for.
“It’s not just about the pit,” Reimu said. She sighed and looked around some more. Her face morphed into a grimace as her eyes fell onto a little doll that unlike the others held no weapon, and was more interested in the table leg it was running against over and over again. “Is it supposed to do that?”
“Oh-of course, it’s supposed to do that!” Alice exclaimed. She stuttered at first, stumbling through her sentence. With each word she grew louder, putting more force behind her words. “It’s, uhm,” she stumbled again, until she blurted out the first idea she had. It turned out cotton was not very conductive, and not a good material for a brain. “It’s to test the integrity of table legs,” she claimed, effectively ending any integrity her words had, if they had any to begin with.
“Very useful.”
“You would not believe how many accidents happen because of badly constructed table legs.” Naturally Alice knew about such things, unlike Reimu who was clearly uneducated in the finer matters of the magical trade. Certainly not many tables had to endure cauldrons pressing down on them, old dusty tomes stacked on top of them, the weight of their magical power distorting gravity as the table’s legs slowly bent inwards groaning under the stress; until they inevitably collapsed in the middle of an experiment. For magicians this was a real problem, common knowledge among them even, and why Marisa for example did not believe in tables. Should one ever be so unfortunate to end up in that rickety shack Marisa called the ‘Kirisame Magic Shop’ you would not find a lot of tablespace as she preferred to just sit on the ground among her chaotic assortment of things and stuff and knick-knacks, mostly stolen, conducting her experiments on the floor like any good witch worth their salt, or so she claimed. Alice, who refused to be called a witch, also refused to experiment like any good witch worth her salt and stood primly at her tables when working on her new magics. Quite frankly she thought that Marisa’s house was less a house and more a fire hazard masquerading as such.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t,” Reimu said. She walked over to the edge of the pit, after a quick look into its depth, she said to Alice, “ This ,” Reimu gestured around her, “is much worse than I thought.”
“Did Marisa put you up to this?” Alice demanded and would have walked up to Reimu, if only it hadn’t meant walking closer to the pit. Honestly, what was it with Reimu and Marisa, always standing so close to its edge. Alice felt light-headed watching Reimu, the heel of her left foot sticking out over the edge. Yes, Reimu might be able to fly, and maybe falling wasn’t high on Reimu’s list of dangerous things to watch out for, but what if you couldn’t fly in the pit? Had no one ever thought about that? Or what if the ground moved? Alice certainly felt like it could start moving any moment. Really, those two seemed to harbour some not-so secret death wish, never thinking before throwing themselves head first into danger and enemies with powers far beyond their comprehension. One day their luck would run out, and then what? For humans those two really didn’t seem to be aware of their own mortality. And considering the people they surrounded themselves with, they really should be. How could they not constantly ponder their own death, Alice certainly seemed to be the only one worried about it.
“She asked me, yes,” Reimu said but before she could even finish Alice let out a loud and ugly Hah! A string of triumphant I knew it! and the like followed. Then Alice sneered, “So, what are you two planning? Where is she? I told her to leave it alone!”
Even with dozens of pointy little swords directed at her, an army of little combatants who had no capacity for remorse, Reimu was unimpressed. It was hard to take the dolls seriously, not when one of its brethren was ramming its head against a table, but Reimu never had taken Alice all that serious. Much to Alice’s chagrin, it was like Reimu didn’t even know that Alice was 3.5 times as strong as her! Reimu should have at least pretended to be concerned about Alice blasting her with all that magical power, it was the decent thing to do! But decency had nothing to do with that girl, Alice thought. She was rude, and disrespectful, and maybe today was the day Alice would teach her some manners, maybe remind Reimu of that little thing called mortality. Well, maybe she would have to take a nap first, because after she made a step towards Reimu, (and towards that wretched pit!) Alice felt the ground under her feet shift. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought she had stepped right into the pit, into nothing, her brain certainly felt like it was sloshing around her skull, and she had to blink a little before she could regain her bearings. Her stomach turned, and empty as it was, Alice only felt acid crawling up her chest and burning in the back of her throat.
“Are you alright?” Reimu asked, and if Alice hadn’t been so busy feeling like her head was about to make very fast abrupt contact with the floor she could have picked up on the genuine concern in Reimu’s voice. But as it were, Alice was very much distracted trying to force the world around her to stop spinning already. This was of course not Alice’s first rodeo with bad circulation, an almost occupational hazard plaguing many of her colleagues, for which no one had yet found a solution that didn't involve staying hydrated and going outside once a while, but the best researchers were on it and would find one any day now. In the meantime Alice and many other magicians would have to put up with the occasional rendevouz with the ground, but it had been quite some time since Alice actually felt the pull of gravity, dragging her down by the skull, no, by her brain that suddenly felt like it moved on it’s own.
“I am fine,” Alice groaned. Around her the dolls staggered, unable to balance themselves without Alice’s attention. Her eyes tightly shut, Alice took a few deep breaths, and focused only on herself, concentrating the magic that she normally wielded so easily, inward as opposed to outward. With that the dolls, strings not cut, but suddenly loose, dropped to the ground, their little weapons clattering.
“Have you been sleeping enough?” Reimu approached Alice carefully. She was not stupid enough to do something foolish like touching her or even just entering her personal space, so against Alices prior assumption Reimu did seem to be aware of her own mortalitly, and had the semblance of a survival instinct.
“Are you daft?” Alice asked anyway, because apparently Reimu was not smart enough to not ask ridiculous questions. “I am a magician, I don’t need sleep.”
“Are you sure about that?” Any concern Reimu might have harboured had vanished by the time Alice started barking back at her. Alice had an incredible talent in destroying any good will people might have by being horribly condescending. A trait she had picked up in early childhood, when she had learned the alphabet faster than her peers, and then stopped having peers altogether once her magic talent became apparent and she got too busy reciting half understood theorems back to private tutors while children her age where supposed to play. One might think she never really grew out of being a gifted child, even living in places where innate magical ability was the norm as opposed to being something special.
“Of course, I am sure about that!” she said. After another brief second, the world had returned to normal. She felt a little humiliated, showing weakness to the Hakurei Shrine Maiden out of all people, who would also definitely tell Marisa, out of all people. Any threat of using her magic and showing them once and for all, would fall a little flat after seeing her almost faint, and chances were they would respect her claims of vast powers even less. If they ever had. It made her feel like a little girl again, prone in a pile of rubble watching a shrine maiden roughly her age. Their first meeting, a meeting only Alice seemed to remember. A mere human, out of all things, just some human girl, defeating not just her but everyone she knew. Alice did not like this feeling. Silly is how she felt back then, and frustrated; feelings Alice, who took herself just a little too seriously, was not well equipped to handle.
“We are trying to help, you know,” Reimu said. A notion Alice sincerely doubted, if they truly had wanted to help, they would be leaving her alone. Instead they were making it worse, and they had to realise that, and if they just stopped being such busy bodies, Alice could be taking care of this on her own. Instead of dealing with the pit, she was distracted trying to prevent Marisa, and now even Reimu, from messing with it. So far, their help had just been bothering her, showing up at her home unannounced and demanding tea. How was that supposed to fix the pit?
Alice laughed, as haughtily as she could, salvaging some of her pride. She said, “Helping? Me? With what, annoying me? Then you two certainly have been a big help.”
As a shrine maiden Reimu’s capacity for patience was a seemingly never ending stream of deep breaths, composure and serenity. She was after all the one who floated through life, dodging bullets and hardships by virtue of this one trait, her tranquillity, she was, by nature, far above being petty. She had to be. Her day to day was a constant barrage of little things, no donations, unruly fairies or the time it wouldn’t stop snowing because someone decided to steal spring which was something you could do apparently. With every little thing, Reimu’s life became busier, messier, as the sources for trouble seemed to grow exponentially with every incident solved, one thing always leading to another, and competition for the few donations of the humans becoming harsher with every buddhist nun with a flying ship that came onto the scene. Reimu had to be above pettiness, she was in fact raised to be above pettiness, and rash decisions, or anger issues. Patience was in fact not just a virtue but a necessity, when one of your few mentors since infancy was a speaking turtle, who spoke as slowly one might imagine. Yes, it might not be immediately apparent when Reimu beat up anyone she came across resolving an incident, but this was all part of going with the flow, it was floating through life, it was in fact rolling with the punches.
“Alright, we are annoying, huh?” Reimu said and if Alice had the survival instinct she claimed Reimu lacked, she likely would have known that this was not an actual question, and would not have replied, “Very much so.”
Alice, by all accounts an incredibly intelligent young woman, should have known, that of course, Reimu’s patience could not be infinite, as so far something truly infinite had not been discovered, and today was also not going to be the day of such a discovery either. “You know, she is actually worried.” Reimu walked up to Alice, any respect for personal space disregarded. “But, sure, tough love it is then.”
“You've got two weeks to fix this. Otherwise," Reimu continued, and then with a whoosh swung her gohei at Alice. She jabbed it into Alice's cheek punctuating every word with it. "I will. You hear me?"
Now, normally Alice would not let such disrespect stand, not from anyone, not even from the Hakurei shrine maiden, especially not from the Hakurei shrine maiden actually. After all, Alice reminded herself, Reimu was only 0.28571428571 times as strong as her. She might have lost to Reimu before but that was because she had miscalculated, probably rounded a decimal wrong or something, and the first two times didn’t count either, and who even kept score about such things.
As much as Alice would have liked to snap the gohei stabbing her in the face in half, she recognized, or some deeply buried survival instinct told her, that at her current level of exhaustion, multiplied with the fact that she was unprepared, Reimu was more likely going to snap her in half. Being very much attached to the idea of being in one piece, Alice only shrunk back, balling her fists, and biting down any smart comeback. Not that she was in the condition to come up with any.
“Two weeks,” Reimu repeated and then with an almost cheerful “see you then,” and a fully intact gohei, Reimu left a stunned Alice staring after her. Reimu had come and gone in less than half an hour, just waltzed right through Alice’s meticulously curated schematics, piles of paper, research and diagrams for an honestly impossible automaton, and made any such plans absolutely pointless anyway.
Now a doomsday clock ticked away, as Alice dropped down on the floor amidst her dolls. She had no idea how to fix the pit, something Reimu seemed to consider somehow secondary to fixing the pit. She was hurt in both pride and those remaining scraps of dignity, those scraps that one could still have after staying awake for weeks and covering her whole house in ridiculous flow charts and ideas, that now that she looked at them again, head still a little spinning, were not just far-fetched but also illegible. A little voice in her head whispered to her, that all of this could still work, that this was a smoke-screen to lower her guard, thinking she had two weeks time just for Marisa and Reimu to strike at any moment. But this was the same voice that had driven this mad rush trying to make the automaton, the one that had thought that maybe Marisa’s brute force approach had a point. That voice was not to be trusted.
After what felt like hours, sitting there, glaring at misspelt notes scattered around, Alice found some motivation. She was not going to let that stupid shrine maiden, or that stupid silly looking excuse for a witch, show up and solve this for her. She was gonna fix this, right now, out of spite, just to show them. She could do that, she didn’t need their help, everything was fine, she was after all a talented magician, a once in a generation certified wunderkind, those two humans would eat their words. Well, hopefully, she still felt a little weird. Looking at the pit was not unlike the fit of vertigo she had suffered earlier. The immediate impulse to just go back, work on the automaton, and not look at the pit, or deal with the pit, was overwhelming. In fact, she would have rather just left, gone anywhere, it didn’t matter as long as the pit wasn’t there. She couldn’t remember the last time she left the house. She probably looked dreadful. When was the last time she had taken the time to brush her hair? A few days ago perhaps?
With one hand Alice tried to untangle knots in her hair, suddenly unable to stand it, with the other she started to pick up the sheets of paper around her. She pulled harshly at the strands of hair, frustrated with it. With every knot untangled a strange pressure spread from her chest. Every noise, every feeling, the tugging of her hair on her scalp, the resistance of the knots, even just the feeling of her clothing hanging from her shoulders, it was all too much. Impatient she ripped harder, flinching as she forcefully pulled out a knot.
Fixated on her hair she did not notice the automaton that was aimlessly looking for new things to run against. It found a new target in Alice’s shin. Alice loved her dolls, every single one of them, even those she blew up or sent into battle, she loved them all the same. With great care she would tidy up their hair after battle, she would wash their dresses, most of her time in the workshop was spent maintaining the dolls she had. What use was creating new things, new dolls, when she could not care enough to treat those she had properly, love them properly. And yet, as the automaton collided with her shin, for one moment, she could not bring herself to care.
A rush of anger took hold of her. But the doll just didn’t stop. Again and again it banged its head against her shin. It did not hurt, not really, but it was annoying. Which was worse. Because everything was just so annoying. So frustrating. She kicked the doll across the room. And as she watched the doll tumbling through the room, and then falling down the pit, something she herself had made, something she was supposed to care for…
She dropped the papers and rushed over to the edge of the pit. It was a pit after all, down there, her doll had to be, with the other prototypes and Marisa’s stupid rock.
All she had to do was float down there. It would be easy. It was nothing to be afraid of, no matter how dark or how deep it was. She knew so many spells and enchantments, nothing down there could harm her. Not really, right? And yet it felt like the one thing that could actually truly hurt waited down there, and if she went down there, and acknowledged this pit and the darkness within it, all would be over. She would never get out again, lost in its depth.
Alice was a coward, always had been. Being a coward could be a good thing, being a coward only meant she was careful, she planned ahead and considered all the angles first. She avoided new things and changes, yes, but wasn’t that natural, didn’t that just make her smarter than others, like Marisa who seemed to never think twice about anything. Perhaps to give herself a moment to reconsider, or perhaps to swallow the fear creeping up her chest, she had her dolls bring her a lantern and after some long deliberation, trying to drag it out as much as she could, she made them fetch one of her coats. But even the warmest coat would not protect her from the strange cold that made her shiver as she approached the edge of the pit. Still, she wrapped the coat around her body and then, the lantern gripped tightly, made the first step.
Now, if you had asked Marisa Kirisame why she was so concerned about some stupid pit, the real answer was of course that she wasn’t. What she was concerned about was the deranged person who lived with said pit. The moment Alice had steadfastly refused to investigate a ridiculously large pit in the middle of her own living room, Marisa knew that this was bad news. Something just rubbed her the wrong way and while she did not have Reimu’s gift of almost magical intuition, it only took one look at Alice’s completely dishevelled appearance a week or so later to confirm that it was really bad news. Though maybe not in the usual sense of bad news, like most incidents were, no, it was bad news in a different, more annoying way. It wasn’t gonna bother anybody but Alice, in fact it was an incident only about Alice and therefore was bound to be infuriating in ways yet unknown to mankind, and Marisa, too curious for her own good, was gonna find out all the ways this was going to be trouble.
Shoot first, ask questions later, was how Reimu and her usually resolved such things. It was a proven method, and had not failed them so far, but with this one Marisa was stumped. She could shoot Alice, she guessed, but somehow she doubted that would do much to help. She was severely tempted though, and would definitely do so once all of this was over, just a little at least. Shooting at the pit also didn’t seem to be the ticket either. This issue required a more subtle approach, and while Marisa was indeed known for her flashy magics, violently large lasers and other such things, Marisa was also a thief. She knew how to case a place.
Casing a place was mostly about patience, a trait people rarely associated with her. Marisa liked it that way, people underestimating just how patient she could be, how long she could bide her time. They did not realise that her magic was all about patience. Born horribly untalented, not gifted with prodigy or the blessings of one god or another, Marisa worked herself up there, experimenting and studying. The end result was flashy, the end result Marisa wielded without much of a second thought, but the way there, that’s where she was patient. And she could be patient now. Even if it was getting progressively harder, as she grew convinced Alice was really losing the thread. There was awkward, something Marisa was used to with Alice, and then there was sitting in Alice’s living room being served tea that had been steeped way too long, among sheets of paper with incomprehensible notes while Alice, dark circles under her eyes, stared at her, the only sound the almost rhythmic bang of that one strange doll running into the wall repeatedly. Marisa also was pretty sure that on the notes strewn across the room she had spotted at least two that had little margin doodles of a witch being burned at the stake by an army of dolls.
Surrounded by the unmistakable landscape of Alice’s complete and utter mental breakdown, even someone like Marisa, who prided herself in her conversational skills, struggled making small talk. It was one thing to convince someone that, no, she was just borrowing these things, really, swallow a thousand needles and so on, and wasn’t she just a tiny human who’d die next week or so anyway, and another thing to deal with Alice and the two tiny songbirds Marisa was sure were nesting in her hair by now. A silver tongue, and a compulsion to lie and tell tall tales had somehow always served Marisa well, but right now it was not getting her far.
After a few visits Marisa realised that this probably wasn’t something she could solve. Some more research, a few talks with a fellow magician or two, and yep, this was definitely not something Marisa could fix. In fact it was not something to solve at all. Casing the place, as Marisa called it, did not get her the solution she had hoped but she still went and visited Alice anyway, just to make sure, well, that she hadn’t fallen down the pit or something. And hey, maybe she was helping by visiting? Marisa knew Alice always enjoyed it when she dropped by. Even a shut-in like her was happy to spend some time with someone who wasn’t attached to strings, you know, a person. And Marisa was good at it too, being a person, but most importantly she was good at spending time with Alice. A notoriously difficult and rare skill that required just the right balance of teasing, play-fighting and being knowledgeable about all the obscure things Alice was interested in. Luckily Marisa liked all those things, but she knew she was a bit of an exception. Visits were like little well rehearsed dances, following the same beats and patterns and on days they stumbled and fell out of sync, for those Marisa had a few tricks up her sleeve. When it got too weird, it just needed the right teasing remark, doing just the right thing to infuriate Alice enough to fall back into this easy rhythm. Marisa was after all patient, and had learned all the ways Alice ticked. Marisa knew by heart those little nooks and crannies of Alice’s personality. And most importantly Marisa knew those lines Alice had drawn around her and to not cross them, at least not while Alice was looking. It was a bit like magic Marisa supposed, it took a while to figure it out, but you just needed to know how and casting a spell or being with Alice was the most natural thing in the world.
Well, that pit had certainly thrown a wrench into Marisa’s finely tuned machine, the almost watchmaker-like manner she had dissected being with Alice and the flow of the time they spent together. It was more than just frustrating, it was in fact, and Marisa would only admit this under duress, concerning. Which was why she ended up taking her last resort: Asking Reimu for help. Something Marisa only begrudgingly did, and quickly came to regret. Marisa wasn’t sure what she had imagined would happen. Maybe, she thought, Reimu would tell Alice a few kind words, some good advice even. Maybe Alice would open up towards Reimu, those two were something like friends after all, and Reimu, Reimu was good at fixing things even things Marisa couldn’t. That Marisa had entertained such delusions should have been a clear sign that she was desperate at this point.
It figured Marisa shouldn’t have sent the girl raised by a talking turtle. The situation was delicate, it required tact and a sensitive touch, things not found in a turtle’s curriculum. Frankly, Marisa insisted, this was not on her, sure Marisa should have known better, but could she have known Reimu would just straight up threaten Alice? No. Threatening, Marisa could have done that herself. But what was done was done. Never send a shrine maiden to do a witches job or so went the old adage Marisa just made up in her head as she reached Alice’s front porch.
She just wanted to survey the damage. When she had seen Alice yesterday, it had been pretty dire, her eyes had been twitching funny the whole time and when Marisa had gently tried to ask her if she was alright, she had flipped out on her. It had stung a little when Alice had laughed at her concern. So, she would just take a quick peek, a quick check up just to make sure Alice wasn’t completely losing it. But maybe she should wait until tomorrow, Marisa thought. Two visitors in a day? Alice would surely hate that. Really, best to just leave it be for a bit, give Alice some room to breathe. Marisa was already halfway back on her broom, ready to scutter away as fast she could, when that annoying little voice kept nagging her. It wasn’t her conscience, heaven’s no, she had gotten rid of that when she was 8. What it actually was, and this was how Marisa would describe it, was concern, naturally not like concern for another person, but for herself. If Alice was in a bad way, well that would suck for Marisa. That’s what it was about, Alice being sad was annoying for Marisa, it wasn’t fun to bicker with someone like that. So, despite wanting to be anywhere else at that moment, Marisa knocked on the door.
She pressed her ear against the door, no sound of footsteps, not even the tell-tale noise of dolls bustling about. That was troubling. Marisa knocked a little louder. And then again, this time her balled fist banging against the wood.
“Alice? You there?”
Normally she would have already invited herself in, but Marisa hesitated. Maybe Alice went out? Maybe Reimu’s method worked and Alice was on her way to the Hakurei shrine or something? Or well, maybe it didn’t work and Alice was on her way to the shrine to pick a fight. Maybe it was best to head back to the shrine herself. All very unlikely, regardless how much Marisa wished them to be the case.
A deep breath later, Marisa pushed open the door. “Alice?” she called out. Carefully she entered the house. Looking around she walked on her tiptoes, hunched over, quiet as a mouse. Dread pooled in her stomach and she wondered if that was how Alice felt, as she approached the living room and the pit that ought to be in there.
But, there was no pit in the living room when Marisa got there. Where the pit had been just a while ago, was just Alice’s living room carpet, like the pit had never been there. The only sign that Marisa had not imagined it all were the notes covering the floor, and a bunch of dolls lying around, unmoving. And then there was Alice. Alice, who sat in front of her sofa, her legs pulled close to her chest, arms wrapped around them, her shoulders shaking. The sound of quiet sobs filled the room.
“Oh,” Marisa mumbled. Had she seen Alice cry before? Perhaps, but not like this. The sound of heartbreak that reached Marisa’s ears, that sound she had never heard before. And did not wish to hear. Slowly she walked up to Alice, who, face buried in her arms, had not seen her yet. How awful it must be for Alice, Marisa thought, always so prideful, to be rendered so helpless, sitting on the floor sobbing, no control, no way to stop, not even noticing someone entering the room.
If Marisa had struggled finding the right words before, now she was at a complete loss. “Hey,” she said, dragging the word out, stretching it into a distorted attempt at comfort. Marisa was so many things, but she never had been gentle, did not really know how and never had a need to be. Quick-witted and charming, pretty smiles, always the right words, deflections and ice-breakers, those were things she knew. She was the fun one, the one you asked for help when you had to bury a body, a partner in crime. But there were no bodies to bury, no heist or adventure, no battle of wits, no, it was just Alice, no defences, no banter, just Alice and those tears Marisa did not know how to stop, did not know how to make better. All those lines Alice had drawn were smudged and blurred, leaving behind only those things Marisa did not know. Those things she had only ever suspected, and caught tiny glimpses of during the time they had spent together. It had to happen eventually, all of this, Marisa had known that. Maybe she had hoped it would all smooth over, that it wouldn’t get this bad, but she had seen it coming all the same, and yet she had not been prepared for it.
Alice, who looked so much like her dolls, with a face too symmetrical and features so fine, looked up at Marisa. And what a terrible sight Alice was now. Her eyes, that had been bloodshot before, were swollen, little vines spreading and flooding them with a bright red. Tears kept running down blotchy cheeks, with snot all over her face. Alice gasped something, her voice straining under the weight of the sobs that swallowed her words.
“Went down the rabbit hole, hm?” Marisa said and what followed was the most horrid, loudest sob Marisa had heard. She flinched. “Got it, got it, no puns, I promise,” she added as she kneeled down beside her. Slowly Marisa reached out. It was tempting, Marisa could just pull her close, press Alice against her shoulder, muffling the sound of heartache, her face hidden in Marisa’s shirt. Then Marisa wouldn't have to look at her and bear the feeling rising up in her chest as she watched Alice heave with sobs, struggling to breathe between the tears. Then Marisa wouldn’t have to say much, could avoid saying the wrong things, not make mistakes that felt inevitable. It would be so much easier. But Alice did not like being touched, Marisa knew that too. She dropped her hand back to her side. Oh, how nice it would have been if Alice could have been spared this, if Alice could have just continued like always, never looking into the depth of that dreaded pit, but it did not work like that now, did it. And no hug could soothe the pain so transparent on Alice’s face. Neither could words. Maybe time would, eventually, but Marisa was not sure.
“It's all your fault,” Alice cried. The words nor the glare she shot Marisa had any bite to them though, as Alice strained to get comprehensible words out, with no anger left to hide behind.
“Hmh,” Marisa responded. She smiled at Alice.
“I hate you,” Alice said. “You and Reimu,” she claimed, before she started sobbing again.
“Hmh.”
“Stupid shrine maiden,” Alice forced out.
“Hmh, yeah, Reimu’s pretty stupid.” Marisa said. Again she felt tempted. She wanted to ruffle through Alice’s hair maybe, something Alice hated, and then maybe Alice would snap at her like always, same old Alice. If only. “How are you feeling?,” she asked instead.
“Don’t make fun of me,” Alice said. She sniffled, and then wiped her face against the fabric of her skirt. Hands grasping her legs tightly, she pulled them even closer.
“I’m not," Marisa assured her, speaking as softly as she could. “Do you still have some of those pills to help you sleep?” She had seen Alice take them once or twice, discreetly, after a long night of research, but had never mentioned it to her or asked her why she took them, acknowledging them as one of those lines not to cross. Marisa had wondered about them of course, but tried not to think too much about them.
Alice nodded. “In my nightstand,” she mumbled.
“Alright,” Marisa said. “I am gonna go get’em. Don’t worry, won’t touch anything else.” But much to her surprise, Alice did not interrupt her to object, but just nodded again. Maybe, it meant that Alice knew Marisa wouldn’t lie to her right now, not like that. Far more likely it meant that Alice was too exhausted to argue, but Marisa liked to think it was the former.
As promised, Marisa got up and went upstairs to fetch the pills. The house was quiet without the constant noise of dolls toiling away one chore or another, sewing machines rattering about or the sound of a teapot whistling on the stove. Buried in sheets of paper with lifeless dolls slumped all over, Alice’s house was barely recognizable. The house that was once so familiar lay completely still now, a stranger to Marisa. Yet, despite everything, it was always going to be the same house, she just had to look closely. Marisa still knew which stairs creaked and to avoid, nothing had changed about that. For so long she had come and gone as she pleased, pilfering things here and there, and she did so, much more often than Marisa realised. In fact she stole much more things than Alice suspected, little things, things Alice would think she must have misplaced, a sewing needle, a wristband, a pen, a towel, meaningless, non-magical things and those she rarely returned. The pen was her favourite, she used it to write notes around Alice who had so far never noticed, which made it even better. And sometimes she would take things, not because she wanted them, but just because they were noticeable enough that Alice had to know who took it, a book, a magical item displayed prominently. It was a bad habit, but if Alice had truly not wanted her in this house, there would have been magical wards, something to keep her out or at least try to keep her out. A magician's house, a magician’s lair was most precious, and usually filled with traps, defences and most importantly secrets. It was the guarded sanctuary in which they conducted their research. But for Marisa there never were no wards, no spells to bar her entry. It was all part of their little games, wasn’t it? Marisa coming and going, taking and leaving, sometimes returning, Alice’s quiet consent as her house welcomed her every time.
It did not take long to find the small glass bottle filled with pills. It was half full, and just where Alice had said it was. Alice’s bedroom was untouched, with the bed neatly made, the blankets folded perfectly edge to edge and the pillows arranged against the headboard. The room appeared unused and the dust had settled on top of the shelves. With the pills in her pocket, Marisa walked up to the window. Its curtains were drawn shut. Pushing the handle upwards first, a little trick Marisa had picked up a while ago, she pulled it open. She would really need to tell Alice to get the window frame fixed, the one in the kitchen too, it was also constantly jammed. Or maybe she should fix it up herself at some point, she thought, fixing a jammed window or two, that couldn’t be too hard. She grabbed a blanket and pillow after ridding them of the thin cover of dust and then headed downstairs again.
Before Marisa had even reached the living room she could hear the sobs again. “Jeez,” Marisa announced herself loudly as she entered, but Alice barely reacted. “And here I thought, you had calmed down a bit.” How many tears did that girl have in her? Marisa walked up to the couch, and then demonstratively spread the blanket across it, flinging the pillow against an arm rest.
Alice sniffled, still refusing to look up to Marisa. “Come on now,” Marisa said and put down the bottle of pills on the coffee table. “You gotta be exhausted,” she said. “I am making some tea, and get you a glass of water, alright?”
“I can do that myself,” Alice mumbled. Then peeking out from behind her knees, she weakly raised her arms. Around them the dolls stirred, twichting here and there. It was a sad sight. Alice could barely have them stand, they wobbled around and fell back on their butt the moment she had them walk. The ensuing wails were unbearable.
“Don’t worry about it,” Marisa tried her best to console her. Not an easy task considering just how humiliating that must have been. In fact, it was so embarrassing Marisa herself cringed audibly, eesh! , which probably hadn’t helped. “After a nap, you’ll feel better.”
Alice struggled to speak between waves of tears, and then asked quietly, with a voice that sounded too earnest to not hurt Marisa a little. “Promise?”
“Hm, I think so,” Marisa said. She sat down on the armrest and patted the spot beside her. “It will probably still suck a lot, though.” Honesty was quite overrated in Marisa’s opinion, a little lie here and there, it greased the wheels and smoothed out those edges of social interactions. Lying also made life more fun. Right now, though, Marisa would try honesty, just for a while.
“It won’t go away, will it,” Alice snivelled while she dragged herself up the couch. It looked like it took quite a bit of effort. Immediately she pulled the blanket up her chin and wrapped it around herself. She did not look at Marisa, her gaze was fixed on the living room floor.
When Marisa didn’t respond, the weeping got louder again. Alice oscillated between hurt pride and blubbering like a child. A horrible combination and just a little too fitting for Alice, which made it almost endearing, if Marisa hadn’t known better. The next few weeks Alice would be insufferably prissy, making up for all that hurt pride in record time. Annoying as that was going to be, Marisa had thick skin, and it was funny to watch Alice bluster her way through lectures on Marisa’s magical imagined ineptitude, chest puffed out like a particularly condescending pigeon. Another very Alice thing, one Marisa strangely enough looked forward too.
“It will get easier though,” Marisa said. Carefully she reached over to adjust the blanket around Alice's shoulder. “Next time, it won’t be half as bad.” And, oh, how much Marisa hoped that to be true. Looking at Alice so miserable, Marisa never wanted to do it again. But that did not matter, the dread lying in the depth of that pit, it was part of this house, it was part of Alice. Whether they pretended not to notice or not, the pit would always be there.
“Next time,” Marisa said and stared up at the ceiling, “next time, when it gets bad, before you go down there, can you tell me?” It was a lot to ask, more so from someone like Alice. But if Alice would have her, would dare to invite Marisa to step beyond those lines she had drawn between them, how could Marisa say no. Even if there was little Marisa could do to soothe the hurt, even if only once in a while, just when it got truly hard to bear, wouldn’t it be much less scary with Marisa around? For the both of them?
She did not wait for an answer. The answer did not matter anyway, after all what was this request if not a promise. A promise Marisa might not have been brave enough to speak out loud, at least not yet. And until then they would continue, masquerading and playing pretend, until they could face the realities of the unspoken promises and wishes they kept secret from another.
When Marisa had finished making tea, one of the few things they both understood, a language they shared, Alice had already fallen asleep. The glass of water Marisa had brought before getting the kettle had been emptied, and the bottle of pills still left open. Placing the cups as quietly as she could on the table, Marisa sat down next to Alice on the edge of the sofa, careful not to disturb her too much. Alice’s sleep despite the medicine, despite the exhaustion was not peaceful, she turned and twisted, and croaked illegible things in her sleep, but it would make do for now. Once again Marisa reached over to adjust the blanket, pulling it over Alice’s shoulder where it had slipped off and tucking it slightly underneath Alice. This time, instead of pulling away, Marisa allowed herself one indulgence, a small one: just this once, Marisa let her hand rest on Alice’s shoulder, just for a little longer than she had to, just for herself.
From time to time Alice would wake up. Disoriented she would mumble things that barely made sense until she would sniffle again and her shoulders shake with sobs that just kept on coming. Then she would fall asleep again. Marisa did not know how long it would be until all tears were spent, but, it did not matter, Marisa had nowhere else to be right now but besides Alice. She would stick around, maybe clean up the mess in the living room, read a book, so whenever Alice would wake up Marisa would be there, a fresh cup of tea at the ready.