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The warrior watches the sleeping puppet, its features as ethereal as her eternal paradise.
The warrior closes her eyes and starts to pray, until she remembers the one she wants to pray to died in her arms. So she forgoes prayer and enters the puppet’s consciousness. It is a space dark and empty as the cosmos above, except for the single being lying in the middle.
She approaches it with alert.
The creature is crying, tears steadily rolling down their vacant, porcelain face, small body contorting as shivers wrack its tender spine.
“For whom do you shed your tears?” the warrior asks.
“For myself,” replies the puppet.
“I am Ei.”
The puppet ignores her, and sniffs. “Oh! there is so much emptiness in my chest, and yet it is full. And this place . . . there is nothing, and yet there is everything.”
The warrior is taken aback by her creation. She wanted them to be sensitive and moral like any other natural human, but she feels the fragility of their mind. She takes a step closer and it feels like she is walking on a brittle, frozen pond.
“I created you and I am your God. This place is your mind. It will remain empty unless I give you instructions. Your body is empty because I did not give you a heart.”
The puppet looks at her and puts a hand over their chest where their heart should be. “My God, why have you created such an ironic being? One who lacks a heart, a soul, but still has divinity flowing through one’s veins? What a cruel existence it is to be an oxymoron . . .”
The warrior doubts they would be a fit vessel. She conjures some electro crystalflies to calm them down and leaves their consciousness as quickly as she came.
When she comes back, an upright fox is with her.
“Why don’t you just give them your ‘heart’ anyway?” she asks. “You don’t seem to care about it.”
“As much as I would love to get rid of that ill-fated gift, I fear what they could do with it.”
The fox sighs, closes her eyes, and transports to the vessel’s mind with the shogun.
The puppet is not crying anymore. Instead they are running and jumping across the emptiness like an energetic child. They wave their hands over their head and sometimes clasp them together at floating purple dots, which only makes the dots fly away faster.
Upon seeing the warrior and the fox, the puppet turns. Their expression is blank and perfect, but their body bounds over to them as if they were excited. They offer two conjoined fists.
“Look!” they announce. “I caught so many crystalflies.”
They open their fists slightly to reveal several glowing purple butterflies. Their wings are as delicate and lovely as silk, yet none have a crystalline heart, because there is no energy in the realm for them to absorb.
“They are so beautiful. I do so love the way their lights blink, going in and out, in and out. And oh! how they never stop moving. Their roaming little feet tickle my hands too.”
The fox giggles, endeared.
“If you want,” says the warrior, watching as one crystalfly crawls out of the puppet’s palm and over their fingers, much to their joy, “I can create a jar with a lid so you can always keep them close.”
The puppet shakes their head. “No no, I only hold them for a little bit, then I let them fly away again. It would be so cruel of me to keep them locked away like that. No freedom to fly or to learn or to grow.”
She stares, confused. “But I will put little holes in the lid so they would still be able to breathe. It is not cruel to keep someone safe. You are supposed to protect what you love.”
The vessel considers this. “Yes, I suppose. But are you truly living if you are only breathing? Are we, currently existing in my subconsciousness, alive if we have no tangible bodies here therefore breathing does not affect us? No, I can assure you the crystalflies would not be happy imprisoned in a jar. They may be safe and free from pain, but who are we to decide another’s pain?”
The fox is uncharacteristically quiet. She simply smiles at them.
The vessel decides to ignore the two and goes back to catching and releasing electro crystalflies.
The warrior turns to her. “What do you think?”
The fox laughs. “I do not think they are a very good candidate for your plan either. I suppose you will have to terminate them. Divine power like that can’t go left unchecked.”
“Yes, but . . . I don’t want to destroy them. Perhaps I can simply suppress it and wake them up.”
“Do what you want my lovely Ei, I have never been able to stop you.”
The shogun blinks, the fox is gone, and the puppet does not seem to care.
The puppet awoke and shed tears. A light hovered over them but it was not the soft light of the small crystalflies. Instead it was a large and harsh and white light, white like the folds that swaddled their body. It came from a lantern attached to the ceiling, and the puppet nearly panicked thinking there were crystalflies trapped inside holding it up.
“You may leave now,” said a voice.
The puppet kneeled, sniffling. “My God, My God, why have you awakened me?”
“It would have been cruel of me to keep you locked up in your empty mind, so I am letting you go. You are no longer my ward, and you may go wherever you want and be whoever you want.”
“What a horrible fate!” they cried. “What would a mechanical being such as me want to be? Who would accept a human lacking heart and ambition? Oh! a machine without a job is no more useful than the splinters of wood floating in the sea that cradles our islands.”
The puppet truly tugged on the warrior’s own battered heartstrings, but she knew she must stay resolute.
“The time has passed. Do not fret, my porcelain child. No matter how far you must travel—whether it be through the windswept eaves, between the snowkissed mountains, into the airless gorges, or beyond the spires of stone—you shall find your keep and your heart.”
The puppet, knowing they had lost, stood up, placed a hand over their chest, and nodded their head.
“Well, I shall go then. Farewell, Mother.”
With that, they left the palace.