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Her name was Sua.
She was a doll, carved and made into perfection. Dressed up prettily under too many layers of lace, her skin almost porcelain. But drop a doll too many times and inevitably, it cracks. Broken, then haphazardly glued back together again, the ugly cracks dusted over with powder.
She was made to be pretty, to entertain. Her voice was beautiful, they’d told her. She was a doll who could sing.
But maybe, she wasn’t a doll at the start. She didn’t know, she couldn't remember. Couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it was that she lost herself and all that she could feel was a hazy nothingness. It was slow at first, her human self slipping inch by inch into the deep waters of oblivion until she didn’t know when it was that she was fully submerged. She didn’t try to combat it and slowly, it became easier to forget she existed. To pretend that all she was was a doll, sitting on the shelf, feeling nothing.
Time slipped by faster that way, she found. Hours spent staring blankly at the wall flowed smoothly into days, weeks, years. Her body moved automatically, like a puppet on strings and suddenly, she could do whatever they’d tell her to do without feeling. It was a bliss emptiness, as if she was floating through space, where nothing could trap her in anymore.
Yes, she was an obedient doll, that was all she was.
A clawed hand glittering with rings grabbing the top of her head, shoving her into a glass container. The iciness of the glass, the chill that seeped into her dress, her body becoming numb, she could barely feel it.
Anakt Garden. The best music education system and highest survival rates. She was to pass and eventually win Alien Stage, to bring prestige to her owners.
It was for humans, not for dolls, and she was no human. But she was a doll that could sing. She doubted she could compete with real humans and win but it didn’t really matter anymore. A doll’s death never really mattered.
The stars glittered against the black skies, so close yet so far away. Maybe she could get her pieces scattered into the universe, turned into a thousand stars that would eventually fade. She felt her head lean against the cool glass. Soon enough, time would flow and she’d forget and everything wouldn’t matter anymore.
Then, her eyes slid up and there were a pair of eyes the colour of gold staring back at her, a girl’s face pressed onto the glass between their compartments.
She could vaguely remember there was a flower called clematis. It was in the corners of her owners’ huge greenhouses, the small plant blooming during winter, filling the area with a unique citrusy scent that stood out in the midst of the sickeningly sweet scent of artificial flowers. She had heard her owners prattling about it to visitors, about how it was one of the rare few plants salvaged from earth. They symbolise something that was ‘beauty of the heart’, she recalled. She had never really paid much attention to it.
That girl was like that flower. She looked like she wore her heart on her sleeve, the plaintive loneliness evident in her clear, innocent eyes, stray tears sliding down her cheeks as her eyes glimmered in fascination. She looked so, so humane and it was the most beautiful thing Sua had ever seen.
Ah, that’s right, the doll had a name.
Sua. Her name was Sua.
Slowly, Sua raised her hand to the place where the girl’s hand was, imagining the phantom warmth travelling through the glass. It was the hardest thing she’d ever done and she felt as if her limbs weren’t her own, disjointed, out of place, foreign. There were no strings attached to it this time, no owner telling her what to do. It was her, Sua, who moved.
Not Sua the doll, but maybe, just maybe, it was Sua the human.
She stared into the girl’s eyes that were a dazzling gold and it was like staring into the brightest star, shining so bright they could outshine the sun.
Beautiful .
Then,
Click, click, click.
Slowly, the glass compartments started to slide past each other, going in opposite directions. The girl’s golden eyes widened and she gasped, hands pressing harder on the glass.
Sua didn’t know when it was that she had stood up, hands placed on the cold glass where the girl’s hands were placed.
Ah. She could feel it. Little by little, her body was coming back to her. She could begin to feel the thin fabric of the soft, frilly dress on her skin, the coldness of the glass her fingers were touching, the piercing silence inside the little compartment.
Sua watched as the girl tried to reach out, only to be stopped by the glass between them that refused to budge. The girl’s hands clenched and as the compartments drifted apart further, tears started rolling down her cheeks and onto the glass, her shoulders shaking as she cried. She then unclenched her hand and waved to Sua with a sorrowful expression.
Sua lifted her hand from the glass and waved back slowly.
It felt more like a promise than a goodbye.
They would meet again, she was sure of it. And perhaps she would be the one who reached out towards Sua who was submerged in the dark, muddied waters, a hand that was willing to pull her back into the light. A saviour.
The girl’s figure became smaller and smaller, yet Sua could still see the liquid gold of her eyes glimmering in the darkness.
And then Sua felt something. Something she hadn’t felt in so long, something buried so deep that she didn’t recognize what it was at first.
Hope. A small flower blooming in the abyss, fighting the endless dark.