Adam Sol

Albion

5/17/2024 10:52pm

"MA MAAAAAAAA"

"Pull the plug!" Florence Twofoot cried. "The Doll Bosses will hear!"

"MA MAaaaaa....."

The giant haunted doll dwindled to back to sleep like a set of deflating bagpipes.

"Well now we know the bellows work," I said.

"They won't do her any good if she can't stay on her feet."

"Which would be a lot easier if we went with more legs."

"No. She needs to be just like in the blueprints. Bipedal."

"She'd be scarier with four legs. Or just a bunch of squirming agitators. Like a star fish."

"Creating a race of abominations would be worse that what we have now. Just go with the traditional design."

"Your plans include no requirements for the brain."

"You've been inside their heads. You know there's nothing there."

"I've found things. Dead spiders. Sometimes a note."

"The doll body is only a vessel. What inhabits it..."

We both shudder.

"Is what crawls inside," we both said.

Albion

1/25/2024 10:34pm

Florence Twofoot's blueprints were disturbing. The kind of thing passed around at criminal science parties while inhaling noxious fumes. Not that I would know anything about that. They went against every grain of our instruction, our oath. The kind of thing confiscated by the Oracular.

"You drew these? Yourself?" I asked.

Florence had seen the same kinds of drawings I had, at one time or another. The kind of thing you didn't talk about. And she a doctor.

"Do you see another way out?" she asked. "We'll never see that shore leave on Peppermint Bay. They won't stop till we've all died from malnutrition or gone mad."

She was already clearly mad. But she wasn't wrong.

Albion

7/4/2023 9:51am

I curate the doll parts library on the Albion. When @Florence Twofoot needs a part, she comes down into my part of the hold. Not even the haunted dolls come down this far.

"Evening, Adam."

"Evening Florence."

Florence rummages through the bins... we don't really have great names for all the odds and ends. Screwfoot Hing, Big Ball Little Ball, Septum Rodgerious... we amuse each other with our creative nomenclature. But it makes organizing them a challenge. It's more about shapes and morphology and a story being told.

And when I think about these broken and disused doll parts, I almost remember another story. A sad one, about a desert, and great insects, and sweets and beauty and a lost friend...