A doll, made of steel, porcelain, brass, hard unrelenting materials that you could hit as hard as you'd like, and even if its porcelain chipped, she would still be more than functional. Its joints and mechanisms redundant, hydraulic systems doubled for reliability, core, synchronized and double calculated for stability. The most reliable system the woman had ever seen. Every joint precision ground. Every bearing press fit into a shock resistant housing. Even it's feet were custom made of hardened stainless steel, each toe and fastener made from a milled block of hardened steel, tamper resistant, naturally. But even as she marveled at the doll, she wondered who'd made such a thing so seemingly delicate in nature, a maid as its dress suggested, so reliable and damage resistant, why ruggedize something made to dust the frames of a house it might never see the outside of?
But that was the confusing part. The machine refused to function, it simply laid there, unmoving, unclicking, dead as if its mainspring had never been wound. Every mechanism she inspected was free of dust, every hydraulically actuated ligament pressurized correctly, it was the most peculiar thing.
But it still acted as if something were wrong. She scratched her head, clearly she were missing something. When it had arrived at her door, it had collapsed on the ground, with a note in its hand begging her to fix the thing. But she ran a leather workshop and the only possible piece of leather she could find was the belt affixing the dolls dress to its waist.
But still, she had once been a mechanic, so she began looking into the doll's problems. Off came the arms, legs, paneling. Still nothing revealed itself. She found its cores, humming magically, seals still intact, both of them synchronized by the most meticulous set of gearing she'd ever laid eyes on. But it was meticulously clean, as if it had never seen a speck of dirt in its life.
Eventually she reassembled the doll, dress and all, before noticing something, a small, well worn ring of parts around the dolls neck. The brass was shiny while the rest had acquired that patena that signified not wear or misuse, but age. Everything bore use, although still it was meticulously cleaned. But not this small stripe of doll around it's neck.
About an inch and a half wide, all the way around, and only in the one spot. She puzzled for a moment, before finally understanding that it wasn't something inside the doll that had broken, but something that it was missing.
She set to work, pulling out her leather working tools and creating a plain black collar. Set with steel hardware and a small brass lock in the back. As she placed the collar on the dollar, it's eyes began to glow again, she sat back, smiled and enjoyed her work for a moment while the doll began to smile.
A sharp rap on the door broke her from the trance of having done good work, and as she opened it a witch stepped in.
"thank you dear, I'm afraid she simply won't work without it, and she went running off to find you before I could stop her. It seems to be in lovely working order now, thank you"
The rudeness of the witch, barging into her workspace without even asking bothered the woman, but the audacity stunned her more than anything.
"How could you let such a thing happen. Arent you supposed to protect such a thing?"
She said this with anger, brows furrowed as clearly this was something a responsible witch would never let happen, she opened her mouth to continue before the witch interrupted her.
"What you see before you is something I have spent longer than you have been alive creating. Every gear, joint, bearing, bone, and set screw has been meticulously created with the precision that would rival anything you've ever done. I use my design as an act of love. I am no leatherworker as my doll knows, and she knows I'd never let something less than perfect grace her body. So she came here, the workshop that held your mother, all those years ago, who created the collar that helped the doll become what she is. She came to the one place in the world she saw as suitable to create what she needed most, the last token of love she could possibly give me, the final gift she could give of the free will she had after her last collar was ripped from her by someone trying to 'set her free from slavery'"
"The gift of her service, and a show of giving me back what others thought was forced from her. It was her choice, to never choose again. And I love her more than I could ever say."
