homoonicidal:
Not human? That couldn’t possibly be true. The only non humans around here were herself, Marie, and monsters. And a few stray Angels still milling around. Eve didn’t detect anything irregular from Dorothy. Heck, she didn’t give off the same feeling the Witches did. The Witches had this special aura to them, like Eve could pick out which ones were hers. Or so they were until Alto came along and tuned them away. Totally not bitter about that. Nope. Not. At. All.
But the fact still remained that Dorothy was human, and if she wasn’t she did a brilliant job of masking it so that Mother Qualia couldn’t even tell. “Dorothy, I don’t understand. I can’t sense any magic from you. If not human then what are you?”
She was pleased Dorothy liked the qualia she just made, but Eve couldn’t help but feel a lot more apprehensive as soon as it was out of her hands. That qualia was new with fresh power probably begging to be released. She only made it for the sake of a demonstration and intended on either hiding it in her room or destroying it (probably the former, she would hate to get rid of the first qualia to be seen in a few millennia). Qualias would only work with highly empathetic girls and Eve had a feeling Dorothy didn’t have much empathy in her. Especially if she had a thing for slicing and mincing other people up.
Technically Eve didn’t have to worry about Dorothy keeping it. But she had an ominous feeling about letting Dorothy have it. What did Eve value more, making a friend and risking something awful, or yanking it out of her hands and ruining any chance at bonding?
…This definitely wasn’t going to end well.
“…I don’t see why not. Please be careful with it, though. I shouldn’t be making qualias out of boredom so let’s keep this a secret between us, okay? … That’s the blood qualia. First qualia to be made in thousands of years. I hope you understand how important it is to take care of. It’s not an ordinary shiny object.”
“What are you talking about? Of course I don’t have any magic! I’m not a witch like Hilda or the others grouped together with those weird knights, and I would’ve thought you of all people would know that without a doubt! Looks like I was wrong, though.~” With a casual shrug, the menacing edge to Dorothy’s smile returned, almost as if it had never disappeared in the first place. When she opened her mouth again to answer Eve’s question, she spoke with an eerie calm. She’d explained her existence before, and after years of believing what she was about say, it came as naturally as if she were still talking about her clothes or perhaps what she wanted to eat for dinner. To her, it was nothing more than the harsh truth.
“It’s pretty simple, actually. I’m a doll. I’ve been a doll since the day I was abandoned and became an orphan. That’s what people always told me over and over, and I eventually realized they were right. That’s why so many people hate me—I’m not human. I’m a doll.”
Peering down at the new qualia in her grasp, she let it drop back into her palm once it seemed cool enough that it would no longer burn her or her gloves. It really was beautiful—easily just as pretty as any of Hilda’s crystals, though those would always hold a special place in her heart for one particular reason. This new qualia was now special to her too; a gift from a new...friend? Could she really trust Eve that much? She had so many reasons not to—especially since Eve was the one she and the other Harbingers had been trying to stop for so long. But...things were different now, she supposed, and besides that, she didn’t have to completely trust the other girl in order to keep a secret.
“Hmm...okay.~ I’ll keep it a secret, but only because that means no one will try to take it away from me. I won’t let anyone else have it!” It was tempting to put the cord of it around her neck as an easy way to hide the qualia under her clothes and keep it safe, but since she needed to hide both the jewel and its cord, that would mean lowering her hood—something she refused to do out in the open. For the time being, she curled up her fingers and closed them around the crystal, covering it with the help of her gloves.
“Don’t worry.~ It’s too cute for me to just lose it somewhere and forget about it. Besides, it can’t turn me into a witch, if that’s what you’re so worried about. It wouldn’t work on a doll like me.” That was the whole reason she wasn’t apprehensive about holding the qualia in the first place. In a way, it represented everything Hilda had fought against until recently, which should have made her wary of it. But it didn’t.
As awesome and powerful as the blood qualia sounded—not to mention how unbelievably cute it was—she was certain that there was no way it could ever choose her.
