It feels more foreign than your room at Garreg Mach. Made only marginally easier by the days you have forced yourself to lay down your head before, you look up at the sparkle-speckled ceiling, an unfamiliar pillow touching the back of your neck. Fabric and possessions should hold heat, but your mind still tells you that the pillow is cool, that it is not worn in the same ways as the one you left behind, and that it holds you, still holds you, still holds you by the nape of your neck.
--evidently you shift dramatically without knowing it, your head light enough to drift away, tethered only by your soft, stubby paws that all bunch together at the end of the shelf. Dust catches the little end wisps of your fur, short and off-black from all the dirt you've diligently caught, and because you haven't any buttons no one notices when you brush a little bit of your shelf clean in that spot right between your feet.
"Don't your teeth hurt?" You ask the Nutcracker one day. You've seen many more seasons than him, but your fur is still soft and your seams all in place, because the Lady has never Loved you, while the paint on his face is all faded. Elsewhere it flakes away entirely -- you think he has been Loved so worn as to reveal long slivers of the patterns of his wood.
"So what?" He barks back, gnashing his teeth, and there you see the wood is loose and almost splintered. The Lady is never kind when she handles him, crushing all manner of fragile thing between his wooden jaws. "Doesn't matter."
"Doesn't matter," the Porcelain Doll agrees, standing proudest and tallest of all of you. She is a well-made, wonderful thing; her limbs are all separately attached so they move and hold their pose, and she's painted as pretty as anything. The Lady loves her the most, so all her broken chips are hidden under fancy clothing.
You don't know what to say to them, so you don't say anything at all. Some days the Lady uses the Nutcracker for the reason she bought him; one day though, she pulls the head off a hollow wooden doll and sticks it in his mouth, and when she forces his jaws together it shatters and sticks in his head. The little pieces push some of the wood apart, but the Lady grins. She does it again a few days later, and again the day after that, and each time she grins when a head buckles and pops.
And one day when his half-split jaw is full of littler wooden picks like teeth, he tries to crush one more fragile little thing and it splinters his head entirely. The Lady scoffs, tossing the pieces of him into the fireplace.
It's a very loud fire, hissing and spitting even though it has a hearth of its own. The Lady grabs you and the Porcelain doll and holds you both in front of it. The heat feels like it'll melt your round bead-eyes, and a few cinders catch your paws and the Porcelain Doll's pretty hair.
"Look at it," the Lady sneers. "Useless thing."
"Useless thing," the Porcelain Doll agrees, but the Lady doesn't Love her enough to hear her.
The Lady picks you up more often once the Nutcracker is gone, and your off-black fur turns dark again. All the dust gets shaken loose, but a bit of stuffing peeks out that cinder-burnt hole each time, too. Sometimes you hear the Lady grumble about how shoddily you were made before turning and preening over the Porcelain Doll's beautiful eyes and glossy hair. There's a hole in your paw, and a few of your stitches have popped, and there's cinder flecks in the Porcelain Doll's dresses, too. The Lady has a sewing kit that sits in the corner; you've never seen her use it before.
"Aren't you sad?" You ask the Porcelain Doll one day, when the chips in her porcelain have started becoming little cracks, and one of her limbs doesn't fit her the way it used to. She looks at you and sees your loose stitches and patchy fur, and exults in how she's been Loved the most.
"Her praise makes me happy," the Porcelain Doll sighs in bliss, the breeze whistling through her knee. And indeed the Lady praises her: she praises her nice hair, her decently painted left eye, the way those cheap tin soldiers crumple beneath her shoes, and the Porcelain Doll is as happy as ever.
You don't know how to ask her if your praise would make her happy, too, so you don't ask anything at all. There's a ribbon tied to the end of your tail, the only shiny thing you still have, taken from the string of that expensive-looking hat she had when the Lady first bought her -- the one that she threw away. The ribbon came loose, and since the Porcelain Doll had no hat to draw it through, she supposed that you could have it instead.
You had never received a present before, and so you Loved it, and you Love it still, and you gave her a bell from a collar you don't have anymore. Now you sit on the shelf where the firelight doesn't reach, and the Porcelain Doll never sees that the ribbon is still tied to your tail. She is always looking forward when the Lady picks her up, smiling so prettily as tin wails underfoot.
And one day when her legs groan like chalk and shed sprinklings of dust, she tries to stomp one more tin soldier and falls the rest of the way apart. The Lady scoffs, kicking pieces of her away with her foot.
The shelf is empty, and the fire is faint, and now that there is nothing else left the Lady picks you up by the back of your neck and looks at you. She looks at your soft fur; she looks at the bits of stuffing peeking out of your paw; she looks at your raggedy stitches, and that shiny ribbon still tied to your tail.
"Look at you," the Lady sniffs. "Useless thing."
You are no good for crushing, and you are no good for breaking. You are no good for anything at all, and so the Lady throws you at the window of her darkened house. If you were porcelain you would have shattered; if you were wooden you would have broken the pane and landed in shards of glass; but you are velveteen, even if your fur is not as soft as it used to be, and you lay limply abandoned on the windowsill.
Would she have left you if she Loved you?
You wonder this as you lay there, dark and cold. But you wonder about many other things, too, now that you see the world outside for the first time. You wonder about stars, little pinpricks of light. You had never known there could be bright things in the dark, things that shone without hurting, for all you had ever known was the shelf and the dark; the Lady and the fire.
And morning, when everything outside the window turns light, and you can see all sorts of pretty things you'd never seen before: birds singing and taking flight, or dewdrops kissing blades of grass, or that many-hued light that warms without burning.
And then-- a boy. He spies you slumped against the window and ventures closer. He looks at you and your worn fur, your tattered paw, your frayed stitches, and a ribbon that must have been Loved. Tap-tap -- just twice, carefully with callused hands, he knocks upon your window.
"Cat," he says quite plainly, "This house is abandoned." The boy has a stern face, but there is something in his eyes you cannot name, for if you had known it once you've long forgotten now.
"Are you sad?" The Boy asks you, but you have never been asked before, so you do not know what to say.
"Does it hurt?" He asks again, looking at your paw, but you have never been answered before, so you do not know what to say.
"Cat," he says quite kindly, "I'll come and get you."
The Boy leaves the door open when he walks in, a breeze stirring in the stale, cold house, and holds you in his careful, callused hands with plenty room to breathe. From the first safe place you've ever known, you glance back at where you used to be, the barest glimpse of an old bell shining on the shelf.
