Oscar was only half-listening to the explanation, truth be told: he could stand very seriously on his audience dais, nodding his head and stroking his beard, pretending the obnoxious little man’s obvious attempts at ingratiation weren’t nails on a chalkboard to him, but he could not lend the clattering chatterbox more than half an ear. He was significantly more interested in the living rag doll standing by, looking back out at him from a pair of shiny button eyes. They don’t make things like that back home, that’s for damn sure! The doll-girl shifted and moved and blinked like a real one, but not: there was nothing human about her, nothing living, yet she was alive! A true marvel! The wonders of this big, bright, beautiful, fantastical, magical, gullible little land seem they will never cease!
Then the doll-girl snickered. The incessant idiot beside her flicked the wand and she went stumbling. More, she fell to the floor, and shortly began to scream. Oscar watched in stunned silence, both eyebrows raised: the dolt flicked the wand again and the girl stopped screaming and all but leapt back up to her feet. Now THAT was interesting. Do doll-people feel pain? They must, from the way she screamed, but somehow that seemed…wrong.
Oscar fixed his best, brightest smile on his face when the blowhard started wrapping things up, presenting him with potions and explaining the girl’s uses, and her name. Oscar took the bag of potions and picked a few up, holding them to the light and examining them as the man kept going. And going. And going. Wasn’t he wrapping things up? When he finally did, Oscar nodded graciously, setting the potions on his belt and coming forward to warmly shake the other man’s hand.
“Oh, she is a doll! —Hah, and, uh, a patchwork girl to boot, huh? What fun, what fun! I so, so appreciate this…generous bestowment. My first in all of Oz! Isn’t that fun? Well. My first that, uh, wasn’t a City. Or a Palace. Or the, uh, the recent changes in local government. My first living bestowment!” Oscar—Oz—laughs and claps the man on the back, leading him out of the audience room almost chummily. “Really, Pickt, I appreciate it! And I look forward to seeing you and the, uh, and the missus around sometime, hmm?, maybe after…after construction on the Palace is done, huh?” Oz will never invite this man back into his Palace. Not unless his doll proves problematic…or too useful to be the only one around.
Oz claps him on the back and delivers Pickt into the hands of his attendants, then turns and—the doll is turned around and staring at him with those glossy, unsettling buttons. The door shuts behind him and Oz scratches his cheek, slowly walking back towards the patchwork girl and giving her a close study. She looked like any other doll, if perhaps a bit overgrown; if it weren’t for the small signs of living, the shifting of an animate body, Oz might never have guessed…. How useful of a tool such a thing could be, if not too common here in the land of Oz. And they can’t be too common, after all: this is the first living object he’s met in his time here. He’s met Animals and now he’s meeting…Things? Objects, with a capital O? Whatever they’re called, they offer a whole stupendous world of possibilities….
Oz’s smile comes back, fixed to be slightly less dazzling than before: Object or not, this is a person, and Oz has always been a people-person. Different people need different speeds, different styles, different smiles: Pickt needed to feel important, special, chosen by someone of undeniable consequence for something, and so he got clearly false smiles meant to dazzle like cheap sequins. The doll just finished being bodily flung in all directions, and if there was anything more than stuffing in that head of hers, she would be cautious of him. (More people probably should be, frankly, but that’s neither here nor there.) So Oz’s smile for her is softer, less outwardly performative; he slows into his rolling country gait as he approaches her again, considering how best to handle this.
First thing’s first. Can she speak? Cleaning, maid work, desk work—no indication. Pickt mentioned helping with memory, but that doesn’t mean speech would be her vehicle for that.
“Well!” Oz claps his hands together loudly, stopping right in front of her. “Wow. Wowee, wow, wow, wow! Y’know, I’ve been told—I’ve been told I like the sound of my own voice, but THAT guy! On and on and on, yeesh. I, uh, I gotta admit, I tuned most of it out. What do I call you again, doll? —Oh, that’s not offensive, is it? ‘Doll’? I’ll—I’ll put a pause to that one, best of my ability, been doing that since—well! Since before I blew in here, that’s for sure!”
