Lil Alien

Absolute babies

The same as always, this place.This smell.This sound. The familiarity of it all was comforting yet nauseating, oddly enough. But who was he to care? A doll, a mere decoration. Never with a name, never with a will. He was called “La Poupée Chantante” by those who knew him- The Singing Doll.

In the home of the aristocratic Fontaine family, he stood still. As if frozen in time, there he stayed on a golden pedestal. Not regarded as a living being, the family kept him there as a treasure. Originally, he was created by Estienne Fontaine. Estienne was an elderly man, the patriarch of the family. Estienne created the doll to resemble a son he lost at a young age, making the doll appear as how he imagined his son to look at an age he would have been at the doll’s creation. 

The doll was loved, cherished by this man, called Perrin as that was the name of the child who passed. He doesn’t have much memory from back then, as eventually he was injured in an accident when the two went horse riding in the nearby forests. Estienne fixed him up, making him as good as new, but he lost all memories from before the accident except the little he was told by the rest of the family- little stories here and there, how Estienne loved him like he was truly his lost son. Unfortunately Estienne passed not long after, leaving the estate- and the doll- in the hands of Fernand Fontaine. Fernand didn’t feel the same love for the doll as his father did- instead, he felt a good bit of resentment. Rather than treating him as part of the family, as Estienne did, Fernand attached the doll to a large golden pedestal in their ballroom. He instructed the doll, forcing him to become only a decoration and entertainment for their guests. This was when he became La Poupée Chantante. The family had become much less honorable since the patriarch’s death. Estienne was a man of honor, keeping the family in line. Now he was gone. The Fontaine family held parties and balls frequently, much to the doll’s chagrin. He never spoke, as he knew the consequences of doing so, but he felt humiliated. They were disrespecting both him and Estienne, but what could he truly do? So there he stood. Occasionally during these parties, guests and members of the family would request songs from him- giving him specific songs to sing or allowing him to choose his own. The latter was much more rare. He always chose a specific lullaby- one that the matriarch, Odette Fontaine, would always sing to him when he would worry or become distressed. Singing it would calm him down, but never rescued him as much as he wished it would. Eventually, after one of these many parties, the estate was quiet. It was dark. He, as usual, stood on the pedestal and stared into space. The doll was frustrated- uncertain of what he could truly do other than wait. Thankfully most of the children of Fernand and his passive wife, Marguerite, were sympathetic towards him. They would often visit and speak with him, not exactly treating him the way his creator and his wife did but much kinder and more compassionate than their parents. He told them stories of their grandparents and himself, giving them fairytales he was told, and listened to them when they wanted to vent their woes or just have someone to talk to. That night, however, something broke the patterns he had grown used to. 

Perhaps he should have been a guard instead. 

He felt a presence, immediately turning his head towards it. A man. He carried with him a large bag, dressed in all black with his face covered for the most part. He had a belt which carried tools, but even that was oddly quiet. The only reason he was remotely caught must have been the doll’s hypervigilance and over familiarity with even the air within the estate. The two stared at each other, one being unable to move and the other choosing not to. The thief then noticed that this man wasn’t just a man, but a doll- perhaps some sort of odd construct he barely understood? But this doll looked weary and worn. Adorned with extravagant clothes but with a look on his face that told him just how much he hated his role. Something in the thief pulled him towards the doll and he went over slowly, cautiously. The two spoke; the doll told the thief of his predicament, and the thief took pity on the doll. Together, the two outcasts figured out the mechanism that kept the doll in place and he felt himself finally freed of his prison. Once outside, the doll looked towards the moon- full and surrounded by a halo of light. After a moment of relishing in its light, the thief broke the silence. “Come, we can’t stay here.” “We?” The doll’s voice rang out- confused and in disbelief. “Yes, we. Let’s go.” And so it began, the new chapter in his novel. He was taken to the thief’s home, nicknamed Aube. There, he helped around the home while the thief went out on his… “errands.” Thankfully, he was far enough away from the Fontaine family that it was unlikely he would be found. All was well and Aube got into tinkering, making little gadgets. Some helped the thief, Papillon Dubois, in his career choice, both what he had by day- a tailor- and what he did at night. Aube enjoyed his life and the thief acted as an older brother for the doll. However, the peace didn’t last forever.