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@stutter-stop
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Danse Macabre >> Dottie & Henry
Flesh and bone and intelligent, as Henry saw it, the big strong man headed for the living quarters of the carnival. His arms swung at his sides and his burly chest thrust out. He held his head high as he walked, his feet beating a heavy rhythm against the dirt pathway. People moved around him, but Henry paid no attention to the peons. These mundane people were so much less — less — than he was. Did any of them know? Could they see what he was as they walked past him? A little girl tittered into her hand and gestured at him. Her mother whisked her away in the other direction. Henry still wore his costume from that night. Of course there would be whispers. Strong Man was barely clothed.
A boy stopped. He tugged on his mother’s hand. The boy carried a little book, and he waved it at Henry. Henry stopped, pausing on the dirt tract. His brows furrowed together and he reached for the book without hesitation. What was this? The boy thrust a pen toward him, and Henry took it. Autograph? This boy wanted his autograph. Scribbling his name on the paper, Henry thrust it back to the boy. He went on walking. Boys took up too much time. Kids were a pain. Better things occupied his mind.Â
So lost in thought was he that Henry nearly tripped over Dottie as she gesticulated. He frowned. Automatons had no reason to be busy. Useful, perhaps, but not busy in this way. With his hand raised, Henry dropped it down, aiming to drop it onto her head. That should stop her. If he hit her on the head, it should stop her. Hitting Marni on the head made Marni stop. Some of the time. Not always: Sometimes Marni didn’t stop at all. Dottie would stop if he hit her though. She would stop, and he would laugh. "Automatons not so smart," he grunted as he watched to see what she would do.
The hand that came down on her head did not crack the porcelain or ivory or whatever was used for Dottie's skull. She could never remember which was which, not for her skull anyway. In order to find out, Dottie would need extended time to examine herself in a mirror closely, as she could only feel surface imperfections, rather than materials.
Still, it sent her collapsing to the ground with a sharp crack as her chin collided with earth. Her eyelids flicked open with a whispered click, and the feet in her line of vision were familiar. It took a second...the strongman! Mister Hopper, hello!
With clicks and stops, Dottie tried to get to her feet to greet him. Her knee caught on the way up, however. Dottie had to fight to get it straight, but, this time, it would not budge. Her eyelids clicked as they opened and shut, as she blinked to express her confusion and discomfort. Not pain though, Dottie told herself. Not pain. She was not alive, and, therefore, she could not feel pain no matter how hard she fought with her joints.
Damozel || Dottie & Tanya
The wind ruffled Tanya’s dark hair, disordering what she had taken so long to curl and put into place. Instead of her work-clothes, plain pink or sea-foam green or white with pastel stars paired with sensible comfortable shoes, Tanya had chosen to wear what she thought of as a romantic, slightly collegiate ensemble: a tea-brown skirt, nylons, a creamy, fluffy sweater, and pale milk-colored coat. She had hovered over her sink for an hour, maybe, leaning deep into the mirror with an eyeliner pencil and wadded up tissue soaked in make-up remover. Tanya had liked her face when she had left her apartment. She was not so sure now.
She had suffered through Halloween, unreasonably bitter that she had missed the opening of the carnival, and heard about it later. Tanya reminded herself of her obligations. A good heroine suffered trials; she seemed to welcome them. Tanya’s footsteps crunched over the gravel and leaves. The walk lead her past St. Anthony’s, lit up, fractionally on the first floor only. It was only about eight in the evening.
Not everyone had gone to the opening, surely—but by the time Tanya had a night to herself, it seemed that everyone had already gone and seen the sights—everyone had one thousand stories to tell, and much of what she finally heard was so contradictory and strange that it seemed like a torture not to be able to. Her curiosity burned. She was not satisfied with her maze-walking. There was only one dark presence there.
Here, passing under the threshold, there was a multiplicity. Mesmerized by the light and color and sound, Tanya stood, lost for choice, unable to decide where to go or what to do first. Her flesh prickled, from the chill or the wonder. She exhaled, uncertain, every angle thick with possibility.Â
Dottie swept, as always. She was playing a game with herself tonight, how many things she could find on the ground alone, and then she would sweep it into dark corners that Dottie couldn't see. It didn't matter if other people could see the things - garbage, teeth, dead animals - so long as she couldn't. That meant they were hidden. That meant she could come back later and count them all up to figure out just how much she had found.Â
It didn't even occur to her that someone else might move it before the night was up or that the dogs might sniff them out as well. But the more she swept, the more her spine relaxed itself so that Dottie was all but hunched over by the time she reached the front gates - the end of the first round of her game.
Someone stood there without friends or family or anyone else. What a pretty someone it was, though there was no way of knowing whether she was real or not. Sometimes Miss Cruentifer liked to play tricks like making up people and faces. It could be a test for the performers to see how well the perform, or sometimes just making the visitors to think that there are more people than there are. Still, this person was very pretty and had such lovely hair. Dottie wished she could see the person properly without craning her neck, as she swept closer to the front gate.
It occured to her much too late that she could indeed to that, and click-clacked and creaked until she stood upright, posture perfect and pointed. A final click to straighten her head, and Dottie could see the girl properly.
Danse Macabre >> Open
Morning was rearing its colorless head. Patrons were sleepy-eyed now, and the carnival was all but ending for the night. It was thirty minutes until last call - last chance to ride a ride or play a game before the park closed fifteen minutes after that. And that was fifteen minutes exactly - anyone who was found inside the gates after that quarter of an hour then belonged to the Carnival.
It was at this time that Dottie finally poked her dark little head out from back stage. She checked to make sure no-one was near, and then went back inside for just a moment to pick up her things. She still moved gracefully, as gracefully as she could with her stutter-stop motions and her click-clack joints and the sound of metal scraping against something inside her because it had fallen a bit and now it did not work properly.
Her broom was perhaps the most common thing Dottie could be seen holding, aside from an old lace parasol that matched her dress. Dottie slept things from the dirt off to the side and into bins or under tents or other places where trash and bones and bits of body would not be seen. She picked up coins and pocketed them, to be given to someone later because money was always meant to go to someone important, or else they would go without the important things, and she would hate for that to happen.
Children passed by with their parents, sleepy-eyed or already asleep entirely. Some limped home, having accidentally smashed their foot with a hammer or gotten hit by a stray dart. As people passed, Dottie got distracted. She imagined for a moment that she was flesh. That she was not a stutter-stop girl of brasswork and glasswork, but a real thing who could dance and dream and feel. She was an automaton, Dottie told herself far too often. She could not feel, and, more than that, she could not dream.
Then what might you call this? She asked herself in her mind. Dottie assumed the stance of what she thought a very wise and scholarly person might say, and gesticulated to show what she meant, so that the curious automaton she "spoke" to would know exactly her meaning.
Well, I...I do not know what I call it, sir scholar! She replied to herself. At this, she turned to face the other direction, to be the other half of the conversation and assumed a more effeminate and demure stance.
Back and forth, back and forth the automaton held a conversation about what she might call these odd things she thinks, and though she got absolutely nowhere, Dottie still found herself feeling very intelligent indeed. If automatons could be intelligent. She had the habit of getting so very wrapped up in these conversations of hers that it was almost impossible to notice someone coming near her. And this time was no exception.
Danse macabre, Op. 40 - written in 1874 by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. The title of Danse macabre is usually translated as Dance of Death, but it’s sometimes also called Ghoulish Dance or Dance of Grim Humor, among others. Image: Les feuilles mortes by Spanish-Mexican para-surrealist painter Remedios Varo.
According to legend, “Death” appears at midnight every year on Halloween. Death calls forth the dead from their graves to dance their dance of death for him while he plays his fiddle (here represented by a solo violin). His skeletons dance for him until the rooster crows at dawn, when they must return to their graves until the next year.

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Instrumentalist
Dottie can play the harp, piano, flute, and violin. Or, at least, she used to be able to. She still knows how to play, but her joints will have to be repaired or rebuilt before she can play any instrument at all.
The young engineer spent a small fortune acquiring teachers for her to learn to play for his grandmother. Because she remembers everything when she is working properly, this only took a few months to do
[Pachelbel in D]: Rago and Dottie
“For you,” he grunted in a low,  hoarse voice, impatiently waving the gift in the air. Why did pack not take the metal? Did she not want to be fixed? Did she enjoy the rustyoldworndecay smell? Or could she not smell her stink or hear her creaks and squeaks or the ticks-ticks-ticks of something broken? Pack’s eyes looked happy, but her body did not it looked old and tired and he did not like it.Â
Maybe all Pack needed was a meal to fill her empty tummy. He could not hear the food sounds in her body that others had - could not hear the warm, slimy organs move - so she had not eaten. He would fix that. He would always fix Pack.Â
He turned to leave and took a few steps towards the outsidebigopenspacetorunandhunt before he felt the cold of the wire in his hand. Pack needed that. Pack needed to be fixed. Metal and then food to fill her up until he could hear the food sounds. Walking over to Pack he reached out and grabbed her wrist, intent on placing the piece of wire in her grasp.Â
“Metal, then food,” he explained, his seldom used voice slowly and painfully forming the words needed. “Metal then food then sleep. Then Pack better.”Â
Oh! Yes, of course! How silly of her to have forgotten that he was here for her. Dottie placed her duster on the table and click-clack reached out for the wire, admiring it for a moment before bending down to hide it in her dress, fiddling with nothing to make it look as though she was fiddling with her own wirework. The wire would be placed in her box of things she loved later on. Every piece of scrap Rago had brought her was now in Dottie's box, and every piece she treasured. Even if they were useless, he had taken the time to bring her things. And, if she had emotions and the ability to speak, Dottie would tell him she loved him for it.
Food and sleep, Rago said. If she had a heart, it would be breaking now at the thought. Then again, if she had a heart, perhaps she wouldn't have to be upset in the first place, because those with hearts needed food and sleep. They could do something about food and sleep, whether they wanted or needed it or not. Dottie had no heart, and so she had no use for food. Sleep was a foreign concept to her. Something other people did, while she sat or went around and worked. But sleep was a funny thing - what use did  people have for lying still with their eyes closed for hours on end? Dottie had sat by and studied sleepers endlessly in days past. And she had come up with no plausible theories to speak of. Oh well. Real people were strange things. They had emotions and thoughts and purposes and the like. Dottie Doo was, of course, simply Dottie Doo, and she had nothing to do other than make sure no-one was unhappy.
Her eyes grew sad as he grabbed her. Dottie did not know how to tell Rago she was not alive. She could hardly write, and she was sure he could not read. Still, she did not fight him. Rago was so very important to her, and she hoped he would not be able to see the sadness in her eyes because she could not do what he wanted. And that was to get better.
Objects
Dottie has a collection of many things she finds odd, or unusual, that she hides in a puzzle box near-impossible for her to open. They consist mainly of rubber stamps, glass bottles, cutlery, earrings, and matchboxes that she picked up off the ground over the years, as well as the wires and gears Rago gives to her. The box itself is usually hidden beneath her other things - brooms and nets and things that are used for cleaning and rearranging - because Dottie fears that someone else might want to take them, and, as devoted as she is to the carnival, she likes to have things for herself every now and then, too.
[Pachelbel in D]: Dottie & Puck
Cats were ethereal. It was a sudden, uncomfortable thought that bled through from some darker part of Pucks mind, making him shiver with discomfort and distaste. They had no real substance, even in their most corporeal forms, and he knew that cats could come and go as they pleased, always leaving some sort of havoc behind them. He turned to Dottie, his brow furrowing in annoyance. "Gone," he said irritably. "The cat is gone."
Puck couldn’t decide if this was Dottie’s fault or the cat’s fault, but Dottie was present and much easier to blame than the creature that had already escaped. Surely it couldn’t be his fault for being too terrified of the creature to dispose of it himself. Cats scared Puck and therefore he had gone to someone he trusted to take care of the problem, but she had fallen down on the job. The motion of Dottie’s joints meant nothing at all to Puck. Her joints were her concern and if they didn’t move fast enough, perhaps she needed to have them fixed.
He failed to see her as a machine, but he also avoided any notion at all that there was the possibility that Dottie felt emotion or thought beyond the ability to do tasks. She was, after all, a slave. No: He couldn’t think like that. To think of her as slave meant that he was a slave to Madame Cruentifer and that thought made Puck freeze in his place. The thought slithered into one of the holes in his mind, occupying a blank memory-space and then disappearing, and he turned to raise his eyebrows at Dottie. "Well? Find it."
The cat could only have gone to so many places. Perhaps he was going to need to find one of the ghosts to find out where the cats went when they weren’t in his tent. Their disappearance to an ethereal realm made more sense, but it would be too disrespectful of him to go to one of them and demand the removal of the cat. No, Dottie had to be his first choice, every time. "Find the cat. Make it go away. Permanently." He waved at her, dismissing her on one hand, though his mind was also curious to know where Dottie went when she shut down, and she could be fun to play with.Â
Send her to find a cat. That, by itself, was a special sort of game. He grinned. The cat didn’t even exist on this plane and he could have Dottie chasing it all night long and into the day!
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Oh. Oh! The cat was gone! How silly of her to think it would still be here! Dottie nodded her tick-tock nod to show she understood. Dottie bent to gather the net up in her arms once again, ignoring the fabric getting bunched up in between her elbow joints. The "skin" covering them had worn away years ago, leaving gaps where the metal skeleton showed through. It also made a perfect place for fabric to get stuck and caught in between the porcelain and ivory plates. Dottie disliked very few things, but that was one of them. However, cats were far more important. Cats were bad. Fabric was simply an inconvenience.
As fast as she could gather the net, it seemed it would never be fast enough. Puck had already given her another order by the time she was only half done with gathering up the net, and it pained her to know she could not be faster for puck. Dottie would search for the cat until she forgot what she was looking for - it was bound to happen after a few hours or days. Dottie's memory was very good when it needed to be, and she could remember that she had been made by a young engineer who loved a woman very much and needed more than she could give him. Dottie never blamed him. In her own mind, was not alive and she could not feel, and so she could hardly be enough for someone who needed love. And her young engineer needed a lot of love.
Go find the cat, she told herself. Find the cat and get rid of it so Puck did not have to worry about it. He had enough to worry about as it was, and a cat was just one extra thing that a worker could take care of while he focused on his Painted Ladies. Oh, she would love to be one of them. Those beautiful women who everyone loved. But Dottie was not one of them, and that was that, now go find the cat. Another tick-tock, stutter-stop bow, and Dottie went on her way out of the tent. She'd look until the cat was found and gone and done with. Shoo it out of the park, maybe. Or, if it was tiny, she would pick it up and nurse it back to health. It happened sometimes, and she tried to keep them secret, but it usually didn't go well. And, besides, nobody else liked cats. She'd best just shoo herself away to go find the cat before the sadness made itself known in her glass eyes. And so she did. Or tried to, anyway - Dottie wasn't sure how she looked just now as she ducked out of Puck's tent.

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[Pachelbel in D]: Dottie & Puck
It was Puck’s tent, and he intended to follow Dottie just to make sure that the loathsome creature had been removed from the tent. He failed to realize that the cat was probably long gone in the time that it had taken Dottie to gather her cat-catching supplies, and that if the cat wasn’t in the tent it would be much more difficult for her to catch. Stopping to seal the tent’s flap hadn’t been on his mind at the time, and the cat could have made it anywhere.
Allowing anyone to disturb his things without his presence, he followed after Dottie, carefully moving slower than she did so that she would stay ahead of him. He didn’t offer to take the net from her, nor did he consider the possibility of her getting it tangled up in her works and making her stop. If she did, there were people available who could repair her and put her back together the way that she belonged.
Halfway to the tent in question, Puck stopped, half forgetting what they were doing. The cat was still there in his mind, and he cocked his head to the side, not unlike the look Dottie usually had. Frowning, his brows knit together and he shook his head, then started after her again, not speaking, nor really thinking. She would notice the rats, but fortunately she wasn’t likely to direct the others toward them. Maybe they would be hiding, with a cat in the tent. This one had been a dark tabby with white paws, a disgusting creature not even good enough for eating.
Frustrated, Puck swept past Dottie and toward the tent, allowing her to follow behind him. Walking at such a slow pace made little sense for a tall, narrow man with long legs. At the tent, he paused, hesitating just outside. The cat was inside. He didn’t want to be where the cat was. Frustrated, he glanced around, trying to find something to take over his mind. Something had to entertain him, and quickly. If he didn’t need Dottie, he might use his time to punish her for being so slow. Something which she quite obviously could not help.Â
Not that it mattered.
Puck's footsteps echoed inside Dottie's head and were made louder than they probably really were. Things like that happened when one had nothing but bits of dust and wires inside one's head - at least as far as Dottie knew. It was the only part of her she hadn't seen the inside of, so she assumed there was simply nothing to be seen. Didn't matter what was really there - as much gears and cogs and wires as anything else in her body, if not more. Just that she thought it was empty.
She looked back to see him following, though not expecting it. Dottie had assumed Puck would simply walk away. Oh, well, perhaps he wanted to make sure she did the job perfectly. If she could speak, Dottie would be the first to admit she did not always do things perfectly, especially when moving quickly was a requirement. It made plenty of sense.Â
When he stopped, she stopped, but for only half a second. There had been no order given, no-one telling her to stop, so there was no reason for her to, and so Dottie resumed her rickety walk. He swept past her again, and Dottie still continued on her way. She was determined to make it to that tent before that cat caused too much trouble, and the more time she took, the more chance it had to ruin everything. Poor Puck! she thought. Having to suffer such a thing for so long, all because I cannot walk so fast as him. Dottie did not think of it as guilt, but a weight settled on her for her slowness, and though she tried to walk faster, her joints became too uncontrollable, and the stutter-stop motion became too much, and she was forced to walk again.
Dottie did not hesitate when she entered the tent, though Puck was already there by the time she arrived. She was used to entering things by now, be they tents or game stands or massive creatures from which something or someone needed to be extracted from. And the moment she entered, Dottie heard all the scritching and scratching of rats. But no padding of cats. Hm? No cat pads?
She began to look around, being careful not to disturb anything of importance. But there was no cat. Signs of one, sure, and she was sure to take note of where each hair was so that she could come back at another time and sweep them all up. But there was no sign of cat anywhere other than that! After a few more moments of searching, straining her mechanisms to hear rustlings that were not from Puck, Dottie stood and looked to him, waiting for an explanation. It did not even cross her mind that the cat might have left. She simply did not understand.
Mechanic
Dotte is an extremely durable machine and was made to work in dangerous laboratory conditions. Over time, she acquired the skills and knowledge equal to multiple skilled chemists and engineers. If her joints worked smoothly, she would be able to rebuild herself properly with things that could be found around the circus.
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Dottie
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Madame
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The Curtain Rises, Del: Replied
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Something Sweet, Delphina: Replied
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[Pachelbel in D]: Rago and Dottie
Rust. Metal. Old.Â
He did not like those smells - they tickled his nose and now he wanted to sneeze. But those smells meant good and kind and friend and pack, so he also liked them. If only pack smelled different and not like decay and death and blood and rust and metal and old. Pack meant safe and warm and dry and food and love, but also hurt and sad and tired and cold and sharp teeth. Maybe soon pack would smell of happy and new and warm and full belly.Â
The leather jacket creaked softly. Only he could hear it as he moved. Only he could hear a lot of things. He could hear the strange noises that came from the tent where the bad and good smell came from. The sounds meant pack too, just like howls and barks and yips meant pack. He could also hear his claws click-clack on the ground when he walked. No one else could hear them. Claws meant pack and hurt and food and hunt.Â
Carefully he reached into the jacket pocket and pulled out the wire. It smelled like pack, so maybe if he gave it to pack then pack would work better and not make strange sounds and smell bad.Â
He snuffled and barked as he entered the closed off space that did not smell of pack but of death and badbadbadbadbad. If only pack could smell as he could, then there would be no need for sounds and noises that were too loud like the clack-clack-clack of his claws and the strange noises that came from pack that were always happening and never stopped even when pack slept out in the rain. He didn’t like it when pack did that. Afterwards pack always smelled worse and sounded worse and the bad noises came from all over pack.Â
Rago had distinct footsteps, at least to Dottie's ears. They were sturdier, in a way, more animal. More...Rago. She still danced when he entered the tent, a slow and imperfect pirouette, but stopped at the sounds he made. A snuffle, a bark. He was almost a dog himself. She did another half-turn to face him before standing on both feet once again, evenly and politely,
Though she never said it, Dottie made it perfectly clear that she enjoyed Rago's company. He had interesting thoughts, wonderful things to say or not say when he chose not to speak. And he was so very important, too, after all. He was in charge of looking after the Madame's dogs, so for someone like him to be kind to her - Dottie was more than flattered. An she grinned as best as automata could grin whenever she saw him.
She saw his eyes first, serious and savage and sweet. Eyes always told more about someone than anyone else - that was something Dottie knew more than anything else. Other things could change, but eyes were always the same. And then she saw the wire in his hand. Another piece of metal that wouldn't make her better. She needed a thorough cleaning, every joint needed oiling, polishing, and repairs in most body segments. Perhaps what she needed no longer existed. But all this paled in comparison to how touched she always was when Rago gifted her something. Anything, even if it was not useful, and her joy shone through her glass eyes as best as it could.

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[Pachelbel in D]: Dottie & Puck
The length of a life had some way of determining the way that a person rested, or so it seemed to Puck as he examined the insides of his mind, reaching into those gaps and letting his thoughts poke holes in them. The holes immediately swam with memories he didn’t want or need to see, and he covered them over again as he strode out of the tent to stand in the dull moonlight. Ground fog had begun to creep about his feet, and somewhere in the distance he could hear the sounds of the carnival making a test run of some of its equipment. These test runs would surely at some point lend themselves to inviting people from the town to come and visit them. That was part of his job, as he saw it, though his real purpose was in keeping the patrons there once they arrived.
What happened after was up to others, and he had failed to pay sufficient attention whenever this process had been explained. They each had their jobs, and it was much easier for him to allow himself to focus on his own job than it was for him to try to compartmentalize what everyone did. Memories produced holes when he evacuated (or perhaps evicted) them, and he no longer tried to remember things that didn’t pertain directly to him — or which he did not find personally pleasant.
At present, the most pleasant memory that he could find would not cover up the cat. No amount of attention paid to the recollection of blood spurting down the back of his throat as he sucked the liver from his last meal would banish the thoughts of the cat. Dottie moved slowly, and he frowned, tapping his foot in irritation. Turning, he swept back the flap of the tent again and glared at her. Perhaps she would need to be disassembled and put back together, but if so this wasn’t his job to do. Dottie wouldn’t laugh at him and make him go through the trouble of punishing a worker (and then of supplying a replacement).Â
Patience came and it went, and Puck was growing bored. He snapped his fingers in Dottie’s direction, the long digits making the task difficult and the sound somehow muting itself in the thick fog that was growing higher and higher. Fog added to the mystery, and it was probable that it was produced by some kind of magic, though he wasn’t sure if Madame was the only one who possessed such extraordinary powers. "There is a cat," he repeated, his tone sharp now.Â
Puck refused to go back to the tent alone. There was, after all, a cat. Impatient though he was, he would dismantle all of Dottie’s parts and carry her there in pieces himself if he needed to, but he would not return to the tent alone. There was, after all, a cat.
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The net had loose threads that tangled up in the rods and springs in her fingers, making it difficult to work with it. But she had to nonetheless, because cats were bad and so she had to get rid of it. Her body caught for half a second when straightening, but with a few jerks, she managed to stand upright again. Granted, it caused her to stumble backwards a bit, but she managed to right herself soon enough. With a turn en pointe to face the entrance of the tent, Dottie rearranged the net to hang heavily over her arm, rather than entangling itself further in her fingers' inner workings.
Despite the look on his face - angry, Puck was angry - Dottie smiled as best an automaton could. She disregarded the fog. It wasn't a problem for her until it reached eye level, at least, because she could see just fine until something covered her eyes.Â
She stepped out of the tent, nodding again at the strange and unusual selflessness Puck was showing. Still, perhaps he just wanted her to get her faster. She repeated the saying in her mind - the faster she left the tent, the sooner she could get to the mess, the sooner it could be cleaned up. And then, Dottie planned to return here and continue her cleaning, and that would be that.
The music sounded muffled once she was outside the tent and Dottie suddenly missed the music.Then again, erhaps it was meant to stay only there, and nowhere else. She did not bother to take the phonograph, after all, and Dottie reasoned that it was the best decision that could have been made regarding it. After all, it was much too big and clunky to carry, and it might rip her gown, and Dottie would not want to bother anyone else if it was ripped, especially considering she still had fingers. They could hardly move properly to hold a needle, but that was no excuse for being terrible at sewing. So the phonograph had to stay behind.
He seemed to be impatient, so Dottie did not wait as she made her way over to his tent. She assumed the cat would be there anyway. Her gait was something between graceful and broken. Her joints caught and jerked and spasmed, but it was clear she was originally meant to dance from place to place. The ballet shoes she were were far from neat white satin, like they originally were, but she could still manage to walk with them as if she were a dancer, which she had been, at one point. After her jaw rusted shut, but before she was dismembered for the first time. That was a wonderful time.
It did not occur to her that he would go with her to the tent, and so she simply continued on her way, without looking back.
[Pachelbel in D]: Dottie & Puck
There was a cat, or had been a cat. Somehow Puck’s mind came back around to that, and he blinked at the beautiful, crafted and sculpted face of the automaton. It was possible, of course, that she had been sculpted after his own features, but he knew that such perfect porcelain skin was something that came rarely in creatures alive by nature. Whether he was alive himself had turned into something of a mystery to those around him, and Puck smiled a crooked smile at nothing in particular, uncomprehending of the ability for Dottie to think at all, let alone to think of him.
He opened his mouth to tell her, then closed it again and swept back and out of the way, his fingers brushing the outer canvas of the tent and then sweeping back the flap to allow her to wander out. The music couldn’t stay behind, but he surely wasn’t going to carry it for her even if it had to be moved, and Puck waited with a lost feeling in his mind, that place he went when he wasn’t anywhere, until she picked up her things and carried them to where he needed her to go. She would, or he would lose his temper, though it seemed she had agreed.
"There is a cat," he said quite suddenly, the memory flashing into his blank mind and lighting it on fire. "It must be removed." The cat gave him a sense of disconnectedness, putting him on edge. The thought of the creature made a strange prickling sensation begin at the nape of his neck and travel upward, prickling over his scalp and making the base of his wings itch. Something told him that meant it was a memory of something from long ago, before his time as the King.Â
Smiling, Puck stared straight ahead of him, beginning to lose patience. "It must be removed and you will remove it and take your papers," he said. His voice stayed low and without inflection, but his shoulders squared, setting himself up to be commanding. She would either do what he had asked, or he would find some way to take her apart so that she would have to endure the indignity of being put back together. If an Automaton could feel indignity at all, that is.
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She watched intently as Puck went from about-to-talk to thinking, to holding the tent flap open. Presumably, he was about to leave to go figure out what the mess was. Puck was like that sometimes, if she remembered correctly. He stopped and he went and sometimes he had to pause in the middle of going because he was too busy thinking. He must have had important things on his mind if he paused for that long.
Oh--no, he wasn't pausing to think. Dottie bent forward in a pathetic attempt at a bow when she saw that Puck wasn't holding the tent flap open for himself. She was so used to people forgetting she was there the moment her orders were given, or at least making sure she went second. It was a level of importance thing. The most important people had to go first. Then the second most, then the third, and so on and so on. Dottie usually went last unless she was dismissed while the important people spoke about important things. But perhaps he just forgot about that for now, because she would get to the mess faster if she was allowed to go sooner. She walked out in her stutter-stop gait,
He spoke, and she stopped walking, only halfway out the door. Cats were pests, that's right. She remembered that well enough to know that Puck's mess was an important mess. She couldn't let them ruin his schedule. Dottie understood. A stiff nod. She did not know what papers he was referring to, but she did not want them taken away. She would have to be clever if she did not want to let the cat get away from her. Cats were quick, and she was slow.
Dottie would need more than just a broom however. She looked to it, eyelids narrowing a bit to suggest a thoughtful look, and then to Puck. In the next second, Dottie turned back to the tent and went to fish a rope in. Metal scraped against porcelain as she bent at the waist - posture perfect as a ballerina's - to fish a rope net out from behind a steamer trunk.