It was fair to say that Melisande had never been this anxious in her entire life. She had no way to know if Emika was fine, and she needed to wait patiently for the scramble before she could even do anything about this situation. She already knew that once the effect started, she’d wait for nightfall, then leave after the old hag had checked in on her for the evening.

In the meantime, Melisande tried her best to keep up her quota, if only not to raise any suspicion.

Right after finishing another doll, she inspected it with a calm and yet penetrating gaze. Would the doll move? The small arms filled with wires to make them sturdier didn’t bend unless Melisande made them. The little threads making up the doll’s hair didn’t wave in the wind because there was none in the basement.

Its little button eyes didn’t follow any movements, didn’t dart to the lamp shining down onto them.

And the lips didn’t part, didn’t make a sound.

“I see…” Melisande murmured. “So you’re not alive, either?”

She stared at the doll a bit longer, then added, “If you can talk, please do. Don’t pull pranks on me.”

The doll didn’t talk. The same as all other dolls before it. Of course, it was a fruitless endeavour. Melisande was alive because a human had made her so with magic. She herself, being just a thing, could only use magic through channelling the tea leaves through the predetermined spell engravings already weaved into her fabric.

And since no other person had managed a feat such as creating something like her ever again, Melisande was the only creature functioning this way that she knew.

The only doll that could talk.

And no matter how many more dolls she made, that fact would never change.

Emika was not a doll. But still, Melisande was able to relate to her a lot. More than she could to any other person she had talked to before.

What might be the terrors that Durand was inflicting on her at this very moment? Of course, Melisande had the capacity to turn off her anxiety subroutine, but there was one issue with that. Currently, with her phone never vibrating to a new message, with no random thoughts to share with her new best friend, the anxiety was the only thing tying her to Emika for now; the only thing making her feel close.

This was not something she wanted to turn off.

Finally, spending days circling these thoughts, she received a phone call in the late evening, after the hag had already checked in for the night.

After she picked up, a voice echoed from the speaker, saying, “You’re good to go.”

Immediately hanging up, Melisande fetcher her stuff and rushed out.

She’d sewn a bag in preparation, one containing a few items that might be useful — a set of sewing utensils and materials for self-repairs, a doll to talk to when she was lonely, as well as a small piece of Emika that had broken off during her visit. That small juniper branch was mostly a keepsake.

It was dark outside, and calm. Melisande pressed a floppy hat down her face, so she’d be harder to recognize as non-human as she ran through the street. Her first destination would be Emika’s home. It wasn’t very close-by. Emika had reached her by using the train, but Melisande couldn’t use trains — because she had no money.

The good news was that she couldn’t get exhausted. Either the magic left in her tea was enough to carry her where she needed to go, or she’d drop over somewhere. It was hard for her to gauge the remaining reserves; the only receptor she had had been letting her know she was running almost empty for about a decade. There was no telling how much leniency Amagdala had given this warning.

Melisande briefly considered robbing a tea store somewhere to get what she needed. However, she didn’t actually know the location of any, and in addition, she couldn’t for the life of her postpone reaching Emika’s house for just one more second.

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Emika, who loved tea.

That’s right. Perhaps there would be small amounts of tea at her house. If there were even just a few bags, that would ensure Melisande could make it for a few days longer. Hopefully.

Melisande hadn’t felt the wind blow through her hair in 176 years. She hadn’t felt the roads under her feet, nor all the new smells brought with the latest expanses of humanity. The looks of billboards, cars, shops, slowly replacing anything magical that still existed. It disgusted her.

However, it was still better than the place she came from. Maybe… maybe she’d leave all this behind, even if it turned out to be too late to save Emika.

And then, after hours, not having stopped for a single break, she finally arrived at the estate.

She found the gates open, which was worrying. Slowly, she paced through the garden — a very pretty place, the descriptions she had squeezed out of Emika’s in their chats not doing it justice. Several grand trees stood inside, between them a shed overgrown with ivy. Most of the ground was covered in moss, interspersed with well looked-after plants, and stepping stones building paths.

It smelled so good.

In front of her, in the middle of the plot of land, stood a large one-stock building in Japanese architectural style — as far as Melisande could judge. Entering, she flicked the lights on, and her figurative heart skipped a beat when she didn’t see any bodies in here, nor smelled any death. The entrance corridor was short. There was a mirror to the left side, and for the first time in a long while, Melisande could take a proper look at herself.

She needed a lot of fixing-up.

In the living room, Melisande found Emika’s phone. She couldn’t use the touch-screen, but pressing on the button on the side made it light up with barely any battery left, showing a few notifications of successful no-contact deliveries.

As she wanted to put the phone back down, Melisande saw something on the desk.

A note. With just a few words on it, written in a squiggly, rushed handwriting.

Hey Cutie,

If you ever find this, please feel free to take a look at the deliveries, in case they arrived without issue. The contents are all for you. I’m going with him. Please take care.

I hope I’ll see you again.

— Emika

Deliveries, Melisande thought. What deliveries?

She rushed back outside, finding a few packages had been left on the premise, next to the gate. With the screen of the phone lighting them, she opened the first of the two smaller ones.

Inside were a pair of gloves. They were black and thin, however, had a bit of a silvery lining at the tips.

What did she need gloves for? There was no reason to wear them. But… since they were a present from Emika, she might as well try. After putting them on, she wanted to open the second smaller package, when suddenly, something weird happened.

The light on the phone screen flickered within her grip. It shouldn’t do that, right?

Looking at it, in her hands, she noticed that suddenly, the phone screen seemed to react to her touch, as her fingers had accidentally put numbers into the screen. These gloves… were they magical?

Inside the second smaller package, much heavier than the first, Melisande found another smartphone. A smartphone for herself. Her own. She stared back at the gloves… They were like a tool to use this new gate to escape her loneliness.

She gulped as if there was something in her mouth. A remnant of a human gesture inflicted on her by Amagdala. And yet, it was almost as freeing as crying. Even though the world was open to her now, at least for the moment, she felt no stronger wish than to step in front of Emika and hug her ‘thank you’ a thousand times.

There was only one package left. Compared to the other two, this one was massive. Probably almost a meter high, and cubic. She ripped the cardboard open, almost losing consciousness as she realized her magic reserves were nearly empty.

What she found inside were hundreds of packages of loose white tea leaves. Enough to keep her alive for decades.

Enough to make her dangerous for now.

She took out a small pair of scissors, opening up threads holding her skin fabric together on her thighs. As she opened the layers, tea leaves started to spill, and she further shovelled them out of the way with her fingers to make room for the new leaves.

It took a while to replace everything. Every single one of those smoked-out old shrivels, in every corner of her body. And as she did it, she felt the new magic sweep into her, healing the tears and fringes littering her skin, washing away the blemishes beneath all the makeshift patches she now could finally remove without leaking her insides.

Only as she had just finished did Melisande notice the being that had crept up to her from behind this entire time. Turning around, she gazed into the abyss opened by the Well of Abstraction’s scarlet red ring.

Melisande smiled at it, rose up and gently caressed one of its juniper antlers. “Miss her too, don’t cha?” she asked, pulling out the piece of Emika she had in her purse. Then, she fed it into the void. “I need your help. You can find her, right? You know where she is.”

The Well stopped pursuing Melisande, now just having its ring gaze at her in calm.

“I knew it, my dear,” she whispered, slowly passing by the creature. “Let’s go get her.”