When Emika woke up, she was a doll.

She had the hands of a doll, made of fabric and seams, she had the legs of a doll, and she appeared not to breathe, just like a doll wouldn’t. Except, even though she was a doll, she couldn’t move her hands or fingers, nor wake up. It was like someone else was piloting her. Like she was tugged at with threads.

Her hands moved, but she wasn’t the one who made them move, and she stood up, but she hadn’t intended to do so.

It took her a moment to realise — or, better put, remember — that this body she was currently inhabiting belonged to Melisande. Different, though. Not the very same Melisande she had come to know, but a different version of some kind. For example, her legs were thinner, and she didn’t wear a dress. Instead, she was clothed in what amounted to a simple linen chemise and drawers.

As Emika was moved through the room and closed in on a crate next to the wooden door, she decided to just give up and roll with it. This was probably a dream, right? Why else would she be in Melisande’s body, and then have someone else move that body? It was awkward, and unpleasant, but it was okay. Not the worst experience she’d had so far.

It was a strange dream, though, because while Emika definitely felt dizzy and somewhat unfocused; while she felt that she couldn’t see all that clearly and not perceive everything she wanted, she still was very much herself in her mind. She remembered that she had just gone to sleep in Heaven. She remembered that later, Dr. Haur would wake her up to talk her through the test results.

When Emika involuntarily crouched in front of the crate, she had to pick up the letter lying on top of it, and rip it open with a gentle and smooth gesture, just like Melisande might.

Then, she was made to unfold the paper, and started reading. It was written with a fountain pen on a sheet of paper with several imperfections, not like modern print paper at all.

Hello!

Sorry, this all went bad and I had to erase your memory because you found out some things you weren’t supposed to. For your own safety, I want to say. Don’t worry, you only lost about a day and were never active before.

I’m going to give you the gist of it: You are my graduation project, and I finished with first place in the academy thanks to you. But then I thought I could give you to the boy I fancy. So you could do chores for him, or stuff. You even agreed, but that’s beside the point. He rejected you based on something he called ‘basic human decency’. Well, I guess I get it, but I thought it was fine because I made you myself. You’re just a doll, after all.

Anyways, I have other stuff to do and can’t really take care of a daughter, so I provided you with some money and this room, I’ve paid the rent for a few days. There’s a spell embroidered on the inside of your skin. It makes you inconspicuous, so others won’t mind that you’re just a doll and treat you mostly human. You don’t need food or anything like that, but make sure to earn some money so you can buy more tea. There’s replacement tea in the crate, as well as some more pattern pieces for your skin, with some body parts. With those, you can choose what kind of shape you want to have.

Inside, there is also a library card and a few books. I thought, since I don’t have time to teach you morals myself, books probably can do that well enough.

Good luck with your life!

Best regards,

Amagdala

Well, this was horrifying. And yet, somehow, even though she’d only known Amagdala through a single phone call, she could very well imagine a much younger version of her having acted this way. Amagdala, who really hadn’t seemed emotionally fazed at all that they’d killed a Cursebreaker, who nonchalantly accepted a deadly curse on Emika without showing the slightest kind of empathy, who mostly had just been curious about all of the magical implications of the situation.

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

Of course, Emika couldn’t really fault someone for being pragmatic. If she’d received a letter like this, she would have probably simply accepted it and moved on. Actually — hadn’t she, once? That letter from Líf may have not been nearly as cold, but still somewhat extraordinary in scope, with how it had asked her to lay down her life.

Regardless, this right here was about Melisande, and Melisande was different.

Because in contrast to Amagdala and Emika, Melisande actually did seem to, albeit not literally, have a heart.

Without wanting to, she placed the letter aside, and opened the crate.

What followed was a rather intimate scene of Melisande choosing her own body. She made it look female when it was androgynous at first. Emika tried to avert her eyes, but unfortunately, she had no control over them, and if there was a way to ‘wake up’ from this, she didn’t know how. This really seemed like one of Melisande’s memories that Emika was accidentally witnessing. The first of all her memories, in fact.

Not that she didn’t want to know every single thing about Melisande that Melisande was ready to divulge — but the ‘ready to divulge’ part was rather important in that sentence, wasn’t it? She’d have to apologise to Melisande later, and tell her what she’d seen.

That is, when she figured out how to get signal in Heaven.

And then, Emika woke up. It was dark, and she now felt her roommates’ presence. The soft snoring of Blaike, the shuffling of the blankets issued by Alisha above her. And after rising in her bed for a moment, she saw Epse, sleeping like an angel in the bunk next to her.

What an odd dream. Emika had never had one like this before. It felt fuzzy, more like a hallucination than a dream, she would guess. And also, it had been a memory, and it was clearly incomplete. There had been a room, but nothing in it? No, she’d felt that the room wasn’t empty, but that what was inside wasn’t important, and so she couldn’t really make out anything.

Emika sighed softly, and hoped she’d be able to see some more of Melisande’s memories at some point, but not without talking to her about it first… That’s right, she needed signal. At least, in this room, she had none.

That aside, what was she going to do now? Was Dr. Haur already done with the tests? Was there even a way for her to call for anyone?

In the end, Emika simply got up and walked towards the desk in the room, pushed the chair aside, and made herself her own cursed wooden bench to sit on.

At that moment, she realised she didn’t even need a table at all. She could simply make structures to use that way with her curse, and they’d be much more fitting for whatever she was going to do. But for now, she already sat in front of the desk, and was too lazy to move.

How much time would she have?

Either way, now was as good a time to start as any.

Inside the prison, she’d never found the state of mind to actually comprehend what was written in Introduction to Curses, Volume I — the book Maxime had given her to pass time in confinement. But now, maybe she could attempt to learn about them. So, she puked it out from her belly where she’d been cut in half, and placed it in front of herself. The soft ambient light falling in from the corridor was just enough to make out the words — Emika didn’t want to wake the others up by using the lamps in the room.

Preamble, introduction, chapter one… Up to chapter twenty-six. It was a chonky work of literature, and apparently only the first of a series.

By now, Emika had some understanding of what a curse was, some personal experience too, most likely. She skimmed through the first few sections of the book to compare knowledge, and what they said seemed to match her own knowledge.

Curses were of human origin, one way or another. Something interesting she hadn’t known yet though was a section on ‘Ancient Curses’ — curses not spoken by a specific person, but rather born from the collective unconscious of humanity.

This wasn’t the first time Emika had been confronted with that kind of concept, was it? Amagdala had explained something similar — that it was hard to kill a Cursebreaker with magic, because most thinking beings considered Cursebreakers to be immune to it. It wasn’t entirely the same, because this book seemed to attribute curses to humans only, while Amagdala had, to the best of Emika’s recognition, talked about beings with thoughts as a whole.

Emika couldn’t help but feel a little happy. Magic had always been something at the periphery of her life — yes, it existed, but it was dying out in a world that had no more use for it. As Amagdala had said, it was usually easier to shoot someone with a gun than to devise magic against them. As such, Emika had never known a lot about it.

But now, she was starting to see patterns within the magical theory she had learned so far. That was a good first step.

Just as she wanted to read about those ‘Ancient Curses’, Emika was interrupted by the door to the room being opened. She looked up from the darkness and saw Dr. Haur look at her expectantly.

“If you are ready, we can talk about your results.”