Within the darkness of the toy shop's attic, its wooden walls, its forgotten community of long-abandoned plushies, lived Jiana, a plague nurse, long-beaked bird mask, white smock, and a glow-in-the-dark lantern velcro'd to her wrist. The Attic is where the out-of-season toys were kept: the Valentines' bears, the Easter Bunnies, the leprechauns, jack-O-lanterns, turkeys, and Santas—both in the original and in his darker-skinned tones. Jiana found herself in The Attic after Halloween. The plague nurse thing was very specific, a novelty of a novelty, and the skeleton-pumpkin-ghosty masses didn't find much use for her cute-but-not-quite-spooky appearance. So one night she slunk off the shelf and traveled to the far back corner of the store and stepped beyond the cracked-open door labeled: INVENTORY. She closed the door behind her, sealing herself into the pitch, and ascended the stairs. After the final step, she'd arrived to her new life—officially.

"Hey fam!" she'd yelled into the dark, announcing herself.

No response.

"Hello? Anyone home?" She held up her lantern, its glow eating the shadows.

And from a nearby toybox, decorated in tinsel and candy canes, emerged several gingerbread plushies with torn limbs, a few Christmas elves without their trademark pointed ears, and a Rudolph—fully intact except for its missing red nose. They approached Jiana slowly, cautiously, a run-down Christmas parade dragging themselves through dust.

"Is that...a lantern?" the No-Nose Rudolph asked.

"Yes! Isn't it cute?"

"Very cute!" No-Nose perked up immediately. "And The Attic let you keep it."

"Of course, it did. It's mine. Does The Attic take things?"

"All the time. It took my nose. Took their limbs, poor guys." The gingerbreads stood alongside No-Nose, waving their frayed, detached nubs. The elves just shook their heads, grayed cotton fuzzing around their lost ears like makeshift earmuffs. Even the original, brown, and black Santas were different shades of bum with their torn coats and frayed beards.

"Oh no, are you guys okay?"

"We're fine, we're fine! This is normal life," No-Nose cheerily declared.

"Even if it is, you still need need fixing."

"That's how it goes," No-Nose shrugged. "The more you're in the dark, the more of yourself you lose."

"We've got to leave then!"

"Where else is there? Besides, there's room for us all here. Ourselves and the other Holidays."

"You mean, like Halloween?"

"Halloween, Thanksgiving, Lunar New Year—even Groundhog Day! We stick together! Come." No-Nose nudged her with his face, his phantom glow-nose; and Jiana patted it gently. "You've brought light, after all. And that's the most useful thing there is."

The gingerbread folk cautiously approached. One of them hopped on their left leg—holding their detached right leg in their arms. While the other broken breads held an assortment of thread and fabric patches. The elves held out needles. The Santas removed their tattered coats. Everyone's cottony faces said it all: "You fix?"

"I fix!" Jiana confidently declared.

Jiana set the lantern atop Rudolph's nose and proceeded with the sewing. Once made whole, the plushies led her to the toybox. Everyone climbed inside, showed her around. There were books, fabrics, needles, Christmassy accents like candy canes and ornaments. There were lights, too, dead but pretty nonetheless. Jiana had a bed—basically a cushion inside of a sleigh. Within the span of half-a-day, she experienced more warmth in a remote Attic toybox than downstairs in the shop.

During her brief time in the public shop, she hadn't seen breakage, just perfectly healthy toys comfy in their boxes or positioned in flattering displays. Damage was a foreign concept. And light—there was light everywhere. The sun, the moon, the electronic display signs, the flashing toys filled with battery life, and when the shop closed and shut down each night, a galaxy of glow-stars shone in silvers and pastel greens on the far wall of the shop. But there was no interaction or movement. The plushies stayed in place, posing for sale. Everyone was distanced and silenced. A store full of smiles but not a hint of heart.

The Attic had its own issues, decay and murkiness and dust—so much dust—but here she belonged. After everyone left the toybox—her toybox now—she curled up in the sleigh, set the lantern beside her, and eased into the comfort of her first and only home.

*

The Plague of Disrepair is what they called the phenomenon, the sudden tearing, the rapid wear of the threads, the unexplainable loss of limbs and accessories, the way they watched themselves fall apart—stuffing, fabric, buttons. Gingerbreads strolled about only for a leg to snap off, the stitched hearts in teddy bear hands unraveled to the ground, lipstick'd dollies underwent Barbie-patterned baldness. In The Attic, exposed stuffing and random maiming were a way of life. And in all that darkness, what you lost was difficult to locate.

Jiana had a flurry of questions. Where were the bulbs, the lanterns, the light-switches? What about The Attic sapped their seam-strength so?

"It was all stolen. A vicious theft to be quite honest." No-Nose said.

"By what?" Jiana asked.

But the reindeer shook his head. None of the other plushies spoke on this either as Jiana grilled them during sewing sessions. Everyone was too afraid to name the menace. She constantly pressed No-Nose the most as she reinforced his antlers. But he remained silent. He stared off into his trauma, as if watching himself lose his nose again.

But she continually pressed. Who? What? Who? What? As their caretaker she demanded to know. She looked out for them but for herself as well. She wanted to avoid the dangers, the triggers, the parts of the darkness that hurt the most.

"The shadow giants," No-Nose said.

"Whaaa?"

"Yes, exactly. Giants. In the shadows."

"Bigger than the humans?"

"Yeah, that's what makes them giant."

No-Nose went on to explain the architects of Disrepair, that The Attic was encased in a crown of giants, winged, fearsome. Jiana looked out into the distance during the explanation and spotted them immediately. These evil figures rose above the closed windows, impossibly tall. From the floor to the windowsill, their bodies seemed to forever grow.

"Do they move?" Jiana asked.

"Not that we've seen. But the Plague is theirs. We can feel our threads pulled towards them." In the lantern light, Jiana watched the cotton contracting around her friend's phantom nose.

She later spent that night flinching in the sleigh. She laid anxiously, waiting to feel the pulling.

From moment to moment, the giants spared her. Their eyes devoured her in the blackness—red ones, Jiana decided. Their mouths were obscured as well but—Jiana being Jiana—saw herself being eaten. There were no hands visible, no arms of any sort, but that was the scary part. She imagined them unraveling her through word and will alone.

In the days and weeks that followed, Jiana suffered daily deaths, menaced by the shadows and their presumed destructive habits. As Jiana traversed one section of attic to the next, her thoughts fixated on the danger, the sizable and sinister thread-snatchers. She hugged her lantern out of comfort and paranoia. Protect it at all costs. Without it, how could she nurse? She focused on her mission: to nurse, to care-take, the exact things a plague nurse like her was made for.

Her route was certain, her role clear. She triple-stitched broken Valentines hearts, re-seamed the ears of each Mr. Easter Bunny, refilled the oblong and misshapen Jack-O-lanterns, reattached buckles onto pilgrim shoes. As she nursed the day-to-day Disrepair, shades of despair nipped at her heels, stubbornly hovering beyond the threshold of the lantern's glow. As the holder of the lantern, Jiana fretted over frayed threads and yarn snags ("OMG fam what happened?") and mended them, brightening their day, providing them their fifteen minutes of a tiny, mobile sun.

As seasons passed and new toys from finished holidays flooded in, Jiana's mind throbbed with uncertainties. They helped others out of their packaging, guided them to their respective Holiday neighborhoods.

What if she was gone? What if the Disrepair savaged her own snitching? She imagined waking without hands. She imagined her Velcro too weakened to hold the lantern. Jiana couldn't restore a thread without thoughts of her own death. She feared her active consciousness being trapped within dead threads. Every soul in The Attic buzzed with that fear. And the colossal shadows buzzed around them, their palpable greed caressing their seams.

"All good fam," Jiana would say, tearing off excess thread. And then she excused herself, heading off into the darkness, a litany of Thank You's chasing after her.

At home she relaxed. Jiana was a Halloween plush but lived in a Christmas toybox. As a plague nurse, a healing type plush, the gifts of the toybox suited her: the sewing guides, the fashion catalogs—and especially the leather-bound Bible. Being The Attic's only light-source, she could read, and the Bible was full of stories to fill her. The miracles. The unwavering radiance. And the presence of God no matter the despair.

How could she leave the Christmas neighborhood? How could she leave the holiness?

Her home's closeness to God restored her every night. The Plague stole limbs and reduced livelihoods, and God countered the damage. He fought the battles that she couldn't. Jiana knew this as fact. The proof was her survival.

Jiana curled up in a blanket and slept, a welcome rest for The Attic's little light-bearer, her soul re-energizing for the next long day ahead.

*

Within her toybox—under God-watch and all—Jiana guarded a secret. It couldn't be helped with the way Plague worked her mind with the way despair, despite the holiness she'd found, lingered about. Her paranoia always had a way of catching her off-guard, like a draft whispering through a loose thread, or an unexpected flicker of a shadow. Suddenly black thoughts appeared, and she delved into her seam-making library for distraction. Endlessly she read. Endlessly she sewed. Jiana made quilts. She made scarves, mittens. She practiced fine details and patterns. She learned the anatomy of plushies, studying every creature and decoration. She fulfilled her destiny one stitch at a time, assisting plushies in need, making them whole again. And then she went one step further: she made her friends from scratch.

Jiana envisioned her friends as their mint condition selves, bathed in storefront neon. Practice—that's how she rationalized it. To work on her friends' bodies, she had to know them better. The stitching, the clothing, the pattern and button placement. She studied everything. She knew them perfectly. She made them perfectly. She'd given them everything but eyes, leaving heavily-stitched X's instead. She couldn't give them life like that—no, eyes would be too much. She learned their bodies only, no soul attached.

Day after day, she stitched Attic Fam up.

Night after night, she re-created them as dolls, golems, mannequins.

And The Attic thrived. With Jiana's skillful sewing she single-handedly curtailed the Plague. Times were glum but comfortable. Tenuously bound but fixable. All with the bonus of Jiana as a wandering sun. Together, The Attic fostered hope. For the first time in months, perhaps years, their stitched smiles were real in soul.

But the cost(?)—shouldering everything on her own.

Jiana gave the village her all. Her studies, skills, and time. She attended to them, focused only on them. And any thought to herself was quickly dismissed into oblivion. A loose thread on her sleeve. A rusted sewing needle. And a tear on her bird mask. The despair gathered in her with each injury, proof of Disrepair—though these were dismissed as snags against furniture or self-injury through her own clumsy needling. And besides, there was plenty of hope amongst the villagers to tamp down the simultaneously building dread. Jiana collected hope—and buried despair.

The despair remained, though, tenaciously accumulating, building and bubbling, pressurizing Jiana.

One night, she created herself. A plague nurse in miniature. Mini masks, mini smocks, mini right-armed Velcro. Her clothing was stitched to perfection. The doll was her and she was the doll. And this scared her. A chill frosted her shaken soul, and this doll too she'd given X'd eyes. She didn't want to admit that God could one day give the doll life. But she prayed for its life as well—because if the Disrepair harmed her, then The Attic had a replacement.

And so she made herself again.

And again.

And again.

She did this on the daily, Jiana dolls galore.

You're not alive. You're not alive. You're not alive. She consoled herself with this thought. Each night she settled into her cushioned sleigh, easing into a long fought for rest, but she couldn't suppress the sudden explosion within her mind of two prayerful words: Please live.

*

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She awoke in perfect darkness, no glow of the lantern in sight. Sheer panic filled her. She tried with all her might to hold the image of the light, but it soon disappeared. The blackness fell upon her like an expansive, smothering curtain. She wondered how the lantern came to be gone. Her jittery self struggled against the thought of the giants reaching into her home and taking it. The casual dominance, the unrestrained power. Nowhere in The Attic was safe and that tortured Jiana. Her soul craved breath yet the pitch of The Attic simply said: No.

The runs had to happen, though. Attic Fam needed her.

She hit the path, unlit but familiar. The Valentine hearts were first. One that she'd just serviced waited outside their chocolate box, a torn seam straight through its middle. Already the heart sensed something amiss: it'd heard Jiana's shuffling feet but without its accompanying light.

"Where is the glow?"

"It's lost, fam."

"We've gotta find it."

"I checked my whole toybox!"

"Want help?"

"No-no-no, it's fine! Well, not fine but we'll manage." She pictured the X'd eyes hexing her visitors. She couldn't risk spooking her friends, becoming forever shunned. "Anyway, come here. Let's see that tear."

"Broken as usual," the heart laughed. But the laugh rang hollow in the pitch. The lantern supported all The Attic's joy. Without it, everyone's uncertainties crammed into the space between them.

Jiana opened her sewing kit and set to work. Her fingers traced the heart's history of familiar wounds and more familiar repairs. The anatomy of hurt was second-nature to Jiana, and so she completed the blind restoration with relative ease. She closed the crooked seam—imperfectly, though—the dim obstructing her typically flawless work.

As Jiana pressed onward with the day, her encounters with the Attic folk were similar—shock at the lost lantern, the thick nervousness between them, and questionable sewing. Something just felt off about her technique. She'd nursed as best she could but the uneasiness remained.

No-Nose visited her that night—the missing lantern was the news of The Attic, after all—and Jiana met him outside the door.

"Jiana, how are you?"

"I'm okay, I guess."

"Can you work without light?"

"I can work, not as well, but we'll be good fam."

"Guess things are how they used to be. Nothing we haven't done before!"

"Mhm, that's right." But Jiana wanted to do it never. She was determined to keep The Attic whole no matter what.

"Are you sure you're okay? You've had a rough go, it's okay to admit it."

"I'm good! I'll let you know if I'm not. I promise!"

"Okay then," And No-Nose, refusing to be pushy, took his leave.

Jiana nervously rushed inside, slammed the toybox shut, then stumbled—

Honk!

She reached out and grabbed at the object she crashed into—the No-Nose clone she was working on. It had X'd eyes of course but a beautiful red clown nose.

Days passed. Weeks passed. And the daily nursing continued. The unease. The blindness. All The Attic and Jiana could do was move forward, picking up their dropped pieces, reattaching them in unpredictable ways.

Everyone was patched, more or less, either moderately or significantly deformed. The plushies maintained their stuffing but abandoned their form. Folks gradually transitioned into a sad state. Within the darkness, the Disrepair stuck. Felled buttons stayed felled, and exposed stuffing collected the dust like long-abandoned books. Emotions filled Jiana's little body, a water-balloon overflowing. First, the despair. Secondly, the grief. Without her light, dread consumed her. Yet she worked everyday. The folks needed her even if she knew the parts were getting sewn back on crookedly, haphazardly even. During the night, she couldn't read her Bible—the darkness being the darkness and all—but she'd hug it to her chest and pray.

It'd also become routine for everyone to pursue the lantern. The search was constant but yielded nothing. The Easter Bunnies checked the eggs, the baskets. The skeletons and ghosts reached into Trick-Or-Treat pails, and dug into the mouths of their pumpkin friends. Pilgrims leaped into straw bundle, wooden chests, centerpiece cornucopia. The gingerfolk and elves searched gift boxes and wrapping paper and piles of Styrofoam snow. But no lantern—not for months.

And in those months, the despair swelled. Despair in blackness. Despair in each heart and mind. Despair in the Plague gradually undoing their threads. Despair in the 's Jiana secretly hoarded. The dolls were just dolls. Simple inanimate objects, but Jiana's mind projected those eyes with judgment. How could you? What would they think? But lately—Be our friend. We're lonely. Come. Touch us—we're memory foam! Memory foooooam!

One night she stepped toward the clone corner, removed the blankets covering them, reached for their faces. It was like sticking her hand into a jar of midnight. She swirled her hand about, feeling around, touching nothing—no cloth, no memory foam. Only the devastation of black air. The plague dolls were gone. Where did they go? When?

Her feelings were a coin-flip of dread and joy. She didn't know what the proper feeling was: fear over the dolls' discovery or joy over God giving them life?

Jiana prayed—for the safety of the dolls, protection from the giants, and composure.

Once calmed, she stepped outside her toybox and stared into the shady expanse. "Search party!" she called out, "Search party!" Jiana wasn't ready—but she was ready—to face the music. Darkness(?), clone-friends(?), clone-enemies(?), shadow giants(?)—oh Lord, the shadow giants. But God urged her on, so that was that.

*

A simple search party for the lantern—that's all this was—but Jiana treated it as a pilgrimage. There was much to confront in her search for light: the Disrepair, the blindness, the clones of her friends, the clones of herself—her children(?). The Attic-folk, Jiana included, were jailed in a bubble of fear, their futures uncertain and dreadful. They'd stayed in their neighborhoods, housed within the familiar decay. Anything was better than getting snatched by their oppressors. But they were done with that now. Jiana had shown them their potential with one small lantern. And they weren't going back. Never. No-Nose led the way. He'd become Rudolph again—even if his threads unraveled as a result, his essence helplessly floating.

Onwards into the pitch, the sightlessness, but the route was known and well-traveled. They first visited the hearts, a settlement of chocolate boxes. Jiana couldn't see well but still managed to make out the disfigured hearts. A cloudy feeling surfaced among the search party as the misshapen forms hobbled in their direction. The heaviness of their fright slowed them. No-Nose kept the same pace—and Jiana too, because scared as she was she didn't want him to be alone.

"Heart Fam!" she said, "Come with!"

"Where?"

"Back to the lantern!" No-Nose said.

"Where's that?"

"Dunno," Jiana said. "But it glows. So that's a start."

And the feeling of Heart Fam's smiles penetrated the dark. The hearts, wearing their damage, joined the party. She heard their audible skip-hop, skip-hops, bouncing heartbeats eager to find their precious lantern.

Within her peripheral she watched the half-eaten hearts, feeling hopeful, but for a moment she could've sworn she saw a perfect heart, store-ready and undamaged, one that she'd made herself, a clone. But she shook the thought, dismissing it as the darkness and its tricks.

Next were the Easter Bunnies, the silhouettes of their offset ears upsetting Jiana, but she choked down the guilt and invited them along. After a thorough, failed search of the straw baskets and oversized eggshells, the now-invigorated Ear Fam joined them.

St. Patrick's came along, their flame of orange hair barely visible. They searched the pillowed clover, rainbow cutouts, black pots of gold—but no lantern, only plastic doubloons the leprechauns had come to treasure.

Halloween was searched, every candy bucket, every ghost-cut bedsheet—no luck, though.

Cornucopias of the Thanksgiving town, harvest-colored blankets, piles of stitched leaves, tee-pees. Nothing. So the party moved on.

And between the Holiday visits Jiana caught glimpses of familiar silhouettes, Halloween pumpkins, Thanksgiving Turkeys—disturbingly whole. But upon a closer look the figures were gone. She tried to tell herself it was her imagination. She focused on the united search party. The hope remained strong. Togetherness was just fun. And the Disrepair and darkness couldn't take that away.

Suddenly, a glowing orb levitating. The lantern—it had to be it—radiating warmth to the crew.

"Gasp," Jiana said.

"Gasp is right," No-Nose said.

Everyone stared at the lantern, basking in relief, their shared search uniting them. One thing then became clear to the whole of Attic Fam: when you look for light, you find each other. And they did, the brightness soothing each and every one of them.

But for Jiana, the camaraderie was also paired with the sinking feeling of neglect, an extrasensory discomfort that detected extra footsteps, unfamiliar shuffling. She didn't fear the lost dolls, but she missed them. God gave them life and in this moment she'd wished for the dolls to experience the best of it. She closed her eyes and prayed to find them.

And, as if summoned, audible footfalls dominated the air. Everyone looked around, clung to each other, and cowered in fright. They expected the shadow giants and for their the Plague of Disrepair to fully un-do them. The steps became closer, louder, and clouds of Attic dust began to rise from the apparent stampede that'd come for them.

Abruptly, the footfalls ceased. But then resumed—this time heading away from the search party, slowly, calmly, the thuds decreasing in volume, becoming distant. And with the gradually dissipating sound, the lantern began to float away. Everyone knew that the lantern was being carried but their terror stayed them.

"Maybe we should stop," a gingerbread said.

"The lantern is there, though," No-Nose insisted.

"But the giants!" Cried the Easter Bunny.

No-Nose stared off at the fleeing lantern, trembling. He wanted to go, he wanted his body to match his words, but he remained in place with everyone else.

"It's okay," Jiana lied—because it wasn't okay, this was just her bedside manner talking. Anxiety twisted around her every seam but she hid it, and instead decided to collect everyone's courage. The last thing she wanted to do was lead her patients into thread-worn doom. But supporting No-Nose was the good-person move. He was full of courage—he just needed a half-a-spark more, he needed to believe that sustained illumination was a real possibility, a true and just outcome. So Jiana declared, "It's okay, let's get the lantern!"

"Okay how?" the gingerbread protested in its impassioned one-legged hobble, "How can this work out? We're good without light!" And the other plushies murmured in consideration, deciding amongst themselves.

"But we can't quit," Jiana said, "It's scary but if we don't face it the Disrepair comes anyway. And that's why this is okay. This has to work. We have to make it work. We will make it work. Come, let's do this my guy." She grabbed the gingerbread's round hand and they took the first step forward.

No-Nose stepped forth too.

And so too did the others, together and afraid. But together nonetheless.

They began to catch up to the lantern which bobbed about in the grasp of the unknown figure. Their souls rumbled with more violence the closer they got. But they quickened their pace, letting their courage drive them. Their aversion to ruin wouldn't stop them any longer. Regrets are for later, Jiana decided, Faith is the moment. "Hurry!" she said—with the last of her bravado. "If we die, we die!"

"Come back!" Everyone else called after the lantern. They called and called but the lantern sped off faster. Under the gleaming orb, the village noticed running legs in a white smock—similar to Jiana's. The lantern was carried off by a mysterious plush, an enigmatic clone of their friend. Then began the game of catch as one copy tossed it to the next, and the next copy tossed it to another. During the mad dash, the lantern was passed from one set of hands to the next. And the final thing the village noticed: visible X's flickering with each section of their progression.

"It's you!" The gingerbreads yelled to Jiana.

"Yes, kind of..."

"And you again!"

"I can explain..."

"What are those creepy eyes?"

"Ah, they're not eyes."

Some of the crew let out gasps but they kept their pace.

Meanwhile the lantern continued to fly. The dolls tossed it amongst themselves. Hot potato. Catch. Whatever their game was they enjoyed playing it. The village had a mix of reactions. Fright, confusion, distress over losing the light. Jiana had these feelings too—but with the strange additions of joy and pride. She'd made them, after all, and the dolls were living it up. She begun to think that maybe she'd done some good—

"The wall!" the search party screamed.

The dolls quickly arrived to the wall, to the shadow giants—before disappearing behind their massive, devilish feet. The originals' pace tapered off, some dragging their feet, some completely stopped in their tracks. They thought they'd lost the lantern forever. But Jiana kept going, never stopping yet fully despairing.

"We have to go get it!" Jiana cried.

"Are you sure?" said Noseless Rudolph.

"Yes fam—even if death is upon us."

"Sigh, death is upon us indeed."

Jiana rushed into the threatening murk, No-Nose following closely behind. With each step she expected collapse. Visions of an arm falling off, an eye popping out, devastated her brain space. But a few moments passed and she remained intact. No damage, no sudden and irreparable devastation. Was she okay?—no. But she was alive (thank God!). And the lantern continued to wave, urging her onwards.

"Other Jianas!" she called, "Where are you?"

"Jiana?" the doll turned toward her, a mirrored image of herself, except the non-eyes. "We're Jiana?"

"Yea. You and me. Well, mostly me. It's complicated."

A pause. "Okay." And then the copies shuffled away with the lantern.

"Wait!"

"Okay."

"Can you see properly?"

The X'd eyes looked through Jiana.

"I guess not..." she said, guiltily.

"We can. Kind of. There's slivers in the seams...ish. The light helps."

"Then watch for the giants! They're dangerous!"

"What danger? We're fine. Want to play catch with us?"

"Please listen. The giants will hurt you."

"What's a giant? What is hurt? We're just playing with light."

And a sudden illumination poured into the room, bathing the plushies, a long-lost treasure paid back thirty-fold. Jiana gazed at the shadow giant—which now shined, glittering along its edges, revealing its white smock, its beaming halo, its golden belt, its several many-feathered wings. An angel. Straight from the Heaven she'd read so much about. Her face of terror transformed into one of salvation.

In that moment she wondered about the demons they feared, the giants turned angels—how did they come to be canceled? What happened to the Plague? She figured that maybe life was just like that. Decay happens. Disrepair happens. But apparently miracles happen too—she watched the dolls running about the feet of the other angels, dragging power cords from beneath their wings and plugging them into the wall outlets. More angels, more godliness for Jiana to enjoy.

And in the newfound illumination, she surveyed the many Biblical figures within the cover of the angel, an entire neighborhood similar to what the other Holidays possessed. She gazed in amazement at the nativity scenes, the prayerful angels, the three Wise Men. There were many iterations of Jesus—as a baby in a wicker basket, as an adult in his beautiful white robes, as a sacrificial bearer of the cross. There were entire groupings of Virgin Mary busts and candles, all of which were beautifully painted. And the Disrepair had simply passed over these figures—their clothing, their detailing were all intact. More than mint, the figures were divine, and Jiana felt that protection spread over her and out towards the rest of The Attic.

And as she experienced the divinity, her life coin-flipped as it tended to do—

Within the light, the plushies began noticing the damage the Disrepair had inflicted.

Jiana faced her handywork, a community of grotesque repairs. Off-centered ears, eyes in the middle of foreheads, left arms stitched to the right shoulder, legs stitched on backwards. Her soul quaked in horror. She cared for them but couldn't find anything loving in how she'd stitched them. But nobody reacted to the damage they saw in each other. In The Attic, this had always been life and they were used to this, and they'd always expressed gratitude towards Jiana doing her sightless best. Jiana first detected the shock in them when she followed their gazes to the dolls—not the Jiana's, but the copies of themselves, box-ready, unimaginably perfect.

"Who are they, Jiana?" No-Nose asked, breathless, confused.

She resisted the reflex to call them practice. Excuses weren't the way. "They're you," she said.

No-Nose stepped off toward the X dolls. He paced slowly among them, perusing the details, taking in what Jiana saw in them. And in no time he came face to face with himself. A reindeer with prominent antlers, the same brown polyester felt, the red collar with its bell—and the nose, a red massive ball. He stared himself in the X'd eyes, pressed his non-nose to his copy's nose-nose—Honk!

"Ha, this is amazing!" He honked his copy again, and again. And the copy honked back. Everyone started to laugh, and they set out into the crowd of dolls to find each other. The broken Valentine hearts bounced with the whole ones like basketballs. The Easter Bunnies compared ear-placement. The old pilgrims convened with the new pilgrims and shared their cornucopia goods, a plushie Thanksgiving in the works.

"Nobody's mad?" Jiana said.

"Who can be mad right now? It's so bright!" No-Nose said.

"True, true. We can find you a nose!"

"No way, I'd rather play with my deer cousin."

"Sure, I guess you guys are related."

"Certainly! Now go play with your cousins—they're waiting!"

Cousins? Perhaps...

She gazed at her nurse army, the two dozen versions of herself. There were no tears, no real damage, nothing superficial to confront. Jiana stared into their faces, their apparent emptiness, their deadness—and found the opposite in them. Life poured from their X'd seams. The vibrancy was undeniable. They were truly alive and she'd treat them as such. Since entering The Attic, she'd focused only on repairs, on correcting imperfections, on seeing her patients as flawed. But the dolls weren't flawed—they just required a unique touch. Now, in their brightened world, Jiana's spirit began to unlock the nature of that touch. Fix, fix, fix—that was her old way of nursing, done and dusted. But healing became the new way, the now and forever way. And in this moment she resolved to start by making things right.

"Line up, fam!"

And the Jiana's did as they were told, swiftly falling into order.

"Come," Jiana said, waving the first one up.

The doll stepped forward. They stared into each other, eyes to X's, X's to eyes.

"Here fam, they're yours."

Jiana reached into her smock and produced a pocketful of eyes.