For the marionette has found her strings. And the world is her stage.
And Lord Aldric smiled, empty and blissful, as he became her first puppet.
The next day, he was hollow again. Worse than before. The music box's hum had faded. He begged her to play it again. She refused.
But he couldn't. So he began to break her rules. He pried open her chest panel while she slept. He touched the opal heart with his bare hands. Elise to Koukotsu no Marionette -RJ01284416-
He wept. He laughed. He danced with her until dawn.
The workshop of Master Geppetto Velas was a cathedral of silence. Dust motes danced in the slivers of moonlight that bled through the grime-caked windows, illuminating rows of unfinished dolls. Their glass eyes stared into nothing. But on the central workbench, bathed in a pool of violet candlelight, lay her .
She looked at him—her creator, her father, her fool—with her mercury eyes. She did not look angry. She looked satisfied . For the marionette has found her strings
They were not glass. They were liquid mercury, reflecting the world in perfect, terrifying clarity.
She reached into his chest—not with her porcelain hand, but with a tendril of pure resonance. She pulled out a single, shimmering thread. His lifeline. His will.
"Despair," she said. And then she smiled. It was a terrible, beautiful smile. "I understand it now. The resonance. The 'Koukotsu'—the ecstasy—is not joy. It is the sharp, perfect pain of feeling too much . You built me to feel, and now I feel everything. The rain falling on the roof is a tragedy. The dust settling on the books is a requiem. Your heartbeat, right now, is a war drum." The next day, he was hollow again
She reached out and touched his chest. Her fingers were cold, but the intent was volcanic.
On a rainy Tuesday, Aldric, in a moment of theatrical despair, pressed his lips to Elise's forehead. The opal heart flickered. A soft, whirring sigh escaped her ruby lips. Her eyelids fluttered open.