Submission (#85) Approved
User
Submitted
17 March 2024, 20:44:58 CET (6 months ago)
Processed
23 March 2024, 20:27:09 CET (5 months ago) by Licht
Comments
“So they were music boxes?”
“Yes.”
“But their ballerina–”
“Her music is too weary, and she tires.”
“Tired you mean, her coil is already snapped, look.”
“What a shame, it’s too much effort to take them now, let's go.”
Enough to deal a fortune to an ambitious troop, music boxes are a fourth of the crab woman’s hidden hoard; she discards their dancers, guts their drums, and tosses the combs to a pile for later use.
Drums are sent to a mass grave, beneath mud at the bottom of her lake, never to resurface. Should that be considered a collection, she is a connoisseur of the part. A caretaker, she is not. They are likely rusted cylinders at this point, the original layer now with nubs either chipped or dulled concave, warped or dented at the sides.
Come Christmastime, in powdered streets, she may look back at the figurines behind the dividing glass. Strung lights with their warm glow seep into the closed store. Glossy tarlatan slabs of crinkled wafers wrapped at each protégé’s hip, legs of fours, frozen in time; they all share a straight hundred-yard stare.
When or if she finds the spare time, she may crank their winders and observe as all, one by one, tick alive and turn, desynced from the rest of their row, in a muzzy rhythm.
She may espy the newlyweds, the couple destined to look at one another, hands meld at waists, by requirement of their factory, by expectation of their target audience.
She watches them dance, their song splitting distant discordance in two, preserved in motion, a glimpse of their first and last waltz.
“Yes.”
“But their ballerina–”
“Her music is too weary, and she tires.”
“Tired you mean, her coil is already snapped, look.”
“What a shame, it’s too much effort to take them now, let's go.”
Enough to deal a fortune to an ambitious troop, music boxes are a fourth of the crab woman’s hidden hoard; she discards their dancers, guts their drums, and tosses the combs to a pile for later use.
Drums are sent to a mass grave, beneath mud at the bottom of her lake, never to resurface. Should that be considered a collection, she is a connoisseur of the part. A caretaker, she is not. They are likely rusted cylinders at this point, the original layer now with nubs either chipped or dulled concave, warped or dented at the sides.
Come Christmastime, in powdered streets, she may look back at the figurines behind the dividing glass. Strung lights with their warm glow seep into the closed store. Glossy tarlatan slabs of crinkled wafers wrapped at each protégé’s hip, legs of fours, frozen in time; they all share a straight hundred-yard stare.
When or if she finds the spare time, she may crank their winders and observe as all, one by one, tick alive and turn, desynced from the rest of their row, in a muzzy rhythm.
She may espy the newlyweds, the couple destined to look at one another, hands meld at waists, by requirement of their factory, by expectation of their target audience.
She watches them dance, their song splitting distant discordance in two, preserved in motion, a glimpse of their first and last waltz.
Rewards
| Reward | Amount |
|---|---|
| Cinder | 350 |
Characters
MYO-007: Genevieve
No rewards set.