feonixe | CMO 2018 EDITION

There were upsides to the rather cartoonishly exaggerated look of their face. For all that their eyes weren't like a human's, for all that they were lacking a mouth and eyelids and even eyeballs, they were very expressive. The big doll was just about an open book here, at the moment. They shook their head, still smiling a little... though with another sigh in calming down again, the expression seemed sadder, coming back down from the fit of humor from the initial question. They typed again, hesitating only briefly.

i'm Tanya's doll plastic she's human i bring her things to eat and drink sometimes but toys don't need to unless it's batteries but i'm not that kind of doll

They turned the screen to make it easier for her to see what they'd written, as though she hadn't surely read it all as it was being typed, and looked up to see her reaction. This explanation cleared everything up, right?

...Yeah, no, it probably only raised more questions.

Edited 2018-05-24 12:43 (UTC)

She reads the text with an increasing curiosity, though as with all her previous words, there's nothing reprimanding about her tone.

Maybe Doll was sustained by its summoner. That would mean that its constitution might degrade now that it's separated form whoever created it... and that it isn't aware of such a limitation by itself.

"I see... Okay, but if you feel ill or anything weird, please let me know."

Maybe she can ask some more questions, but it seems intrusive at the present time.

Doll nodded; there wasn't any reason not to, if they did. They paused just after they did, frowning slightly in thinking over something, but then shook their head to themselves and looked up again, to Eve. The act of bringing their sleeve up to their face again to wipe off the last of the seemingly imaginary tears' traces didn't seem to be a very conscious one for the odd child, but they did it and then held the little device back to them to type something else. Crim could probably read it easily enough despite not being explicitly shown the screen:

android? or cosplay? or what?

They turned their little device so Eve could more easily read it, watching for their reaction.

Crim has her back turned for now, checking out her work, so she doesn't read the message immediately. Eve regards the small device with interest, aware that it's being addressed - but it doesn't talk either, merely tilting its head at the statement. It then moves to Crim's side and motions to the device, indicating that there's a question that only she can answer.

"Oh, he's a homunculus. Kind of like an android, but made with alchemy. No robotic parts."

Did that make sense?

Doll blinked at that, and looked between the two, eyes slightly wider.

A homunculus?

But--

No. No no no no. Just because this was a different world than Doll's didn't mean that it was that world. That world was a work of fiction. And even if its author had figured correctly about how things worked, didn't mean that they'd have gotten all the details. Surely Amestris was fiction. Surely the events had been fiction too. And even if they weren't, this was an island; Doll had seen the map, and it wasn't the same place. Even if multiverse theory were being proven correct right then and there... it was a one-in-infinity chance, was what that meant, right?

Eve and Crim seemed friendly enough, besides. So it was best, Doll decided, to try shelving such assumptions, and to try figuring things out on their own instead.

They frowned a little again, thinking on it, and typed.

so artificial/engineered organics? cloning + magic = Eve?

Edited (that thought process deserved to go into the tag too, I think.... XD) 2018-05-29 11:25 (UTC)

For the most part, the two adults (?) are patient while Doll susses out his thought process - though when the device is presented, it gets Crim to tilt her head a little.

"Something like that. It's really complicated, though. Eve is the first one ever made."

She turns to pet the homunculus on its head, and it smiles - just a little, though it's more out of a lack of expression than a lack of emotion within. Though once she returns her hand to her side, she turns to address Doll again:

"He's a little frail health-wise, so try not to bump him or anything."

Doll nodded, smiling a little more back, and eyed Eve again.

No red circuitry-looking lines, no suspicious tattoos, at least that they could see....

No, if anything, Eve's rather mild demeanor, plus Crim's warning about him being physically fragile, just reminded Doll of the pretty things adults usually kept up high on their shelves, or inside glass cabinets for display. The toys that weren't meant to be played with.

Except maybe gently... Eve couldn't really be content to do nothing all the time, right? And when Doll's human, Tanya, didn't feel up to doing much -- when she was ill, usually -- there were still things she could do.

Doll held their device up again after a moment, where they hoped both Crim and Eve could read it easily enough:

quiet things? reading, art, writing, watching cartoons, video games?

Doll would be lying, to claim a lack of interest in Eve. Surely this angle of investigation wouldn't be amiss? The plastic kid kinda wanted something to take their mind off being stranded in another world right now, so they'd fish for leads there.

Honestly, Doll's thoughts aren't too off the mark. Being the first of its kind, Eve is not suited for anything outdoors - its joints are more frail than that of a human's, so it is forced to stay inside the house for its own safety. Even a small fall could break something - while Crim could fix it easily, it still felt pain and it's an experience best not repeated.

Eve tilts its head after reading the device, answering with a nod. Though Crim speaks for it as usual, perhaps an indication of how familiar they are:

"Yeah, that's what we usually do. He likes to read, so I've been bringing back books. I'm sure he doesn't mind spending time with you."

Doll is impish but not too exuberant, so Eve can probably keep up. The homunculus tires easily, mostly due to its constitution.

Not too exuberant? Wait until there's the right inclination and opportunity around, and Doll'll be proving just how not fragile they themselves are.

But until then, reading would do. Arts and crafts were always welcome pastimes!

I was translating a book so what about mystery stories?

Where was it Crim had set the things Doll had tumbled in with, again? The kid glanced around for it even while holding up their device to make the offer.

Edited 2018-05-31 02:28 (UTC)

Doll and Eve are opposites in quite a lot of ways, and not just in personality. It's cute, almost - and it also meant that Crim trusts Doll to treat Eve gently. The homunculus is fragile not just physically, but in its manner; while it is tenacious most of the time, it is somewhat afraid of strangers and had a tendency to cry.

"Oh, that sounds cool. What are you translating it to?"

There's also the issue of language comprehension across worlds, which leads her to wonder if people had secretly crossed over the realms without publicising it. Or maybe there was another reason they could understand each other.... all very interesting.

"I put your stuff on the counter." Still in the bag that they came with, arranged neatly, so Doll will have no issues finding everything inside. "You two can use the living room, if you'd like?"

Japanese to English

Doll held the reply up for her quickly enough -- and it at least did make sense, that as Doll was writing in English for them, they must know English. So the plastic kid wasn't too concerned about it, really. Not enough to pause to consider whether the languages would have the same name, and therefore the answer hold any meaning. They nodded back and smiled a little more, gesturing to Eve to come, and then headed to grab the bag in question.

It was only after exiting the room and walking down the hall to look for the living room that Doll paused to reconsider the language issue. If this was a different world entirely, with different geography, then that meant, logically, that there was no England... and therefore the language wouldn't necessarily be called "English", even if it was functionally the same language. Or was that some sort of dimension-hopping magic at work? Maybe passing from one to the other automatically switched around Doll's knowledge of languages? Did it do that to their translation dictionary too? To what they'd written so far? Or did they just gain another language and not realize it?

Oh. Oh, wow, this definitely needed to be looked into.

Doll's eyes had widened a little as they played those possibilities over in their mind, and they looked back to Eve, raising the bag a little. Books, yeah? They needed to check out the books, asap. Time to go spread them out in the living room and see what they could see!

Japanese, huh?

That gets a slight pause from Crim, though that language is known by a different name here so she doesn't make the connection immediately. Maybe, Eve would recognize the script later, and bring it up proper.

"If you need anything, I'll just be here." Crim nods, letting Eve follow in Doll's wake to see what they should do next.

Doll gave her a nod and a quick thumbs-up before heading out of sight, ending up with Eve and the things they fell into the garden with in the living room in short enough order. They spent a minute pointing out to Eve that the manga was read right to left, and then pointing to the various speech bubbles, and the corresponding pencil-written text in the notebook: it was an ongoing effort to translate it without making a mark in the book itself.

It was slightly inconvenient to have to go back and forth between the book and the binder's lined pages, but on the upside, the story wasn't exactly the most dialog-heavy, in the prologue. There was a scene involving a small village while it was dark out, some sort of magic, and a figure that was probably not a human, but was hidden in shadows, and then someone getting hurt. The first real chapter opened up with a few police officers getting out of a car in this little setting, in broad daylight this time, so likely the next day, and meeting with someone to check over the crime scene.

And of course, they end up calling in their consultant, the main character pictured on the front of the book, and the story really got started.

It had highly detailed artwork in a realistic style, if black and white, and it seemed to be written for possibly teenagers, if not adults, rather than much younger children -- but Doll didn't seem all that much like a teenager, and their handwriting, though carefully precise, rather agreed with that idea. Still, it was an interesting mystery story involving the supernatural, ghosts or youkai and the like, and Doll had gotten most of the way through it already; they opened the binder to take out the last page or so that they'd copied lines onto, to work on that with their translation dictionary, though it would be fairly obvious to Eve, if he wanted to watch, that Doll already had a somewhat decent handle on the language already, only really referring to the thicker book for some of the more complicated-looking characters, breaking the kanji into the simpler kana.

And Eve might well find Doll's choice of bookmarks interesting -- the kid had tucked a bit of colorful origami into their spot. It barely peeked out from the top of the pages, but it was shiny, a color-shifting metallic thing... which turned out to be a unicorn, if it were investigated.

Eve pretty much follows all of Doll's instruction, reading silently as Doll pointed out each page and its corresponding dialogue. While it doesn't speak, it appears to comprehend these words at least; nodding along as they followed the plot into adventure.

All things considered, it is quite an impressive undertaking. Once they reach one of the last few pages, it gives Doll a thumbs-up - both for effort, and also the acknowledgment of time shared together.

The origami unicorn catches its attention next, so it would point to the piece of folded paper once it seems polite to. How exactly was it made? Who made it? All very curious questionns.

Unfortunately for Eve, Doll hadn't finished their translation efforts before falling across realities -- but at least Doll's able to work on the last bit of what text they'd copied out while Eve catches up on what was done so far, even with Doll peeking over to see Eve's reactions to the book so far, and to make sure that if the other had any questions, they'd notice.

And then almost to the climax, most of the way through the mystery, Eve finds a unicorn.

Doll was sitting contentedly after replacing the last few lined pages in the notebook to watch Eve enjoying the story and perhaps even reread some of it themselves. They smiled more and reached for the device they'd set down between the two of them for ease of access, just in case, and typed a simple word: unicorn. A brief pause to glance up at Eve, just checking that they'd read it, and then the toy switched functions on their little device to bring up an image -- a painting, it looked like. A high fantasy, magical sort of woodland scene with a young lady dressed in a long light blue dress, a tiara on her head, some sort of fairy herself with giant rainbow-tinted insect-like wings, sharing a sweet little nuzzle with a unicorn. In the picture, it was a bright white horse with a wild, luxurious mane with multiple colors' highlights in it, well fitting the image's otherworldly theme.

The paper version was a much tamer, much less detailed little paper toy thing, its own impressively-colored finish aside.

Doll looked up to Eve after loading the image on the screen, and their hand went to a pants' pocket to pull out a few pieces of similar paper: shiny squares in various colors, one a pearly white, another a rainbow black. A few that bore something of a glittery look, one that was simply rainbowed. Doll took a shiny pink square, set it in front of them, and made a quick series of motions, folding it and unfolding it, tucking it around, turning it over, pulling out then-hidden pieces....

....And then picked it and the unicorn up and held them up together to recreate the scene: a winged humanoid figure, missing face against the missing face of the unicorn that'd been tucked into the book.

Doll reached down to tuck both pieces' feet into the crack of the book, so they'd be held together like that, facing each other, and then typed, origami.

They looked back up at Eve again, smiling. Did that explain things well enough?

Edited 2018-06-05 07:51 (UTC)

It's ordinarily a bit hard to judge Eve's response towards things, considering the homunculus' limited expressions - but it makes an effort to convey acknowledgement nevertheless, nodding as Doll types away on their device and tries to communicate. It does not have a device of its own, so it either has to write, or demonstrate by way of its actions: slender fingers pick up a piece of paper left lying on the table, and it tries to mimic the movements that Doll had done...

.... only to find that the paper doesn't quite obey it the way it obeys Doll's touch. Eve gives it a few tries before unfolding the paper again, a slight frown on its pale face as it regards Doll with a confused look.

Doll watched what Eve did with the piece of paper, then took another to put it in front of themselves. A look back up to Eve, and down to the paper, and Doll made a simple, slow, deliberate fold, turning it into a triangle, and glanced to Eve, checking that the other was following so far.

Another fold. Turning it over. Fold, unfold.... Doll looked back to Eve briefly at every step, just to see if the other were watching, or even following along for themselves, so they knew how to pace what they were showing.

It wasn't the hardest pattern, honestly, and Doll was careful to make their motions clear, using the top of their fingernail to lightly press the folds into sharpness and pointing out which lines and points were being used as guides by which to match parts of the paper up for the next steps....

And in short order, Doll had made a butterfly.

They held it up, taking it gently by the head, their other hand putting two fingers under its wings, and "flew" it over to sit it on the book as well, then looked up to Eve again with a smile.

Origami butterfly, get!

Eve isn't a fast learner, so it takes the homunculus a few tries to follow each step - but when it does get the step right, its motions are very careful. It holds up the butterfly in its hands, turning it over once or twice.... there's a bit of confusion in its eyes, and then understanding.

It sets the butterfly next to Doll's - and it doesn't smile, but its eyes crinkle a little, artificial skin shading mirror-glass eyes. A smile, as much as it can make. Then, it lifts a finger, traces letters out on the table in lack of a pen:

thank you

Doll smiles more when it clicks for Eve, and when thanked, turns their body a little more to face Eve, to put the side of a hand, flatly-open palm up, fingers together, against their lower chest, and dip their down head slightly -- it's a more subdued mime of taking a bow, but if Eve has seen a more pronounced one, perhaps with a stage performer involved, or even the lesser head-only bow, the smaller gesture is surely rather self-evident. The toy takes their little device, still sitting there on the table roughly between the two of them, if slightly set aside for space reasons, and sets it where Eve had used a finger to write. They point to Eve, and then to the device, giving a nod.

Eve was welcome to use it too.

With that being the seeming end of that, Doll reached for another piece of the paper, and looked to Eve again. A little gesture to the butterflies they'd made, and a head-tilt in question. Another? Practice, and learn this somewhat simple design a little better?

Or Eve could use the device too, to ask Doll to demonstrate something else. In comparison to the butterfly, the fairy maiden and unicorn were madly complicated designs, but surely there were other simple ones, if a repeat of the butterfly wasn't going to hit the spot?

Almost absently, Doll pulled out another couple sheets of the thin square paper, perhaps more than a dozen, it was hard to judge, and added them to the few still on the table, for more color and finish options. Patterns, colors, glossy, matte, rainbowed, plain, iridescent, metallic, pearly, sparkly, solid....

Edited (phrasing) 2018-06-18 07:20 (UTC)

Doll is a patient teacher, which works very much in Eve's favour. For all of its human-like characteristics, Eve didn't really possess the intelligence of a proper human, which meant that demonstration is often the only way it could learn effectively. It tries its best to follow Doll's instructions, and it works for the most part. Soon multiple butterflies would join the first one, making a chain of paper butterflies across the table.

If Doll offers the papers to Eve, the homunculus would end up picking softer, muted colours. Seems like it doesn't deal too well with things that are bright and garish - if Doll paid attention to the decoration of the house, the rooms themselves seemed to follow the same theme. No item was brightly hued, mostly in shades of pale pastels and browns.

After a while, the door of the study opens and Crim comes in. A few strands of hair have come loose from her ponytail, but otherwise she seems to be alright.

"Hello. How's it going?"

It might be close to dinnertime...

Honestly, Doll rather just assumed that the house decor's colors were because it was an adult in charge -- Crim -- working without the clearly ~~superior~~ more adventurous influence of a typical kid, and that Eve was simply too mellow to counteract that. Not that there was anything wrong with that; people liked what they liked. It just seemed to Doll that people generally settled down as they grew older. Less running around, less experimenting. Fewer urges to make peanut butter and chocolate chip sandwiches for breakfast, or watch cartoons. Adults were the ones who liked minimally-flavored oatmeal and talked about health insurance, and it wasn't that kids never read books, but as far as Doll was aware, not a lot of adults read comic books. So it wasn't the most visually exciting house. But Doll had an idea for how to make it a little more interesting, given what the two were working on.

If Eve wanted to pick the softer colors from the pile of origami papers, that was fine -- like wanting to have tea parties instead of playing four-square with a ball. Doll would simply keep pulling out more papers to replace those, and let Eve make whatever kinds of butterflies they wanted. A little while before Crim came out front, Doll switched to making some other sorts of shapes out of paper, things that weren't butterflies. Taking brightly sparkly-patterned paper and folding it so that the pearlescent white side would hide the bolder colors within, leaving long thin diamond-ish shapes in a pile near the butterflies, and a lot of seemingly random stronger-hued green shapes near those. Small crumpled-looking pink and dark red shapes, a couple others that were in various shades of purple and pale blue... and then a stack of sparkly charcoal black shapes, as the plastic child continued to pull more papers out of their pocket to be picked through on the table, encouraging their new friend to continue with butterflies even as they folded other shapes with a speed born of long practice.

And then Crim made an appearance. Doll looked up and smiled, giving her a wave, and then glanced to Eve briefly before writing something on their little device, to look back up to the homunculus for the answer:

is there some tape? or needle and thread and two pins/tacks?

If Eve shook their head or otherwise indicated that they didn't know, the big toy would look to Crim for the answers.

There's a lot to be said about the progression of a child into an adult. Time dulls spirit into weariness, and for some that weariness is also borne from a need to take responsibility and to protect. In order for children to be able to afford time to themselves, someone has to pay the price of doing all these adulty things... and that falls to her, so that Eve will be able to have the peace of pursuing what it wishes to do.

Eve regards the question with a tilt of its head before taking the device to write again:

yes

wait here

It pushes back the chair and starts to walk towards the entrance, but stops next to Crim when she comes in. They make eye contact for a few seconds while it motions to her in what seems to be an entirely random gesture, then she steps aside to let it retrieve the items that were asked for.

Crim herself takes a few steps closer, peers at the items on the table.

"Wow, you made all that? You must be good at it."

Doll gave her a smile, and pulled the manga volume from among the things covering the table, to open it up to where the two more complex pieces were hiding, and offered her the book so she could see them better.

Then came the signing. Doll indicated themselves by tapping their chest, then put one fist above another, thumb to little finger, and rotated them, as though twisting something, wringing it out, and pointed to the book's little origami again.

Then an indication to the hall where Eve went, then putting both hands out, palms up, fingers curled loosely, and pulling them back to their chest, as though pulling something toward them, then tapped their temple and gestured vaguely to the table and book. Eve wanted to know about this.

Doll indicated themselves again, then reached down to their pocket to pull out a few more pieces of the crisp squares of paper, setting them with the others, more sky blues and baby pinks. They mimed taking one and folding it, then pointed to the direction Eve had gone in, repeated the gesture of twisting something, one fist over the other, and gestured to the vast majority of the paper butterflies. They pointed themselves out again, and then only a few of the more brightly colorful butterflies and the non-butterfly paper shapes.

Doll didn't know if Crim knew sign language or not, and was actually suspecting she didn't... but not already knowing it didn't mean that she might not still follow the general meaning: that the examples in the books had probably interested Eve, so Doll had taught them, and then Eve made butterflies while Doll made... whatever those other shapes were.

Really, what Doll was actually up to was probably much less clear; there were a ton of triangles, thin diamonds, and long thin green... whatever those were, more than anything. Were they going to be plants? Doll smiled more and grabbed one of the more colorful pieces off the bottom of the pile, unused from the first of such offerings to Eve, and quickly folded it a good number of times, ending up with a squished-looking hexagonal thing made of several flaps. Doll picked it up, pointed to the open end of it, across from what had been the center of the paper. They tapped their face, where their mouth would be if they had one, shrugged somewhat sheepishly, then offered the paper thing to her, turning it so that the end with the hole was closer to her face, and mimed blowing, leaning forward just a tiny bit while doing something with their free hand. It started with fingertips together, back of the hand against Doll's chin, and then as Doll leaned forward, put the hand out more, widening the fingers.

Doll wanted her to inflate the little paper shape; they couldn't do it themselves. Or that was what they seemed to be saying, anyway. They looked between the little paper shape and Crim, smiling.

Go ahead, blow up the balloon!

It is true that Crim didn't understand sign language, but she didn't make it this far without cultivating the ability to read nuance without knowledge of it. Living with Eve meant that she had to rely solely on actions for the better part of a year, so she could piece together what Doll was trying to tell her. From Eve's countenance, she could tell that they had an amiable time together, so there wasn't anything to object to at all.

Crim casts a curious glance at the object proffered to her - it looks like a deflated balloon, with a hole. A familiar shape that elicits memory from years and years past, of time spent when she too was a young child with a few of her friends who have now scattered to distant lands.

So she takes the piece of origami and obligingly blows into it, the strength in her lungs trained by years of oratory work and general fitness. The balloon inflates on command, and she holds it out on one flattened palm, a twinkle in her eyes.

"Wow, you're really good at this."

Doll smiled a little more at that, giving her something of a little bow in response to her compliment, and picked up another of the pieces of paper, a black-and-white splotched one that had been hiding in the stack. Doll folded it in half, then only did a few other things to it, and in about no time at all, held up a little bunny shape to her on their open plastic palm, its nose resting on the shiny surface, facing her. The kid made sure she could see it easily, and then reached up with their other hand and put a finger out to press down on its butt.

It was a brief little motion, pressing it down like that and then pulling the fingertip back, and the folded paper acted as a spring, launching the origami rabbit up off Doll's palm. It did a flip as it bridged the gap between them, and bounced off of Crim's shirt harmlessly, to land back on the table.

Doll seemed quite proud of this, the shape of their eyes betraying a grin. Origami was fun, okay.

CMO 2018 EDITION

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

doll is so cute wtf

actual child, tbh

STILL CUTE

:3

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

KICK ME IF I DISAPPEAR FOR TOO LONG AGAIN, PLEASE?