CMO 2018 EDITION

[eonflamewing]

I am, once again, in hell.
»		«
the rest of the gang is here
» Feel free to request OCs, I'd be glad to provide writeups about them if needed. » I am generally a slow tagger due to RL/workbut I'll get one out every 2-3 days at the latest. » Pick a prompt and get the ball rolling! Or post a comment and I'll brain something. » Long PSLs are my jam, hit me up on plurk or discord if you'd like to do anything similar ;) » This CMO is sfw but if you want to write nsfw stuff that's also on the table....... WISHLIST ☐ >>>> FATE/ AU <<<< ☐ hair brushing ☐ reincarnation au ☐ mercy killing ☐ royalty au ☐ masquerade party ☐ mermaid au ☐ 'city in the sky' au ☐ long airship journeys ☐ space jockeys
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[cmbr]

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...

[hollowbutnotempty]

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.

[cmbr]

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."

[hollowbutnotempty]

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!

[cmbr]

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."

[hollowbutnotempty]

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.

[cmbr]

It seems like there might be another factor to Doll's skill with origami - that was a really fast process to produce a complicated bunny, and she's sure that it couldn't be done within a short time. Maybe Doll used magic or some kind of extra technique to skip steps; it's something interesting to consider.

And it's a beautiful thing, too. To be able to make such art easily... it's similar to what she wanted to do originally, but one hardly has time to pursue something so trivial in this day.

She sits down so she can peer at the bunny more closely.

"How'd you learn to do that?"

[hollowbutnotempty]

Doll seemed pleased enough to be asked, sitting back down to grab their little device again. They pressed a button and selected some little icon which enlarged on the screen, turning white before pictures and text appeared, most all in the language Doll had been translating from with their book. Being used as a quick means of simple communication like a tiny typeable whiteboard, was clearly not the limits of its capabilities. Doll tapped some of the text, expanding list items, navigating a menu, an index of some kind. Then they put a finger to the screen and swiped it aside, and the display's contents moved along with it, sliding over to show something else, and then something else again, and then Doll offered it forward more for her to see, having found what they were looking for. As they tilted the device toward her, the screen's contents rotated to be right-side-up from her perspective, as though it mattered much, regarding the text she couldn't read.

It was a series of step-by-step instructions on how to make the little paper rabbit. The language might not have been familiar to her, but the illustrations were very clear, to the point where translating it wasn't even necessary for someone to follow along on their own. Doll touched the screen and pulled the contents up more slowly than when they'd been flicking through things a moment ago, and the drawings made it clear that the little rabbit was actually far simpler a pattern than one might have assumed.

That still didn't negate any suspicion as to the relative banality of Doll's paper-folding abilities, though.

On one hand, it was entirely possible that Doll's hands had obscured her view, and they'd simply been folding quickly thanks to long practice, even to the point of creating shortcuts, condensing several steps into one motion, like forming the ears by pinching in the sides instead of folding the paper diagonally, experience helping Doll's fingers guide the paper's edges to the center and its corners to their destinations. Perhaps the steps had become muscle memory - a task, or series of tasks so often repeated that it became automatic, no longer something which required conscious thought to perform, but a mere impulse to accomplish.

On the other hand, it was hard to rule out the possibility; it had been folded quickly, and she hadn't gotten a clear look at the process. It could very well have been the case....

Doll pretty well offered her the device, and gestured to the little squares of paper on the table. Maybe she wanted to try it for herself, making one of the jumping rabbits? It was certainly a fairly simple-looking process, now that it was laid out for her in pictures....

[cmbr]

The responsiveness and capability of Doll's device doesn't escape her attention, either. It was similar to the many touchscreen devices employed by the Academia, but this was of a model too expensive to be offered in mundane homes. Why did Doll come to possess it? Maybe it was made by a more advanced family, or a rich one. All very interesting questions.

"I'll give it a try," she nods to Doll, before pulling one of the pieces of paper closer so she could work on it. Crim is good at following instructions, but doing origami is very far from her usual work and she takes a bit of time to orient things together. Doll's dexterity meant that as a homunculus it would be crafted to quite a high degree... if she could copy the improvements.....

At this point Eve comes back with a roll of tape in its hands. It sets the tape on the table and looks at Doll expectantly.

"What's this for?" Crim adds, pausing in her folding.

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

[hollowbutnotempty]

Doll smiled again, giving Eve that gesture of touching a hand's fingers to their chin, like blowing a kiss, and picked up the tape. They glanced up at Crim, clearly up to something and not explaining what just yet, as they peeled a little off, then set the roll back down while curling the tape up into a small, sticky-on-the-outside tube. They grabbed a butterfly, put the tape on the underside, then turned and eyed the nearest wall.

Doll's gaze traveled up a bit more, and then they got up to go to the spot they'd settled on, tilting their head a bit, looking it over... and very deliberately stuck the bit of origami there.

Their grin was plain to see in the shape of their large eyes, demeanor almost teasing as they quickly attached another bit of tape to the next butterfly, and the next, and turned to add those to the area too. What did Crim think of this?

To be fair, Doll didn't look to quite be placing them randomly. They were all facing roughly the same direction, the plastic child swiftly ordering them into something like a swarm, trailing them up higher, standing on tip-toes to get a last few inches up. They paused to look back at Crim -- no objections? It wasn't as if they couldn't be easily enough removed, with so little tape being used in the first place, after all. But if she seemed to be fine with it, Doll would happily continue, placing the new little decorations into a swarm that trailed around that wall, implicitly going under any frames or windows that they would've interrupted -- the illusion was simple enough, just don't put any butterflies on those areas already occupied, and carry on like they didn't exist otherwise.

Doll didn't, however, involve either the non-butterfly shapes they'd amassed on the table, or that one more colorful butterfly sitting with them. Those were for something else, it seemed.....