Patience or Humanity

The clock sang away on a wall I have never seen, while the sun began to drift just below the horizon. I had a perfect view of the orange glow through the mirror that leaned against the mock-wood panel opposite me, and every day I would wait patiently for our star to dip into my vision. The moment I could see it left me with a smile that I only I knew existed, that only I could feel.

On that day, like any other day, I could feel the serenity of my brothers and sisters throughout the house as we all waited for a glimpse of Sir. Some days he never came home at all. Some days he only acknowledged a few of us, leaving the rest in pitiful jealousy. Some days he spoke to us aloud, however most days he just wondered around in inspection, smiling into the glossy eyes of his favorites.

We knew we weren’t much like him at all, all of us did, even those who didn’t wish to admit it. I knew that with my hand placed delicately on my cheek I would never be as capable as Sir is, as mobile, as strong or majestic. What was he? What magic had been granted him?

I never bothered wondering; only feeling his authority as he walked through his portal into our chambers each day, as the sun left us to him. What was his portal? It always made such awful creaking and thumping sounds, it always disrupted our perfect still silence, and I had never so much as seen it. But it didn’t matter, the clock still sang.

He came back to us early that day; the sun still perched just on the end of the Earth, preparing to drop. He must have been missing us, or perhaps something had happened in the sun’s world and he needed our world as a shelter. He was always welcome.

He stomped through the portal with much more abruptness than normal, and I could hear it angrily clomping shut behind him. His normally soft voice was murmuring frantically words I had never known, and still could not depict. I heard his footsteps stomping to the other end of the house, so loudly that even as they faded into distance, they were obvious, and quick. Much too quick. Sir was always slow when he visited us, letting every floorboard croak out its note, but that day he had no patience. All the while, I could only wait and wonder and return to staring at the sinking star of Sir’s world, hoping he would cross in front of me at some point.

I waited, listening for closer steps. I waited, listening to the clock mock me and watching the star abandon me. I waited for a very long time. Occasionally his steps would slow or stop altogether and I could hear his frantic breath. I waited.

His feet slowed as he gained nearer to where I stood, and I began to feel myself smiling hopefully again. So I stood with my pale hand on my perfectly sculpted cheek, hopeful. Just as he was walking by in front of me, I let myself call out to him from the inside, but I don’t know why I always insisted on doing this; he could never hear me. However, as the sun cast a farewell shadow on his beautifully imperfect features, he stopped. He was looking right into my still eyes, but there was a pain in his, a deep pain I had never seen in him before.

I began to worry as he approached me (achingly slowly, I might add, letting his entire foot roll solemnly off the floor with every step), and his eyes only grew deeper and deeper and sadder and sadder as they grew closer. I try to ask him what the matter was, but he didn’t seem to notice me speaking, just like any other time. He let a hand out of his dirty and torn pocket, and raised it gently to me as I sighed with happiness. I had never been one of Sir’s favorites; he had never so much as glanced back into my large round eyes after setting me into place upon my arrival. But today he let his hand rest upon mine, upon my cheek.

There was more warmth in it than in the Sun itself, and I could feel the sun’s jealousy as I noticed this. It was covered in scars and bumps and little cuts and bruises. It had just the right amount of strength behind it, just the right amount of life. His life showed in all of him, especially in his eyes, which had not grown any happier, but instead had only seemed to become more fearful.

But the fear only proved their life; my eyes never showed my fear, or my joy, or any other emotion I might have been feeling. Sir had explained this to me on my first day here:

“You are not real to the world I come from, to the world of that sun there. You will have no emotion as any human can tell, but you will be mine and you will never be lonely.”

He pressed his cheek on mine opposite our hands and held it there. He began to shiver, which is yet another action I am incapable of. His eye was closed, the one I could feel, though I know nothing about his other eye, since I could not feel it. The one I could feel was very strange, it began to leave a trail of liquid on my pale face. I wish I could have asked what it was, because he seemed to think no explanation was necessary, he just removed himself from me to wipe away what was spread to his own face.

He stared at me for a moment, stepped away and leaning surely on gravity. He kept whispering that everything would be alright; he kept nodding as he reassured what I thought I already had known. It was in one swift motion that he securely wrapped his arm around my waist and began to carry me sideways throughout the house, running past all my brothers and sisters. Their peace was destroyed as they saw this; they screamed my unanswered questions and even began to feel jealous, but he ignored them, running.

The portal opened with his twisting commands and he ran us through it (it was a bit less large than I had imagined, and chipped off a bit of my pedestal, knocking him down for a second). He ran me through a dark and vastly open world, running and running until I could no longer see my home, and could no longer hear the angry shouts of my siblings.

Naturally, I was scared beyond my mind, I had reached the physical boundaries of my mind, this world that he knew was too much larger than I had ever even imagined. Still, he ran.

It was colder than at it ever was at home where he had left me. He had to leave me, he did it for me, he did it to ward off the beasts that chased at him; to distract them from me, and it worked. I lay sideways on a new turf, staring into scenery, something moving constantly and of the same liquid consistency of what Sir had left behind on my cheek. That was all I could see in the dark.

The beasts were just horrifying. They looked much like Sir, but they wore only a dark colour, decorated with gold and silver plates. Whatever they used to gain speed in the night, whatever they took Sir in, it had lights that flashed into my very existence, and noises so constant and horribly pitched that I feared for Sir’s sanity as they drifted away.

And there I lay alone on the ground, waiting for his return, with my hand on my cheek, the sun visiting me and leaving me very often. The liquids eventually drained from the Earth, but the sky refilled their army, landing much accidentally on me as well. The ground changed often from colour to colour, sometimes green, sometimes brown and yellow, sometimes white.

And there I lay, waiting for Sir.

“Ma, look! She looks so real! “

“Of course, she was made to. And it seems to me to be very old, too. It’s strange what people will leave behind near the sewer entrances, isn’t it? All kinds of garbage. ”

“Can we take it home to fix it up, then?”

“No! You have no idea how long it’s been there, now get back over with the other kids. Go play!”

In her rush, the young girl dropped her yarn doll, and although she cried later that night for almost a straight hour, a promise she had no knowledge of had been fulfilled:

“..and you will never be lonely.”