Mary, A Doll.
They inspected the board.
“What’s a Mary?” Cometh spoke up.
They all looked around. None of them knew.
“Like merry?” Wayside asked, but the others groaned at him.
“No, it’s something else,” Song said.
“How do you know?” Cometh said.
“Look
at the sentence construction. It could either be lyrically, Merry, a
doll, like if it’s saying “a doll is merry”, but it’s more likely that
‘doll’, is a descriptor: Mary is a doll.”
Everyone stayed silent for a moment.
Why would a big black board tell them that Mary is a doll?
They
didn’t know of any gods other than The Silence and The Noise. And the
Noise was the only living one, and it hadn’t been capable of this for
the first five days. Whatever, whomever, put that here, it was something
outside their grasp.
So naturally, some avoided looking at it, while some began inspecting it closer.
Glass
was the first person up there, already beginning to take the board
apart. It had been uninteresting to her beforehand—just a black board,
but now that it showed a power they couldn’t understand, she was all
over it.
Song followed not long after, and Wayside liked to follow
Song; they were fascinating, with their approving knowledge and guidance
about the world, and Wayside had few others who were willing to put up
with his prodding nature. Some others came as well, Spark, Grimoire,
Trot, and Text were all there. Cometh had to look as well, she could not
look away when there was something to be done; after all. Shimmer,
Flare, and Drive, came too.
Finally, From watched as well, from a
distance, and at first it seemed he wasn’t interested. However, as they
began inspecting it closer and closer, he too came closer.
They spent the entire day inspecting the large thing, spilling over to the next, seventh day, without any solutions or ideas.
Glass
wanted to find a doll in the warehouses, maybe there was one called
Mary. But Song wanted to hear no such thing, it was foolishness to begin
doing whatever before we knew why the text was there in the first
place.
From, as the only one, had noticed that the text hadn’t just
appeared, it had slotted down from above, flying down like a bird,
crashing into the hall with a twang.
To what that meant, though, he was as clueless as the others.