>>5819035With a tired huff you move to take the doll’s hand, only for a small black bolt of static to shock the two of you as your hands meet. The two flinch and recoil at the sudden pain. A horn goes off as two curse words are uttered in tandem, but before you can register your free speech being taken away.
You feel…nostalgic. Your head throbs but the pain takes a backseat to…a feeling…no, a memory, of clanking plates, and boiling water. Voices of a busy restaurant, you hurrying to set plates, for impatient customers, as your father yells at you for being slow from the kitchen. His Brooklyn accent is strong as it is offensive. A stereotype of a man, but one that you respected, wanted to learn from. Shame he taught you all the wrong things. Including how to hold a knife. You stand still as the memory races through your mind.
The doll sneers as she holds her hand.
“That was…odd. Uh sorry about…new guy?”
Ragatha looks at you only to see the chef wearing the thousand yard stare of thousand yard stares.
It is as if he saw the face of god and god proceeded to spit in his mouth. As if their father sat upon their hamster smothering the beloved family rodent under denim, in which the father tries to tell a dad joke to remedy the situation, the punch line of which is a messy divorce. Yes, that deception matches exactly the type of shocked and helpless stare being bore into Ragatha. Nothing else makes sense.
As creeped out as she was she suddenly feels her body seize up as the tingling of the bolt stiffens her.
Ragatha’s single good eye is wide open. She gasps in still silence as she catches a glimpse of something in her mind, of a sunny day, a push, the sound of gravel under her bikes tires. The faces of others are all blurs, as is her form, but..the feeling of the wind, the joy and innocence of her childhood. She remembered..how it felt. And just as quickly as it came it left. Leaving the doll in the same state as the chef. Both wearing very worrying stares as they look off into nowhere.
“Uh, Ragatha? When you’re done doing..that. Does Caine always do that?” Pomni asks the mentally struggling doll.
“I…had a bike.” Ragatha begins to laugh a bit, a small weak smile on her face as she does this.
“You what?” Jax asks his eyes mainly on the ringmaster who is surprisingly silent during this whole ordeal.
