He Pouts And I Think It’s Really Cute

“I wasn’t meant to ache, nor built to shed a single tear. Yet here I stand, appearing such a pitiful thing.” 🎭🦋

“Pinocchio, you are human..aren’t you?” Your whisper stirred the smog that crept through the air around you. Wide eyed, you observed him like a cornered lamb, curling a nervous hand into the fabric at your chest.

The question came as no surprise, if anything he’d anticipated it much sooner, which made it all the more disappointing for him to be so unprepared. His body flinched at its arrival as if it had raised to strike him.

Oh how he wished, for every breath he’s never taken, that he could tell you yes. And though it were in his best interest to deceive, Pinocchio refused to be named a liar. So he braced himself for the disgust that was sure to follow after he uttered the shamefaced reply, “No, but I look quite like one don’t I?”

The reveal shot down your spine, a quiet fear spreading through the branches of nerves.

He received not a huff of anger, nor a gasp of fright. Absent was that disgust he’d played over in his mind. He thought the silence to be worse somehow.

The puppet’s eyes narrowed, following your foot as it tucked behind the other. “Are you going to run now that you know I am not the same as you?” He didn’t sound hurt, accusatory seemed a better fit to place next to the sharpness of his stare. After the time spent in one another’s company, the only company that had entertained the word ‘safe’ thus far, perhaps he’d expected better.

Your muscles went rigid just as you’d shifted most of your weight onto that step, undecided if you were going to confirm his suspicion. The man wasn’t human, not like you in the slightest beneath the mask of human skin, he was the same as those who’d tried to sink their teeth into your bones as soon as they were offered.

If he wanted that too, however, he’d had ample opportunity to bare his jaws, and he hadn’t. Instead he’d protected you from his own kind, slaughtered them with a cold fury when they’d marked you as their next victim.

He’d saved your life many a time and never once turned around to undo it. Disgraceful, it would be, to write off the kindness he’s shown to you simply because a part of him strayed from your initial perception.

Your hand dropped from the front of your shirt to ease at your side, unsightly dents left behind where your fingertips had dug in. A tightness in your throat resisted swallowing the panic from the revelation about his being, but you let it pinch on the way down.

Then you saw it. The fragility behind that guarded stare of his, fixed on yours while he waited patiently for you to make up your mind, there was something human about it, even now that you knew otherwise.

It’s possible you were only seeing what you wanted to, but it’s difficult to argue with your eyes, unequivocally convinced it was there. Something as susceptible to hurt and wanting of connection as a real person would be. He wasn’t just different from you, he was different from the rest of these mindless puppets as well. A creature all his own.

That provided a semblance of comfort.

Though, one detail still bothered you enough. Apart from the prosthetic arm, his appearance was so convincingly opposite to the painted metal forms of his sibling creations and for that, it was true you hadn’t asked if he were a puppet, lacking the hunch to summon the need. But he never told you either. How naive to consider it would slip his mind.

Your step returned to line up with the other then, firm in place and standing you tall. “I’m not going to run,” Your voice held steadier than you’d imagined it able, far from the shaken whisper of before.

The tension in Pinocchio’s face fell away, his lips parting slight and that razors edge to his stare softening as you proved him so gladly wrong.

“I’m not going to run,” You repeated, before he had the chance to ask of your certainty. “But no more secrets. We have to trust each other, that means no keeping things from me anymore, alright?”

He regarded you for a moment at that, silent, as he usually was. But his eyes were loud and they didn’t shy from showing it, transparent in the relief that soothed inside his chest. You were going to stay. You’d learned what he was, what he was capable of, that he’d withheld it from you, and you’d chosen to stay.

Pinocchio nodded once, stepping closer with deliberate caution, in case your fear still kept a hand on your shoulder, until he came to stand before you. “No more secrets.” The puppet agreed. 🎭🦋

Written about the love of my life, paired with my favorite painting, Romeo and Juliet by Frank Dicksee.

I wrote this in honor of the nights I spent in the dark, just the moon and myself. (And the occasional cat that would join me)

The human heart was designed for torment, and the mind for disease. But what of mine? Will I succumb to the same fate? 🎭🦋

This shot ✨

“I really like this character from this thing and I also really like that character from that thing…but what if they liked EACH OTHER?! WHAT IF THEY KISSED?!”

And that’s how crossover pairings happen. Beautiful, just beautiful.

I wrote this one after watching Pride And Prejudice (2005) for the first time last night, if you’re familiar with the film I’m sure you know who this is about.

The sound of muffled sobbing drew me to a bright, rainy windowpane, where a weeping woman hid herself behind a curtain. On broken breath she begged me to retrieve her baby for her, her cries growing in their violence while she told of the night her family had cruelly taken her daughter away. I nodded to her shadowed form and agreed to the task, hoping to spare her some of those bitter tears.

I set out to search near city hall as she instructed, the gears in my core quickened their turns at the puppets I found stalking the courtyard. Following an odd sense of urgency I dispatched them within a minutes time, the thought that I’d arrived too late to save her child from the gruesome ends the other humans had met loomed at the forefront of my mind.

Then, a flash of lightning exposed a fallen stroller close to a garden bush, and a small humanoid shape caught my eye amongst the wreckage. As I neared, there was something that could only be described as ‘fear’ in me, it gave a tremble to my fingers and I lost the grip around the sword I held, digging my fingernails into my empty palm without it there to stop me until a clearer picture came into view. My eyes narrowed at the discovery that was more welcome, but less expected.

No blood, no ivory bones stripped of their flesh. Tipped over onto the cold ground and halfway pulled from wet, lacy blankets…lay a plastic doll. The rain dripped into its painted blue eyes that reminded me briefly of my own, spilling down its expressionless face when another drop fell and caused an overflow.

Could this be her child? The way she had spoken of it implied it was real, did someone take the child and leave a doll as its trade? There were no other children here, anything once alive was long since slaughtered by mindless puppets and the consequent litter of remains consisted of adult humans.

I bit the inside of my lip as I pondered what next I should do. I didn’t want to disappoint the woman, although I stood alone her sobs returned to my ears and I made a choice then, this would be better than to leave with nothing. Gathering it up carefully, I pulled a damp blanket from the least sodden part of the stroller and tucked it tight around the dolls body. With it secure and warm like a real baby should be, I carried it back to the rainy window, still unsure if I had found the right one.

To my surprise, when the woman parted the curtains she looked relieved, crying tears of joy instead of sadness as she took it from my arms. “Thank you, kind one, my sweet Elena has come back to me, isn’t she beautiful?” The woman asked as she gazed at Elena with a fondness in her smile, petting the unmoving child with shaking, grey colored hands.

Though confused, I felt it wrong to inform her that this was only a doll, it seemed of such great importance to her.

So…I lied, “Yes, she is beautiful.”

The woman’s smile widened at my deceptive answer, stretching the bluish scales at her cheeks. She began to rock Elena back and forth, humming a tune in a wavery voice. I felt a strange pressure lift from my chest once her tears dried on her ashen face, as if I’d been weighed down by the small drops of water somehow.

Perplexity came forward to ensure my steps remained heavy and I left the window more troubled than when I’d happened upon it. The human woman clearly loved Elena despite that she wasn’t real. She was only a doll, much like me. The baby didn’t eat, didn’t breathe, didn’t smile, just like me. And yet the woman cared for her all the same.

How curious that someone could show affection so pure to inanimate beings, to love them as if they were the same as them.

I wonder of the difference in outcome should I have told her the truth, but the relief in her eyes appeared a rare gift to her. This time lying hadn’t been a necessity, not like the lie given to the doorman at hotel Krat that tricked him to let me in. I believe this lie was told as an act of kindness, and while I searched for it, I couldn’t find a trace of harm in that. 🎭🦋

//I just really liked this part of the game and wanted to write a scene from his pov, P is both a murder machine and a sweetheart.