Time moves differently when you can't move at all.
The days blur together, like brushstrokes on a canvas left too long in the rain.
I no longer knew how many weeks—or months—had passed since Elias first brought me into his home. The candle that once sat beside me melted down to nothing and was replaced, again and again, until I stopped counting. Seasons changed outside the small window: the snow fell and melted, flowers bloomed and withered, and still I sat, silent and watching.
I learned to read time not by clocks, but by light—the way morning gold gave way to evening amber, and how the gray hush of winter crept earlier each day.
And though my body was still porcelain, my mind remained alive. Awake. Waiting.
Elias spoke to me less often now. His grief, I think, had softened with the seasons. The sadness that once filled his every word began to fade, replaced by something gentler—hope.
I began to notice it first in his voice. A lightness that hadn't been there before. He would hum to himself while sewing, sometimes even smile as he worked. Then came the visitors—a woman, quiet and kind-eyed, who began to stop by the cottage with baskets of bread and bundles of thread. Her laughter filled the air like sunlight through dust.
Her name was Amelia.
At first, she treated me as one might any other trinket—an ornament by the window, a curiosity. But on one visit, she lingered, brushing the skirt of my gown with her fingers.
> "She's beautiful," she said softly. "Where did you find her?"
> "She found me," Elias replied, smiling faintly. "Or perhaps fate dropped her on my doorstep."
Amelia laughed, but I felt the truth of his words like a whisper through glass.
From then on, I watched them. The way Elias's eyes followed her when she spoke, how her presence filled the house with a warmth I had almost forgotten existed.
For a long time, I didn't know what I felt. Envy? Joy? Sorrow? Perhaps all three.
Because even though I could not move, I felt something inside me changing—like fine cracks forming beneath a painted surface.
Months passed, and the two of them were married in spring. I watched from my place near the window as they returned home hand in hand, laughter trailing through the door. Amelia placed wildflowers in a vase beside me, their scent sweet and alive.
> "She should have a name," Amelia said one morning as she dusted the room. "Every beautiful thing deserves one."
Elias paused from his stitching and glanced at me. His eyes softened.
> "Clara," he said quietly. "She told me her name once, I think. In a dream."
My heart—if one could call it that—trembled.
He remembered.
The name I had given her in my time. The name I had whispered to her as I shaped her face and polished her hands. How could he have known? Had I somehow reached him, through the silence, through centuries?
I wanted to cry. But porcelain cannot weep.
---
Years slipped by like pages turning in a book I could not close. The little cottage grew emptier as Elias and Amelia prepared to leave it behind.
One morning, sunlight spilled across the floor, catching on trunks and boxes stacked by the door. Elias wiped sweat from his brow as he lifted one of them, and Amelia folded fabric into another.
> "Are you certain about the city?" she asked.
> "It's time," Elias said. "I've worked in this house too long. Perhaps the city will bring better trade—and better days."
He turned toward me, hesitating for a moment. His hands brushed the dust from my dress.
> "She's coming too," he said, smiling faintly. "I couldn't leave her behind."
And so, once again, I traveled—but this time not by my own will.
Packed carefully among linens and memories, I left the quiet village and its whispering fields behind.
---
The city was a world unlike any I had seen in this time—crowded, noisy, alive with scents of smoke and rain and horses. The streets echoed with voices, carts rattling over cobblestones, the hum of life rushing forward.
Their new home sat above a small boutique, a tailor's shop that Elias and Amelia built together. I was placed on a high shelf near the window, overlooking the displays of gowns and coats that danced gently in the breeze.
From there, I watched everything.
The laughter of customers. The soft arguments of a married couple learning to build a dream together. The candlelight reflecting on glass and silk.
Sometimes, when the doorbell chimed and new faces entered, I imagined what it would be like to walk among them—to feel the floor beneath my feet, to touch fabric with real hands again.
Elias and Amelia worked tirelessly, their shop slowly gaining favor among the townsfolk. They would work late into the night, sewing by lamplight, their fingers brushing occasionally as they reached for the same spool of thread.
Their happiness should have been enough to warm even a hollow soul. But as I watched, I realized that time had begun to change them—and me.
Their faces aged. Elias's hair grew silver at the edges, and Amelia's laughter, though still bright, carried a note of weariness. They built a life, piece by piece, while I remained exactly as I was—untouched by time, forever young, forever still.
Immortality, I discovered, was not a gift. It was a cage.
Some nights, when the city fell silent and the last candle burned low, I could almost hear the echo of my own thoughts whispering inside my hollow shell.
How many years will I watch them live while I cannot?
Will I still be here when their children grow old?
Will anyone remember the man who once was Jacob Moreau?
The answers never came. Only the steady tick of the clock, and the soft rise and fall of their sleeping breaths.
---
Then one evening, a storm rolled through the city—rain lashing the windows, thunder shaking the walls. The candle near me flickered wildly before going out. For the first time in years, I felt something shift again.
A pulse.
A spark.
It ran through me like a whisper of life, awakening that faint ember I had felt once before in the cottage long ago. My vision blurred. The world flickered.
Outside, lightning split the sky. In that brief flash, I saw my reflection in the glass—
—and for a heartbeat, the doll's painted lips were moving.