The years turned to decades, and the world outside my glass eyes changed again and again.
Empires rose and fell. Street lamps replaced candles. Horse carriages gave way to machines of smoke and iron. I watched it all unfold from the stillness of my place near the window, unchanged, unmoving, unseen.
The last time I saw Elias Vinter, his hands trembled when he lifted me to dust the shelf. His hair, once black as ink, had faded to silver. His voice cracked when he spoke.
> "You've outlasted everything, haven't you?" he said softly, smiling through a weary sigh. "Even me."
That was the final time he touched me.
Soon after, the workshop fell silent.
The scent of fabric and thread lingered for a while, but the sound of his laughter, his humming, his words—they all vanished into the air like morning fog.
---
It is now the year 1889.
Elias is long gone, his absence marked only by the slow decay of time. His wife, Amelia, has grown frail and quiet, her silver hair coiled neatly beneath a black shawl. Their daughter, Margaret, now a young woman, tends to her mother with gentle hands and carries on her father's trade.
And still, I remain.
I sit on a wooden chair in the corner of their parlor, a silent figure dressed in a gown long out of fashion, its lace yellowed with age. Dust gathers in the folds, though Margaret sometimes wipes it away, humming softly as she works.
She has her father's eyes—calm, thoughtful, tinged with that same quiet melancholy. When she looks at me, I sometimes feel as though she sees through me, as though she senses something behind the glass.
---
One afternoon, as the autumn light poured through the window in soft, golden beams, I heard her voice.
> "Mother," Margaret said, folding a shawl over Amelia's shoulders. "Can I ask you something?"
> "Of course, my dear," her mother replied, her voice as delicate as paper.
> "That doll." She nodded toward me. "How did Father come to have it? I can't recall ever hearing the story."
Amelia's hands froze on the fabric. For a long while, she said nothing. The only sound was the ticking of the clock and the faint wind outside.
Then, slowly, she turned her gaze toward me.
> "It's a strange story," she murmured. "And one I've not told in many years."
Margaret smiled faintly, curious. "Please? You always said Father found beauty where no one else thought to look."
> "He did," Amelia said, her eyes softening with memory. "He found her in the wreckage of something not of this world."
My vision—limited though it was—caught the flicker of firelight reflecting in Amelia's eyes. Her voice grew quiet, distant, as if she were speaking to ghosts.
> "It was before I met him, in his younger days. He told me once that an old woman found it. He said she came from the heavens—or perhaps from hell. No one knew. The wreck she found it in was made of metal and glass, burned black as coal. There was a man, too—dead beside it. But she took only the doll."
> "A wreck of metal and glass?" Margaret repeated, puzzled. "Like a carriage?"
Amelia smiled sadly. "He said it was no carriage. None had ever seen its like. Some said it fell from the sky."
I felt something ache inside me—a memory trying to surface.
The flash of headlights. The scream of steel. The blinding white before the end.
> "The old woman gave it to your father," Amelia continued. "He was a tailor then, newly alone after his parents had passed. She told him the doll was too beautiful to bury. He dressed it in his mother's gown, the one you see now, and placed it by the window."
Margaret's eyes lingered on me. I wanted to look back at her—to tell her that I remembered it all. That the story she heard was mine, though centuries separated us.
> "He said sometimes," Amelia whispered, "that the doll seemed alive. That when the light struck its face, he could almost swear it breathed."
Margaret laughed softly. "How strange."
> "Yes," her mother said. "Strange… but he loved that doll in his own quiet way. He said it gave him comfort through the loneliest nights. I used to tease him that he spoke more to her than to me."
Amelia chuckled, though her laughter carried the brittle weight of age.
> "He never did tell me why he called her Clara. He said the name came to him in a dream."
And again, that ache—the ghost of a heartbeat within the hollow of my chest. Clara. My name for her. My name for myself.
Amelia's gaze softened.
> "Your father believed everything had a soul," she said. "Even the things we call lifeless. Perhaps… he wasn't entirely wrong."
Her voice trembled at the edge of memory. She reached for her daughter's hand and held it.
> "I remember once," she said quietly, "waking in the night and seeing him sitting beside the doll. The candlelight flickered, and I could have sworn—just for a moment—that she was watching him too."
Margaret's expression changed—curiosity tinged with unease.
> "You think it moved?"
> "No," Amelia said quickly, though her tone wavered. "I think… I only wanted to see what he saw. A companion in silence."
The two women fell quiet after that. The fire crackled. Dust floated through the air, glowing in the afternoon light.
Inside me, the silence pressed harder than ever. I longed to reach out—to speak, to tell them that their memories were real, that I had seen it all: the workshop, the wedding, the years passing like whispers in the wind.
But my body remained still, unmoving. The world around me continued to change, and I could only watch as Amelia's voice grew weaker with each passing day.
---
That winter, snow fell heavier than usual. The world outside turned white and silent, and the house grew colder by the hour.
One night, Margaret wept quietly by her mother's bedside. I could hear her sobs echoing through the small parlor, soft and broken.
Amelia's final breath came with a smile. Her last words were a whisper, almost too faint to hear.
> "He's waiting for me… by the window."
And then she was gone.
---
Weeks passed. The house was quiet again—too quiet. Only Margaret remained, sewing by the firelight just as her father once did. She often glanced toward me now, her eyes distant, thoughtful.
> "He loved you, didn't he?" she said one night, her voice barely a whisper. "Even if you were only porcelain."
The word only stung more than she could ever know.
I wanted to answer—to tell her that he was the last warmth I had known, that I remembered every kindness, every moment of silence shared between a man and the ghost of his creation.
But the words stayed locked within me, buried under centuries of stillness.
And so I watched as she turned back to her work, the fire casting long shadows across the room.
Outside, the city lights flickered in the distance.
Inside, the porcelain heart within me waited—silent, patient, unbroken still.