For the first time since she'd come here, Maya saw something other than sand.
A bright silver needle flew like a dancer through the air, guided by Deus' watchful presence. Threaded through its eye was a thin, bouncy green thread that glowed subtly as the needle wove in and out through sheets of springy fabric.
As the stitches continued to pull together, a vision of the completed project shone in Maya's mind. A doll. A very human-like doll, which Maya's soul was to possess to take form in the mortal world.
She watched as a pair of ornate, delicate scissors cut the peach coloured fabric into abstract shapes, entranced by the way the needle darted around the project and tugged the pieces into fingers here, a leg there, pulling everything together like a rehearsed performance.
"It will resemble how you looked in life." Deus' voice echoed around her. The sand around the base of his figure shifted quickly, a turbulent sea. "You will blend in with mortals seamlessly, but take care not to get cut; unlike them you have no blood, and under your skin lies only stuffing and wooden hinges."
Cloudy white cotton zipped around the area and stuffed itself into the arm puppet along with a wooden pole. It was coming together now. She had two arms, a leg, and a torso to tie them all onto. More cotton appeared and tucked itself away inside the doll, filling out curves and softening it to the touch. Maya felt something inside of herself stir, something she knew she hadn't felt since life. It was the excitement of truly living; to know firmly when, where and who she was.
"Will anyone remember me?" The needle wove neat lips onto her face. She looked friendly. Gentle, feminine features set on pale skin with rich brown hair that fell in loose waves from her head. A twinge of memory ran through her- she knew that face, she'd seen it every day of her life.
"You've been dead for a long time, dear," Deus guided two lifelike glass eyes into her sockets. Black and large, she noted. Striking. Innocent looking. Something about Deus' gentle chuckle at her thoughts told her perhaps this observation wasn't so accurate. "I did take a few artistic liberties, though," he dotted a mole on the right side of her neck, "They won't even recognise you from the statues."
Her head shot up. "Statues?"
"I only keep souls I find entertaining." Deus reminded her and set the finished doll silently down on the sand. It wore clothes she found unfamiliar from her life, similar to what the girls she saw in the mortal world wearing. On the bottom, a pleated skirt with some geometric pattern that fell only to her knees, fixed at the waist with a thick band of the same fabric. On top he'd dressed her in a tight fitted white top that came all the way down her arms but only fell to her navel on the body.
Maya knew probing further into the statues comment would bear no fruit. "I'm wearing very little," she noted, "it feels wrong."
"It's modern!" Deus' voice held an air of irritation. "Standards have changed."
"I know, just…" She thought back to those gritty city streets she observed so often. Though her attention was frequently fixed on David, she had to agree the modern girls wore less than what felt deeply familiar to her. Deus' eyes flitted into angled rectangles in offense at her criticism of his fashion sense.
Maya moved to step towards the doll only for Deus to hold her back. "One last thing," his eyes relaxed back to earnest circles, "Take this with you."
From the sand sprang a small wooden box, beautifully ornate in a style she instantly remembered. It was made from a material she recognised as rosewood, inlaid with mother of pearl and bright gold metal in a floral design. Inside, cushioned by soft green velvet, laid a spool of the same green thread her doll body was stitched with, a velvet drawstring bag of cotton, and a long, thin indent.
Before she could ask the purpose of the indent, the silver needle hanging in the air darted down and settled in place. Deus snapped the box shut and handed it to her.
"They're supplies for repair." Hesitantly, he pushed the doll towards her. "Once you are in this form you will not be able to return here. If you get injured, the needle will fix you, but be careful because the supplies are limited."
"What if I run out of supplies?"
"If I catch your soul, I shall bring you back here."
She paused. "And if you fail to catch it?"
Deus gave her no reply but his silence spelt volumes. She would become like the others he did not save; simply nothing. It would be as it had been before she was born. As empty as her current existence was, that idea terrified her above all else.
Suddenly, the doll didn't appear as enticing as it once had. That soft skin, the tangible form; every move inside of it would be a risk. Amid this fretting her mind flew back to David. How much time had passed since he'd won that brutal fight? Had the other boy extracted his revenge yet? Every moment she remained here was also a risk- she couldn't let this opportunity slide.
While her doll was being assembled, Maya had noticed a small felted heart soar around and tuck itself into her chest like a chick snuggling inside its nest. She longed to feel it beat again, to taste and hear and love as the living did. There were other experiences too, ones she knew she longed for. They fizzled out at the tip of her tongue, remaining nothing more than vague feelings shrouded from her mind by the veil of death.
"I'll do it," she leant over the body and took its hands in hers.
Deus gave her a curt nod. The sands around him- around the both of them, now- shifted and bubbled in a rolling boil. "Maya," his voice was fading, coming more from inside her head than all around her, "Do not remember, or I will call you back."
With this warning, she felt herself slipping through the sand, clutching the doll as her mind went silent for the first time.
_
Gasping, hands clawed around her strangled throat, Maya jolted awake. This body was lead compared to her spirit form, a tangled mess of limbs and movement with squirming insides. Maya clutched her stomach with a pitiful groan and retched some clear liquid, then hung her head, panting like a dog on her hands and knees.
The sounds of the city raged around her, sirens and beeping in the distance, faint yells and thumps in the air. Beneath her palms and knees the gravelly tarmac floor grated her skin like sandpaper, leaving small red craters on the soft surface. Beside her lay the ornate box.
Tentatively, she put her head up. Her eyes adjusted to the dim light of a buzzing yellow streetlamp above her, moths fluttering around it with cult-like reverence. Deus had placed her in a small alcove, walled in on three sides with a large dumpster sitting in the entrance.
The area bore signs of human life with shattered green bottles strewn about in the corners, cigarette butts squashed onto the tarmac and layers upon layers of graffiti towering up across the walls around her. Within the colourful art she distinguished the phrases 'KNOWLEDGE IS POWER' and 'MAKE TEA NOT WAR' juxtaposed with 'SEX' and someone's phone number scrawled across the sooty bricks in dribbling pink pen, embellished with a heart.
Maya felt rather like the letters on those walls. While her spirit form had been light, understimulating, her new body felt too full and shiny and jagged in all the wrong ways, organs bunched up inside like sardines in a can. She coughed again and wiped the spittle from her mouth with the back of her hand, dampening the sleeve of her white top.
More sirens whirled past, a hurricane of noise, followed instantly by harsh yells punctuated with expletives from strangers only a few metres away. Turning her head towards the source of the noise, behind the dumpster that was now the only line of defence between her and the rest of the world, she finally caught sight of the rest of the city.
Tall, brutalist buildings squatted proudly next to houses and halls with pointed roofs, slouched with age, nuzzled comfortably in their long-held stations. The whole skyline was shrouded in a thick burnt yellow haze matching the flickering light from the lamp in her corner, spreading out into the tarlike night sky with a gradient that seeped from bands of buzzing, buttery yellow to smooth butterscotch, fizzing into a rich pumpkin orange before fading into the abyss above.
Someone sneezed from behind the dumpster. "Fuck," he muttered, then sniffed and slumped against the metal with a dull bang.
Maya crept forward, keeping her footsteps as silent as she could in her rubber soled white trainers. From the slit in between the dumpster and the wall she saw the dingy corner's other occupant, realising with bated breath why Deus had dropped her here.
David nursed his bloody nose and knuckles with clumsy hands; the stained, obviously reused bandage wrapped somehow both too tight and too loose around his digits. He sniffed every so often and wiped his nose with the bandage, dirtying it further. His buzzed dirty blonde hair glistened with a sheen of the same sweat that dripped down his forehead, channelled by the wrinkles between his furrowed brows to collect and drip from the tip of his nose.
Shaking, he tucked in the edge of the bandage and took a deep breath.
She was in luck. From the look of his injuries, he had recently fled the scene of the same fight she'd just watched, quelling her fear of having missed too much time. How could she greet him? The gap between the wall and the dumpster was large enough for her to slip through but she didn't want to startle him. He'd likely hit anything that made him jump, and she only had limited supplies to repair herself.
This issue was resolved for her when she hopped back over to collect the box and stumbled over her own legs- it had been a long time since she'd had to control a body. Quick movements weren't quite natural to her yet.
"Who's there?" David appeared in the gap. His vulnerability from moments ago was gone, replaced by a scowl. "Sallow?" He spat out the word as if having it in his mouth was poison.
"No," she'd heard 'Sallow' mentioned a handful of times while watching him, typically before the accused individual was beaten to unconsciousness. She could only assume it was a group David held a deep rivalry with.
"Then who the fuck-" He stormed through the gap with his fists clenched, then stopped abruptly when he saw her. Whatever he had been expecting to find, a well put-together young girl hadn't been it. "Oh."
Maya stood up, box in hand. She brushed the gravel from her knees, silently thankful she hadn't tripped on glass and spilled her cotton insides so soon. Hoping he hadn't seen her grab it, she stashed the small box into a pocket in the seam of her skirt.
"Just oh?" Although this boy had inspired her to return to the mortal plane, she couldn't tolerate rudeness. Some faint feeling within her whispered to speak her mind with unwavering confidence. "Won't you ask my name?"
"The fuck?" A drop of blood threatened to fall from his nose but he restrained it with a sniff. "Fuck are you back here for? Drugs?" He peered past her, scanning the area for goods.
Miffed, Maya crossed her arms. The same inkling, the same innate feeling telling her that in her lifetime the clothes she wore would have been unacceptable returned to rear its head at David's foul mouth. "Do you know how to speak without swearing?"
"Duh," he scowled at her. "You're weird."
"And you don't know how to tie a bandage."
He glanced down to his hands as the stained cloth untied itself and fell to the floor. Swearing again, he moved to gather it up.
"No, don't be ridiculous." Seeing him reuse the same filthy cloth sent shivers down her spine. "You'll catch your death."
Without thinking, Maya took his torn up hands in hers and turned them over for inspection. The bones didn't seem to be broken, and there were no signs of existing infection, which relieved her. His skin, particularly on his knuckles, was littered with small lacerations leaking vibrant red. On his palm laid a row of crescent imprints from clenching his chipped fingernails inside balled fists, and his nailbeds bore the signs of habitual nervous nibbling; the skin around them was thick and frayed.
"Are you a nurse?" He tilted his head, curious. Maya was sure that pressing on his wounds was painful but he didn't flinch once as she touched them.
"No, I'm…" A flash of something rolled around in the outskirts of her mind. It was like a storm at the base of her skull, bearing jagged edges that tore at her with thinly veiled recollections, pleading with her to remember. "It's complicated."
"You're young for a nurse." His tone was soft, flirtatious, alien to his earlier hostile manner. "Are you still learning?"
Maya brushed the dirt from his hands. Infection here is dangerous, she thought with a grimace. He's risking mobility loss, amputation if it gets bad. I'll clean it, use fresh bandages (she tossed the filthy one into the dumpster) and keep an eye on him for fever.
"I don't remember anything. I hit my head and woke up here." A half-baked lie, but it would have to do. Change the subject, her mind hissed. "Do you have any new dressings?"
With a glint in his eye, David pushed her shoulder playfully. His grimy skin tarnished her cotton top with a smear of blood and dirt, but when she saw his slight smirk she couldn't find the will to care.
"You're lying," he winked. "I'll get the truth out of you later."
I won't, she thought. In that moment she felt a mild camaraderie with Deus. Now on the side keeping the secret, it was clear the knowledge would do David no good.
"What's your name, then?" He spoke up again after her silence. "I'm David."
"I'm Maya." Accepting his handshake, she could practically feel Deus wince as she wiped her hand on her skirt afterwards.
"About the dressings," David glanced behind him at the mouth of the alley and scratched the back of his neck, "I can get those. So long as you're the one wrapping me up."
Opposite the pair was a small corner shop with cracked blue paint on the windows reading 'OLLIE'S'. David nodded his head towards it and winked at her.
Maya looked away as her felted heart fluttered. "Just get the supplies," she mumbled, and followed him out into the street.