The girl’s parents had always argued, but this time was different. Their words clashed like swords, shrill and bitter, cutting deep into the air. Then, together, they shrieked a single word—

HATE.

Their bodies twisted. Their fingers curled into claws. Their faces stretched into cruel, black beaks. With a furious beating of wings, they flung themselves into the sky, still screaming at each other, lost in their own rage.

They did not look back.

The girl ran after them, calling out, but the trees swallowed her cries. The darkness thickened, the branches stretched like grasping hands, and the path beneath her feet twisted into something unfamiliar.

She was alone.

She wandered, lost, until she found the doll.

It sat beneath the roots of a gnarled tree, porcelain hands resting in its lap, blue eyes staring up at nothing. She picked it up without thinking, holding it close. But the moment she did, her arms felt stiff, her legs light as air. A strange stillness crept over her.

She looked down and saw the truth.

She was the doll.

—

She came upon a familiar face—a neighbor’s child, a girl she had once known.

Relief flooded her. Surely the child would help. Surely she would see past the painted face and stiff limbs.

She reached out.

The child’s face twisted in disgust. She swatted the doll away, hard.

The doll stumbled, and her hand hit stone. A sharp crack split the air.

She looked down. Jagged and white as bone, the broken edge of her hand gleamed in the moonlight.

The child was already gone.

—

She did not approach anyone else after that.

She wandered through the forest in silence, watching from a distance, afraid to be seen.

Then she noticed the birds. Bright, beautiful things with feathers like the sunset. She did not move toward them. She only watched.

But they saw her.

They swooped down, talons grasping, beaks pulling. They tore at her dress, stripping it into ribbons, carrying the fabric away to line their nests.

She tried to run. Her foot caught on a root. She fell, hard.

Another crack.

She did not need to look to know. Her leg was broken.

—

She kept going.

There was nothing else to do.

The pain was dull, distant, like a bad dream, but she was weaker now. Lighter. Less of herself than before.

Then, through the trees, she saw the squirrels.

They were small and quick, with bright eyes and twitching tails. They chattered to one another as they approached, darting close, then back again.

For the first time in a long while, the doll felt a glimmer of hope.

The squirrels were gentle creatures. Surely they would be kind.

But they were not looking at her face.

They were looking at the row of red buttons sewn down the front of her dress.

One of them lunged, teeth flashing, and bit down hard. The thread snapped. The button came free. The others joined in, scrabbling at her chest, their tiny claws scratching, tearing, yanking. She tried to back away, but they climbed onto her, clinging, pulling, taking everything they could.

One squirrel grabbed a button in both paws and sniffed it. Then its nose wrinkled in disgust. With a sharp flick, it hurled the button at her face.

The button struck her eye. The porcelain cracked. A jagged line split through the blue glass, and the world became fractured.

She pressed her hands to her chest, but the stuffing was already spilling out. The squirrels had taken what they wanted. The ones who hadn’t found real berries chattered angrily and skittered away.

She sat in the dirt, her head bowed, her hands clutching at the hole where her heart should have been.

It was a small eternity of desolation before the Lamb came, and yet when the Lamb came –

He was pale as the moonlight, his wool soft and clean. But there was a mark across his throat, thin and dark, as though a blade had once tried to silence him.

The doll shrank away.

She had trusted before. And each time, she had been torn, cracked, hollowed out.

The Lamb stepped closer.

She flinched.

Do not be afraid, he said.

The doll shook her head. She had no hands left to break, no buttons left to steal, no fabric left to tear. But she still had something inside her, something she could lose.

The Lamb gazed at her, his eyes filled with something she could not understand.

You are, he said softly.

The words settled in her like warm light.

“What do I do?” she asked.

“You are,” he said.

And he turned, his soft hooves fading into the quiet.

She sat there, staring at her hands—flesh, not porcelain. She pressed her chest and felt the steady thrum of life beneath her ribs.

She was real now, not just a thing made of thread and stuffing.

In the stillness, the words echoed in her heart: You are.

She was.

She was.

And in that truth, she found the beginning of everything.