Ri Locannon
There was the shattering of a window. That's all she knew. The crystalline twinkle of a thousand glass shards and the reflection of sun and water in each one. The distant dirge of a fog horn. In the quieter moments, the lucid moments, Ri knew that it was the fishermen returning with their catch, as they did every day. But everything was contained in that single memory of life. Nothing else existed in her mind, but the will of the Keeper and that one singular memory.
A crash of glass. A fog horn. The sun and the water. Nothing more.
The quiet moments were always the most terrible. The panicked breath before the plunge. They were the signal of waking, the half-remembered dream as sleep faded. But for Ri, waking meant pain and humiliation, contorted into a living image of beauty for the amusement of something sinister and alien. First there was a flash of light into her little box. It happened slow, as if the Keeper enjoyed prolonging the dread, but Ri did not know if such a being even knew care, or dread. The horrifying rictus of a child's face in a gross approximation of joy. Then the music. Screeching noise such as her ears could not understand, but to the Child were as like honey made sound. Then the pedestal, the marble round that was her home more than any she had had ever forgot. Ri knew the punishment for not clambering to her position by the time the Keeper had opened the jewelry box that was Ri's tiny home. She scurried up as quick as her aching limbs would allow, and then held the pose that the Keeper found pleasing that day. Somehow the Keeper would plant the image in her mind, and she knew better to fight it. Most days she was a graceful ballerina, her toes in a pirouette that she surely never had done in life. Some days they were simpler poses, casual beauty, and her clothes and demeanor would be changed for her in a more relaxed way. Other days, the worst days she would be put on display in some demeaning manner, the Child contorting her limbs and laughing with its mockery of childish pleasure, like every little monster that had ever dismembered a Barbie. Others would be brought to her and laugh at the failings of mortal form.
And then, when the Keeper was well pleased, so came the change. Her muscles would stiffen and grow cold until only a marble version of Ri, impossibly beautiful, remained. Then, nothing but the burning shame of object-hood and display. Always it would seem that she would lose hope of being anything but a marble statue that her muscles would begin to soften, to relax, and always the same words in that same childish voice that carried more years that Ri would ever know; "Sleep, my beauty." Then, blessed nothingness - until the crashing of glass.
The fog horn.
Marble for a day.
The crashing of glass.
Then some pratfall act of contortion until everything was pain.
The sun and water. A crash of glass. The fishermen coming off the Bay.
The San Francisco Bay. Something real.
And suddenly something broke. Some part of the spell loosened its grasp as reality intruded back into Ri's welcoming thoughts. The fog horn was the same time that Jessica would come home, her beautiful smile lighting up the crystal window in the door. The smell of fish and squawk of seagulls. The San Francisco Bay shining like a jewel in the autumn sun, the crisp air of October, the sound of engines revving up the hill, boats in the distance, the iconic bell of the cable car. The shattering of glass reversing, as the crystal window repaired itself.
The light glared into Ri's already open eyes. There would be no dainty statue today, no pretty ballerina, no dismembered corpse for the Keeper's inhuman desires. Ri was never a large person, but she was certainly bigger than a jewelbox figurine! With that thought, her body surged out of the box, shattering it within the Child's hands, and out sprang an impossibly large Ri, her voice distorted and hewn with her marble tongue making guttural cries of freedom as she punched an inhuman child, a marble fist to a Fae face, and strode from Arcadia, her giant foot steps trampling over things she recognized from fairy tales and fiction, and then her large foot came crashing down into a park...
... her size shrinking back down ...
... the smell of industrial waste that could only be Earth, or ...
Ri looked up at the sign above her reading "Camden, New Jersey." She hadn't escaped hell. She just moved to the next level.
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