Somewhere, sometime, lived a little girl who loved playing with her dollhouse. And it was a pretty little dollhouse, too: cream-coloured with a pink thatched roof. The whole thing- right down to the fittings and furnishings- was built by her father, an amateur carpenter, and painted by her mother.
Every morning she'd take out this masterpiece of woodwork, and lovingly begin her ritual of assembling all the furniture. Room to room would slowly take shape into a domestic setting of her design- and the players were no less interesting. A faded little teddy bear broken off the top of a keychain would tend to the kitchen; the plastic fairy doll would sit atop the roof (as she was the only one whose knees could bend); a little Santa Claus from a Christmas ornament would never shy away from the house, no matter the time of year; and the cardboard cut-out of a cartoon dog would play the piano (an inverted matchbox with black and white stripes). And yet, this was not all they did.
The little girl would frequent the toys throughout the day and move each one around. Often, their actions would reflect her own daily experiences (her age was so that she was on the brink of disbelief in the dolls' state of life, but not completely). She gave them feelings, thoughts, and all the characteristics innate to the people she knew and loved best. But as she had never lost a loved one, she dreaded losing any of her beloved dolls. She imparted to each a profession that she aspired to hold one day- in a way, she could live out her dreams through them.
At night she would tuck them into their beds, and transfer the whole dollhouse onto the window sill, careful not to disturb its slumbering residents.
Days and nights passed, and rest came less easy. Times grew stranger, and soon the dollhouse would be visited less frequently and rarely displaced from its spot on the window sill. The dolls within would be frozen several days at a time in their little daily actions and moved only when their proprietor remembered.
Then came the day when a doll was lost - the Santa Claus fell victim to a careless hand, and tumbled out the window. And yet, the little girl would not look for him. More important things occupied her mind; she was playing a different game now.
In time, the dollhouse found a new spot - in the attic- and its residents had only one purpose- to gather dust. Days and nights passed again, and again, and again, until the structure was shoved into a corner where days and nights scarce seemed distinguishable- only darkness persisted within and without, and silence its only companion.
Months, years, decades.... no one knew that somewhere in the upper corner of that large house was a far smaller structure similar in scale, yet more charming in architecture, one could argue.
And then, one day, a hand forced open the door of the attic. Its owner knew the dimensions of the room well enough to discern the presence of a great deal of objects buried under the generally separable junk piles. After all, the old woman had lived there her whole life.
She took her time digging through the piles, reminiscing about each trifle and trinket, and carefully recalling memories of them, as if unearthing treasures hidden beneath the sands of her mind. Before long, she struck upon the most prized artifact of her childhood – the dollhouse. Years in that damp attic had caused it to fuse with the wood surrounding it, and rot had begun to pervade its walls. As much as she tried, she could not cause the toy to budge.
Frustrated, tired, and solemn, she bent over the dollhouse, and began to sob softly. Her tears landed upon the roof like a soft rain, and washed away the dust to reveal the pink patterns carefully painted on by her mother more than half a century ago.
She felt strange – it did not take but a second for the same old childhood imagination to come rushing back, and through her mind’s eye she could see as clearly as ever her beloved dolls moving about the little rooms.
She wondered how they would have played out events past .... Santa Claus would have been lost long ago, the piano-playing dog would move away and start a litter of his own, and the teddy bear would fall to the same fate as the Santa Claus shortly after. And the fairy…... well, the fairy would remain seated atop the roof, gazing up at the stars she never could reach, nor scarcely attempted to. Eventually, she would remain the sole resident of the dollhouse.
Still sobbing, the old woman moved her hands along the walls of the different rooms, now bare and empty. As she felt her way to the top, something caught her finger. Looking up, she saw that it was a plastic wing- a wing attached to the back of the little fairy doll.
The doll’s pretty dress looked ragged, and her face was dirty. But her wings were intact- torn and bent, yet intact. This seemed to please the woman, and a small smile began to form as she stroked the wings and said – “That’s good… you’ll need these soon enough. To fly…. But first, a little rest….” With that, she moved the fairy doll down to what was once the bedroom, and covered her with her handkerchief, taking care to tuck her in.
Outside, a soft drizzle had just begun to fall. The room was growing increasingly darker as twilight turned to night. Yet, the old woman seemed to be at peace again, and left the attic with a heart lighter than when she had entered.
Days- and only days- passed once more. No one ever thought to look into the dollhouse again, but if they had, they would find no fairy doll.
For she had joined the little musical dog, the teddy bear, and the Santa Claus in a different kind of play – in a dollhouse far beyond the attic...