Sometimes, up high on her lonely balcony and looking out over lush gray lands and twisted black ones, Blandine makes dolls.

It's easy enough to just *make* a doll, out in the Marches, but Blandine desires the process more than the result, so she makes needle, thread, cloth of various colour, yarn, stuffing. She sits on white stone, skirts spread out around her, materials spread out on her skirts.

She starts with a basic design, cutting out the shape, sewing it almost closed but leaving a little hole with which she can fill the doll with what it needs. She pushes stuffing in with one finger, gentle, careful of its new seams. She watches it take form in her hands like so, filling out. She has small dolls and large ones, skinny ones, medium ones, overstuffed ones. But even once they're stuffed and she's sewed shut that tiny hole, they're still generic.

Blandine makes clothing for them next, though that is not the usual order. Sizes them from their little pink generic bodies, dresses them in skirts and pants, blouses, t-shirts, linen button-downs. No two outfits are the same. She can get caught up in this for hours, embroidering flowers into the cuffs and necklines of tiny shirts.

She gives them hair next, gently pulling yarn through their scalps. It's usually white, though among the pile of white haired dolls, the brunettes and redheads stand out like blood spatters on snow, her tribue to Snow White. And then for the features, little red satin lips and dark-lined pale eyes stitched carefully into place.

Then Blandine walks over, places the latest doll into a pile, and look quietly down at what she has before turning back to look at the other tower again.

She wonders what she'll do if her balcony ends up full of dolls, but her wish is never answered.