She loved that little boy the moment that she saw him, sitting on the edge of the wall with a stuffed pig neatly arranged beside him. He had such a beautifully blank expression set in porcelain skin, just like a doll, and when she stepped a little closer she could see the way the sunlight caught his eyes like amber. She remembered seeing an insect fossilized in amber once when she was a little girl. It had gotten caught in slipping tree sap and become immortalized in its own way, forever caught in a pretty little prison, just like she was now. Just like this boy could be as well.
He sat up straight and still, with his hands folded neatly on his lap and his feet hanging straight down, not kicking them impatiently against the wall or playing with bugs creeping in and out of the tiny crevices that wandered over its stony face. If not for a few soft blinks and the gentle motion of his small shoulders as he breathed, she might have thought he were merely an exquisite statue carved especially for her pleasure.
But if he had truly been a porcelain statue she would have surely shattered him. She did so love to watch things break and laugh at all the pretty little pieces on the floor. Sometimes it made her angry because she could no longer play with the thing after it had been broken. Sometimes she relished the thought that it could never be reassembled the way it was before. It was fun.
She wanted to break the boy, to take him apart and see all the little pieces that made him up, from the pretty outside and the secret inside. She wanted to play with him, use him up until there was nothing left.
"Hello." She called softly as though coaxing a small bird into her hand.
The boy swung his head around, not having noticed her soft approach. "Hello." He parroted blankly.
"What a pretty little boy…" she reached out to touch his cheek and like a bird unused to humans, not knowing it had any reason to fear, he did not flinch or move at all. "…but you would be much prettier covered in blood." She giggled.
He seemed more perplexed than frightened by this remark.
"Will you play with me?" She begged, taking his hand.
"Play?" The boy gave her a confused look as though he had never heard the word before in his life.
"You know." She giggled. "Have fun." She tugged at his arm harder and he nearly tumbled off of the wall.
Recognizing insistence when he saw it, the boy obediently slid down from his perch.
"What do you want to play?" He asked.
"What's this?" she asked, picking up the stuffed pig he had abandoned on the wall.
"It's mine." The boy replied bluntly.
Setsuka giggled. "No, it's a piggy. They make pork out of these." She held the pig up. "They cut them open and rip out their insides and fry them up."
The boy tilted his head slightly, considering this for a moment.
"Well not this one." He pointed out.
"Why not?" Setsuka toyed with one of the button eyes. "Do you think it's because you love it? Because loving something is not enough to keep it from being taken from you."
The boy shook his head. "Because it's made out of cloth and stuffing. You don't eat cloth and stuffing."
"Cloth?" Setsuka laughed. "But it's a real piggy isn't it? You play with it, you name it, you make it go 'oink, oink'. That makes it real doesn't it?"
"No." The boy was giving her a baffled look.
"Why not?" Setsuka tugged and tugged at the button eye. "You can dress people up and tell them what to say and they're real aren't they?" She paused, staring at a bluebird that had landed on a branch nearby. "Or are they?" She wondered aloud. "Maybe we're all made up." The bird leaned down in its nest to feed its chirruping young and Setsuka tired of it, returning to tugging at the buttons. "Maybe Mr. Piggy here is dreaming all of us."
"You mean like the butterfly story?"
"I like butterflies." Setsuka answered. "They're so pretty and soft and colorful. Like little pieces of tissue paper when they catch the sunlight. Only they get your hands sticky when you tear them."
Seishirou wrinkled his nose. "I don't like having sticky hands."
Setsuka giggled. "You're so prissy." She remarked. "Like a cat. Only they don't like getting wet." She wandered to the koi pond and dipped her hands into the water, flicking them at him and laughing as he flinched. "Neither do you though. Are you a kitty-cat?"
"No. I'm a human." Seishirou replied rubbing a bit of water off his cheek.
"Human?" Setsuka laughed and sidled back up to the wall where he sat. "Oh no, I don't think you're a human. Human's faces change. Yours doesn't." She reached up to caress a porcelain cheek. "You're more like a doll." She giggled. "Which means that I can imagine how you react to things but you don't get to actually react yourself." She declared.
A passerby would have said that the boy did not respond, but as far as Setsuka was concerned, he agreed readily with this sentiment.
"Who are you?" He demanded with quiet resolution.
Her eyes had been dancing with the edge of sanity from the moment he had seen her, and yet at the question, at this small provocation, they sharpened, as though seeing him for the first time. Her face displayed a similar shift, from the girlish giggle and overly open expression to something more reserved as her features carefully rearranged themselves into the mask so often worn by adults to shield their true thoughts from children.
"I am your mother." She replied with quiet authority.
.
.
He believed her. He could not have given one solid reason for it, but a vague recognition had lingered at the edge of his senses throughout their entire conversation, not in the sense that he recalled having met her before, but in the sense that the distance from reality she displayed so readily was not unfamiliar to him. From time to time, he realized in silent reflection that he too had felt some chasm between him and the rest of the world and he wondered if he too would eventually surrender and sever what link he yet maintained with it.
None of this of course registered with him at the time. At the time, he merely watched her pluck the button eyes from his stuff animal's face, feeling what he realized upon reflection was what most people considered "a connection". There was a tether between him and this beautiful, bizarre woman, umbilical one might say, as if she held the key not only to his existence, but to the rest of his life. The red threads of his fate were in some way that he could not yet fathom, wound about her as much as they were around himself.
When she beckoned him to follow, he did so without question, knowing that wherever she would lead him, it was where he was meant to go.