a/n [For Lils, my star, my love, at the last minute of Christmas.]
Side by side, they are just two kids with a simple dream. They imagine a world where people dance in freedom and sing in sunshine and speak in words of peace. Because the world they already live in is dressed up and proper with dollhouse walls for a city border and little figurines for people. It's all one giant play of puppets on strings working for promises of silver and gold and fairytales.
The puppets' favorite tale is of the two-dozen children who explore a new world and it's ups and downs before playing a game with each other—isn't that just so sweet?—until a lone little winner is crowned in the fame and glory. Their puppeteer tells them the story once every year.
"Lavinia," the first kid, the boy, says. He's calling the other, the girl, by name. "Lavinia, have you dreamed of a better world yet?"
And she tells him of the world of an underground city that's hiding from the puppeteer and his stories and his toys. She weaves word after word together until she's strung a tale so bright that nothing compares in the slightest, only drastically pales in comparison. It's so wonderful of a world that they act it out on their own, and while no one's there to yell, "Action!" at the start, the puppeteer sends out his wind-up soldiers to call out, "Cut!" for the show to end.
There's only the snip of a heart and the crash of a net to end the heartfelt story and send the two kids into a darkness that they know all too well.