.:Memories of a Broken Doll:.
Why is it always dark here? It's so cold. There's something shimmering all around me. When night comes I can almost feel it clearly. It's water. The sun doesn't reach down to where I am so I didn't know. Why am I here?
How much time has passed?
... Am I alone... here?
Something... dark is coming down... A shadow... and bubbles? What is it? What's coming?
"Mai, did you find anything?" Naru asked. Mai glanced over her shoulder a second then returned, without answering, to the bucket she was hauling up from the well.
"I knew there was something down there," she muttered to herself between breaths as she quickly tugged the rope towards her side so the bucket could rest on the stone walls of the well.
A girl.
Mai picked it up and carried it out gently. It was a little smaller than she had expected, but water tended to give you different illusions anyway. The doll was old. It was rotting. Probably from being in the water too long. The clothes it was wearing were all still in tact but they were now rags and the colors were all but faded. Mai felt a shadow approach her and turned around. The doll transfered to equally gentle hands.
"Was this inside the well?" Naru asked, narrowing his eyes as though he could inspect it thoroughly like that.
"Yeah! I thought I saw something glinting and I thought that it might've been a coin or something but then the bucket suddenly fell," she explained quickly, pointing to the said bucket. "Then this floated to the top... then somehow I managed to capture it with the bucket..." Mai felt uneasy with her own explanation of events. It felt perhaps a little too much coincidental. How does one fish a doll from a well with just a bucket?
"We'll have Lin look at this," said Naru, already stepping away from the well.
Mai took one last look at the well where she found it, and then stared at Naru's back for a few moments. The kid who dropped the doll must have been pretty sad. The doll must've looked really pretty once upon a time. Shaking her head then, as if they would get rid of such thoughts, she started jogging after Naru.
"I wonder if it has anything to do with..."