The Dollhouse (Renee).

[Pyper]

Christmas was coming soon. A bitter bite of cold, the barren trees. People gathered together; humans collected their body heat underneath the same roof. Unwittingly, they saved their heating bill expenses, if they were actively conscientious of their dues. It meant accidents, sirens blaring and blinking lights that seared into the pits of her retinas. It meant that tempers rose more quickly; the custom of gift giving making seemed to put tension in people. Indecisiveness on what to get, the money that would be leaving their wallets and bank accounts. It meant being force fed holiday music. The same songs sung by different people and the words never changed. Pyper didn't understand the point. Christmas brought something to the Altaire, however, that created a surge of flowering restless behavior. Her tics kicked into overdrive at the designs of decorations. The colors, the patterns; the stores that had things that whistled, and played music made her jumpy. None of it was unpleasant.

"I'm sorry Miss but you can't touch any of the displays." A man had approached her in one of the stores she chose to circulate through. She ventured out of the places she felt most comfortable in to fetch ideas. For the presents in mind, and for the design of her dress for the party. A waterfall of plastic, decorative tinsel was framing with its reflective red hue for the white bells dangling within her reach. They were set in diagonal columns, hanging on the front size of a card board erection of a Christmas tree. It was because of the way her fingers grabbed at each one, rolling the beads over the rounded edges of her prints. Her nails snag on the embossed ring of some and the metallic orb inside would clash creating more noise to compliment the array of music, screaming and chimes of toys in the impulse sections.

The way she handled the bells with a peculiar tenderness as a person might have catching rainfall, made the employee label the eccentric behavior as a mark of a shoplifter. Touching things for too long, aimlessly evading a crowd in the same store for prolonged hours. "Did, you, make these?" Pyper Altaire's eyes forced from the bells to the store employee. At first, nothing about him spoke to her. His bone structure held no anomalies that deserved attention. No impressive attributes that chain reacted to put her into a hyperactive harvesting frenzy. She felt nothing for him, not as much as her curiosities about the bells stirred drafts of vague ideas. Roman's bow design. The gift swap present. The blond wasn't going to give another thought to the human until she saw his enamel when he told her that they are shipped the decorations and the displays ahead of time. His most captivating physical feature was his teeth. His name tag said Robert. It didn't display a last name, defeating - to her - the purpose of having a sign that tells people who you are. Pyper will come back for those teeth.

"Thank you," and she left the store. Shopping and prepping for the holiday events was hard to understand. The matter of her attire, how other women got ready for these things escaped her. She felt removed from her gender. Someone could help her. Being more social was part of working on herself. Her ways. In her phone, the names blinked by. The highlighted one read: Renee. There had been loosely agreed plans of the showing of Renee's doll. The one that Roderic made for her. She never ended up visiting that night. Her thumb waved over the screen, dancing in partial circles around the green phone signal. The tap resounded with a soft blip, an internal vibration setting made by the original device's provider.

Calling Renee.