Domunsoka rises, flesh shuddering and twitching, it's new-given maw snarling and hissing animalistically at the two surrounding it.
Domunsoka has had dreams, fragmented dreams, dreams where never was a dream before: It has dreamed of things it has never known, things strange to it, new concepts which it only begins to understand with the partial intelligence of the Divine Thing, landscapes, moonscapes, forgotten halls beneath the ocean like the bones of stone whales, dreams of war and birds and women talking in harsh croaking voices like ravens. It has dreamed that a woman slew it with a wave of her hand. It dreams a dream of long years, a reminiscence or a possibility; the Divine Thing screeches that this is false, this is not the truth, this is not the ghost doll's life, and then
It has dreamed of a little child, a little boy running on the white sand of a beach, with miles upon miles of dunes and turf and tall weed, happy at play collecting pebbles, splashing in salty surf. Mother is up the beach, diving for clams to sell on market day. It is a perfect day, with sunshine and a cake and no small siblings. But then comes the bad man , dressed in his robes of white and purple (here the Divine Thing screeches like a fearful child) and he drags the boy, now crying, away from the beach and away from mother, a white body slicing through green waves, unseeing. Days pass and the bad man does bad things. He hurts the boy and the little boy cries, but there come no tears. It has all happened in a large mansion close to the sea, whipped by autumn storms and surrounded by a dark forest. It is a bad place and the villagers have nothing to do with it, for even the good ones fear it, so they stay well away. The big house is a scary place with benches and utensils, barred windows and chained wooden dolls. Strangely enough, the dolls cry like children, comforting the boy somewhat, even though they are not human. 11 was the number of childish dolls, 12 the number of brethren, for the boy counts himself as their brother, and they count him as well. For long moments, almost like an eternity, the brethren stand inactive, chained to the walls, hurt by the bad man who does strange things to them all. Then one day the good people come and bear torches and knives, spears and screams. The boy’s mother is there and they are all angry, screaming and shouting, telling the bad man how bad he has been. But mother does not recognize her boy (the Divine Thing wails) and the good people punish the bad man, but they also punish the wooden dolls and the little boy. Everything and everyone is thrown at sea; the bad man, his furniture, and the brethren as well, sinking like traitors condemned to drown into green depths of eternity, into blue depths of choking fear, into black depths where only false shadows of remnants settle in the domain of godlike molluscs and noctilucent jelly-beings.
The dream shifts, blurs, reverses, forward faster now, unceasing, gulfs of time speeding by and no longer is there a boy which lay broken amidst the rocks, waiting to be carried away by the tide. Now there is a wooden man cradling a boy in his arms instead. A boy who is very similar to another one, yet whose memory was lost in a thousand thousand knots of enfolded wood and pins of iron. The wooden man is crying, but tears do not fall, for the boy is dead and the wooden man is not human, but a mockery, a doll, a shape, a mannequin, a falsity, a ghost. The boy is a broken thing seeping crimson fluids upon its wooden torso. Now matter how hard it tries, the wooden man cannot repair the broken boy, like a toy to be mended, so easily smashed by petulant children, and neither does it help to punish the bad men who are responsible.
So the wooden man screams, but it does not help.
So the wooden man curses, but no one hears.
So the wooden man grieves, but there is no mercy.
It's emotions fall broken like toys, like wooden dolls, and harden into knotty, silvered, weathered sculptures of emotions, final vestiges of humanity which lie about it's feet.
In the distance storm clouds are gathering, omens reflecting the inner turmoil of the wooden man. And when it breaks, so does the sky. And when it cries, so does the sky. And when it's heart grows cold, winter arrives, so easy a shift of subtle temperature, like the uneven roiling of color upon a chameleon, and even midsummer becomes a tempest of snow.
