Paracosm

The small girl played alone in the garden, dolls around her and a red blanket under her. Her parents silently observed her from inside the house, the man muttering softly to the woman right next to him, who shook her head and countered what he had said. “She’s alright out there. She has her toys.”

“She needs to meet other people. This is why I didn’t approve of the house being built here in the first place.”

“Come on, you need to relax. She’s alright – we’ll just join her later.”

The girl didn’t hear her parents’ conversation and merely smiled, dressing her dolls in dresses and mismatched heels, retying their hair into ponytails and pigtails and braids. Different dolls of different skin color and hairstyles surrounded her and the girl picked another one up, studying it critically with a queer look in her eyes and then turned to the small and organized container, where clothes, shoes and accessories lay.

She wrinkled her nose and picked up two dresses – one a soft butter, and the other a deep green. She stared at the blonde doll in front of her, and then the dresses, trying to comprehend and pick which one suited the slim figure and bright eyes of the manufactured toy even more.

“The green dress goes with her blonde hair.”

A seven-year-old Monika Arzen dropped her doll in surprise and turned to where the voice came from, seeing a young man sitting on a chair that was a few feet away from where she was seated. He merely smiled, waving to her good-naturedly. The girl narrowed her eyes.

“You’re a stranger,” she said in an almost accusatory voice.

The blue eyes seemed to give off a mischievous gleam and he rose from the chair, walking to her. Arzen stared defiantly and brought her dolls closer, her young mind thinking that he was there to steal her dolls and throw them away. “Mommy told me to never talk to strangers. So go away.”

The man blinked, suddenly struck by her negative response.

“Come on - I’m a friend.”

And again, her narrowed gaze came back.

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not,” he told her easily. With a smile. “You’ll know me soon enough.”

“But you’re a stranger-”

“Strangers are people you don’t know.”

She stared.

“I don’t know you.”

“Well then.” He looked at her. “My name is...Nikolai. So I’m not a stranger anymore.”

She struggled with the sudden change in events, biting her lip and thinking hard. He guessed that she was trying to find a loophole to this, and his smile turned into a grin when her cautious gaze went away and a shy smile replaced the unusually stern look on her young face.

“Okay. You’re not a stranger.” She looked around her and picked up a brunette doll wearing a dark green dress, handing it over to him. “You can change her clothes if you want to.”

The man with ocean eyes gazed down at the doll and the grin went away.

She noticed.

“Do you want another doll?”

“Hm? …no, no. This is fine.”

“Are you alright, Mister?”

He looked back at her, seeing her big brown eyes starting to light up with worry. The blonde doll lay limply in her lap and she just stared at him, trying to figure out what was wrong.

A laugh was forced and he shook his head, messing up her hair.

“It’s nothing.”

Later in the afternoon, Arzen’s parents came out and called for her. Normally, she would walk back in without any protest, but this time, she hung around the garden even longer, staring into the distance.

“Come back tomorrow, Mister! We can have tea and cookies with Scooby and Elmo.” She was waving to an imaginary figure with a large smile on her face, dolls in her arms and items packed neatly in the small container. Her mother came out of the house with a frown and approached her, gently prying the toys out of her grip and putting them into the small bag where she usually kept them.

“Arzen, come in. It’s dark.”

“Wait, mommy. I have to say goodbye to my friend-” she broke off and stopped, staring with her eyes wide and looking at the darkening orange sky. “Oh. Never mind. He’s not here anymore.”

The older woman blinked. “Your friend?”

Arzen nodded eagerly and rubbed her hands on her skirt, getting traces of dirt on the blue cloth. “Yeah! I met a guy named Nikolai and he was really nice. We played with my dolls and he promised he’d come back tomorrow so we could have tea out here and eat oreos,” she chattered excitedly, a bounce in her step as she skipped back inside. Her mother could only stare and closed the door, her daughter running into her room and the sound of a chair being moved was heard.

Her father glanced up from the newspaper and steaming cup of coffee, looking at his wife who looked worriedly in the direction of her daughter’s room.

“What is it now?”

“Arzen said she met someone.”

“That’s ridiculous.” He shook his head and turned the page, “she’s young. Her mind’s making up imaginary friends for her to cope. It’s normal.”

“Imaginary friends?”

“Sure, why not? She doesn’t have that many associates or people she knows. Just so she can avoid being lonely, her mind makes up different characters and personas that she believes it’s alive. It’s a normal, healthy thing for kids nowadays.”

“If you say so…”

In her room, Arzen beamed and colored in the man’s hair a vivid scarlet, then made his eyes an ocean blue. The bond paper contained a large drawing of the man she had met, with a brunette doll in his hands and other small pieces in the background. The young girl scrambled away for scotch tape and soon enough, the drawing was on the wall, by her bed.

After watching the girl from her room, Mathias Gletscher smiled.

Quick feet stepped into the small pond away from her room, and he disappeared.