cleolinda | And now I can't sleep

So I went to bed a little before eleven, tired from all the computer-fretting and dog-chasing and doll-mediating. (If you're just coming in, A Long-Awaited Addition joined The Shelf today.) And just as I was about to drop off to sleep, I realized that someone was sitting beside me. Not on the bed--on the nightstand. Someone small.

"I knew I was gonna have to have a talk with you about--Anna?"

She was sitting by my alarm clock, her eyes fixed on some distant point. "Expecting someone else?" she said dryly.

"Where is he now?"

"He was poking around your CD shelf. He's wandering around getting his sparkle all over everything now."

"That’s okay. I said he could. Look at things, I mean."

He had asked me, actually, if he could look around; he seemed to think that not asking first would be some gross breach of etiquette. I told him to make himself at home, go through the books, read whatever he wanted. And then I kicked the Twilight books under the bed (Eowyn's bookmarks be damned), because… that would just be too weird. Like Eowyn running into her own double that time, or that part in the Neverending Story book where it gets all meta unto infinity and shit. It was okay when the Faramirs were reading up on Lord of the Rings, you know? They were hardly in it as it was, as opposed to the... voyeuristic quality of... Edward reading about Bella thinking about Edward not being able to tell what Bella's thinking about Edward thinking about... look, I don't even want to contemplate, okay?

The CDs were a different story—no music allowed in the middle of the night, obviously—but I'd told him he could browse the cases, no problem.

"Just don’t laugh at my taste in music. I know it’s horrible."

"Not at all! Richard Marx is a very underappreciated artist."

I leaned over closer to Anna so he wouldn't hear me: "Anyway, he doesn't sparkle, like, 24/7 or something. Just in direct sunlight. And he doesn't want anyone to see that anyway. It's not like he's dripping glitter all over my Snickets or anything."

I peered across the room and saw that he’d settled down with The Annotated Phantom of the Opera on the shelf by the door. Right under Faramir and Eowyn’s shelf—I hope he doesn't hang around there if Eowyn's around, but whatever keeps him occupied for now, that's fine. The entire Anne of Green Gables series and all my Louisa May Alcotts are over there on the second level—he could be there for weeks.

"I’m not gonna let him watch you sleep or imprint on you or eat your brains or whatever the hell it is he does--"

"Imprinting’s what the werewolves do, he won’t do that--"

"You’re damn right he won’t do that, he’ll scrapbook in hell first."

Suddenly I found myself imagining a very dainty scrapbook spread done up in red and orange paper with ~* Hell *~ scrolling elegantly across the top. Maybe flames drawn in with glitter pens or something.

"Or on Lyra," she said, glancing up (Lyra and Iorek [and Pan] sleep up on the top shelf of the nightstand). "She’s a tough kid but she didn’t come with any weapons, that’s for sure. I’ll sit here all night if I have to. Every night. You’ll see. I’ll keep watch. He won’t come over here. Damn disco ball creeper. I’d like to see him try."

"So… what you’re saying here is… you’re going to watch me sleep all night to make sure he doesn’t watch me sleep all night."

Anna glared at me. “It’s not sick when I do it. I’m not going to sit here all night and—think about you."

"No, you’re just going to sit here and think about him thinking about me. What’s that saying? He who fights monsters needs to check himself before he becomes one? You look into the sparkle for too long and the sparkle looks into you, or something? OW! GODDAMMIT! WHAT WAS THAT! YOUR PISTOL? YOU THREW YOUR PISTOL AT ME?"

"THAT’S GRATITUDE FOR YOU!"

"YEAH WELL I’M KEEPING IT NOW! THIS IS WHY YOU CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS!"

She sat back down with a thump and a huff. "I’m not leaving. I’m gonna keep sitting here. And you’re gonna give my pistol back."

"NO, I’M NOT."

"Fine. You keep it for self-defense."

"GOODNIGHT, ANNA."

(More from the Secret Life of Dolls.)