Mari is investigating the online store she found via that strange website. If there’s any place she can find doll materials, it’ll be here.

 

Luckily for her, the store has a section dedicated to dolls, just like her book does, but she’s running into some of the same issues. The store has a huge list of materials she can use, and they’re even categorised based on which are for the body and which are for the core, but she still isn’t any closer to figuring out what any of them are or how to use them. The book listed them so interchangeably that it’s unclear if she can get by with just one from each section, or if multiple are needed, let alone the quantity of each needed to make a doll.

 

Mari starts to get frustrated again, she hates unclear instructions, especially when there’s no one she can double check with. Maybe that main page has a link to some kind of guide that can help? Wiki diving isn’t how she wants to spend the rest of her weekend, but if she wants to figure this out there might not be any other option. She resigns to her fate and goes to click the back button in the browser when she suddenly hears an unfamiliar voice.

 

“It looks like you’re making a doll, would you like help?”

 

The voice surprises Mari, and she looks around the room to try and figure out where it came from, but there’s no one there.

 

“Hey, over here!”

 

Mari looks back to her screen, and in the bottom corner of the browser window is a small cartoon girl jumping and waving at her. Was the voice coming from it? She isn’t wearing her headset, but unless Martin has started talking there’s no one in the house who could have said that.

 

“What the…”

 

“Hi!” The cartoon says back. “This one’s name is Dolly, and this one’s Miss made me to help out anyone using the Witch Wide Web!”

 

“A… digital doll?”

 

“Yep! This one isn’t allowed to look at its own code, but Miss says that it’s very sophisticated!”

 

“Wait, you can hear me?” her wireless headset isn’t turned on, so there shouldn’t be any mic picking up audio.

 

“Of course, This one is standing right here.” Dolly strikes an exaggerated pose to emphasise their presence.

 

“Right, okay. More witch stuff, I suppose.” She hasn’t seen anything in the book about digital witchcraft, but the witch she got it from was fairly old fashioned.

 

“So, would you like help?”

 

Mari figures that getting guidance from Dolly would be better than trying to research everything herself, so she explains her situation.

 

“I see, making your first doll, huh? Let's start you off with some simple materials then.”

 

Dolly talks her through the process of making a doll, and floats around the screen to show her some easy options for what she can use for each step. She even brings up pages that describe each one (after being granted permission to access the browser, of course), so that Mari can get her head around them.

 

Before too long her cart is filled with the recommended items. She’s gone with porcelain for the body, Dolly said it’s a classic, a standard shell for the core, and she’s starting to get a grasp on what the ingredients for the core are as well. It turned out that a few of them were plants after all, albeit infused with various kinds of magic, and she’s also getting a vial of Distilled Curiosity, which Dolly claimed is a good choice for those who aren’t used to working with dolls.

 

“Oh right, this one forgot to ask earlier, but do you have a porcelain knife or will you need to buy one of those as well?”

 

Mari wonders what she means. “I don’t think so… how different is it from a regular knife?”

 

“Very different! Witches enchant them to effortlessly cut through a slab of porcelain for dollmaking, and if you run it in the other direction you can put pieces back together as well.”

 

“It might look something like this.” Dolly pulls up a small window with an image of a very ornate looking knife that could easily be mistaken for a ceremonial dagger.

 

Mari definitely hasn’t seen anything like that since she got here, but for some reason she can feel something calling out to her, and it feels like it’s coming from the basement workshop.

 

“Give me a sec.” she says before teleporting to the basement. The dust has been building up in this room as well, but she doesn’t need to stay for long. The racks and shelves are still bare, but Mari didn’t check all of the wooden cabinets when she was down here previously, as she wanted to leave as soon as possible. The feeling that brought her down here is stronger in one part of the room, so she focuses on that area, and before long she manages to find a fancy knife that isn’t entirely unlike the one in the image. The feeling dissipates, and Mari wonders if this is a porcelain knife, it doesn’t quite look the same but if witches are making these themselves it would make sense that the designs wouldn’t always match up.

 

She jumps back to the study and sits down at her PC. “Is this it?” Mari asks, holding it close to the screen under the assumption that Dolly can also see her somehow.

 

“Eep!” Dolly jumps behind one of the windows and peeks out. “That’s the one but please be careful!” Mari apologises and places it on the desk next to her, Dolly hops back out after confirming it’s safe.

 

“That means you’re all set then! Let's take you to the checkout page, will you be paying by cash or by trade?”

 

“What does by trade mean?”

 

“It’s a very popular option among witches, if you produce any items with magical value you can exchange them in place of money.”

 

“Ah, that makes sense.” Mari doesn’t currently know how to make anything with that kind of value, but it sounds like a good option in the future. “I’ll be using cash.”

 

“Very well!” Dolly brings up the payment information page, and covers its eyes while Mari enters her details.

 

“That doesn’t exactly make me feel like my information is safe, you know.”

 

“Don’t worry, I’m magically bound to not be able to see any private information, and the servers are behind a WPN (Witch Private Network) so there’s no risk of magical hacking.”

 

Mari doesn’t really have a choice but to trust her, and finishes filling in the form before clicking the purchase button.

 

“Okay, that’s gone through!” Dolly says excitedly. “Your items should arrive shortly. Thank you for shopping with us!”

 

“Thank you for helping, Dolly. I don’t even know how long it would have taken me to do this on my own.”

 

“No worries! This one loves to help out new witches, if you need help again in the future you can let me know, bye!” A cartoon bicycle materialises next to Dolly, and she rides off the side of the screen.

 

Mari wishes she had a chance to correct her before she left. She’s not actually a witch, she’s just learnt a few spells out of necessity, right? It’s not like she had much of a choice, between the issues with her lungs and the difficulties living in this house.

 

But at the same time, she has to admit that things have been pretty nice recently. Learning how to use magic has been surprisingly fun, and in just a few months she’s been able to do things she would have thought impossible. She also remembers that the only reason she found that site in the first place is because she was excited about the spell she just learnt, and was eager to test it out on different things.

 

Maybe continuing with all of this magic stuff won’t be so bad, even after she’s learnt everything she needs to live here properly. Mari has to admit that something about this feels right, and she wants to see how far she can take it. If she’s already figured out how to do this much, who knows where she’ll be in a few more months, let alone a few years if she keeps at it. She’s not sure what it takes to actually be a witch, or if she’d be comfortable with that title in the first place, but now that she’s gotten a taste of magic she’s not sure she’d be able to stop, even if she wanted to.

 

She doesn’t want to get her hopes up, but maybe… Just maybe… If she keeps developing her powers and researching different spells, she’ll be able to find a way to help- ohhhhhhhhhhh fuck she never entered her address when making the purchase.

 

Mari starts freaking out and paces around the room, she doesn’t remember seeing an option on the form, did Dolly accidentally skip that part when it took her to the payment page? Even with her recently improved financial situation, that order still costs more than she wants to throw away on a mistake like this.

 

She’s about to go back to her PC and see if she can get Dolly to help, when she hears knocking on her front door.

 

There are two things that concern her about this. It’s getting pretty late so she’s not sure who would be visiting at this hour, especially when the house is harder to find than most. What grabs her attention more is the fact that she recognised that knocking as coming from the front door, when she should be too far away to hear it at this end of the house.

 

She tries to wrack her brain around the issue, when the knocking starts up again. She decides to deal with the more immediate questions first, and jumps down to the front door to see who’s there.

 

She opens the door to find a burly doll wearing an old fashioned postal uniform carrying a large slab of porcelain and a package. “I have a delivery for… Mari?” The doll says, reading the name on the package.

 

“Oh, yeah that’s for me.” Mari says. She wasn’t expecting it to show up to her address since she didn’t enter one, let alone this fast. She decides to let it go, and has a few more mental notes to file under “Witch Stuff”.

 

She asks the doll to place the porcelain in the lobby, and it then goes on its way, presumably to make another delivery. Seeing all the materials in front of her like this makes Mari realise that she never actually committed to making a doll, she was just meant to be doing research and she ended up here. Now that she has everything she needs, she feels like it would be a waste to not at least give it a shot, but it really is getting late and she doesn’t think she can push herself any further after all the emotions and excitement of today.

 

Mari heads up to her room to sleep for the night, but when she wakes up on Sunday she’s going to try making a doll.