The formerly red, now blue, plastic pony toy is the first up the block-stairs behind the purple octopus. He comes to an abrupt halt, and she scrambles to a halt behind him, but the others behind them are not so nimble. Barbie and Ken follow, the tiger toy behind them, and finally the uncoordinated t-rex; the impact of the lizard-thing behind all of them sends the group tumbling into thin air. For a moment she is afraid – there is a rush of air beneath and around her, absolute nothingness, and she simply knows that she will dash her body against the ground below in some devastating way (she doesn’t understand that she is no longer bone and flesh).
But her descent is halted suddenly, with a force that would push air from her lungs if she had any, and there is a high-pitched squeal in the air. Even dazed, Dagny can hear the clatter of toys hitting the ground around them, and see her would-have-been friends sprawled on the white ground. For a moment, there is hope – it’s white, like the snow and ice of the Tundra! Perhaps she is home, and father will be there any moment to swoop in and save her! – but it is fleeting. She doesn’t get a good look at her captor at first, dazed as she is, because the girl is swinging her through the air, and then holding her too close to her face to get a good look. Dagny wants desperately to struggle and squirm her way free, but her limbs are unresponsive now.
“What a pretty pony!” the girl squeals again, sweeping her free arm across a low play table, sending the former occupants crashing to the ground. Then Nerissa plunks Dagny roughly down, not rough enough to bend her plastic legs but it sends shock waves of pain up them anyway. Then she sits back, and the girl gets her first real look at her captor. Pink, naked skin; bright gold hair, bright blue eyes. But Dagny doesn’t understand people – Nerissa is simply a monster to her, a giant of a thing, and even though her body refuses to respond now she quakes inside and wishes this were a bad dream that she can wake up from now – preferably tucked safely into the recesses of a Tundra cave beside her twin, with her father standing guard.
“Everything’s tangled,” the girl pouts, and turns to rummage in the toy chest for something. Suddenly, the girl feels herself start to shiver and a thrill runs up her spine – she can move! Desperate, she lunges forward, only to halt abruptly at the still-dizzying height the edge of the table spans from the ground. Before she can steel herself for the fall, the monster has turned round again, grasping something in her fist. Nerissa grabs Dagny again, this time holding her head-down and rump-up…and there is sudden, shooting pain as she runs the thing she’s holding through the pony’s tail, and then again. And again. And when she’s finished, she flips the toy up and starts on the mane. And, true, the tangles are gone – but so is quite a bit of her hair, stuck in the spines of the brush. Dagny cries out, more than once, but the girl seems to care not at all. “That’s better,” she says, with an air of satisfaction, setting Dagny down carefully this time on the table. “Much prettier.”
“Help!” the filly yells, when the girl turns and climbs into the closet, clearly looking for something in a jumbled heap on the ground. Once more she races to the edge, a few steps, and stares down at a couple of discarded toys on the floor, but they don’t move. “We can’t help you.” comes a voice from below, barely audible, and then: “And she can’t hear you scream. So it doesn’t help.” Silence for a moment. “Or hurt,” comes another voice, “It doesn’t hurt to scream. Sometimes you just need to.” She takes a wavering breath, blinks back tears. “Why would I be screaming? What’s going to happen?”
They don’t respond, even if they wanted to, because the girl is back, flouncing across the room, dropping to her knees beside the play table and spilling an armful of toys onto the table beside Dagny. The two-legged pale things from before make an appearance, and alongside them another pale female. Another lizard-like creature – this one Dagny recognizes (it’s a dragon), though only from stories. Her purple octopus friend makes an appearance, as well as an innumerable number of what she now knows are blocks. The girl shoves everyone into a pile, except Dagny whom she places lovingly upright beside it, and begins stacking the blocks carefully, until she is out and the stack stretches like a small mountain. “A tower for our princess.” the girl says (and Dagny wonders if the hair-pulling and bone-jarring was a mistake, she sounds so nice!), and reaches for the girl two-legged thing, roughly pulling off what Dagny had assumed was her fur and replacing it with a pink, frilly fur. She places this creature atop the tower, and then puts the brown and worn fur on the other figure – and places her there too. The male she gives a pointer silver stick, and then finally she slams him down on top of Dagny. “A loyal steed for the knight! To rescue the princess from the evil witch!” She’s gleeful, holding Ken and Dagny together in one hand and grabbing the dragon in the other – and then roughly slamming them into each other. Pain blossoms in Dagny’s unmoving chest and limbs, her nose and eyes burning where they’ve been slammed into sand-paper rough scales and pointy claws and fangs.
And again. And again. Finally the girl slams the point silver stick into the dragon – and then even the stoic dragon can’t keep silent, crying out in pain – and then Nerissa drops both Dagny and dragon to the table, forgotten, as she crushes Ken and Barbie together for what she must suppose is a passionate embrace.
In the next game, Dagny flees from every predator in the toy box – and loses an eye, the paint scraped off against her tiger friend.
The next is an adventure – but she can’t see most of what they explore, because the world never stops spinning. Her tail catches on an errant banister – and most of the rest of it pulls out. There’s only a few hairs left.
After that, the girl crafts Dagny a pair of paper wings – and spends some time throwing her through the air. The pony loses a plastic ear.
After that, it’s something about magic, and sorcerers, and she’s bound with thread (“magic ropes”) and loses most of her mane (apparently she’s not very well made).
Nerissa takes her into the bathtub – and she loses the other eye. They may be painted on, but she discovers something worse than pain; blindness is torture in and of itself.
The girl takes the pony to bed – but she rolls over on her one too many times at the wrong angle, and a plastic leg snaps. As the others warned, her cries go unheard. The night is long, and as the hours drag on, the girl finally overcomes shock and she cries. Being unheard in her pain is nearly worse than the pain itself. Eventually, she sleeps – waking only when motion jerks her awake, as the monster-girl goes flying from the bed, pony grasped tightly in her first. “It’s my birthday! My birthday!” she chants, running down the stairs. Dagny is thrown onto a cold, hard surface and lies unmoving while the girl snatches up a pink-and-gold package and snatches the wrappings off.
It seems mom and dad came through at the same time as fairy godfather – the box is a pony. Less magic, perhaps, but it’s pink. And it’s bigger, and thus obviously better, than Dagny. Loud, excited squeals emanate from the very walls as the new toy is snatched up and the girl flees the room. Of course, Dagny can’t see any of it – but she can hear it (kinda, out of her one ear. There’s a lot of garble). Dagny can’t get up – three-legged horses don’t balance very well – so she simply lies upon the cold marble, shivering, until footsteps come into the kitchen, heavier than before. “I wish she wouldn’t leave these nasty old toys lying around,” says a disgusted voice, and then a light touch sweeps her off the counter, and once more: she’s falling.
Maybe now, she thinks, she can wake up. She desperately wants to wake up. Or - and despite her youth, this thought fleets across her mind - it might be a relief to die.