Wither, Whither [AU] [Private, Join-Requests Allowed]

Tiara nodded a bit. "Alright, who do you want to give permission to come into your room? I would suggest myself, but it really is up to you. Also Anya, maybe. And are there any friends that may be visiting that you'd like to be able to come in?"

"Ib!" This was said with absolutely no hesitation once Tiara finished speaking, "And Anya. And... I guess Garry, too. And you - you are my friend, right?"

Tiara nodded again. "Yep! We are definitely friends now, Mary. So just say 'Ib, Anya, Garry, and Tiara are allowed in my room.' If you ever want to add anyone, just put your hand on the door and say they are allowed in. Same for taking away permission."

"Okay!" Mary acknowledged before following Tiana's instructions and adding her friends to her room's white-list. When she was finished, she turned to Tiana again, "It's a promise - we're friends now!"

Tiara's smile only widened. "Well, a promise is a promise, isn't it? Okay, last thing. I want you to, with your hand on the door, think hard about how you want it to look. You will feel that tingle again. When it ends, open the door and take a look at your new room."

"Hm..." Mary mused thoughtfully. A room. Her own room. What did she want it to look like? What did she want inside? Her room in the gallery was really dark and plain and bleak and she didn't like that, so her new room - her real - room should be colorful. And bright. And lively! But how so? How so? Yellow was a lively color, so there should be yellow. A lot of yellow. And flowers. And - she stopped herself, glancing to her hand. No, Blue Doll was enough. Consolidating her thoughts, Mary imagined the room - constructing it in her mind as if she were putting together pieces of a puzzle. As expected, the strange feeling - the tingle, Tiara had called it - appeared once more, but Mary was too focused to care. When it ended, she opened the door.

...while Mary was a poor hand drawing art, she was far from uncreative. She knew what to do, she just didn't know how to do it. But she was the only one there who knew that fact. Not even Blue Doll knew, for the simple reason that Blue Doll wasn't her and so didn't know what and how she thought. The room on the other side was bright. Intricately painted chains of yellow and red roses wrapped around the walls in an endless loop along the top and bottom, over a green background. The floor was a simple beige carpet, but the ceiling was blue and white - a circle of clouds around a central sun.

On the left side of the room was an easel, stack of canvases, and a simple paint set consisting of the three primary colors, a thin brush, and a wide brush. On the right was a bookshelf filled with titles that Anya might recognize from the Fabricated World, as well as a blank sketchbook and a small box of crayons. In the center was a simple white bed. It was an exact replica of Ib's, as Mary had seen no other and liked Ib's anyway for the simple fact it was Ib's - though the sheets had emblems of a childish, spiral-made sun instead of rabbits. Behind the bed, the four rose-chains of the room intersected in a manner that formed a circle before continuing onward. Inside it was an elegantly simple picture frame that contoured to match the shape of the rose-circle. And within that was a painting.

In the same exacting, lifelike detail of the painting which gave her birth, it depicted Mary and Ib standing with hands locked together. Holding Ib's hand was Garry, and holding Garry's hand was Anya, who held Tiara's hand, who completed the link by holding Mary's hand. It was drawn from above, and all five of them were leaning away from the center of the circle and looking upward, smiling, so that it seemed they were looking kindly at the viewer, but in the painting would be looking at the sun.

Beneath it was a simple plaque reading, 'My Most Cherished Thing' in Mary's childish handwriting.

Stepping inside and seeing that the room was exactly like she'd imagined, Mary let out a squeal and spun around in wonder, "It's amazing!" She said, "How does it do this?"

Tiara was snapped from her own inspection of the room by Mary's question, and gave her an affectionate smile. "Magic, Mary. It does it with magic. You can change this room however you want, all you have to do is step outside, put your hand on the door, and imagine what change you want... Mary, your room is beautiful... and that painting..." She was fairly perceptive of things, and she understood that for these new friendships to be this important to Mary, and so quickly, that it spoke ill of her past experiences. Not that being brought here by Anya didn't already suggest that.

Anya, for her part, had moved over to the painting, looking at it as if in a bit of a trance. She hadn't even noticed she'd begun to cry, a hand over her heart and a warm smile on her face.

"Magic..." Mary said in wonder, before hearing the rest of Tiara's statement. Blushing, she looked down bashfully - ankle teetering back and forth in embarrassment as her arms, still laden with her diary and Blue Doll locked together behind her back, "Thank you." It was sincere, and quiet. To Mary, who had received no praise before, it was a memorable event and recorded inside her mind forever alongside the first time she met Ib and Ib accepted her friendship.

After a moment of brief silence, Anya suddenly spoke up. "Mary... do you want your painting? The one your father made, I mean... I could bring it here to you, if you wanted..." Tiara really wanted to know the story here, but Mary would tell her if she wanted to; she wasn't going to ask. Anya would only tell her things that she absolutely needed to know.

Mary's head shot up, and she glanced down and to the side just as quickly. All traces of emotion - cheerful, bashful, or otherwise - faded from her face. She didn't know how to feel. The painting was part of the gallery. But it was part of her too. Even if Anya had separated her from it, that painting breathed life into her. It was her. And she was it. To leave it in that... that place... was an unbearable thought. But it was also part of... that place. She was part of that place. The girl bit her lip, deep in thought. The lonely portrait that no one had seen, lost within a haunting, hungering world. The last portrait her Father ever painted. The best portrait her father had ever painted. Her portrait. Her being. Could she really abandon it? Should she?

She had been so lonely because no one had ever seen her, like they had seen all of Father's other paintings. No one ever looked at her, like they looked at all of Father's other paintings. Not even Father looked at her. He went away and vanished after it was created. Just before she was born. The girl nearly drew blood, so tightly had she clenched her teeth. Tears started to well up in her eyes, cold beads of steel emotion on her furtive face. The surprise of feeling them brought her out of her trance, and she held her hand to touch them as if she weren't quite sure they were there, absently letting go of her diary in the process.

This had happened before, when Ib was so sad she wouldn't move, which had made Mary sad.

So the thought of her painting being so alone... was making her sad?

"Anya," She said uncertainly, "could you... would you..." She trailed off, wiping the impromptu tears from her eyes and looking solemnly at the white-haired woman. "Please... bring it here. I don't want it... to be alone."

Anya turned to look at Mary, and gave her a soft smile. "I will. We can hang it here in your room... or if Tiara is okay with it, we could hang it where everyone can see it."

"...I see no problem with that. Sure, if Mary wants, I'm sure we can find a place for it." Tiara was very, very confused now, but she could gather that this painting was incredibly important to Mary. Was it perhaps the only memento she had left of her father? But... then why would she have needed to think about it? Mary had seemed to be struggling mightily with her decision, after all...

"Will it be safe?" Mary asked uncertainly.

Tiara chuckled. "Mary, I could make it so that nobody could even touch it, if that's what you wanted. No harm would come to it, no matter where you decide to put it, I'll make sure of that. So it's up to you."

"Then..." She took a breath to calm herself, "I want it to be seen. I want that. I - It never wanted to be alone. Never. So... I want it to be seen. Please."

Tiara simply nodded. "Then that's what we will do. We will make sure it's seen.... by the way, Mary, we'll need to add a dresser to your room so that you can store clothes. I can guess that you are wearing your only clothes, but we will get you some more. I figure you should be getting some sleep soon, so I'll leave you be. I think Anya wants to talk to you before she leaves though, so I'll just give you two some privacy. Have a good night, and I'll see you in the morning." Tiara gave a friendly wave, before simply exiting the room, closing the door behind her, leaving Mary and Anya alone in the room.

Mary turned an inquisitive eye to Anya, "More clothes?" It was a curious question - in that it was filled with curiosity - and in that it was a strange question to ask. "But this dress is my only dress. And I can't change out of it. It's part of me. Father painted it on."

Anya paused, and sighed softly. "I somehow expected that. Mary, I want you to be able to live a normal life. To laugh, have fun with your friends, grow up, and eventually be able to have a family of your own one day. But for that to happen, I may need to do a bit of work. There are some things about your body that will prevent you from being able to live a normal life, and I need to change those. I'm not sure what all needs to be changed though. Mary, may I come over and check to see what needs to be fixed? I just need to hold your hands in mine, and if you give me a few moments, I'll know what I need to do. You won't feel a thing at all. Is that okay?"

Mary frowned pensively, but nodded, "It's okay. I trust you."

Anya smiled, and moved to kneel in front of Mary, gently taking both of Mary's hands. "Just give me a moment, this won't take long." She closed her eyes then, concentrating as she basically familiarized herself with the 'makeup' of her body; how everything worked, what didn't, everything.

She would find that, as Mary is a living painting, and not a human, there were several notable differences between herself and a human. As Anya already knew, Mary was incapable of sleeping - but she was also highly, and - indeed - almost explosively flammable. Her dress was literally part of her body, which was actually solid mass of paint somehow formed into an impossible absurdly realistic form. As a result, she was lacking in any sort of biological indicator and, indeed, didn't have any internal organs at all. But curiously, aside from fire, she was totally impervious to harm. She wasn't any stronger, physically, than a child of her stature should be, but any attempt to cut her or otherwise damage her aside from fire would ultimately do nothing but daze her if she were to be moved suddenly without warning. Despite that, she'd still be capable of feeling pain if attacked. And if she was somehow damaged, she would be unable to naturally heal. Or bleed, for that matter. In short, she could be described as an extremely convincing clay-golem for all intents and purposes (though she was made of paint, not clay.)

When Anya had things figured out, she sighed softly. "There is a lot I need to do... but it will take time. I can't do it all at once. For now, though... Mary, how would you like to be able to sleep? And to have a body that is more like Ib's?" The best example, really, as Anya's body was currently just composed of energy, and Tiara was... well, a dragon, even if in human form.

Sleep, while something she was intensely curious about, still didn't strike Mary as a particularly important thing. At least, not compared to the rest of what Anya had just said, "A body... like Ib's? What do you mean?" Her head tilted peculiarly to the side in confusion, as she didn't understand what Anya was trying to convey.

Anya thought about that. "A... more 'human' body. One that eats, sleeps, and grows older. As you are now, you don't need to eat, or sleep, and you will never age. You will remain exactly as you are, never changing, while your friends grow older and become adults... and eventually die. You also are in extreme danger from fire, but with a more human body, it will be far less dangerous for you."

"You mean..." Mary trailed off, eyes widening, "You can make me... real?"

Anya frowned a bit. "Yes, I can... but Mary, you are already 'real', okay? Your body is artificial, but you are real. And if anybody tries to tell you different, they are wrong, understand?"