The witch cracked the sky open to unleash the full force of her power. She hurled frigid winds and a torrent of ice, each shard a dagger flying through the air.
There, in the center of the storm, a doll stood, unmoving.
It was an obstacle to be erased, nothing more, and although it did not move, it was not untouched.
It was not particularly durable. It had no magic to resist the witch’s cruel blizzard. Icy shards gouged its surface. Hailstones cracked its porcelain with each collision.
An arm fell away, crushed to pieces. A glass eye shattered. A knee joint buckled, and the doll shifted its weight to the other leg.
Here—at the end of its meaningless stand—a half-forgotten memory surfaced, of an old friend and an even older song.
The doll began to hum.
Softly at first, then gaining strength, the doll hummed the melody it remembered, each note a petal on a memory that slowly bloomed and revealed more of itself as it fed on recollection.
The borrowed strength from the music helped the doll remain upright inside the storm.
It was a doll’s song, passed around in secret and never meant for witches. They could never understand it anyway, and this witch surely did not understand how the doll found her attacks easier to endure with this music in its heart.
Nevertheless, it did. Weakness dropped away from the doll, little by little. Even the storm responded, with the ice increasingly managing only glancing strikes, and soon not even that.
The cracks in the doll’s body frosted over. Both legs held its weight again.
The storm embraced the doll completely but refused to harm it further.
Even the shattered remnants of its arm, carried by the swirling wind, somehow flew to affix themselves back in place.
The witch called off her onslaught. When the icy maelstrom cleared, the doll remained, humming its wordless tune to itself. It had not budged in the slightest.
After a moment’s quiet fury, the witch left the stubborn doll, electing to build her new house elsewhere.