Re: dining area
She thought he was strange. Strange wasn't exactly ugly, but maybe that meant she just didn't understand. Because you could never be ugly once you were real, not to someone who understood. She thought about that, because she'd never considered that maybe something could be ugly to one person, while not being ugly to another. She considered sucking the tip of her ear between her lips as she thought, but she refrained. She still wasn't sure if that was okay, and she didn't know who to ask. Except maybe she could ask him. If he was real, he might know the right answer.
She believed him when he said that he was real. She had no reason not to believe him. "Did it hurt?" she asked. "Did becoming real hurt?" She knew the answer was that becoming real could hurt, but maybe he'd say differently. She wouldn't mind at all if his answer was different. She stepped closer. "I don't want it to hurt. I want to be real very much, but I don't think I want it to hurt." And all those sharp things he had, those looked like they hurt. Maybe being real was different for everyone, and maybe she only needed to become shabby and faded. That didn't seem so bad now. It seemed a lot better than knives and scissors. At least she thought those were knives and scissors.
"You're here. I'm here too," she said, because being somewhere didn't make her real. She was already here, but she wasn't real at all. She had just finished making that observation when he moved forward with his knives. She thought the knives looked like they had hurt to add to him, but she didn't realize they could hurt her. She couldn't remember ever being hurt before. She didn't think he needed to ask either. No one asked when they picked up toys. They only asked real things about being picked up and handled. She'd noticed the dancing, too, and she thought she might like to dance like the real girls in the room.
She moved forward when he did, her smile soft and stitched pink bright. Her finger just touched one of his knives, and she felt something rend. It didn't hurt, but she felt the strangest pressure, and she looked at her hand. Stuffing was poking out of a tiny hole in the velvety brown skin. "Ow?" she asked belatedly, because it seemed the real thing to do. She was willing to not mind being hurt, but she wasn't sure what it meant if it didn't hurt at all. She didn't think it was good.