Page 110 of Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions

“You were about to publicly endorse his version of the world on a national television broadcast, pulling the belief of millions into line,” said the female with the empty hands. “No, thank you. This has gone on quite long enough.”

“What are you talking about?”

The half-transformed female coughed. “Vel, honey—your Doctor Darwin used you, and the power you channel and clarify, to transform the world into something he thought might be nicer to live in. For him, anyway. Not for all the rest of us. And it’s spreading. Before too long, it’ll be everywhere, and we’ll lose what it doesn’t contain.”

“Like what?” asked Velveteen.

The female with the glass balls in her hands stepped to the side, revealing a large glass box. Velveteen stalked closer, trying to get a look inside, and the soft bipeds moved to let her, keeping a sensible distance between them.

There was another soft biped inside. This one was male, and oddly familiar, even though she had never seen him before. She cocked her head, looking at him first through one eye and then through the other. Finally, she looked up and focused on the woman with the empty hands. “Who is this?”

“His name was Tad,” said the woman. “He also went by ‘Tag.’ He used to fight with you. Maybe he loved you. Maybe you loved him. But there was an accident while things were still very new between you, and he died. So the Princess put him in a glass coffin to wait until you were ready to give him true love’s kiss and bring him back. Only seems that in Doctor Darwin’s version of things, your Tag wouldn’t have been hurt, so he’s still up and around. This solidifies, our Tag gets deleted. Not transformed, replaced.”

“Oh,” said Velveteen. She wanted to tell them they were being ridiculous, that none of this was real, but they were familiar somehow, weren’t they? They looked like creatures out of a children’s storybook, and they were shaped like friends at the same time, like people she wanted to trust and believe. And this…soft mammalian Tag, he was familiar, too, wasn’t he? Even what they described matched a nightmare she’d been having on and off since their first date, when it had been way too early for her to be getting that intensely attached to someone. It all made sense. And she didn’t want it to, because if they were telling the truth, the world was a lie. “What do you want me to do about it?”

“Tell me I can,” said the female with the glass balls. “Tell me you don’t care if I break things, and give me permission to be selfish. I’m not strong enough on my own. I haven’t been selfish in a long, long time. But I want my world, and my friends, and the things that belong to me.”

“What does selfishness have to do with any of that?”

The female smiled, sadly. “See, my Vel would know. She would protest that I can’t be selfish without endangering my connection to my holiday, and I’d say I know, and she’d still try to talk me out of it, because no one knows what happens to a Spirit of the Season who goes counter to what they were made for. But I do know what happens, and I’ve already talked to Aurora, and she’s agreed that I’ve been generous enough to do something just for me. He was my friend first. I introduced you. I want him back.”

“Don’t you want to know the truth?” asked the half-transformed female.

“I do,” said Vel, looking down at the biped who looked almost like her lover, and nothing like him at all. “If this isn’t the way the world is supposed to be, I want to know.”

“So make your Christmas wish,” said the female with the glass balls. “Wish for what you want, and let go of what you think you owe.”

“What’s a Christmas—never mind.” Vel shook her head. “I don’t need to know. I wish the world were the way it’s supposed to be, and not whatever’s been done to it.”

The female threw both her glass balls at the ground, and they struck with a vast shattering sound, filling the air with glitter once again. This time, it burned. Velveteen coughed and choked, collapsing across the glass box as she gasped for air.

When the glitter cleared, she was in a small, round, cathedral-ceilinged room with stained glass walls, draped across Tag’s coffin. A crack ran down the center, but he appeared undisturbed. She sat up, hastily feeling herself. No feathers; warm skin; hair. Mammal.

The relief was so all-consuming that she started to laugh, slumping against the coffin. She was still laughing when the Princess came sweeping in. She was back to her normal self, dressed in a dark purple ball gown trimmed with black lace and white crystal snowflakes; she had been crying.

Velveteen sat up. “Cara? What’s wrong?”

“It’s Jacqueline,” she replied. “I can’t find her.”

Velveteen blinked. “Who?” she asked.

The Princess blinked back. “Well, honey…I don’t rightly know,” she said, and silence fell.

VELVETEEN vs. True Love’s Kiss

It had been the better part of a month since Doctor Darwin’s misguided attempt to restore his original reality had turned much of the population of the western half of North America into sapient saurians. The erstwhile supervillain hadn’t been seen since his plans had been thwarted, leading many to suspect that the backlash of his failed conquest had destroyed him, or snapped him somehow back to his original timeline.

Velveteen knew better. Doctor Darwin might be a dinosaur super genius forced into the body of a pudgy, unassuming human scientist, but he was a cockroach at heart, insect before he was saurian or mammalian. He was still out there, a lurking threat that she now knew was much more dangerous than anyone had ever taken him for.

Of course, he wasn’t the only one missing. Jacqueline hadn’t been seen since his defeat, either, and there was a void where the sweet-voiced scion of Winter should have been, a silent shadow following their footsteps and reminding them all of what was missing. The Princess hadn’t slept for the first week after her disappearance, spending all her time flitting from mirror to mirror, muttering increasingly incoherent poetry as she tried to coax the glass into showing her the location of her missing friend.

Nothing had worked. Eventually, she’d been forced to give up the game and let herself sleep, lest dark circles form under her eyes. “Beauty must never be tarnished,” she’d said, a note of forced levity in her voice, before waving her hand in a grandiose arc, banishing Velveteen, Victory Anna, and Sparkle Bright from the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle and sending them back to the real world.

The dinosaur fever that had followed the brief transformation had almost died down by the time Velveteen and the others returned home. Superheroes who’d been caught in the reality shift remembered the whole thing, but at a distance, like it was a storyline they’d read in some comic book or something. Ordinary people were lucky if they remembered anything at all. For most of them, it seemed to have been reduced to a particularly vivid dream, leaving them confused by the flight feathers under the couches and the strange footprints in their yards. It had been a true, physical change, and some vestiges were naturally left behind.

The Super Patriots, Inc. had already announced a new toy line of their various heroes as anthropomorphic dinosaurs. Sparkle Bright’s lawyer had countered their announcement with a cease and desist, reminding them that they no longer had the rights to her likeness, and had never had the rights to Victory Anna’s. Victory Anna was grumpy about the fact that Doctor Darwin had managed to escape before she could force him to sit down and have a civilized conversation, time traveler to time traveler. And Velveteen resumed patrolling her city, seeming only half-present, a ghost behind a domino mask.

Her heart, it seemed, was very far away.