Someone Else's Memories [Local Museum] [Clementine]

Sakura was very lucky, she thought. She had the chance to take an internship (unpaid, but she had a paid job already) at the local history museum. It wasn’t much, it was an old Victorian house that had been preserved in its state and a newer building on other parts of local history, including displays on several other time periods, from roman coins and relics drudged up from the Thames to displays on the Tudors.

It was hard work, fitting in school, her job at the newspaper and now this internship, so her art had been somewhat neglected, but she was trying to be longsighted; if she did well at her internship here, she would have good experience and perhaps one day she would be a historian in one of the larger museums, perhaps the V&A or the British Museum, or maybe one back home.

She was working in the Victorian house of the day, carefully cleaning the porcelain dolls in the nursery. She hated working with gloves, but she was more than happy to work. The glass eyes stared at her, and the red lips pouted. Why anyone would want to play with something so... unnatural and even creepy.

Clementine did like the local history museum, she had liked museum since she was a very small child, something that really came naturally when raised as an intellectual. The local museum was rather appealing too, while it didn't have as many exhibits or artifacts as its larger counterparts, it still had a dignified and still well-cultured air to it. The exhibits that were there were comprehensive and well tended and still just as informative as in the larger museums.

However, a favourite of her's in particular was the Victorian house. She had been to the exhibit many times before, she personally found it to be the most comprehensive and intriguing part of the museum. Also, she did harbour a secret admiration for the British Victorian era, despite being thoroughly French. She adored the sophistication and the culture of the era, something that it possessed that the present did not hold.

Re-adjusting her cotton gloves so they fitted more comfortably against her fingers, Clementine walked through the doorway of the well-preserved Victorian house, taking in every bit of information as if it were newly learnt, despite having been here numerous times in the past. Making her way into the nursery, she saw a rather familiar person working with the dolls in the nursery. Clementine didn't often forget a face and it felt as if they had seen each other before, perhaps just passing each other in the street. Quickly realising she had let her gaze sit on the other girl for a period of time that seemed a little longer than was necessary, Clementine smiled shyly in embarrassment and moved her gaze onto the numerous dolls that were placed around the room. They were beautiful porcelain dolls and one could see they were well loved and cherished by the previous owners. The glass blue eyes and painted lips were still quite eerie in Clementine's view, if not in a very beautiful way, though she could not fathom why a young child would want to cradle that in its arms. As a child herself, she was rather afraid of them, there was a doll museum she visited once in Monaco and the hundreds of pairs of unblinking glass eyes had left a slightly unfavourable impression upon the young girl, though she had now thankfully grown out of it.

Moving to leave the nursery, Clementine saw something move suddenly from the corner of her eye, the sudden image of a figure falling. Turning her head suddenly to view the image more clearly, her foot managed to catch onto a stray nail hammered partially into the floorboards. It was a shame, Clementine thought, now finding herself being hurtled into the exhibit aimed towards the hopefully soft bed with the unfortunately not-so-soft porcelain dolls placed on it, that all those years of ballet training and practice never completely prevented all of her falls.

Opening her eyes after the fall, she was attacked with two feelings. Well, just one actually. The first was the utter dread from the realisation that she had managed to stumble onto the antique bed of the Victorian exhibit at the local museum, and had therefore made a spectacle of herself. The next was the slight sense of the same dread, now tinged with a shade of irritation, her uncovered forearm had managed to land on the lapel of one of the more well-worn dolls. The last thing she saw before she was drawn into the viewing were those unblinking blue glass eyes. Those damn glass eyes...

Sakura was the type who engrossed herself in her work, and nowhere was that more appropriate than when she was forced to do menial tasts such as cleaning the exhibits. She would shut out all other noises and sounds, and focus completely at the task at hand, so soon even the thought of how creepy the doll looked was gone from her mind; she was too close to the object to appreciate how strange the ensemble looked, leaning in to the pale porcelain skin that she was to clean, focussing just on the delicate glass eye that needed to be handled very carefully lest it scratch or dust got in to the head. There was already a small scratch on the delicate glassy blue iris, that looked almost disturbingly human. Probably from years of use; most of the toys and victorian things were gifts and donations that had been well worn or in this case, well played with.

As she worked, she hardly noticed the creak of the old floorboard under foot, or the way they moved only slightly, under the weight, to show that someone was there. She was far too concentrated on her task, and used already to visitors. She expected at some point the person would look over her shoulder as for some reason, people always found conservation work highly fascinating, even though all she was doing was cleaning and testing moisture and sunlight levels. She wasn't interested in half the things that she ddi, even. She did hope they would be careful, however, as since there was cleaning work going on, the place was not alarmed at all.

After a moment though, she finally finished with the piece she was cleaning and looked up for a moment, looking around at the visitor. A young woman, she didn't think she recognised her, but she had a knack for faces and hers looked a little familiar, though not too much. Perhaps she had seen her around the museum before? It was possible, if she lived around here. Or maybe she had seen her in the supermarket or at the university, somewhere inconsequential. But she had a pretty face and Sakura always had a good memory for people that she considered interesting or pretty. Plain people passed her by, but those she thought may be interesting to draw stuck in her mind, at some level. There had been once or twice she had been drawing idly and some image had come to her, some feature. Then, later, she would see someone - whom she had often seen before, who had that feature and looked remarkably like what she had attempted to draw, though she hadn't intended to draw anything. She was about to speak, to say some kind of welcome, to make them feel the museum was friendly.

However, she was already turned to the door and Sakura did not want to hassle her by calling her in. Then, the girl spun around on her heels, why, Sakura wasn't sure at all. There had been no reason to, had there? In a short second the thoughts and musings were cast from her mind, as the woman was caught, and stumbled. Her feet seemed to tangle and she pitched forward, crashing straight on to the bed.

Sakura was glad that her fall had not been hard, it would be very worrisome if she had hurt herself on the hard wooden floor. However, the bedspread she was currently sprawled over, and the doll which she had hit her hand on (causing it and several others to fall over) were antiques, and she didn't want the woman and the chemicals on her skin and her hair and the tags on her clothes to damage them any longer.

"Are you alright?" She asked, standing and going over. But the girl had not moved at all... oh dear. Oh dear. But she had fallen on to the bed, that couldn't have possibly knocked her out, could it have? She put a hand on her shoulder and rolled her on to her back, "Madame?" she asked, a little more urgently this time. She couldn't think of what could have happened to her.

But she did know what to do in an emergency and, since she was breathing, she picked her carefully from the bed (luckily she was fairly light and Sakura had spent many years in martial arts training) and placed her on the floor, checking to see if she was showing any reactions, but she didn't. She remembered the recovery position, didn't she? She bent her leg and stretched the one arm out, placing the other on her cheek and carefully rolling her on to her side. Quickly, she checked her for medical necklaces or bracelets, but could find none, so presumably she wasn't an epileptic or prone to any diseases. However that was perhaps even more worrying, because it meant that she didn't know what was wrong with her. She got out her phone and started to dial 999.

(( Sorry about how bad it is. I just couldn't let you be longer than me *shakes fist* ))

Clementine really didn't want to open her eyes, she could tell it would be a long time before she would get back to the "real" world. However, since the faster she got this over with, the faster she would get out of this mess, she opened her eyes, finding herself in a small dimly lit workshop of a Victorian doll-maker. Though she knew it was impossible for anyone in this reality to see or hear her, she still tried to be as soundless as possible as she walked over to look over the man's shoulder. He was cradling a half-made porcelain doll, brushing its hair gently, as if it were as fragile as a real child. She noticed his beaming smile as he placed it back on the worktop, like a proud father. The scene suddenly changed to a well-lit manor, with a joyous child unwrapping the parcel sent to her for her fifth birthday, Clementine saw how she adored it, how she never separated herself from it, taking it wherever she went.

Clementine herself had never really liked these events, while they weren't exactly commonplace, she still found them very unhelpful. It had been quite a novelty at first, but after a few rather unfortunate incidents where she had made a fool of herself, she now found this, well she couldn't exactly describe it as a gift, occurrence to be very hassling. Following the doll, who was now being enthusiastically towed around by the girl, she could not help but worry about the state of her physical body. It was most likely out cold on the bed in the museum, she really did hope the poor girl whom she had seen in the exhibit just now wasn't too alarmed by her sudden departure. People did tend to react badly to a person suddenly fainting, she would have to apologize for the whole incident and make up some medical malady that would explain her passing out.

She was in a dark alley now, as far as she had gathered from the scenes beforehand, the girl's father had unfortunately left the family, leaving his daughter in tears and leading her to abandon the doll, which was a gift of his. Somehow it had found its way into a box along with all of the other abandoned memorabilia is a dark alleyway that was presumably behind the house itself. Hearing the wind whistle and seeing the flecks of snow follow along, Clementine was suddenly glad she was unable to interact and therefore, unable to feel the chill of the wind and the bite of the sleet and snow. Noticing a young street urchin had taken the entire box, she let the scene fade out and change. If these 'occurrences' didn't always seem to happen at the most inconvenient of times, Clementine would have enjoyed them, after all, the were certainly highly informative and would have been invaluable if she had wanted to be a archaeologist or historian. Well actually, Clementine stopped her train of thought as her eyes followed the doll's transition from owner to owner, or rather, from from shopkeeper to shopkeeper, it would be very inconvenient to be an archaeologist too, after all, no-one would ever believe anything she said without proof and judging by how old human history went back, she could potentially be trapped in one of these for weeks. Clementine cringed at the thought, watching an elderly lady who looked strangely familiar purchasing the doll from a disarrayed antique store. Luckily enough for the Monegasque, the doll was now considered a collector's item and had spent the last few decades sitting idly in a display case in the same manor, watching generations of children grow up and move out and move back in with children of their own. Well this certainly was quite interesting, Clementine thought as she watched the last owner pack the doll into a box and send it off to the museum, but she really was more thankful that this whole episode was coming to an end.

Clementine's eyes fluttered slightly. Her cheek was rather cold and she felt like she was resting on something wooden and very hard, the bed didn't feel like this, she was sure of it. Opening her eyes fully now, her vision danced and faded in and out. She also realised she had an enormous throbbing headache. Rubbing at the spot that it seemed to come from, Clementine tried to push herself into an upright position, looking around quickly. She was quite a bit away from the bed, she was certain she had fallen on it, the dolls and bedspread were still crinkled and in disarray, and it looked a little far away for her to have fallen off and rolled to this position. Strangely enough, Clementine thought, she was also in a rather strange position, as if someone had arranged her like that. Still confused, she heard a female voice in the background who sounded quite panicked. Pushing herself up from the floor, she tried to stand in a reasonably upright position and managed a few teetering steps towards the voice, taking quite a considerable effort since she was wearing rather tall heeled shoes, her vision still not quite what it should have been. " I'm so sorry" She called out "I must have blacked out for a moment there, I hope I haven't caused you any trouble..."

She heard the voice of the emergency operator and was about to speak when there were stirrings from the woman on the floor. She rubbed her head and sat up almost as if she had merely fallen asleep there, and nothing beyond that. "False alarm, I apologise for startling you." She said and quickly closed the phone as the woman was staggering to her feet and trying to walk towards the door, but she seemed quite dizzy.

"Wait!" Sakura called after her. She was very worried for her, and she jumped up, rushing over, though unwilling to put a hand on her. "You did black out... are you alright?" She asked, finally putting a hand on her elbow to hopefully help balance her a little bit. She didn't want her to leave and then potentially black out in the middle of traffic, it was best that she wasn't hurt. The hand on cloth, she caught glimpses of it, the feeling of dread as she was pulled in... she couldn't truly tell. Just touching fabric wasn't enough to get a proper picture, just a few strong feelings. But she thought it maybe had something to do with why she had blacked out.

"Please come to the staff room with me." She insisted, "I'll get you a cup of tea or coffee and you can sit down and rest." She didn't want her hurt, but she also wanted to know more... she was wearing gloves, perhaps if she could get her to take one of them off, she would be able to slip one on and understand what had happened. The glimpses were making her curious - it didn't quite seem natural to her.