Pinocchio is quite a beautiful puppet, you think. Gepetto’s finest creation. He breathes like a human. Looks like one. He can almost be one.

His lips part, face soft against your hand. His eyes are a glassy blue—feeding off Ergo with no true life of their own—but they watch you with purpose, like real people do. He is too unexpressive though, you think. Too impassive. Too washed out. He is almost identical to Carlo, only without warmer brown eyes and an easier smile. In those shadows you can see Gepetto’s failures. It is futile to note them now. He would never listen. Romeo is proof.

Your touch tenses at the involuntary thought, perhaps too harshly. Pinocchio blenches at it. The action startles you in its humanity, or rather, its anthropomorphism. He falters almost immediately, head drooping to the side.