Clover rocked back a little, like someone might do if they were laughing hard. “It shall be done. And this one assures you that such a request is far from ‘weird’ compared to many of the uses Dolls are put to.”

Kordas set the Ducal Crest aside, sitting up in the tub. “I don’t think I can imagine.”

Clover replied, “This one opines that may be for the best. Dolls are versatile, and are sometimes modified for specific tastes.” The Doll laid the shirt out on a towel stand and examined it closely. “This one assumes the shirt is of sentimental value. It is threadbare, but appears . . . beloved.”

“Sometimes we humans need to remind ourselves who we are. Our minds are limited, compared to particular others. We mark ourselves, or wear things to help us focus when we might otherwise find our minds in panic. The storm shirt is like that for me.”

It reminds me that whatever I may appear to be on the outside, and even whatever I show my closest friends, what I am inside is a lethal thunderstorm, and if I don’t keep constant control, I destroy.

“I am seldom happy with who and what I am,” Kordas admitted in a subdued tone. “So, I occupy myself trying to make things better for others, in the hope that if I bring about enough that is good for others, I will, overall, have become a good person when all is weighed. I wear that shirt to remind myself that however—awful—I am inside, there is more to me than only that. I don’t want to stall out at what I was, but it’s foolish to deny it existed.”

Clover was silent for a long time. Motionless, in fact, for long enough that Kordas sighed, emerged from the tub, and dried himself off. It was only when Kordas wrapped a towel around himself that Clover finally replied, “Self-examination is not common for my kind. We mainly exist simply to be, and to avoid not-being. If this one were to sum up my kind—as Dolls—in your terms, this one would say that . . . we are very sad. In our efforts to avoid not-being, we have submerged our aspirations of what we could be.”