By now, Lorelei was in the nightly habit of disassembling his puppetress paramour. She more than tolerated it as the results were always rather interesting. In addition to creating tiny ballerinas from her fingers, a fantastic kicking bicycle out of her arms and legs, he had even created a feeterfly from her darling tootsies in combination with a family of gigantic moths he’d hand raised in a small terrarium and then harvested for their wings.
“Make them dance again,” Marrionetta unpegged all her fingers on her left hand and poured them into Lorelei’s workspace. He scowled at her. Marrionetta weaved around his workspace like a drunken whirligig on a tradewind ship. Lorelei attached the fingers to the wires and flicked the switched for her amusement. Then he continued working on something different.
The fingers rose but more haltingly this time. They swayed. One fell over as if to snooze off a bad hangover. Marrionetta hit Lorelei in the head.
“KURST! What?!” he screamed at her.
“They’re lazy as daytime witches!” she whined “What’s wrong with my jewelry box dolls?”
Lorelei heaved a sigh. He examined the device. He poked the plug of tissue in the cylinder. It cracked from dryness. “Fresh out of juice,” he said and returned to screw driving a panel.
Marrionetta looked very closely at the dried out mass of tissue. “How do we get more?”
Lorelei perked up at this question and turned a grinning, frenzied expression towards her.
“Yes. It’s time for more, isn’t it?”
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