Tanya Silvermead

[Tanya]

Name: Tanya Silvermead
Age: 24
Race: Born Human
Height: 13.5 inches (34cm)
Weight: Unknown

Appearance: Wavy corn silk colored hair ends mid thigh. She has blue eyes and pale china painted over her porcelain body. Normally wears her white silk dress with a floral print that rises up from the hem and the cuffs of her long sleeves. She also wears a white underskirt, thigh highs with blue embroidery accent, black leather shoes with a silver buckle, a long black apron with two pockets and bead work, and a matching bonnet.

Possessions: A doll repair and cleaning tool box complete with sewing needles and thread to mend her clothing. The box is a stained wood with the same floral pattern carved on its sides and the lid as the ones that can be found on her clothes.

Powers/ Strengths: Is nimble and agile from years of being small and having to keep ahead of feet, dogs, and cats. She knows a simple spell of "Neverchange" which is meant to keep colors on herself and her clothes from fading and keeps the materials she's made out of from braking down from age. Tanya can only use it once a year and only if she has enough life force. Also has the ability to let others feel her emotions. It hangs around her like a perfume for anyone to sense. When she feels intense enough emotion, she can share flashes of thoughts with others and can even communicate with one who willingly gave a tiny amount of their life force to her using her thoughts and a touch. The more a person gives, the clearer the images are and the more sensory imagery the person can receive.

Since Tanya is a doll and is hollow, aside from the springs that attach all her moving joints, there is no need for food, drink, or for her to breath but she can still physically feel to a point. She can feel heat and cold or a touch of something on her but it would be like feeling those things through a glove. She can burn or freeze like any object can but it won't affect her like it would if she was in her human body. Her body can withstand most normal fires since a doll like her is fired in a kiln about eight or nine times during the molding and painting phases. However, her hair and clothes would burn up like any other person's hair or clothes would and she would be brittle until she cooled off normally. if doused in water while fresh out of the fire or her body temperature drops too rapidly, just like any other porcelain object, she could crack or shatter.

Weaknesses: Just about anything that can break porcelain is dangerous to her. In order to move and give her energy, she needs to take small amounts of life force from a living being. She won't take it though unless it is freely given. The doll she now uses as a body was not changed or altered during the spell so even though she animates it, things such as the mouth cannot move. Tanya has the ability to speak but has no means of doing it since the doll's mouth was made closed with no way of moving.

Personality: Tanya is easy going and usually has a upbeat personality considering what happened to her. She does have moments where she will be lost in her thoughts which would make her emotions unreadable as long as her thoughts are turned inward. Tanya is still true to herself and her ideals of helping others in need, standing up for herself and others, and hearing both sides of a story. If there is a way to be helpful, she will do all she can to lend a hand. The one pet peeve of hers after being stuck as a porcelain doll is not being able to do more to be useful.

How the Porcelain Doll was Made: The initial sculpts for a doll is made out in clay. In this stage all the ball joints mechanisms are worked out and fine-tuned even though the pieces themselves look rough. They undergo only basic sanding and the primary goal here are to get all the anatomy and movement correct and to make sure the pieces are undercut free. Then, first set of molds are made, forms are cast, soft-fired, sanded and high fired to maturity to produce a set of final, smooth and perfect parts for a final set of molds.

A doll maker would have to go through many, many, many days of work to create the ideal mold from the Master parts created from the clay. After that, several dolls can be made from one mold before it wears out and has to be thrown out and another mold must be made over again from the Master parts.

Clean-Casting is what the final cast is called and it is where the maker takes the actual doll parts made from the molds and trim off the seams, open up the joint openings, and drill holes for 'stringing'.

The porcelain parts are then low-fired in a ceramic kiln. They still have seam lines and require a thorough cleaning all over. The porcelain is still soft and fragile and needs to be soaked in water and gently scrubbed with soft sponges for a high sheen.

After the pieces are cleaned they are dried and then high-fired to maturity. During this stage the pieces shrink by about 10-13%. So the size difference between the very first, clay sculpts and the final doll is about 20-23% less.

Next step is china painting and firing. China paint is transparent and doesn't dry on its own. To get rich and saturated colors, china has to be built up in several separately applied coats. Every coat must be fired in between for a molecular bond with porcelain. So, the doll maker can't just sit down an have a painted doll in a couple of hours. The painting process can take 3-5 days because the kiln takes several hours to cool down after firing. The upside to this time consuming process is that china is completely permanent.

When the pieces are painted and lined in leather lining in the joints, it is ready for 'stringing'. Leather is essential to porcelain joints as it provides necessary traction for articulation. Leather has an excellent grip on polished porcelain and can be posed amazingly well because of this.

The particular maker of the doll Tanya inhabits was strung with heavy duty, miniature, industrial springs made from steel as opposed to string cord that most dolls were traditionally strung with. Every joint is isolated and strung up individually with its own spring and a different degree of tension so that the tightness of the spring is invariable and the tension in every joint is constant and unaffected by the movement of other parts.

After the doll is complete, a wig is glued on in place and can be brushed, styled, and braided. A costume is made for it next. Every costume is considered the crown piece of the dolls. The doll maker only uses the very best in materials for their masterpieces, often not caring if they go without to make that happen. Each costume is its own masterpiece of sewn on gemstone and bead work embroidery. They use 24 karat gold, sterling silver, crystals, as well as gold lined seed beads and gemstones such as rubies, emeralds, pearls, and many more to adorn the dolls' gowns with. Every little seed bead and gem stone gets sewn into the fabric by hand and it takes generally 150-250 hours to complete the costume.

History: Tanya grew up living a normal farm girl's life in Eyropa with her mother and father. Some years were harder than others but the three of them were happy. She worked side by side with her mother and father in the fields. Her mother would sing as they worked, making it go by faster, and Tanya would join in singing harmony with her father smiling at them both. Her mother had told her a few times as they sat by the fireplace in the evening about how it was her voice that had allowed them to meet. He had been walking by her family's home on his way to market when he heard her singing. He looked up to see who the voice belong to and instantly was in love.

One winter, when Tanya was six, her mother became sick. She would have terrible headaches grew in intensity over time and refused to go away. Next was the nosebleeds, racking coughs, and close to the end she would hallucinate. Tanya's father did all he could to find anyone who could help but all said that it was no use. Even the old witch who lived in the outskirts said that she couldn't help. During one of her last moments of clarity, she told Tanya to help her father and always be a good girl for him. She also told Tanya to keep her mother's heirloom - a hauntingly beautiful porcelain doll - safe.

After her mother passed away, things got tougher for her and her father but like before, they managed. Eight years passed and Tanya, now fourteen, was growing sad because the crops were dwindling and so was her and her father's livelihood along with it. She tried every trick she knew to make them grow - even the song her mother always sang while tending the crops - but the crops still came out scraggly without producing much at harvest time to sell at the market. If things couldn't get better for them, they would lose everything including the farm and the home her father had made for him and mother before Tanya had been born.

As a last ditch effort to get the plants to flourish again, she turned to magic. When her father went into town, Tanya used the last of of her saved up Bishan and secretly bought a wizened witch's potion. Tanya ran back home and tested it inside on a potted plant, saying an altered version of her mother's "Neverchange" spell that should work for plants in theory but something went wrong. Terribly wrong.

She screamed as she felt like something was being ripped from every part of her being. It became so intense and too much for the young girl that she felt herself float out of her body to escape the pain. Tanya looked at herself writhing on the floor screaming in pain with a sort of detachment as if none of what was happening was real, that it was all some horrible dream. When her body finally stilled and the Tanya floating above felt a chill begin to seep into her, the witch that sold her the potion crept in.

The old woman looked at the girl laying on the floor then looked up and directly at where Tanya was floating still, the witch's black beady eyes burning into hers. Without warning, the witch flung her hand out and Tanya was blinded by a flash, the force of whatever it was making her spin end over end, the old woman making off with her body in a drawing cart.

Tanya reached out for anything safe and familiar with all her being. Before she knew it, she was fluttering her eyes open, the small act making relief flood though her. The young girl raised her hands to her face and heard a light tinkling sound as fingers touched cheeks. Eyes wide, she looked around her frantically and noticed the whole room was wrong. Everything was much too big! Tanya looked down at herself and let out a silent scream. She was her mother's heirloom porcelain ball jointed doll with the the hand painted china body and face - and her real human body was long gone.

When her father came home later that evening, he called out his daughter's name like he always did and frowned lightly when he heard no answer back. He stepped outside and looked over the fields, hands cupped around his mouth as he hollered for her again and again. On her shelf, Tanya tried to answer him. She really did! She hollered in response every time but no noise passed the doll's lips. She didn't dare to move for fear of falling off and shattering and when she tried to move, she could feel her real self inside - her soul - start to leave the doll making her afraid to go back to feeling the creeping chill and of getting lost.

After a hour, her father came back inside with a neighboring farmer who had been blessed with four sons. She heard them discuss for a few minutes on the best ways to look for her before all headed out with their orders from her father. They looked everywhere that she would play or work but none had seen her. They talked to every farmer's family within their community and even went back into town to see if she had tried to meet her father. Weeks went by and no one had seen Tanya... or the witch leave in her drawn cart.

A year went by as Tanya could only watch her father slip deeper into despair for his missing child. She still tried to cry out to him, to give him some sign that his little girl was still there but stuck in mother's grandma's porcelain doll. He never heard her. He actually saddened more and more every time he looked at it. To him it was a symbol of the wife and daughter he had lost.

One morning, Tanya woke up to find herself in a strange, musty smelling place, the doll arranged to sit on the box that her mother kept all of the porcelain doll's things to care for it. After a few minutes she recognized the place as the store in a neighboring town that would buy and sell things. Her father had sold the doll so he wouldn't have to look at it again. After a few days a young man picked her up carefully and laid her on her back. He then took out a threaded needle and began to painstakingly tighten the bead work on the doll's apron and bonnet one by one.

The man worked for the shop's owner and it was his job to fix up any of the objects that came in before it could be re-sold. While trying to tighten a freshwater pearl on her bonnet, he accidentally pricked his finger and a droplet of blood fell on her cheek. The young man chuckled softly to himself before turning to grab a cleaning cloth. "There you go. More rouge for your cheek."

To both of their astonishment, after he spoke those words the blood seemed to flow against gravity to enter the nearest doll joint to splash on the real Tanya inside. Her soul felt a bit heavier and the chill of death faded from her. The life energy that was in the blood was added to hers by his consent. Just like a body couldn't go on living without blood, a soul of a living person couldn't keep on going without its life force. Without being in a living body, she could no longer produce her own like everyone else did along with their blood. It seemed like she needed to use it from others. It made Tanya feel more solidly anchored in the porcelain doll and gave her more energy.

The young man never touched her again or went near her in fear of what had happened. He didn't say anything to anyone either in case someone thought he was crazy. Eventually a very fancy looking elderly couple walked into the shop and the woman took an instant liking to the porcelain doll. They bought her and brought her home to set on display in a doll showcase box where they arranged her on her box that the came with on a wooden platform then set the glass box over it so it set right in the grooves on the wooden platform.

The wife invited others of well to do families for tea or dinner parties, making sure they would see the doll on display on the mantle. Tanya grew sadder and sadder until, unbeknown to her, the sadness and gloom hung around her like an aura. Others felt it and it made them feel ill at ease and not want to come over as much unless they were obligated to. The wife complained to her husband and he had the doll auctioned off at a auction house. Things went on like this for ten years and the story of her being haunted followed.

Some bought her for the story and other people bought her without knowing. Once or twice Tanya had a tiny bit of life force given to her by accident when someone had a cut or a hang nail that had drew blood while handling her. No one else had found out about it like that young man in the store, thank goodness, and nothing ever seemed to cheer her up until someone took time to mend her up or when a child played with her. It was a pleasant distraction for a while but then she would b left alone again to her thoughts.

Not once has she moved on her own or tried to speak to anyone while the porcelain doll exchanged hands over and over. She waits silently until a owner buys her that would be open enough to understand her or until she has the chance to get free unnoticed. Maybe she would even come across the witch who was responsible for all of this and she could somehow get her own human body back. But for now, she waits silently deep in her own thoughts, bright blue eyes peering out at the world like two windows to a soul that a antique porcelain doll shouldn't have.

[Saruna]

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