Her immediate surroundings are dark. 

Not totally dark. There are street lamps a little ways off, and stars? overhead. 

The architecture of the buildings she can see in the same direction as the streetlamps is vaguely antiquated. 

A spider the size of a dinner-plate and holding a human eye in its chelicerae scuttles over her foot. 

Oh no, this isn't her room anymore! The spider seems friendly though - she flips it over with her foot and checks the belly to see if its a familar species. 

The spider is mostly a soft green, a few shades too light to be pine-green. A complementary red forms three triangles at the beginning of its abdomen, almost like a skirt or a crown, and the eyes are a red of the same shade. It chitters agitatedly around the eyeball but doesn't drop it. 

That's not any sort of spider she's seen before - also she's pretty sure that normal spiders don't carry around eyeballs, even if that is obviously a really cool thing to do. 

So she's probably far away from her Uncle Jack and the rest of her family - so she should find a nearby adult. She idly puts the spider in one her fluffy coats zippered pockets and goes searching for someone to make a friend with. 

The spider wriggles around for a bit then settles down sulkily. 

The lamp-lit streets are bustling with figures the height of human adults, not all of whom are. A fellow with a squid face in a suit walks past. A woman with gold eyes doesn't shed heat the way a human being would. One lumbering figure is either covered with or made of unfired clay. 

Below adult human eye height, a pack of rats scurries past on their hind legs, holding little rat-sized tools. 

Bonesaw looks around wide eyed at all the exciting people! This city is sort of like someone was trying to make art but was scared of doing things that were really exciting. She's sure she can help them go the extra mile. but for now she needs to study more. She keeps looking for someone she can corner in an alleyway or an otherwise empty shop.

There aren't really empty shops, at least not in the immediate vicinity. The streets, though dark with a night not fully chased off by the antiquated streetlamps, are bustling with activity. People exchange odd pearls with light and dark parts for fabric, and ingots of metal for pots of honey, and wine for artwork, and all sorts of other things. 

There are plenty of alleys. Some of them aren't even being watched by anyone she can see right away. 

Bonesaw tugs on the sleave of a passing man who looks nice (and also human),

"Mister, could you help me get my doll out of the hole it fell into?"

"Where is it?"

"Just around the corner over there," Bonesaw says, pointing towards an empty alley. 

...He gives her a flat look. 

"I wasn't born yesterday," he informs her, tugging his sleeve out of her grip. 

She scowls but lets go - it's really sad when people are so cynical. 

She'll go searching for an opportunity to catch someone alone - from a less busy street or someone entering a house she can sneak into.

Less busy streets exist, although none nearby that have exactly one person within view. 

Houses to break into are much more common. 

She'll pick one she sees a human enter, walking in a minute after they do as if she lives there too.

There is only one human in the house, bustling about with candles and food. A cat sits on the bed, watching the scene silently. 

Bonesaw walks into the room tentatively "Hi, I got seperated from my family and I'm lost and it's all so confusing"  - the words spilling out of her - "do you know where this is right now?"

"--London?" he says, bemused. "Elderwick?"

Bonesaw scrunches up her face in confusion.

"Oh I've never been to London but I think I would have heard if there were so many monster people walking around? Are they Case 53s?"

"Monster people? Do you mean Rubbery Men? What's a Case 53?"

"A Case 53 is what we call a monster cape in American, you call them something different? I'm guessing the rubbery men arn't Case 53s if there are multiple of the same type of monster, who made them?"

"What's a cape?"

"Someone with powers, I thought they were called that everywhere."

"What kind of powers?"

"Parahuman powers?? Like how legend can go vvvvvv from his hands," she says, miming shooting a laser.

"I don't have any idea what a parahuman is or of anyone who goes by 'Legend.'"

"... oh."

"It's possible I'm way way farther from home than I thought."

"I suppose so," he shrugs. "--If your parents aren't also here you could join one of the urchin-gangs, probably, or find someone who wants to buy information about wherever you're from, possibly a player in the Great Game."

"Oh, why would they pay me for information? Also what's the Great Game?"

"The Great Game is some kind of spy thing, I think. People will pay for information because you can use information as leverage against your enemies and rivals, or in order to invent things, or as inspiration for art, or because you collect secrets as a hobby."

"Oh, those things sound fun, I'm always looking for inspirations for my art."

"You might try Veilgarden, then, that's where the Bohemians tend to gather." 

"Veilgarden, thank you for the suggestion - you're very helpful."

"Well, there's no benefit to hiding information that isn't secret," he says reasonably, "and I'm not so heartless that I'd refuse to help someone when it doesn't even cost me anything."

"That's very nice of you - I'm so lucky you're the first person I met here."

"There are plenty of people who would be just as nice! --Also plenty of people who would have taken advantage of your ignorance to try to talk you out of your secrets or your soul, though, so I suppose you're not wrong."

"Oh no that sounds terrible, I'm lucky I have you to let me know if anyone is trying to take advantage of me"

"Well, don't sell your soul before you know its fair market value, and don't tell people random facts about where you're from until you know what people will care enough to pay for," he says reasonably. 

Bonesaw nods.

"That makes sense, I'm sure you'll be very helpful while I get used to this strange new place."

"...I'm not offering to adopt you or anything."

"Oh I don't think you could take me from my family, you'll just help me out while they aren't around."

Bonesaw walks towards him slowly as she says this. 

He turns and bolts for the back door. The cat startles and makes a loud angry cat noise and jumps off the bed and darts under it. 

Bonesaw might be small, but she's fast - inhumanely so. She stabs him with a needle coated in a quick acting paralyzing agent before he makes it out of the room. 

He falls to the floor with a thud. 

"It's rude to leave so quickly, we were just getting to know each other."

Bonesaw sighs, "I don't have most of my tools on me, so we'll have to make do with whatever you have,"

She skips over to the kitchen and looks through the cutlery.

There are assorted eating utensils, a few in silver. There are various plates, cups, and bowls, a few of the plates and cups made of brass and peculiarly warm to the touch. There are a couple of pots and pans, a few ladles, and a block of various knives. 

Bonesaw returns to her paralyzed friend, carrying a silver spoon, a weirdly warm cup, and as many knives as she can carry. She dumps the cutlery next to his head. 

"Now, I don't have time for anything really complicated, but I can just add a few connections between your amygdala and your olfactory nerves so I can use scents to make sure you know when you're doing a bad job at being helpful."

She sits on his chest and hefts the largest knife she brought.

"You should probably be worried, this is going to hurt a bunch."

He makes his very best attempt at an agonized whimper. 

Bonesaw chatters throughout the impromptu surgery, informing him why she makes each cut and why this bit of the silver spoon was inserted in that place and how she always carries a bit of clear thread to stitch back wounds so they don't show when she doesn't want them to. 

After she's finished he looks the same as he did before, at least on the outside. 

"There, that wasn't so hard now was it?"

This time he makes his best attempt at a pained gurgle. 

"Oh, you're right! I forgot to test it, silly me."

She clenches her jaw an almost imperceptable amount and breaths out, a not especially notable smell permeating the room. For a few seconds it fills the man with fear, intense and overpowering. 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

"Good job, and now the other one?"

Clenching her jaw again, a different smell drives him into a rage, almost but not quite as intense as the prior fear. 

EY FUCK YOU

"Good!" Bonesaw smiles delightedly.

"I'm sure you'll still need plenty of reminders but some basic aversion training and soon enough you'll be all helpful all the time."

CRAP. This is not good. 

"Oh, oops, I forgot to give you the antidote to the paralyzing agent - better do that before the secondary effects kick in."
 
Bonesaw gently pokes him with a needle identical to the first one.

"All better!"

"Why," he gasps when he can move again. 

Bonesaw looks pensive for a second, trying to remember - she can get sort of engrossed in surgery sometimes.

"Oh, it was because this way you'll be a very polite and helpful Friend for me here. I'm just getting my bearings and it's important for me to have someone who knows the basics."

He can't really argue with that. 

"What do you want?" he tries instead. 

"A Friend!"

"Not with me," he says hastily, "in general."

"Well, I'm an artist. You're not really anything creative or special - I needed a Friend fast, but later I'll make something really pretty!"

"I'm going to need to have a better idea of what sort of art will speak to people here, but I'm sure you can help with that."

"I'm not a Bohemian, I don't know art." 

"I don't care what some other artist thinks of art, I want to be original. I need to know what sort of thing speaks to people here - back home if I turned a bunch of people into squid faces it would have been art, but here it would probably be everyday samesies. You can help me figure out what would be different and new for this world!" 

"...Well...I don't know about different and original, but the Correspondence always gets an impact," he says hesitantly. 

"Hm, just so you know - I don't really expect you to give me suggestions about what's different and original - I'll be able to tell by your reactions. Like how I could tell earlier that brain surgery was different and original for you!"

"But also now I want to know, what's the Correspondence?"

"It's--I don't know exactly what's true and what's not, people say a lot of things. But I know it can be written or spoken, and that it drives people insane sometimes, and the Light-Hearted Wastelander uses it."

"Wow! There's so many cool things in this world already. But I bet if I have a really good idea and I try hard at it I'll be able to make something new and original that everyone will notice!"

"Also, who's the Light-Hearted Wastelander?"

"People say a lot of things about her, too. She's...powerful, and beautiful, and she glows with the Mountain's own light when she wants to, or at least people mostly say it's the Mountain's light and it seems plausible. They say she walked out of the Prickfinger Wastes and declared war on the Masters. They say she walked out of the Prickfinger Wastes and declared war on Hell. They say she's blackmailing the Bazaar. They say she's a sorceress of the First City. They say she speaks with the Duchess's cats and the Fingerkings without taking sides. They say the Tiger Keeper defers to her. They say she's the Mountain's own daughter. What I know for sure is that she keeps a residence in the Prickfinger Wastes and has a laboratory at the University that her brother keeps when she isn't there."

"Oh wow, people sure do talk about her a lot! Do they look up to her?"

"Some of them? I don't think the Devils like her very much. The Rubbery Men mostly like her, she chases people off if she catches them trying to stone one, and she got one into the University. She's on good terms with the Urchins, I think, and at least some of the Bohemians--it's not that hard to be on good terms with the Bohemians, though, if you can afford to buy them wine and honey."

"What about you?"

"Me? I work at a pub over in Blythendale. Not really associated with any of the city's big factions."

"Yes I got that," she says impatiently "I want to know what you think of Ms Wastelander."

"Oh. Well, she brings back people who'd otherwise stay dead, and she made Mr. Iron shut down the Iron and Misery Company. I wouldn't want to get in her way, but I like her a lot better than any of the alternatives." 

"Hm..." Bonesaw rests her hand on his chest, paying attention to his pulse "Does your family like her too?"

He pauses to consider this. 

"I'm not married and don't have any children, and I haven't seen my parents in years, but my brother is a clerk at Mahogany Hall and his wife sings there and they think she's swell."

"Oh maybe we'll visit, I like pretty singing"

Bonesaw yawns.

"It's probably past my bedtime, it was already night when I showed up here. Instead of going to that Hall could you sing me a lullaby yourself? Pretty please?"

"Of course," he says. He doesn't know a ton of lullabies, but he can probably improvise? 

He only has the one bed but obviously she can have it, sleeping on the floor is probably loads more pleasant than whatever she has in mind for aversion training. 

She'll stay on the floor with him, cuddled up for comfort. Cuddling helps a little bit with the nightmares.

His singing voice isn't great for lullabies, but she's too tired to do anything about this. Maybe tommorow.

After a few minute she's asleep.

Literally nothing about this went the way he expected it to but, like, whatever, sometimes shit like that happens. 

She's a cute kid. Too knife-happy for his preferences, but hey, she didn't leave him a tomb-colonist, so as long as he manages to avoid this "aversion training" thing it could definitely be worse. 

It takes him less time to fall into a more peaceful sleep than you would expect from one of Bonesaw's Friends. 

Her nightmares that night are different from usual. 

The dream takes place back in her original family home, before the Nine killed everyone and took them away. But something's wrong. Her parents aren't there, and a strange silvery light illuminates everything, and everywhere there should be text of any kind is only the word NORTH. 

Bonesaw gets a full but restless night of  sleep.

When she wakes up, she remembers the dream. She could have made it so she would never dream, or even made all her dreams good ones. But the only change she made to how she she dreams is lucid recall. Every detail of every nightmare remains in her mind as if she experienced it while awake. 

Her nightmares are the only place where she sees her mother.



She shakes her Friend awake.

"I had a weird dream during the night."

He opens his eyes almost instantly; he's a light sleeper, and he couldn't forget what had happened yesterday. 

"Weird like how?"

"It said the word 'NORTH' everywhere," she says, fiddlign idly with one of the smaller knives she found last night. 

"Oh, yeah, that happens." 

Without paying much attention, she starts cutting into the palm of his hand, pealing away a window of skin.

"Something important in the North?"

He winces but stays carefully still. 

"I don't know, I've never been." He thinks for a moment. "There's a Northbound Parliamentarian." 

"Do they send dreams?"

She pinches the spider she saved from yesterday between her fingers, and stats to gently tuck it's legs into his palm.

"I don't think the Parliamentarian sends the dreams. Is that a Sorrow-Spider?"

"Where do the dreams come from?"

She ignores the question, but she uses her fingers to peal the spiders carpace aside for a look inside to see if there's anything sorrowfully about it. 

On the outside, it resembles a perfectly normal earth spider except for its size. On the inside, it...doesn't. Its organ systems are far more complex. It has spinerettes in about the right place, but they're far bulkier and more productive than any normal spider's, and that...and that...it looks as though the spider was designed to hook up to and agglomerate with other organisms, albeit not usually human hands. Its oxygen-processing systems are far more efficient, allowing it to grow much, much bigger than the square-cube law would usually allow. 

"I don't know, but probably not something human, and as far as I know the Parliamentarian is human. I suppose she could be a Snuffer."

She starts to hook up the spider to his hand - she can follow the design for now and add her own flare later when she sees what happens.

"Do the dreams you know about always tell you to go north?"

"No, there are lots of other kinds of dreams. Dreams about fire, dreams about chess, dreams about storms..."

"Don't people have dreams like that a lot of the time?"

This vein goes into to that vein, this one to that one. It's soothing to work while she talks.

"You can sort of tell the difference between a normal dream and a Neathy dream after a while. Normal dreams have weird transitions between them and Neathy dreams...they have a sort of logic that's a lot like dream logic, but not quite..."

She frowns "That's not a very helpful description, why'd you guess that mine was a Neathy dream?"

She finishes the circulatory system, and positions the fangs to poke out of his palm as she starts to sew his skin back over the rest of the spider with her clear thread.

"Because it had NORTH all over it, that's a pretty big hint."

"Oh, well there's no reason to go there just because a dream told me to I guess."

She has a lot of new places to explore, she can check up north later when she's more prepared for ominious things. 

"Are there any Bohemian art exhibits we can visit? Like a museum or something."

"I don't know about a museum, but there are galleries in Veilgarden."

"How far's that?"

"Not far at all! Blythendale is about as close to Veilgarden as you can get without being in it."

"Okeydokes, let's head there now and see what fun we can have!"

He has a coat and a hat for going out; he puts those on, if Bonesaw doesn't object. 

He can hold her hand on the way to Veilgarden, if she wants, but he won't push if his initial tentative offer is rejected. 

Bonesaw will definitely hold his hand! It makes it easier to discreetly perfect the improvements she made to it earlier - this vein should really be twisted a bit to manage blood flow and this bit of leg should be tucked in here and the fangs should be retractable but she can't actually do that discreetly while holding his hand so she'll wait till later for that.

He approximately does not react to this. 

And then they reach Veilgarden! 

He tries to gently nudge her towards The Singing Mandrake and away from any of the honey-dens. 

"Where are you trying to go?"

He points to the tavern. "That's the Singing Mandrake. The biggest pub in Veilgarden, and a place where artists like to congregate--there are artists all over Veilgarden, of course, but the Singing Mandrake has more of them in one place at any given time than anywhere else." 

"And why not those other places?"

He considers carefully how to respond, then gives up. "Those are honey-dens, and I don't want you getting addicted to honey if I can help it." 

"Why not?"

She gives him a tiny whiff of the fear pheromone she installed into his brain since he seems to be trying to be clever.

"Because-it's-not-good-for-you-and-you're-a-child-so-I-don't-want-bad-things-to-happen-to-you," he gasps out, pupils dilating and shoulders shaking slightly. 

"You really shouldn't tell lies!"

Here are some more pheromones.

"I'm not lying!" he all but screams. 

Bonesaw finds this hard to believe, but she checks to see if he's telling the truth by digging her finger into his palm and feeling how his body's doing, just in case.

He's really freaked out for obvious pheremone reasons, but not lying. 

"Oh, you aren't. Good job!"

Bonesaw skips with him to the Singing Mandrake.

He gives himself a moment to stop shaking, and then follows her. 

In contrast to London's foggy gloom, the inside of the Singing Mandrake is bright, lit with many, many candles, of varying sizes and kinds of wax. In one corner someone is singing; in another someone is telling jokes. At tables scattered across the floor, people are drinking, discussing their latest oeuvres, heckling the performers, flirting, and playing dice. 

Bonesaw would like one of the most interesting non-alcoholic drink please!

Darkdrop coffee?

Ew, no not coffee! Don't you know kids can't have coffee!

Not a principle they're familiar with, no. Tea?

Sure! Tea will work. With extra sugar pretty please!

They will put extra sugar in her tea, then, and give it to her in an eccentrically-painted only-slightly-chipped teacup. 

Oh this is very good! Her Friend will have some tea too! And if anyone else wants to join her tea party they can!

Sure, why not, a handful of Bohemians will join this kid's tea party. 

One of them is a man in his late twenties with flyaway hair, wearing a waistcoat with mushrooms embroidered on it; instead of being a repeating pattern, no two mushrooms are of the same species. 

One of them is a woman wearing a green dress that makes Bonesaw feel sleepy if she looks at it too long, with a bird with seven heads perched on her hat. 

One of them is a woman with no eyes wearing an outfit that would be quite nice, except that those colors do not go together. 

"Oooooh, how'd you make that dress???"

Bonesaw stares at the dress a bunch. She only sleeps when it's her bedtime, she made sure of it.

"Oh, it was a souvenir from the Viric Jungle." 

"Can I try it on?"

"Perhaps some other time. I didn't bring a change of clothes." 

"Silly of you not to bring a change of clothes if you're going to play dress up like that."

She blinks at her. "Whatever do you mean?" 

"Well, when you wear a special costume you should also have a normal change of clothes, just in case."

"...This isn't a special costume, this is just...a dress, that I wear."

"Well, it's very pretty and I sort of want to make my own. I guess you don't have to call it a costume."

"Well, I also think it's pretty, but pretty dresses are just what one wears, if one is the sort of person to wear pretty dresses; if I had a change of clothes, that would also be a pretty dress." 

"Hm, when I wear a pretty dress people say it's a costume."

Well, if she regularly goes around trying on adult-sized clothes then that might have something to do with it. "I think the dress you're wearing right now is quite pretty, and doesn't look a bit like a costume," she says instead of that. 

"Aw, thanks!"

"What's your name?"

"Bonesaw!"

"This is my Friend uh. Hapless." she says, gesturing.

She titters softly. "So you have a noun but no adjective, and he has an adjective but no noun?" 

"Mhm? What do you have?"

"I'm the Silvered Aesthete. These are the Jam-Spackled Artist, and the Spider-Stricken Seamstress." 

The man with the mushroom vest gives her a look. "The Cremini Artist, thank you." 

"As you like." 

Oh, so they do have capes here? Maybe?

"What do you all do?"

"I go into Parabola for rare and dangerous art materials," the Silvered Aesthete says. 

"I paint," the Jam-Spackled Cremini Artist says. 

"With cremini jam," the Aesthete specifies. 

"Yes, I paint with cremini jam. It's an underrated medium!" 

"I sew," the Spider-Stricken Seamstress says softly. 

Oh WOW this place is so great.

"Oh oh, what sort of things are dangerous art materials?"

"Well, any unadulturated sources of Viric, of course. Anything to do with the Fingerkings. Parts of dangerous Parabolan animals...whole Parabolan animals." She strokes the bird on her shoulder. 

"What's Viric?"

She smooths her hand over her dress. "Why, this color, of course." 

"Oh! Can I have a bit of it? Pretty Please?"

Bonesaw makes her best Pleading Face - her eyes actually inflate slightly and her muscles execute pre-programmed and carefully optimized routines.

She's slightly taken aback, but rallies. "Alright," she says, taking out a pair of delicate fabric scissors and snipping a loose thread from the inside of one sleeve. 

Bonesaw licks it. Tongues are very good at detecting the composition of things, especially her tongue. 

Well, it's...

Yeah it's nothing she's ever tasted before. It's more like linen than anything else--it's definitely got some kind of phytocellular structure, dried and processed as flax tends to be--but it's still not a whole like linen, in chemical composition or...yeah, it doesn't actually have DNA? It has something else instead of DNA, something her tongue isn't capable of reading. 

Bonesaw loves this color!

"Thank you!"

"You're welcome!" Small children licking bits of thread aren't remotely in the top half of weird things the Aesthete has seen today, and she's so enthusiastic, it's endearing. "What do you do?" Probably something involving body parts of some kind, if she calls herself Bonesaw. 

"I make Art."

"Hm, I guess that's not very specific here, it was enough to just say that where I'm from."

"Really? Even on the surface, they have," she gestures expansively, "sculpture, and painting, and music, and embroidery, and literature..." 

"Oh I mostly do... sort of performance art?"

"Like flower arrangements but with other things."

"Oh! Like femurs?" she guesses. Femurs seem like a body part you could do flower arranging with. 

"Sometimes! I once did a flower arrangement sort of thing with eyes. They'd blink and sort of sneeze at people. It was an early thing of mine actually."

Bonesaw likes this place, but can also tell she's going to have to try really hard to stand out. Still, Uncle Jack always said her best work came out when things were hardest.

"Sneeze at people? Were they eyes, or just something sort of like eyes?"

"She didn't say they were human eyes," the Seamstress murmurs. 

"Oh, that's true--I've never heard of something with eyes that sneeze, but that doesn't mean much."

"They were human eyes that sneezed acid! At first they cried acid but that wasn't as shocking as I wanted it to be so I made the little sneeze instead of cry."

"Hmm...if it were me, I think I would have left it at crying?" the Aesthete muses. "An expression of pain that only increases it...there isn't really any interesting juxtaposition between acid and sneezing, I think." 

"How did you make eyes sneeze? Did the acid come out of the tear ducts, or, I don't know, the pupils? Could you make eyes that sneezed jam?" the Cremini Artist wants to know. 

"I agree that just crying would have been better, but I was still new and wanted it to hurt the viewer and not just the subject, which was hard to figure out with crying. Probably now I would have made the tears sticky and let the eyes move so they left a trail, and make the tears do something more interesting then just be acid."

"The acid came out of the tear ducks and I bet I could make yours sneeze or cry jam - your pick!"

He ponders this for a moment. "I think crying it would be better," he decides. 

"How do you do this, anyway," the Aesthete says. "You're very young to be so skilled in the Red Science." 

"Uncle Jack says I'm getting better every day!"

Bonesaw gets up close to inspect the eyes in question.

He has perfectly ordinary eyes! A very normal brown color. 

Poke poke.

He holds very still and lets her do that. 

Bonesaw presses two fingers down, one right underneath his left eye and one on the side, and pushes inwards to pop it out of the socket, keeping the optic nerve attached so it'll be easy to put back after she's gotten a good look. 

He flinches involuntarily when she does that, but goes back to holding very still once he can. 

"Oooh, you can see the back of your eye this way!" she says, showing him.

"--Amazing," he breathes, distracted from the pain. 

Hopefully he'll learn to admire art without being distracted from pain someday - it's very important for her subjects.

Does he happen to have any jam on him at the moment?

Yes, he has a small jar in one of his waistcoat pockets. 

Bonesaw licks a lollipop she has in one of her pockets and swirls it around in the jar real fast, to add some extra fun, and then starts pushing the candy infused jelly into his eye socket with the hand that isn't holding the eye. She has to peel back some bits of skin near the corner to properly get into the tear duct but her fingernails are very sharp so she can do that sort of thing. 

After a minute of this she pauses and produces a fork from her pocket.

 "Okay one last bit - it's very important that you don't move, or else it'll feel much worse and your eye might come out. So no moving."

And then, before he gets a chance to respond, she rams the fork into the back of his eye socket at full speed. 

He--twitches, slightly. 

That's much more polite than her average Friend!

"You did a good job! I'll do your other eye now," she says, going to repeat the process.

The Aesthete watches, her chin propped up in the palm of one hand. 

"Are you going to put his eyes back in the sockets, after?" she wonders aloud. "I think it would be more interesting to leave them out, like that, if you had some way of making it so he could move them about on those red cord things...of course, just removing eyes in general is a bit declassee. No offense." 

"None taken," the Seamstress says softly. 

"Hmmmm..." She really likes these people!

"I'd need to figure out a way to leave them out that doesn't make accessing the tear ducts easier since that would ruin how he'll want to make himself cry a bunch to get at the jam cause of all the sweetness I added."

She thinks on the idea some more - she doesn't want to ruin how addictive her lollipop's sweetness will make the tears but it feels rude to ignore such a good idea. 

"Maybe I could make it so they retract if he tries to poke at them like turtles do, but go out and explore the rest of the time? Though I would probably need more time and tools for that."

"Maybe the wandering eyes should be a separate project," the Cremini/Jam-Spackled Artist suggest dryly. "I know of more than one piece of art that tried to do too many things at once to succeed at any of them." 

Bonesaw nods - she's learned this too, after a piece of art she made when she was just starting out ripped itself in half cause it tried to do too many things at once. 

"That's probably right."

She makes some final adjustments to the sockets and pops the eyes back in.

"Ta-da!"

The Jam-Spackled/Cremini Artist pulls out a pocket mirror to see if he can see anything different. 

His eyes are a bit poofy, though that will go away over the next couple of days. Other than that it looks the same.