Summary: Fall of the Marionettes is set in a Parisian salon sealed off from a starving city, where wealth, spectacle, and hunger collide in a single act of theft. As the ruby passes from hand to hand; hidden, swallowed, and erased—the story follows three women bound by inequality and unseen strings, each redefining theft as power, courage, faith, and finally freedom.
The salon’s opulence masks a system that forces choice into performance and survival into crime, while those who serve it absorb the risk. The true fall is not the loss of innocence but the recognition that agency itself is an illusion, and that knowledge offers no escape
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Fall of the Marionettes
“Her gaze moves right,
The prize sways left,
Reach, strings tight
One touch, one theft.”
Séverine
Her gaze moves right
Outside, Paris starved: bread queues stretched along the boulevards and torches gathered as chants for heads grew louder. Inside, chandeliers blazed like false suns, wine pooled in crystal, meat sweated on silver, and at Mademoiselle Goddard’s ear, the ruby swayed—red fruit on a golden hook, mocking famine.
I drifted among them in powder and lace, costumed like a doll, strings guiding each step, dazzling men that forgot I was flesh at all. But I knew the stage I walked. The guillotine had taught me that nothing gleams forever, that every glitter hangs from a thread.
And as I snaked through the salon, I told myself:
Theft is power.
Eva
The prize sways left
I carried platters heavy with goose and grapes, my mouth watering at scents I could not taste. Outside, the mob fought for crumbs; inside, I had nothing. Séverine burned for vengeance, but I burned for food. The men’s eyes clung to her fire. None remained for me. That was my moment. I reached, and the clasp gave.
The ruby dropped into my palm, cold, bright, heavier than hunger itself. Quickly, I tore a crust I had hidden and bit it once, hollowing the bread. Into its cavity I pressed the jewel, its glow buried under dough. Adèle caught my wrist, and I placed the crumbs into her palm, the jewel pressed down with them. She did not falter.
By the time Mademoiselle Goddard rose and struck the table, my hands showed only crusts. The laughter died; silence clamped tight. Every pair of eyes swung my way—and found nothing.
…And as I felt every gaze fix on me, I told myself:
Theft is courage.
Adèle
Reach — strings tight
Her hand trembled in mine, but mine did not. She gave me the crust, its secret already sealed. I bit into it too, pressing the bread tighter around the jewel, wrapping it under a second layer.
Now twice-hidden, it lay heavy in my palm, no more than a scrap to anyone else. When suspicion sharpened, I slipped it into Séverine’s waiting smile.
Her lips closed over it, calm, obedient. No one drunk on wine and gold thinks to search the doll. They saw only two servants with crumbs, girls with nothing but crusts in their pockets.
Yet I felt Mademoiselle Goddard’s suspicion linger, her eyes crawling over Eva and I, hunting, as if she saw right through the crumbs.
Still, Séverine smiled, her silks already drowned in red, every gesture a performance borrowed, every word spoken in another’s breath.
And as we stood bare in the silence, I told myself:
Theft is faith.
Séverine
One touch, one theft
They call it choice; hunger or defiance, theft or obedience, but choice is only the mask we wear when another hand pulls the strings. Is it coincidence that two orphan girls should be found clutching crusts? Was that fate, or the script we were bound to follow? Hunger wrote their reach, I carried their whisper.
Bread or ruby, it did not matter. From that night I knew the salon’s doors would no longer welcome Adèle and Eva, and the courts would finish what hunger had begun.
Free will? Or only the illusion of freedom, staged for those who need to believe it. To have knowledge is no blessing, only a hunger without hope.
I coiled my tongue around the ruby and held it in silence, wealth and decadence hissing behind painted lips. There was just enough bread left for me to swallow it whole; crumbs and jewel together, erased in one mouthful.
And as the ruby clenched in darkness, I told myself:
Theft is freedom.
