The doll was the color of bone.

‘Porcelain’, the kadin had said. It was shaped like a ketucari, in a way. It could just as easily have been a horse, for how featureless it was. Solid white. Crudely shaped from the delicate clay. No paint, no glaze. ‘It wanders’. The kadin had claimed. It had not moved from its spot in the center of the antechamber.
There was no malevolent energy that Tsuru could detect, but when she’d tried to show Papa…
Father recoiled from the doll, grey eyes flashing with horror, tail pressed tight under his belly, as surely as she’d lifted a nerve agent to his nose.
He’d hissed, sprang away, growled. “Get that Thing out of this house!”

So clearly, there Should have been something about this thing but… no. Nothing. How was she supposed to purify or exorcise it if there was nothing to it?

The doll was utterly featureless. A roughly conical snout, like a ketucari (or a horse). Long neck, long spine. A long, drooping tail. Four legs straight under the belly, with only the faintest impression of paws to show they weren’t hooves. No eyes. No impression of ears, or feathers, or a mane. Tsuru stared from the doorway, and dared it to move. As she had since it had been delivered at dawn. Her paws itched, her pelt twitched. Antsy.
It had to move sometime, didn’t it?

“Why haven’t you fixed it yet?” Auntie’s voice rang from behind the sliding panel door. She sounded so… stern. It wasn’t Right.

Frustrated, Tsuru puffed her cheeks and glared at the figurine. “Because there’s nothing Wrong with it. It’s boring.”

Auntie’s presence hung, Disappointed, on the other side of the door. And then she was padding away, scoffing. Tsuru lashed her tail, and swallowed the burn in her throat.
There was nothing to the doll. Nothing at all. The kadin who’d brought it had been so Desperate for help and there was just. Nothing.
All in the kadin’s head.

The doll was the color of bone.

Its pose was simple, standing tall, tail relaxed, head turned slightly to the left. If you weren’t looking for it, it was so plain it might pass your notice. When Tsuru, desperate to move, stood and approached, she found it to be two hands tall, from foot to the crest of its head. This close, its paws were tipped in a pale gold. Around its chest, specks of green. Those weren’t there before… were they?
No. It was bone white… wasn’t it?

The faint shape of an eye stared at the yearling.

…She’d been still too long, she needed to. To take a break Maybe eat. She was starting to imagine things, that’s all it was. Daddy could… could cook something and she’d get right back to work.

Tsuru was careful to lock the door behind her, a trick of greheli on the latch. She dashed along the hallway--careful not to run--towards the kitchen. Voices emerged. Papa, and Weird Uncle. Low hisses from Papa, Uncle… Uncle just sounded like Uncle.

“There wasn’t anything wrong with it, I don’t know why Veatrice brought it here of all places!” Uncle whined. “I was real proud of that, you know?”

“She didn’t bring it here;” a storm rumbled in Papa’s throat, “there’s no white statue here. Your… Veatrice delivered some… abomination!”

Tsuru slipped into the kitchen. Daddy was nowhere to be found, so she was on her own for lunch--with Uncle here she wasn’t going to convince Papa to cook. Something about not feeding strays, he always said. Neither of them noticed her as she ducked around the kitchen table where Uncle was sitting, nor the counter where Papa was trying to do a crossword in the newspaper. A glance told Tsuru that he’d be swearing about that in an hour--that wasn’t how ‘rutabaga’ was spelled.

Uncle popped chips--gods only knew where he found them--into his maw. “She called it that, too! She was so mean, Toshi! She tried to throw it in the street when I gave it to her! And then she started telling me it was haunted or something but… but that’s not possible! I made Wittol Lucy myself!” His sniffle ground against Tsuru’s spine and she flattened her ears. Undeterred, she reached for the fridge--

“Tsuru.” Papa’s voice seemed to be right above her and she Jumped, yelping and spinning to face him. He stared at her over the edge of his glasses, expression unreadable… but not angry. “...You could have announced yourself.”

“I… didn’t want to interrupt.” she tried. He nodded, wrote another word into the puzzle, carefully balancing his pen between his claws.

“Did you get rid of that… Thing that was brought here yet?”

If she did, she couldn’t find out what was up with it. “No Papa. I was asked to purify it but… there’s nothing to purify about it? I… was just taking a break.”

As she turned back to the fridge, a wall of tangled emotions slammed through the room hard enough to stir the drawings on the fridge. Violet fur stood on end, Tsuru holding her breath through Papa’s aura. “You…?” he asked, voice tight and scent roiling, “You left it unattended?”
His chair clattered, and claws thudded out of the kitchen, a string of Aegrun curses escaping him as he bolted.

Uncle called after him, “uh, Toshi? Toshi I’m not done crying over here! Aw c’mon man!” he dropped from his own chair and bolted after Papa.

Papa will break it. The thought ran cold through Tsuru.
She turned. Leaped the counter and dashed after the pair.

The sharp corner, left, towards where the antechamber door was open, the room past it Pitch Dark--Papa blocking it, tail tucked under him, sides heaving as he stood frozen. Uncle bounced back and forth behind him, trying to see, or push past, or something, prattling about how There! That was his doll! Hey If You Want To Get Rid Of It, Give It Back And--

Tsuru froze. Four tail lengths behind Papa, she skidded to a halt and froze, staring into the pitch dark room.
Beside her, the sun streamed in through the same netted windows that should be in the chamber.
Malevolent energy rose, creeping, out of the room. Shadows crawled out under Papa. Towards Uncle.

Somewhere inside, something shattered.