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At first he’d told himself it was temporary.
It had to be.
“Hey, Alicia, do you still play with stuffed animals?”
“Look how filthy it is!”
“Keep it away from me, it probably has fleas!”
He could still feel the tug, of being picked up roughly and thrown around. Alicia’s three friends. Though “friends” was being generous. Teddy had never liked those girls. Lately they’d taken up more and more of her time. They’d laugh about her behind her back, made fun of her toys and her books when they thought no one was listening.
And him and the other toys were helpless to stop it.
A few times, when Alicia had joined them in the Dreamlands, they’d tried to hint to her that these girls were bad news. But she either hadn’t understood or deliberately chosen to ignore them. Even when he himself had breached the topic once, she’d cut him off.
“I don’t wanna worry about real world stuff in here,” she’d said, cheerful voice carrying a strain that made Teddy wince. “Let’s just go back to fighting dragons, okay?”
He should have been more insistent back then. He should have made her listen. But he’d been too desperate to make her smile, to make her feel loved and show her that she still had friends, true friends here in her imagination.
Now look where that had gotten them.
He still felt the pain that had shot through his body when Alicia had ripped him away from one of the girls who’d played Hot Potato with him, face red with shame and anger.
“Of course not!” The words had hurt so much. Like poisoned arrows. “I don’t now how that old thing got out of the box. Like I’d play with something that moldy and gross.”
He shook in her arms as she walked briskly toward the wooden box holding her older toys. The air was knocked out of him as she slammed him inside. And then, with a terrifying sense of finality, the box had slammed shut, trapping him in darkness.
At first he’d told himself it was temporary.
She was just trying to save face in front of these girls. She’d get him back out as soon as they were gone.
She wouldn’t just abandon him because of them.
She wouldn’t.
Days had gone by.
Night after night.
The box remained closed.
Teddy felt the sharp edges of wooden blocks and train carts press into his back. At times he felt like something was crawling over him. But he dared not move. Alicia might open the box at any second.
He thought he heard the other Dream Guardians outside once.
“This is ridiculous! I’m opening that box now!”
“Peter, you mustn’t. You know Alicia would notice.”
“Screw that, old man! He doesn’t deserve to be trapped in there!”
“I never thought I’d say this, Merlin, but I agree with Peter. My poor bear must be terribly lonely in there!”
“Those nasty girls… I can’t believe Alicia would let ‘em talk about him like that!”
“Little Red, Mermaid, Peter, I understand your frustration, believe me, I do. But if Teddy were among us, he’d tell you the same thing I am telling you now: Our job is to protect Alicia. Not ourselves.”
Silence.
“...I still don’t think it’s right. She needs him! We can barely get a grip on the Dreamlands nowadays. Not to mention her.”
“True. But that is a choice Alicia must make for herself. Until she does, we must persist and hold the line. As best we can.”
“You still haven’t found the Cat?”
“No, sadly not. I’ve sent Gepetto and Pinocchio deeper into the Dreamlands to search for her, but-”
Their voices grew faint. They must have walked away from the box.
Teddy shifted a bit. They’d been talking about the Dreamlands. Ever since Alicia had put him away, he’d felt his connection to it weaken. He hadn’t visited since then. The way the other dream guardians were talking about it worried him. What they’d said about Cat did, too.
Cat would never abandon her post or cut herself off from her fellow dream guardians. Not without a good reason. What could have prompted her to go into hiding?
Something was wrong.
Maybe he should-
A strange light blue shimmer came through the small crack between the toy box’ lid. Teddy squinted. He wasn’t used to the light anymore. And he didn’t know why, but this particular light unnerved him. It was too bright, too… intrusive.
He felt like it was shining straight through his fluffy skull and into the filling making up him.
Penetrating his thoughts and turning them into a swirly mess he couldn’t hope to grasp. What was going on? Why was he-?
The light disappeared. Teddy blinked.
Had he just been thinking about something?
It was suddenly hard to concentrate.
He felt like he’d forgotten something important.
Perhaps he was finally going mad.
Little wonder, with how long he’d been trapped in here.
His chest started to ache. The darkness seemed to close in around him. For the first time in his life, Teddy felt scared. Scared and alone.
He wanted Alicia to come back. To open up the box, pick him up and hug him. Tell him that she loved him, just like she used to do.
But no one came.
Day after day, all he saw above him was shabby wood.
Occasionally he heard voices from outside calling his name. He didn’t recognize them, but he knew they weren’t Alicia. And so he didn’t respond.
Some days there was this nagging feeling at the back of his head. Like there was something he’d neglected to do, something he needed to do. But for the life of him he couldn’t tell what it was. One time he felt like he was close to remembering.
But then a light blue shimmer began to shine into the box and the thin thread he’d held onto seemed to dissolve.
Whatever.
It probably hadn’t been that important.
Just like he, evidently, hadn’t been that important to Alicia.
Teddy curled in on himself, gritting his teeth. So this was what years of loyalty and friendship got you in the end. An indefinite exile in a stuffy wooden box. Forever cut off from all day light, to eventually be forgotten.
He wished Alicia even bothered to look into the box anymore. He wished she’d take him out so he could ask her the question that burned inside him ever since she’d left him in here.
Why?
Why did you do this to me?
What did I do wrong?
Did you ever really love me?
But the box remained close and so there was no one who could have given him answers.
He was alone.
Completely alone.
Stuck in here, probably for the rest of his life.