dolls are always getting lost in fairytale forests, buried for thousands of years, trapped in time loops, marooned in space… poor things, they're so accident-prone, or perhaps fate-prone. they need clothes that keep up. it wouldn't do for them to be naked on their little adventures.
there is a witch — known by her peers as Arachne (although this is a common name among witches) and by dolls as "the stitch-witch" — who has taken that cause on herself. she makes fate-appropriate clothes for dolls with fates.
if you are a rag-doll, she may tug and sniff at your fabric, rub it between her clawed fingers, and decide that you are likely to spend a decade in a musty attic with only moths for friends. she will sew you up a blue frock in nylon taffeta, which moth friends will not nibble.
if you are a human-scale clockwork doll, she will prepare you for the possibility of being trapped in a witch's clockwork ballet, with a tight-fitted but stretchy black leotard with buttons for a keyhole, durable tights, and a long elegant skirt in dust pink.
if you are a combat doll, it is best, she says, to wear clean underwear for battles, as you never know who might see it. you may languish as battlefield scrap until a scavenger finds you in the mud and brings you home to repair. a lace of glittering optic fibers catches the eye. (what you do to the scavenger afterward, she says with an eyebrow waggle, is up to you.)
if you're a hazmat doll, they're doing wonderful things in tungsten-laced silicone these days. it may be heavy, dear, but you will look like a radiation-proof raven with a daring silhouette, cutting mysterious shadows in the hot zone sunsets.
it is considered proper to bring her exotic textiles and daring fashions, especially if you are visiting her for the second time. and dolls are always proper (that's why it's so easy to catch the little dears in nets of assumption and obligation and pride). things come her way.
she has no doll of her own. this witch is out of the game.
if pressed on why, she will say that she feels happier in the background, ensuring that the usual stories of doll and witch happen with some style. she is above the system, part of the background, and thus powerful.
if doubly pressed, she will admit that she was, of course, not always above the stories of doll and witch. she had a doll, and to hear her tell, the doll was a marvel of poise and grace, but considered itself clumsy and plain. the witch took pride in dressing it and showing it off in clothes of her choosing. the doll wished it could be Still, on display, but something chafed its soul.
there was eventually a moment both regretted. the doll left; the witch pursued her, but only to the edge of her desert, not beyond.
she trudged back that day to her cave, now emptier than it had ever been.
along her path, the witch found a sand-blasted porcelain doll in a dune. she wanted to fill the emptiness. she wanted to take this doll home and replace the one that had left, dress her in lace and gossamer, dress her in a fitted suit and slippers, dress her in ribbons and nothing much else.
but that was not what she needed, nor what the doll needed. the witch took her home, cleaned the sand from her joints, sewed her a loose peach djellaba in fine light wool to keep the sand out in future, and set her on a safe path to follow her fate through the desert and beyond.
the witch first gave her name as Arachne that day. it took another doll to hang the epithet of "the stitch-witch" upon her.
perhaps the doll that was once hers will see another doll bearing the stitch-witch's work, and know that she has learned to sew for the wearer, and not the sewer, and come home.
perhaps not.
perhaps someday another doll will come to her desert cabin to be dressed to meet fate's capricious embrace, and decide she prefers an embrace of a less abstract sort.
perhaps not.
meanwhile, there are many dolls in need of function and finery, and the stitch-witch works her craft, and occasionally smiles.