[BATIM/BATDR]A Lonely Sepia Melody

Part 1: Thinking Of You

Eyes blinked open, gold against the yellowed-out sepia of the studio in its drawn-out, animated form. Golden freckles smattered across soft cheeks under the dim lights like small star spots on a young face. Two ink-warped hands came up into Bonzy's view as they stared in wonder at their own smeared features. Which of course led to them pushing themself up into a sitting position using these very same hands, feeling like their skin was dipped in wax as they flexed the fingers of their right hand in front of their face again.

Now in a sitting position, Bonzy peered around the large room they were in.

Banners hung from the ceiling in the images of the characters they'd seen drawn and redrawn hundreds, maybe even thousands of times over. Bendy, Boris, The Butcher Gang- all in slightly torn and draping banners. A fountain in the center of two grand stairwells leading upwards, the words "Heavenly Toys" read in a wonky font over the front of the fountain. If Disney were hell... Bonzy thought, amused, as they pushed themself up onto their slightly-shaky legs.

An upturned barrel here, a post that looked kinda like a broken ironing board- did they iron shirts in hell?-, and a massive Boris plush that looked like he was nearly decapitated (cool) later, the fountain was right in front of them. "I feel like a violin should be playing," they mumbled to themself as they inspected a sewn-together Bendy plush on the side of a toddler- do toddlers have a size ratio? "He's jus' a little lad," Bonzy reached out and poked the plush, leaving the smallest dot of ink where they removed their finger.

Wide-eyed, they held their hand up again, "Oh my god- am I an infinite source of drawing material now?!"

After a few minutes of mindlessly smearing ink over the wall of the fountain, writing things like "Bonzy was here" and "Inky-Fingerz" and weirdly sketched bird-monsters, they finally decided to move on. They were working their way up a few misplaced bricks on a wall when a voice caught their attention and nearly caused their demise. "Hey! You!" Bonzy's fingers slipped off the bricks and they caught themself on the other wall in their startle. When someone moved into the corner of their vision, they spun around, arms flared out, when a woman stood across from them, looking rather... unique. "Oh... you're new."

"I sure am!" Bonzy grinned. "Tried to save a friend, fell into some forbidden ink, and ended up here." They sent another amazed look around the sketched-out world under their feet and around their sights when the woman waved to get their attention. At least they thought she was a woman. She wore a dress and had a weird-looking halo AND horns, and dark circles around her eyes like well-placed makeup or something. She looked like Alice if Alice were in the apocalypse. Though, from the looks of this place, Bonzy might not be too far off the mark on that one.

"You seem not at all unnerved," Not-Alice mused skeptically.

"No, not in the slightest, however, I am eager for world domination so I'm not so sure if I'm a great tell of what is and isn't sane." Whatever words poured out of Bonzy's mouth, clearly Not-Alice wasn't processing. Because she simply stared at them for a moment before shaking her head and holding their hands up, glove-like ink designs up to her elbows showed in the light.

"Well... my advice is to stay on the upper floors, it's safer there. Watch out for the Ink Demon, be wary of the searchers, they may swarm. And keep an eye out for the Creator."

"Who?"

"It's hard to-, you just-," Not-Alice breathed a sigh and tried again, "you'll know him when you see him I guess. In case you meet Arabel, look for fake coins called 'slugs'. Now, I really have to go. Good luck." And with that, she whisked herself away as Bonzy tried to even begin to imagine what she could've meant by 'you'll know him when you see him'. Never met this Creator and suddenly they'll 'know him when they see him'? Yeah, no thank you.