Author's Note: I don't Naruto or Vampire Princess Miyu.

The Forest of the Dolls

Chapter 1: Do You Know

Do you know of the Forest of the Dolls? The Rustle of the leaves it sounds as if someone is speaking. Are they laughing or are they crying? I do not know... not anymore. The twigs, twisted, knobby and crookedly bent in such ways that they appear to be tortured fingers, mutilated and blackened by age shoot from the branches that are bent like arms toward the heavens as if begging the gods for mercy. The two twisted branches flare out of a trunk that is warped and irregular. Eerily it resembles the twisted frame of a man haggard and deformed by agonizing pain. At the top of the tree where the mosses, bark, and branches form to shape a round head like shape a single trail of amber sap glitters faintly in the dusk: a tear hardened by time forever being shed. All around are other trees; thousands of them, all bowed and misshapen by an eternity of suffering.

"They say that Pinocchio is the leader of the forest...mysterious forest." Elsewhere in the gloom of the forest the spindly distorted finger like twigs of one of the trees twitch, seemingly of their own accord, as there is no breeze to be felt nor wind to be seen stirring the patches of grass that dot the forest floor. Where... where is he?

The twigs give a final shrivelling twitch and fall still. Tell me, do you know of the Forest of the Dolls? Sap begins to ooze like treacle as the golden sunlight filters through the green leaves of a forest in the haze of a distant dream. Perhaps it is the last shred of memories long forgotten or bits and pieces of an ancient past slowly being recalled from the darkness of time.

"Humans, whose souls were destroyed, are standing there like trees. It's said Pinocchio has eaten their souls. But whose voice do you hear when the trees rustle?"

"I don't know."

Author's note: Yeah this is not my best work but I've wanted to write something like this for a while. I'm going to have to do some serious editing. I should be done with this in five or six chapters and all the following chapters will be longer. I just need a good starting point.