For a moment Carly was not sure what to make of this as she looked in the mirror that had been her whole world that day she could see the mannequins slowly leave their pedestals and head to the center of the store. The place where Carly knew that her next challenge was to take place.
They didn't move very fast, but they had the run of the store. She wondered why the security cameras didn't ever catch this sort of thing, but then one of the others stopped her. The cameras were pointed at the entrances to monitor people entering and exiting. There was no need to have them recording the center of the store. It was probably why Victoria hadn't gotten very far.
"What will happen if I lose all the challenges?" Carly asked Victoria.
"You will fail to regain what is now Dalia's," Victoria said. "And return to your pedestal with us."
"I meant...to her..." Carly asked.
"She will leave the Sisterhood and join their world. She will do all the things soft bodies do."
"And you don't think people will question who she is and where she came from? Or where I disappeared to?" Carly asked.
"This is not the first time someone has claimed this right, Sister," Victoria said. "We all were taught of this...but none of us have ever witnessed it. I do not have all these answers. But, why do you think the soft bodies will question another among them? There seem to be many soft bodies...how would one more be noticed?"
"Has anyone ever won these challenges?" Carly said.
Victoria paused. "I do not know that either." she admitted.
"But, I'm really a soft body...I don't come apart. So I'm sure to win the next challenge," Carly said.
"The challenges show how much of what you were is what you still are. We have until the orange light returns....after which, only one can be victorious."
Carly wasn't sure what that meant. She decided she definitely needed to teach the Sisterhood how to talk more like soft bodies.
