The author pauses in the Christmas rush to adore a doll in a store window, imagining what it would be like to be a doll imagining what it would be like to be a human. . .later, she wonders whether if they had tried hard enough, wanted it enough, they could have exchanged consciousnesses.

"Listen, love, in your cocoon: " she thinks to her absent 'other self', all wrapped up in storage— "Imaginary creatures exist only from the front. Do you believe me? If you do—does it help?"

Published in Galaxy, Jan 1974