Light flooded her vision and the dancer's mind was hoping against hope. Maybe, just maybe, this time would be it.

A young woman had opened the music box sitting on one of the antique shop's shelves. Unbeknownst to her, a consciousness dwelled inside the small porcelain dancer rotating in the center of the box. The dancer had no idea how long she had been trapped inside this box. All she knew was what was needed for her to finally be freed from it.

She remembered browsing the shop and opening the music box. She no longer remembered why she had come into the shop or why the box caught her eye. These details slipped away from her during the indeterminate amount of time she spent stuck here. All she knew was that she had been watching the small figure of a dancer spin and listening to the tune the box played, just like the young woman watching her now was doing. The box stayed open long enough for the tune to repeat itself three times and the next thing she knew, she found herself unable to move or speak, involuntarily spinning in place while the box's music continued.

Somehow, she had become the dancer inside the music box! As she reached the point in her rotation where she was facing the front of the shelf, she saw that another woman was standing where she had been mere seconds ago, an unmistakably jubilant smile on her face.

All this unknown woman said before closing the box was that someone else had to open the box and leave it open long enough for the melody to repeat itself three times in order for her to be freed from her imprisonment within the porcelain figure with the person listening to the tune taking her place.

Since then, her existence was almost entirely darkness and silence inside the closed box. The sensory deprivation completely destroyed any perception of time, she could have been stuck like this for years, decades even, for all she knew. This all encompassing lack of stimulation was only interrupted on the occasions when some potential customer of the shop opened the box. She had lost count of how many times the box had been opened. Each time she had allowed herself to fervently hope that the oblivious browser would leave the box open long enough for her to finally escape this torturous predicament, but each time left to mentally wail in despair when the box was closed before the tune even got close to completing three repititions.

As she slipped in and out of lucidity during the seemingly endless stretches where the box remained closed, she could tell that bits of her mind were slipping away from her. Barely any memories remained of her life as a person. She couldn't even remember her own name. She feared she would fade away completely if she wasn't freed soon. She was long past caring that the only way out for her was for someone else to take her place. All that mattered to her was finally being able to leave this box, to be able to move and speak again, to be a person and not a decoration.

Thus, she found herself focused intensely on the young woman who was now inspecting the music box. The melody played itself once and the dancer's hopes lit up once more. After another agonizingly long wait from her perspective, it played a second time and the dancer was hysterically praying to any force that might be listening to let it play out a third time.

The tune was halfway through its third repetition when the woman observing the box turned her head toward another item that caught her attention. As she walked away, she closed the lid of the box, leaving the dancer to mentally cry out in anguish as the darkness and silence of the box's interior consumed her once more.