My Queen sat against the window on her little booknook. Before I had arrived and before she had cried, she had been reading about the territorial struggle in some other kingdom a sea's ways from here; perhaps she wished to visit. Perhaps she longed for a freedom, but I know she never was able to have it.

She did not wish to see me. Her tears had been for whatever she shed them. Unlike his own, she kept her sorrows private. She wanted no comfort. She wanted no one, not even I, inside her head. The deepest parts of her were for her and her alone.

“What can I do?” I asked her. I touched at her wet lashes and she knocked my hand away. “You are sad and yet I do not know what you want from me.”

Back then, when she had been but a child, she had been so powerful in her individuality. The essence of her potential was limitless. I had been drawn to it as a spirit, as I’m sure later in life her people had been to her as a princess, and the King to her as a man.

It had been a windy day, much windy, and I had appeared into the human world. In my plane, it is about as overwhelming and overstimulating as you can think. If it is of abstract everything, then the realm of men was specific art and design.

That world was symphony for me. The light presence of the rippling river and waters surrounded me. Aged and gnarled trees cast and echoed their welcome as their leaves and branches brushed in applause. I did not summon the wind, but the laws of this world liked me so. Sunshine warmed me through and the birds were sweet with song. They bid me welcome; joyous was the appearance of the magic that I was I, and they thrived in my existence while I breathed in the life of theirs.

And then I felt, then saw her, the drowning child with colours so vibrant I could not let the waters snuff it all out.

I dove in and swam towards her. With a blink, the waters divided into air and tendrils remained only to hold her. At that point, she was limp and motionless, so I pulled her to the shore.

On the earth she fumbled, and she lay hacking and coughing. I drew water from her lungs carefully, bit by bit. My fingers brushed her jaw, and coaxed until she could bring out no more,

There I remained by her, the day steady, the ground rough below. Her hair covered her face, but most of it remained on her back in its loose braid. I ran my fingers through it, marvelling at the sensation as it loosened. Her body shook with exhaustion and fear and upset, all emotions I swallowed up as my touch ghosted the skin at her wrist.

Oh, this is how I met humanity, you see, and it was very lovely.

I remember too, once, she settled, her and her breath. I touched the back of her small hand, watched her raise her head and turn her beautiful eyes open to look at me. In the presence of she, I felt I could be hers to command if she just so wished it.

The day after I bed the King, my Queen was with tears and greys too early for her age in her hair. Compared to her youth, she was less flexible in her opportunities, and shackled to the products of her ambitions. I wondered if she had regretted her prior choices to be where she was, but she was not a person fond of what could-have-beens. I was a decision she had planned for and made for only a specific time in her life—though whether or not I offered enough, well, that will never be known.

“Sit there,” she said, gesturing across, as she tried to gather herself. Already, her face was closing off to me, the delicacy of vulnerability hidden in the mask, and I mourned the loss of it. “Just sit there and pretend you’re not there. Or even better, go away.”

I did and yet I didn’t. There were three reasons: the silent shaking of her body, every drop of salty tears I could taste in the air because of my attunement, and my inability to look away. I was corporeal whether or not I wished it, and she wished to be alone, but she did not wish it too.

So I touched the hem of her nightgown, and I made both possible, just for her. I steadied my powers, and became something else.

By the time she was able to look back up, calm and collected and completely indiscernible save for her red eyes, I was among shadows across from her, as I was part of the shadows of the room. Thus I was nowhere to be seen, but everywhere to be found.

I do not think she had known, really, that I could be and not be in the human realm at the same time. Perhaps she remembered too well the impression I gave at our first meeting. Perhaps because she had only seen me at my King’s side at court, she did not realize I did not need to be found to exist. She was alarmed when she thought she saw that only her chambers looked back. Then she grew subtly upset, brow wrinkled and lip bitten.

“...are you still there?” She tugged the curtains only a little wider, and her voice cracked.

“Of course, my Queen.”

I appeared opposite her, blinking at the dust the sunlight wafted down in between the small gaps while she was covered by the drawn curtain. A creature of the other realm wreathed in light, while a human birthed into the central realm was covered by the dark.

The irony did not hit me because it was the relief of her face that did. She had not been a child prone to expressing herself well, either through words or through emotion, and such was the case even as an older woman. Still, that small open-mouthed smile-laugh was a treasure to me. I remember it still, as I will remember the way she held my corporeal hand: as if I were human, as if I were equal and meaningful to her, as if i too had lifelines and wrinkles and flesh where she traced with her thumb, and warmth by touch alone. She touched me as if I too would die one day like her, and we were the only two who mattered.

I would have been content in this silence, to be but a companion holding hands or sitting beside her as she spent the rest of her day to read. I would have made for a much finer pet than the puppy—which I must tell you I have never been able to tame as I wished. But eventually, my Queen wished for answers. Even barefoot, hair unruly and still in her nightgown, she was regal as she was pragmatic.

It was the way she chose to survive in this world, and to profit from it. I admire that.

“Did he hurt you last night?" she asked me. “You’re different than you were.”

She hurt him most. But I hurt him so it would not hurt as much. In some sense, I had returned the balance to what it should have been. "No." A simple answer, really, that said everything.

"What did you..." She stopped herself. My Queen would not be herself if she did not know every little piece of scandal and information in the palace. She was not envious, yet she was not fully relieved. She knew what I had done for him on that wedding night, as she had deduced then this last night. She did not know what I saw in him. “Do you not feel disgust?"

She placed herself in my shoes, because we were more alike than I and the King in our understandings of equivalent exchange. I by my pact, and her because human interaction has only ever been characterized by give and take. Unfortunately she did not understand that spirits do not require reciprocity, and thus our morals are different from that of humans.

I felt no disgust as a being that was not inherently sexual nor inherently romantic. “I feel goodness and satiation because he is glad and satiated.”

Her eyebrows furrowed. Her hand tightened on mine. “That’s not right. You should be feeling whatever it is you wish to feel.”

”It is what I wish to feel,” I said, looking at my hand, then at her. I tilted my head, somewhat curious. “This is how the pact works. As I feel your anxieties and anger now.”

“But that’s not what you want,” she argued, and her voice was hard, as if this was something that bothered her immensely. “You wanted only human emotions and experience. What you give him isn’t what you actually want to give him. You were just supposed to help him become King, not give him...that.”

“But I enjoy giving him that,” I said, but her scowl did not lessen.

My Queen's eyes turned down. “It’s only because he wants it and your pact says you’ll do it no matter what gladly.”

“I must assure you it is authentically and genuinely provided on my end. I offered on both accounts, years ago and last night.”

She was convinced of her own understanding and would not listen to me. “You’re magically bound to him to think only good of and the best for him. Otherwise, you don’t get the benefit. You’ve never once had your own thoughts and feelings since.”

I wish now I could have done more for her then to reassure her of the specifics of spirithood. That we are not ignorant. That we are not wanting or in lack. That from our creation—a random, spontaneous, and sudden becoming of a something from the excess magic—we have been satisfied. To pact and experience beside a human is not every spirit’s desire. And for those like me, it was well enough to provide for anything I was asked.

I came back when he called me a second time because I enjoyed our times together, and because I missed what we had been and wished to see how it would turn out. It was not solely because I missed what he provided.

And yet, should I have been gifted with the power to turn back time, I would not really know what to say or do. She was unlike the others that the King has engaged with, and perhaps my world was either truly too small or truly too specific when it came to humans like her. I only what I was commanded and was compelled to do. I do not know the intricacies of argument, so I did only what I could.

I reached out and curled my fingers around a loose strand of her hair, and pushed it back over her shoulder. Her eyes, dark and brown of earth, looked only at me. "I am a spirit,” I said, and somehow it mattered to me much that she understood me, even if I did not expect it from him. “If I have to say disgusting, then you are all disgusting compared to my kind, but I happen to like humanity better than others."

“There’s never been another spirit who came back after a contract has been broken. Then how can you know that you aren’t just being compelled if you have no frame of reference?”

“How can you tell, then,” I said to her, as gently as I could, for I truly felt sorry she did not understand, “that you do not wish for romantic and physical love if you have never met another human like you? There are just some things that are the way they are, and we cannot use logic on them.”

“It isn’t the same!” she exclaimed, and she releases my hand to clench her own two hard into fists. “You can only be one or another, you can’t be completely different depending on who you’re with.”

I was sorry to her, as I was becoming somewhat sullen. I was absorbing her frustrations and anger. “What of it? I enjoy you two both. If it is love of one sort he asks from me and love of another you ask from me, why would I not give or fulfill it the way you both ask? Do humans not give gifts to those they care about? For me, all ‘love’ is the same.”

I was not like her in this as I was not like the King in this. And yet I was certainly not sacrificing myself to provide what I was asked for. I only wished she could understand, for would this not be good? The King loved a Queen who would not love him back, but the two were content because their needs were met by a third who loved them both the way they wished, despite not being a being of love or lust at all.

She could not convince me and I could not convince her. It was unfortunate.

It was a standstill, and so she moved on from the topic. “After you two left last night... Did you tell him anything about me?"

"Yes." Because I do not lie, you see. If I am asked, I will answer. "I told him what you wanted, so he would better understand you."

It was the last straw. “You should not have said that. You should not have exposed what I am. You meddle." She stood up and made her way to the bed; I thought she would have crawled back in. But she picked up the little bell at the side of her nighttable, and rang it to summon the servants.

The maids came at once, swarming her.

“Dress me,” she commanded, and though they lowered their eyes, they moved in a way that separated me from her.

The sting of this hurt more in confusion than genuine upset. “How did I meddle?” I watched as they beckoned her behind the folding screen. “How can he leave you to your peace as you wish if you never inform him?”

“Do you think it’s the first time he heard about it? You know it isn’t.”

“It is only fair to be patient with him. A paradigm shift is difficult.”

“He’s had years to get used to the idea.” Disdained, my Queen emerged, dressed in her petticoat. “I’m not his mother, and I’m done trying to be civil.”

The maids helped her put on her skirts, her shirts, and her jewelry. The fancier she looked, the more untouchable she seemed, so different from earlier this morning. I floated around, feeling a little lost.

“Where are you going?”

Last were shoes, functional and hidden under her skirts. She stood with her back tall. “A meeting with the Carsinian diplomats today.” It was the kingdom from the very book she had been reviewing. “If you care about him so much, go to him, but don’t bother following me. You’ll get in the way.”

It was half because she was not proud of me. She preferred her husband to remain ignorant to the reality of what she was like and what she wanted. It scared her for him to know her in any true capacity; for she was not at ease with who she was either. Her desire for my contract perhaps stemmed from the need of validation: that who she was alright. That she was not alone, and this of her was not unnatural.

I was content to give her the time to lower her resentment of my freedom of human milestones and 'normalities', and presumed illogical thinking. I was not defending him to spite her or favour him more than her, but I presume she thought so.

Neither hurt me truly, though I did pity them: a boy Prince now King who only ever wished to gain and be at the centre of someone’s universe; a girl villager then Princess now Queen who wished to never lose and be completely in the control of her own destiny over all others.

The King’s tantrums meant he wished to physically harm and emotionally wound. My Queen’s tantrums, I learned, were of the biting, neglectful sort of treatment and the seeds of ideas that would ruin you with enough time.

Still, spirits have more than enough time. It is humans who really have too little of it.

In the end, because she commanded me to leave, so I did.

I went to find my King again, and he was much more glad to see me.