Work Text:
You know the comfort of soft hair.
You know the gentle rocking of a pedalo.
You know the comforting shelter of a bird’s wings.
You know the brightening sweetness of candy given from massive hands.
You know they are your friends.
And you know you feel pity.
You are small. This doesn’t mean you’re stupid. The Queen does her best when she’s here, but she isn’t, more and more. She has her throne in the sky, and you have your rooms.
You have more than she does. She has a view--one that you can see too, if you try--but you have comics and teddy bears and the rarest of meats to tear into pieces small enough to bite.
I--we--won’t let anything bad happen to you.
All your friends told you that in their own special ways. They should’ve promised each other that, too.
You watch with the Queen, sometimes in her arms, sometimes in her bed, sometimes in your deepest room, as they forget each other. The pale people who smell sweet and burn sweeter are their only ways of talking to each other. They visit you, but it happens less over time as the bonds--that already splintered between themselves--starts to fade between them and you, too.
From your place you stare down all the people scurrying around, like the child you are keeping an eye on anthills. You can't touch, they're dirty, they might bite. Or you might disrupt them.
They don’t understand how much you can see. The Queen doesn’t know how to tell them. You think about it, but when you see a tall or small or giant form passing through the halls to visit you, you hide your mouth so you can’t. Maybe the sweet people got their cowardliness from you.
They’d all hate that. Dedan would scream and Japhet would wail and Enoch would just look down, so very disappointed.
Or maybe not.
Maybe they’d be stunned instead. Maybe they'd break, since they can't burn. Or maybe they’d run away and never come back.
‘Cause none of them know that you know; you know how Dedan hates everyone and Japhet is going mad with despair and Enoch hides how the sweet people really make the sugar everyone eats.
When any of your friends come over, they look you in the eye. And they lie. Right to your face. They desperately want to keep you safe.
They don’t want you to know the bad things.
(You guess
they got that
from you, too.)