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Some nights Feferi stays up later than usual. She insists that she’s used to sleeping when it’s dark and moving about when it’s light, but you know that she’s lying. Sometimes you find her taking an extended nap in a bowl of cereal or in the laundry room, her cheek pressed against the washing machine door, and you always make it clear that she doesn’t have to live like this. But she wants to spend more time with you, and no amount of cajoling has made her change her mind yet.
So on these nights you try to accommodate her. On some occasions she’ll rifle through your old books. She especially loves your grimoire. You thought that you had buried that thing under mounds of god-awful writing drafts, chip bags, and old birthday cards, but Feferi had found it. She’ll curl up at the foot of your bed and open it to a page at random, giggling at the creatures in it. Only a girl like Feferi could find gargantuan horrors hilarious.
It had always been hard for you to deal with. You hate being reminded of your embarrassing old hobbies, and one night you hadn’t been able to take any more.
“Is that really necessary, Feferi? Put that thing away. You might catch something,” you had said, eyeing the book with a considerable amount of disgust.
But then Feferi had looked up at you, her eyes glazed over with something like homesickness, and her attention returned to the book. One of her fingers had traced the outline of one of the creatures sadly, as it were a friend that she had abandoned ages ago.
“They remind me a lot of my lusus,” she had said quietly. And then she shut the book and brought it to her chest, falling backwards onto your lap with a large pwoof. It had probably taken an extra second for her mass of hair to hit the bed with her. “Not only that, but there used to be legends of these sorts of dudes connected to my caste. Back on Alternia, I mean.”
It had taken you two years to even want to hear about trolls and their culture after the game. You had been surrounded by it so much that you had experienced a violent-homicidal-insectoid-alien overload. When she had mentioned it then, though, you were well over it. Some tiny part of your curiosity had perked up. “Oh?” You had encouraged her, adjusting so her horn wasn’t pressing into your stomach.
“Well,” she had started, squirming around and stopping when the horn pressed back into you (she was such a brat, really), “when empresses or heiresses die, it was always said that their inner and outer beings travelled to the Furthest Ring. There, they would become a horrorterror themselves.” She sounded like she was reciting a fairytale. The words hadn’t seemed like her own. “It’s said that our hair becomes our appendages in our afterlife, so we never cut our hair.” She played with a strand absently, pressing her thumb against the split ends. You had watched her, somewhat shocked and somewhat angry at yourself. You don’t like the idea of falling back into all of this Furthest Ring garbage.
But an idiotic part of you had asked something like “is that true?” and Feferi had shrugged, dropping the hair so it fell limply on the bed. “Probably not! It was likely just propaganda to keep warmbloods more afraid of us than they should’ve been, but...” she trailed off, and it was then that you noticed how wild her hair had looked. It had been obvious before -- her hair had often swallowed unsuspecting knitting experiments laying on your floor -- but now that she had directly brought it up it was hard to ignore. You remember trying to run your fingers through it, but the knots in her hair had stopped them before they had gotten anywhere. “I think it would be nice, being able to influence the universe after you die. Don’t you?”
If you said anything back after that, you don’t remember.
After that night, you didn’t bother her when she looked in the grimoire again. It was the same reason why you liked to wear that one pink scarf even in the heat of summer. She would see you in it and smile knowingly.
But after that she would try to sneak up behind you and pull on the tails. It was never really funny, but seeing her laugh afterwards always made you laugh, too.
Thinking about it now as you smooth her hair over your hands, you realize that Feferi had always uncovered old junk that embarrassed you. You aren’t a very clean person, so Feferi usually takes it upon herself to clean the house. You don’t feel bad about it, though. She likes to leave the doors and windows open to let animals come and go as they please. You don’t know how many times you’ve told her that she’s just letting the air conditioning out, that she’s just letting the bugs in, that there’s no way that cute woodland animals are ever going to visit your tiny flat in the middle of the city. She tells you to shut up.
But Feferi always finds awful things when she cleans. Once, she had resurfaced from under your bed holding a suggestively shaped blue tentacle replica. You remember how hot your face had felt, how your fingers had twitched with the desire to rip it from her hands.
“What’s this?” She had practically sung, observing it critically. “It’s really cute! It’s...” and only then had she looked up at you. Slowly, a smile had spread across her face, splitting it in half like a knife, and she began to wave it around excitedly as she realized its purpose.
“I meant to throw that out,” you had mumbled lamely, wringing your hands together.
She stuck the dildo onto your wall. Now, your purses hang from it when you bother to remember to put them there.
Those are only some nights, though. Other times, Feferi is so restless that she can’t even read, so you take her to the kitchen for a midnight snack. She always eats raw squid while you sip a coffee, and somehow or another you always make a stupid joke concerning her love of cephalopods. “Don’t you like cuttlefish too?” is a really popular thing for you to say.
And then she calls you stupid and, if she’s feeling especially regal, uncultured. “Cuttlefish aren’t for eating, dummy,” she likes to say, and then you both usually feel tired enough to sleep by that point. If you’re not, you end up slinging awful insults at each other like intoxicated teenagers until you both pass out at the kitchen table.
That table had seen a lot of you two. You remember your six month anniversary in particular, which you still think is a stupid thing to celebrate. After work, you had returned home to a completely decorated kitchen, ugly pink and green and blue and purple streamers tumbling from the ceiling. The table had a bright pink tablecloth on it, and on top of it was a cake made to look like a wizard’s hat. Later, you learned that she had commissioned a particular cake artist to make it (which honestly explained the disgusting taste of cereal treats and pound cake). Two packages, wrapped in what looked like gold-embossed wrapping paper, sat prettily next to it.
Feferi had bounded into you, giving you tons of little kisses on your face. You remember asking yourself if it was your birthday or something.
“Happy Six Periversary!” She had said, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Oh, well, monthaversary. I’m on Earth now, I keep forgetting!”
You probably said “uh” to that. You had thought that month celebrations were for highschoolers who couldn’t hold a relationship past homecoming, not college-aged adults.
She had been very understanding of your forgetfulness. Your presents were an incredibly ugly gold and amethyst necklace (which you still wear on a daily basis) and carved diamond (and very useless) knitting needles. Presently, you still forget that Feferi has expensive taste, and you only remember it on certain occasions.
Behind the cake’s taste of Rice Krispies and chocolate molding, you had tasted something else. When you made a face and asked about it, Feferi brightened up. “Oh, I was hoping you had noticed! You know how you just finished the first draft for your book, Conchplacency of the Learned?” She had taken a minute to giggle at her bad pun. “I made it like a double celebration! I asked for marzipan in the cake, which sounds a whole lot like Zazzerpan! That’s also why it’s shaped like a wizard’s hat,” she added that last part quickly, and grinned expectantly. You neglected to tell her that you routinely tossed all marzipan-filled chocolates into the bin upon attaining them.
It had been a nice thought though. You really liked remembering that day.
Now, though, you’re not watching Feferi read your grimoire, and you’re not sitting at the kitchen table with her and watching her eat seafood. You’re reading the first published copy of your book and watching her sleep, letting your fingers snag in her hair that might, supposedly, become appendages one day.
You like it when she sleeps soundly, which isn’t too often. Right now, though, she’s still except for her breathing, and her webbed hands grip onto your shirt. You had always found it hard trust people in the past, especially those who you’re close to, but you’ve grown better at it recently; right now, you don’t think that you trust anyone as much as you trust the little horrorterror princess sleeping to your side. Your past self, ever the psychoanalyzer, would’ve had a field day with someone like you.
Somehow, though, you don’t find yourself caring. Instead, you decide that you should probably work against being nocturnal, too. You dogear the page that you’re on, shut off your bedside lamp, and snuggle up next to Feferi before falling asleep.