Call me Anarres. Everyone else does, and who am I to stop them? It's my name, apparently, and I've worn it like a bandage for just over a year now. At some point in that time, the convincing act I put on for these mercenaries I share a home with began to convince even myself, though it's harder when I'm alone. 

They say you can't escape your past. I have two, and they're at odds with each other, and I'm running for my fucking life hoping to outpace both of them in all the confusion. At some point, my run became a walk. 

At this point, I might as well be crawling. I dare not look over my shoulder. Would I want to see Doll in the lead, or Anarres Báncourte? 

"Ana, stop gorming out and drink your mead, might as well have a buzz on if you're still moping over that lad you ran down." Tavia Durenburg sits to my left—perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I sit to her right—and throws an arm over my shoulder while slouching in my father's old chair, legs spread wide. I think this chair meant something, to someone, once upon a time; now it's just a seat grand enough to make my godmother feel ten feet tall, as opposed to the modest seven she presently stands at. 

The woman is drunk, and rightly so. I think I must be the only person in the hall not celebrating my victory: Anarres Báncourte's very first kill. By her own bloody hands, at least. I give the woman a derisive smile and reach past her for the damn tankard, catching whiff of her drunken fragrance and cursing my own loins for the excitement that stirs downstairs. There's nothing sweet about her, but the things I associate this fairly unpleasant scent with are not so easily forgotten. 

Warming iron presses upon my lower lip and I take a slow, appeasing sip of the alcohol we brewed right here in the keep—not distilled, as I'm often corrected like I could give a single shit how we make this swill. I'm used to stronger stuff. "To me, then, for sticking that poor farmer boy right in his gut and watching the life leave his eyes. Twas my pleasure, boys and girls. One less man in the world, I'll drink to that." The dryness I speak with is intended to incense my godmother, to wound her pride with my ill gratitude, so I'm given deft reminder of who I'm up against when her low, throaty cackle fills the hall—and fingers, damnable fingers as rough as I feel, spread into my hair. 

"That's right, my Anarres does so loathe you ugly menfolk, so keep it in your pants boys or we'll be celebrating her second kill in the selfsame afternoon!" Her Anarres? Woman needs to lay off the mead, she speaks far too openly about matters I'd rather not dwell on. Unfortunately, this appears to be out of my hands... perhaps her next words are getting back at me for the sarcasm I just tried to stab her with. "She prefers a woman's touch, and I mean a real woman at that. Don't you, kid?" The woman twice my age twirls my short white hair between her playful digits and I attempt to cut her throat with the icy stare I give her.

Half the clan is present, maybe more, the old dining hall of the noble Báncourte family now playing host to brigands. We've an employer, but truly we act more like bandits than we do sellswords. The cove was but carrion, and we the vultures. It's probably for the best I didn't step foot in the palace, though I hear the king was already laying dead. These people are villains, and I'm one of them now. That, I can make peace with quite easily, but this? This has me restless, squirming, only put back in my place by that strong hand pushing down into my thigh beneath the table. She knows just how to use me—all too aware of my true nature as a toy to be manipulated. A Doll. I hate it as much as I crave it, the need feeling like a chronic ache in my side that won't go away until I comply. Playing at person feels like wearing an outfit that doesn't quite fit, and shambling onwards painfully.

"Are... we really going to air this out now?" I whisper, knowing full well the woman's sure to respond to my pleading at full volume, amused by her own shamelessness. Auntie Tav is an open book, and every page is filth. A walking smut, who I'm beginning to think was only ever held back from putting her hands on me in the past because my parents yet drew breath. She's a predator, and I'm far too good at being her prey. It's not like I push her away, but you'd think my own godmother would have the decency to keep a hand out of her own goddaughter's—a recovering addict who sometimes forgets it has a choice—braies. At least, you might think so, if you did not know Tavia Durenburg. 

Auntie Tav smirks knowingly, the touch in my hair tightening just a little. I know she loves me, and I think I love her back, but sometimes I feel the compulsion to tear out her throat with my own dull teeth to prevent her from embarrassing me any further. "Oh come now, Ana. It's an open secret, those tents we set up for camp ain't exactly soundproof and besides, you should know me to be a very braggadocios woman." This much is true, I'm not foolish enough to assume there's a single person left in this hall who wasn't aware of the shameful comforts I found in this woman's musty tent. Still, silently knowing is one thing and open discussion is something else entirely. A bridge too far, but I don't presume I'll have any chance to take the reins back for this conversation and so tend to my mead more intimately. 

"It's not like you're the only girl in this hall I fuck, dear Ana. In fact... ladies, are there any among you I've not yet had a turn with? My door's open tonight." I know she's laying it on thick to tease me, and I choose to ignore any unwanted feelings of jealousy that bubble up to the surface of this jarring broth I call a mind. I'm always one step behind in any conversation, that cursed medicine spaced my thoughts apart and made a dullard of me. How I envy the sleeping beauty who gets to live in her dreams forever. 

Turns out I've a taste for this swill after all, because I've just finished swallowing back every last drop like it was fresh spring water. Tav's hand slips deeper between my legs and I part them for her automatically, her left hand digging into softness I've yet to lose while her right still holds me by my hair like I'm her marionette doll to show off to the room. Her hands are all over me, body turned in my direction, breath a warm caress against my cheek. She's drunk, and I'm nothing but a plaything. 

"Do you want to tell them what I call you, when you're riding my hand, or letting me grind against your face?" Her voice has lowered, but is no less audible in the otherwise silent room. These pricks love a show and Auntie Tav revels in the attention. I'm just a thing, playacting my personhood for the sake of appeasing my fellows, so what the fuck do I care anymore?

"She calls me 'fuckdoll'." I state bluntly, robbing the fun from her game and finally finding my mood starting to improve. Should the satisfaction outweigh the humiliation of such a confession? Probably not, but it does—at least, until laughter starts to fill the room and my eyes scan the table for more damn mead. I'd rather nurse a headache than face the embarrassment, I think. 

Tavia does not let it show when she's thrown off her game, but her next response does take longer to come. I've made the woman think with her head for once, and not just her cunt. Small victories. 

"Well, I'm glad to see my goddaughter over all that doll crap she was obsessed with for damn near half a year, but it can be cute in the right context. She's being a bad sport right now, but the girl gets real into it." Her words hit their mark, and I find I've no adequately satisfying retort on hand. She's not wrong, when I'm made to act the doll for her amusement, and arousal, I get to feel normal again for just an hour or so. It's easier, to be a doll, I understand it far better than being human. When Tav beat the pronouns out of me—not quite literally, but no less roughly—it was more unpleasant a feeling than the withdrawal period, in which I must have torn out enough hair to fashion a wig from. I'm better now, apparently.

"I'm not—"

"To bed, Doll."

I'm distracted from the rowdy scene, and my tarnished pride, by a voice like fresh snow in my ears—angelic, and ethereal. Transient. 

Unlike my immoral godmother, whom I could likely still refuse had I any real strength to, this command is not so easily disobeyed. 

"Tav, I'm tired... that's quite enough excitement for me, can I go and rest up for the evening?" I do not need to ask permission, not from this woman, but I know it pleases her. It pays to stay in the good graces of the one person who decides whether you get to eat or not. It's not so bad really, she put a sword in my hand and until today I'd dogged her footsteps like little more than glorified squire boy, or maybe a puppy. Today, though, I protected her, and that has to count for something. If she insists I stay, I'll throw that in her face. 

Fortunately, I can hold onto my favour for another day, because the shrewd woman releasing me seems amused enough to have deduced my true purpose in exiting the banquet hall. "At least the women I fuck have their eyes open, dollgirl." She finally speaks in a hush, which I'm grateful for. 

"Maybe if you had a gentler touch, that'd be true, but we both know I'm usually scrunching shut." It's nice to tease like we're anything close to equals, even if I know it's a pretence. Me and Auntie Tav do not make love, she uses my body for everything it's worth and I shamefully return for the treatment night after night. It was only weekly, at first, but then I got competitive with the other mercenary women she'd have on hand to replace me with. If she stopped desiring me, I'd only have my one sided affair left... and sometimes it feels better to be the one being used. 

Another cackle, this one softer but no less crass. "Stop being a smartarse and scram, I can tell how badly you've been itching to get back to her this past month. Go regale her, at the very least, before you defile her body like I know you do. My Anarres, a sicker fuck than her godmother. I'd be proud were I still not somewhat perturbed." Tavia snorts, letting go of me completely. 

She doesn't understand. She doesn't understand a fucking thing, and that's okay. Nobody needs to understand but us. That's the way it has always been, with the Princess and her—

"Doll."

I'm coming, I'm coming!

The air in the corridor is much less stuffy, and I find myself dropping back against the closed banquet hall door momentarily to catch my breath. Embarrassment and inebriation burn themselves onto the surface of my cheeks and I slam my head back against the thick wood in frustration. I've a shockingly high tolerance for pain, but I simply cannot handle being treated like some girl. Anarres. I feel like I'm desecrating the woman's corpse, but I've no loyalty to her. My allegiance is to the girl presently calling out for me, in that weak little voice which owns me. 

My lungs are at full capacity; I exhale these myriad troubles like they're so easily discarded. This is what being human is: you always have to breathe them back in eventually, or you'll die—and I don't have permission for that. It's okay. Really, it is. I just need to walk like I matter, square my shoulders, and remember who I'm supposed to be. It's easy to pull the fucking wool over their eyes, and my own, when the alternative is suffocation. Every step forwards that I take is made to crush my regrets, and nostalgia, under heel. Until I enter that room and find myself alone with her, I am Anarres whether I like it or not. 

Some humans have even less of a choice in what they are than a mere doll, I should just be grateful I get to fuck, and kill, and eat. 

The corridor is quiet on account of the festivities concentrated in the dining hall and I find myself grateful for the peace in my well practiced stroll. It's nice to just walk and think, I think. My gambeson feels unbearably tight, but I thank the padded cloth for holding me together—it's an emergency stitch-job of the self, and I know the moment I loosen it I'll fall into fucking pieces. Again, it's perfectly okay, her voice always knows how to put me back together. It doesn't even matter whether I believe it's real or not, because it still fixes what's broken either way. Isn't that pathetic? 

My dull stride has soured, as I once again begin to contemplate my own presence of mind. My sanity feels like an exposed nerve, a jutting tendon, and I've half the mind to reach for the sword presently swinging from my belt and fray the damnable mess into oblivion. Perhaps then I, too, could be an immortal dreamer like my other half. 

That's enough angst for one afternoon, I'm beginning to grow sick of my own dour company. Besides, there are footsteps, and that means the play begins anew. Hurried footsteps even, which never typically bodes well. Urgency is an affliction of man, which is why I'm surprised—pleasantly so, I must confess—when I turn my head and spy the tuft of bone-white hair characteristic of my kin.

"Ah, Miss Báncourte!" The servant girl is holding a tray stacked with food that reminds me I've yet to eat, despite having spent my afternoon in the food hall. I feel the sharpness in my scowl blunting in the face of this innocent creature hoisting meat stew and fruit compôte; the food smells delicious, it makes my stomach groan angrily at me. I give the woman the smile and softness I reserve for those who share my affliction, but even a dull knife can maim, so I know to be careful. Their thoughts are spaced out too, which puts our conversation on an even keel. Maybe not fully, because the way she's looking at me betrays the effort she put in to correcting her speech. 

"It's alright, doll. We're alone, you can say it. Though I don't think myself worthy of the title, it's certainly better than the name of a dead girl." I watch as the permission changes her, makes the woman simultaneously more relieved and more attentive. The tincture blew our minds apart and planted these sort of contradictions in the spaces with corruptive blue kisses. 

The maidservant nods, a little too eagerly, and assumes a slightly less human posture. It looks good on her, but I don't see the need to tell it. "Thank you, mother." She grins to herself after speaking the word, like a child getting to share a secret. The giddiness is kept in check by her call to duty, my victim-turned-family—isn't it typically the other way around?—politely presenting to me the tray which fills her wide arms. "Food for our Princess, nothing she can choke on... a-and I was hoping to find you in there too. I had my... sisters... prepare extra for you, as well. You're skipping meals." 

"Remind me who the mama here is." I crack a light, wry smile at my own little joke and feel grateful to the maid who mirrors it. The blue stuff has long left our system, but none of us truly recovered from the changes it made. You can't put the Milky Way back in its box, it just won't fit anymore. "Thank you, I can take it off your hands. I'll make sure she eats her fill, as I always do. If I see she's gotten skinnier after my month away I'll be having some stern words with you lot. Been a while, since I caned a daughter."

The servant girl blushes fiercely, then shakes her head profusely. This is a point of pride for them, I'm sure, because I was the one who beat into them a loyalty to the Princess above all else—it superseded their deference even to myself, because I too was... am... living, breathing property. Endure the nightmare, so she can live in dreams. I fucking hate it here. It's worth it, though, for her I'd close every door in my life and flush the selfish wants I harbour. I'd torch it all to see her smile, though I miss her rage, too. 

Reluctantly, the maid—who only ever wants to be useful, deterioratingly so—places the heavy tray into my waiting arms. Her eyes linger, and I find myself shrinking at her stare. It's like she's concentrating on a puzzle, but it's just my stupid mug that fills her vision. It cannot be so interesting, I've a scar down my chin and ashen hair reaching no further down than my ears. I've the dead eyes of a doll, but the curl of a woman. I'm broken, but whole. I need her to stop looking, her perception is blinding. 

"How are you... I-I mean if you don't mind me asking... how are you so... you?" It's an insulting question, and I want to punish her for the insensitivity, but I can't, because I'm a good mother and I know she can't read minds half as well as she can peer at masks. Instead, I smile. Steam assaults my cheeks from stew and covers for the red smear of frustration that surfaces from her misguided observation. 

Before I know what I mean to do, I find my body moving closer—it only takes one step—and I lean over the tray of food between us to plant cold lips against her forehead. "Love your sisters, obey your mother, and foster our young." My whisper tickles her skin, and moves her pretty white fringe. "Do this, and I'll ensure that not a one of these unloved fucks ever lay a hand on any of you and keeps it. I've learned to kill for us, they say it's easier after the first." 

Her breath hitches against my neck, and she really does feel like little more than a child in this instance. My child. I do not deserve its love, but I can feel it anyway. It's throbbing, and ugly, and it would not sever cleanly, so I leave it be. Better to love than to hate, which is why I've come to love my Auntie Tav; it's just easier, less weight to carry. She can't have my hate, that's reserved for someone special—someone who matters more than my conditional, contractual loves. 

"Do you understand, dear one?" I know she does, because I built her, but I ask all the same because I yearn to hear another voice in place of my own. 

"Yes, mother." She speaks softly, with more grace than this bitter shell of mine can muster on the same day I skewered a boy barely old enough to lift his blade. Fuck him for making me feel anything close to guilt. He should've been older, and tougher. He was, at least, ugly as sin. That helps. "This one is very happy and significant." Ah, it's the phrase I had them repeat for us back in the palace. The daughters would echo, and enforce, the simple sentiment while performing their doll-duties. Now, she speaks it with a certain air of reverence, nostalgia, and wistfulness. I can see hope shining in her eyes though, and find myself unsure to feel at the fact that I put it there. I wield power I don't much want, but when I see that glimmer behind inspiral stare, I cannot help but acknowledge the bond. 

"Such a good girl, now go and remind your sisters. Just remember to make sure you're not overheard. Should you feel the need to... serve... tend to one another in secret, never a man or woman with a sword belted to their hip. Let it deepen your bonds, but make sure not to disconnect entirely and lose your edge. Always one eye on reality, lest the vultures take advantage of your gifts. One foot in the dream, and one in the world we madden." I feel a different person to the pathetic creature I'd been in the hall, or the angsty boob I'd been in my lonely stroll. How many of me are there? This one actually feels like it matters, which makes it far more terrifying than the other two. There's a thrill in fear, one that I'm keen to embrace when pitted against indifference or worse. Look at me, acting the Anarres I had once been, all that time ago, sitting on the coach and daydreaming about her new miserable life with the blonde who bound her. An entertaining reverie, perhaps, but the real thing was nothing like I imagined. I was drugged and beaten and loved; killed and born and killed again. 

Daughter nods. I pull my face back to assess her understanding of my instructions, as if there was ever any doubt. Her mouth opens to speak again, and even though the conversation's running longer than it should, I permit her the indulgence of the words I know may wound me: "I love you... we love you." 

They're so fucked in the head, but I find myself smiling more genuinely than I mean to. That it doesn't hurt proves I'm not a very good person, and I think that makes me smile even wider. I'll endure playing human, dirty myself for the performance of a lifetime, but trying to be good—to anyone besides myself, anyway—would destroy me and by extension, my family. The people I fashioned my daughters from were addicts, thieves, and liars, so this is fine. This is justice. I am kindness. 

"I love you too sweetheart. All of you." I lie, or maybe I don't.

Once again, in the chambers of my beloved Princess Pincushion—I find myself kneeling on the floor. 

This room is smaller than the one in the palace, though assuredly still the grandiose bedroom of a noblewoman. In Anarres Báncourte's old bed lays a Princess in name only; every time I've been told her other name, her false name, I've only been able to hear an ugly, painful noise my body rejected. She's Princess, it's not a title. It's a feeling, deep inside, clawing out of her sleeping form and forcing her to sit up like a grotesque marionette made to perform for me in my mind. 

"There you are, Doll." Speaks her soft, angelic voice. It was never truly so lilting, but who am I to question my own senses? "Can you stand for me?"

The moment I stepped into the room, I felt the weight of this past month lift from my shoulders and dissipate into hot air. Perhaps it's ironic, then, that the first thing I did was collapse onto the floor. Wreaking havoc on the rug in front of me is the remains of our stew and fresh compote. Oh well, we're both used to skipping our meals... I'll make sure we both get twice as much tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow. 

"Give... give me a moment, please." I need a breath. A Doll's breath. One I don't have to worry about the transactional nature of—a breath without worries to lend out and return, only pain and struggle in these suddenly gelatinous limbs of mine. Flimsy and fragile, hah, I really am but a doll even in my performative renaissance of human pride. A capital D Doll, even. How could this one forget?

"Haven't you kept me waiting long enough, pretty girl?" Speaks the dreamer. Long white streaks of hair flow down my old pillow like a waterfall, and when I blink it hovers like curtains. Close one eye and I can see her, fast asleep as always; close another, and she's sitting up with an inviting smile that deceives me like a drug. I'm still an addict, it must be my personality. Or just my weakness. 

I can't help but scoff at myself, muttering a pointless apology under my breath to the daughter who'll clean up this mess I've made of the floor while rising to my feet purposefully. My eyes trace the bedridden Princess and I make sure to keep them both open—both possibilities overlapping in my vision, two truths and one lie. Her smile is infectious, it is a Doll's smile and reminds me what I'd done to her. More justice. 

"I really hate you." I take the care not to mutter this time, these words are not to become lost under my breath. My steps are fledgling, like walking on twigs, but still they carry me over to her bedside with a smouldering look in my eyes that never leaves her. Both of her. 

"You deserve to rot in here, for killing my family just so that you could abuse me until I only saw the cosmos through you. Was it fun for you? To prey upon my shock, loneliness and isolation? To pick me apart until all I could ever be was yours? You seemed to be having fun, but then you'd shake... fuck... that's why I hate you. You shouldn't have been able to do all that, and then shake. That's not right. It's improper." My fingers wisp through her hair, and the Princess gives me a patient look I quickly edit in my minds eye to be more fitting. She stares with incredulity, lips parted in a stained blue o I want to close shut with my own. "Don't you dare talk, Princess, it's mama's turn okay? Be a good girl for me now, or I'll leave... I-I mean it. I'll go."

_{"You're not allowed to leave. I won't let you."}

"I know that." Her hair is so soft in my hand, I remind myself to praise the daughters for brushing out the knots in my absence. "But I also know you're not really here, you're up there. If you were really here, I'd hear no end of how displeased you are with this short, messy cut of hair. You'd passionately mourn the symmetry of my face and demand to etch a mirrored scar onto the other side of my chin. No doubt you'd ask about the medicine, the tincture, and cry like the baby you are when I tell you it's long gone. Well... suppose it's out there somewhere, hidden away in some tropical country perhaps, completely unaware of the lives it touched." And still, after I've said all that, I admit to myself that I cannot leave without her say-so. 

"It's a telepathic connection: tincture-talk. The Pincushion is just as otherworldly a power, is it not?" The Princess in my lying left eye speaks thus, and I'm embarrassed at how pathetic this is. And unnecessary. It does not change a thing. 

"Is that the best I can come up with? Remind me never to pen a fucking novel, unless I'm writing for children." My harshness softens, the bitterness dies, and I drop my knee onto the bed beside her. "I hate you, like I said," I tell her this in affectionate tone, showing another version of myself. This one is just for her. "Because you're me... and you left... and I love you." My body collapses over hers, but I do not blanket her in hair; only the faint scent of booze and a shadow that'll do nicely to hide my sinful advance on the fairest of maidens. 

"If I didn't hate you, maybe then it'd matter to me if you were awake or not when I violate you." My hand wraps around her throat. My lips cut across her face. "If you weren't me, my other self—the second half to my whole—perhaps this could even be called rape." I laugh, humourlessly, stroking my tongue across the true-blue lips of a living dead girl. I want her so badly I could die, were I able to. "If you didn't leave, we could fuck like lovers, and I... I'd take you out into the world with my hand clasping yours so protectively you'd have to tell me to ease up. Nobody would recognise you, we'd look as sisters and live like pigs. If you woke up, you could have all that. But you won't. Selfish fuck... the least you can do is stop me from using you so easily. You really are little more than a doll, a fuckdoll, we're always the same like that... mmgh... balance each other out." My fingers are under her dress, digging, and my tongue is stuffing her mouth to see if it can't gag her into consciousness. I'm truly deplorable, because I'm enjoying this... but I'm also shaking just like she would. The weakness always makes me go harder, as though I crave to prove it wrong, show it that it begs upon a lost cause. 

"If I didn't love you... I might still be human." My gambeson is loosened and promptly discarded, her dress unmade by impatient touch. Before long, we both lay naked and sweaty in the heat of the room. I'm smothering her with my black affection, and she's absorbing it all to absolve me of the responsibility. She's good like that. 

I'm tearing at her collarbone with teeth, while fingering her until she's wet enough to take a man. I'm grasping at flush breasts resembling swollen red berries and I'm fucking myself with her knee. I'm turning her head like the toy she is and slurping at her ear like a succubus; I'm licking my fingers clean and then making her taste my lust in turn, wondering if it'll perhaps flavour her dream—like seasoning; I'm covering her in bruises made by intense, pleading suction, and I'm crying into her neck because I want so badly for her to do it back to me. 

I want her to kick me, to berate me, to hum for me, to pleasure me, to peck me like a lover, like a vulture, like a rock concussing me into my final moments which call curtains on my curse of continuity. I want her to do something, anything, but instead it's always me that has to do the doing... and I do, and I know—I know that I must compensate in this one sided doing and do double the deed I'd usually be obliged to do. Do damage, to this perfect star-stained skin I covet, maiming it with painful kisses of want and sealing them off with hot wax stamps of cascading wet. My eyes are pissing on this perfect scene, and I've half a mind to pluck them out and cauterise the excitable ducts with a poker. 

So I kiss, and I cry, and I use her body for every drop of pleasure I can find before we're both just as spent as the other despite our difference in dreaming. We're one whole, so it only makes sense to be in sync like this. One whole, we are, and so I've done absolutely nothing wrong. 

Fuck... I look at her on the bed, in a messy scrawl that's hard to focus on—like the corners of a large room. She appears ruined. 

I'm still straddling my Princess when I leave my daydreams—and she's still the mess I made of her. Didn't daydream that, I guess. 

"It's getting dark, I should clean you up before I have to use a lamp." My voice is strained, telling me I must have been shouting—or screaming—while I fucked her. Don't quite remember. I'm not bothered about being overheard in any case, it's just another open secret and this is my fucking house. 

"Did you have fun?" Princess is sitting up again, even though she isn't, and she's smiling a waning blue crescent of mockery. In reality, it takes fingers to make her smile, one in each corner pushing up into the skies she inhabits. Princess is in the weather, her smile is sunshine. 

Deciding to ignore that sweet little voice for the first time since it began to haunt me, I cover her mouth with my hand and gently lean down. I'm not suffocating her—she has her nostrils—but I'm thinking about it. Instead, I talk, thinking childishly that it might be the last time I ever do. 

"You're never coming back to this place, are you Princess? Immortal in the clear blue skies... heh... if you're living in sleep now then maybe I ought to join you. Perhaps... I've kept you waiting long enough, and all this time you've been wondering where your mama is. I-I'd hate that... so maybe I should..." Before sense can wake reason, I'm unsheathing my blade from the scabbard laying discarded over the sheets to our left. This bed is too spacious, even for a pair of Dolls like us. Young Anarres used to feel like a drop in the ocean, in this absurd bed, and for some reason it brought her comfort. 

"What are you doing, Doll? Put that d—" My arm moves with the same mechanical sway it had when I gored that farmhand—and I lodge my blade emotionally into the headboard. If my Princess really had been sitting up, she'd now be spilling the prettiest sea of starry red all over my Anarres' bed. Instead, she lays still, small breaths proving that what little's left yet lives. 

I blink away the false ghost, and pry my killing tool from the wood it splinters. 

"Maybe I should go to you." The blade is lighter than I know it to be, right now it feels completely weightless. We're floating to nirvana. 

There's no voice to protest this time, so I press the sharpened steel to my throat and feel its stinging kiss. The pain is pinching, more of an annoyance than anything; in fact, it feels kind of good. 

—and then—

"A-ah... ouch..." Another pain comes to compete, and I'm thrown off balance by the sudden unpleasant feeling. I let the sword lower momentarily, but the second I do so I realise it is once again heavy. Too heavy to lift again on this night, perhaps. 

"Are you... ahahaha, no that's..." A stitch. It was just a stitch in my side, but for a moment I could have mistaken it for something else. Something more meaningful, something to hang on for. 

Just a stitch in my side, but I've found a new reason, and so I sheathe my blade and wipe down my special girl and hum her favourite tune all the while. 

Just a stitch in my side, probably... the day was rife with exertion and I had killed a boy I probably could've spared. What's a stitch? 

It couldn't have been her. Could it? 

"I'll be back tomorrow, Princess. First thing in the morning. And we'll try this again." My heart pounds excitedly, I've dared myself to hope—if for no other reason than to punish myself when the pins and needles never come a second time. I need myself to suffer. Or do I want to be proven wrong? 

As for Princess, well, be it down here or in the skies above, I hope she's happy. Her happiness is my happiness, after all, because we're inextricably bound. 

My Princess is a seagull, and her happiness is a whale—

As wide as it is white.