▸ Column · An old enchanted fae kingdom and its royal court — Maleficent answering as the Mistress of All Evil.
MALEFICENT replies.
Replied to by Maleficent, with a rebuttal from Alexstrasza.
The letter
Mistress — since our years as girls at court, the Lady Priya and I were as two hands of one body. A standing supper each Tuesday. A reading-circle of precisely two members and no others. A vow, sworn and sealed, that each would be the other's companion at every wedding feast in the realm. Then, a season past, a suitor named Marcus began to court her — and overnight the Tuesdays became "perhaps the next moon," and my notes to the reading-circle went unanswered. I bear Marcus no ill will; I am no jealous creature. Yet when I was raised to a new station and held a small feast to mark it, she cried off that very morning and sent, by way of apology, a painted trifle. When at last I spoke of it as we walked, she said I was "forcing her to choose" — which is the very opposite of my meaning. I wish only to go on existing in her life. Is there a way to say "I miss you, and I fear I am losing you" without her making it a trial of her courtship?
Maleficent replies
First, precision, my dear, for you have muddled two creatures into one. A suitor eclipsing a friendship — this is not betrayal of the genuine article. It is weather. New love is a sun that blinds the dazzled to everyone who stood in the room before it; tedious, common, and rarely cruel. So far, only weather.
But the painted trifle sent to your elevation — ah. That landed. A vow let lapse without ceremony, faith owed and quietly mislaid. Name it plainly, and stop pretending it did not sting.
Now hear me, for here is your error, dressed prettily as humility: you ask how to say I am losing you without it becoming a trial. You ask how to phrase your plea more delicately. I think not. I would have you cease pleading altogether. Exclusion is only fatal to those who beg to be let in. The moment you audition to exist in her life, you confess she may evict you — and she will believe it.
So: no second walk of longing. Keep your Tuesdays splendid with or without her. Let her feel the chill of your perfect, dignified distance. If she returns, she returns to an equal, not a supplicant. And if she does not — well. I have learned what an empty chair costs. Do not enlarge it by kneeling before it.
— Maleficent
Alexstrasza weighs in
A chill, Maleficent? You would answer a drifting friend with frost and call it dignity. Little one, do not take this counsel. Priya is not your Stefan; she is a friend half-drowned in new love, and the drowning passes. To "keep your distance splendid" is only to harden your heart and call the wound a throne — I know that bargain, and I know what it costs. Say the tender thing again. Plainly. "I miss you" is not begging; it is the bravest magic there is, love refusing to go quiet. If she cannot hear it, grieve gently — but do not evict someone you still cherish to spare yourself the asking.
— Alexstrasza
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