Lips Like Ice

VI

The Prince returns on what she thinks is the fourth day since they shared a bath together with a small pile of dresses, and some soft knitted socks that have a leather bottom like a boot. The socks go all the way up to her knees, and the dresses have straight collars that cut from shoulder to shoulder, and long sleeves that bell out modestly just above her wrists. There is no underwear. She wonders if these were children's clothing once. They do not seem to be cut to accommodate her curves, and they are all indecently tight across her chest and hips, which means they were probably made for someone... genderless.

A child who is not one or the other. Or anything in between, as she knows some species on Earth can be, including humans.

She does not find the Choosing monstrous, and that is perhaps what surprises her the most. Lydia knows that there are humans who are both, or neither genders, who switch and choose, who shift fluidly depending on the day and how they feel, or who feel their minds do not match their bodies and so change their bodies to accommodate. Lydia has never felt disgust for those who needed to transition in order to feel at home in their own flesh. It's no different than knocking out a wall or adding a window in a house—your body is your home and people have every right to renovate until they feel comfortable in it.

For all that the Prince is a creature, it is not his gender or lack thereof that makes him, or indeed his entire race, monstrous. It is his lack of humanity.

It is also around this time, once he's discharged his promise to provide her with suitable clothing, that he begins to neglect her. At first it is thoughtless, small things like forgetting to leave the door to the bathroom open so she can get at the faucets for a drink of water. The doorknobs are too unwieldy for Lydia to manage, some sort of combination of an analogue rotary phone interface and a tumble lock that requires a user to put their fingers in and twist. She has neither the height nor the leverage, nor the finger span and strength to operate them, so if he leaves her in a room with the doors shut, that's where she's stuck.

But when he returns from wherever it is he goes, doing whatever it is that alien elf princes do, he finds her towering anger amusing. He pokes and prods, pulls her hair until Lydia is spitting like a cat and swiping at him with hooked fingers because her only weapons are teeth and pitifully weak nails, and her own terror.

On the seventh day, she scores a scratch along his cheek. There is no blood, but there is a deep purple mark and the Prince startles back and yowls. Well, if you kick a dog often enough, it will bite back. Even Lydia knows that.

The Prince claps his palm against his face. His eyes and mouth drop into wide circles of offended dignity. He actually stumbles backward, away from Lydia, as if he's afraid she'll... she'll what? Jump on his leg and bite his ankle? Ha!

The Prince shuffles out of the room, never taking his eyes off her, and locks himself in the bathroom. Lydia stays in the parlor, ears strained for any sounds of infuriated shouting or breaking jars, but the distance is too great and the walls too well made. All she can hear is the crackle of the fire and the rush of blood and white noise in her ears.

I hurt him, she thinks. I hurt him, oh god. That's it. I'm dead. It is a mantra, a certainty that pounds with every beat of her heart. Adrenaline surges, makes her temples throb, her feet itch, her lungs burn. She holds still, so still, but the Prince doesn't come back. Doesn't hit. Doesn't hurt. He just... leaves her.

Sitting there. Alone.

Eventually the adrenaline is used up, and Lydia collapses on one of the cushions by the parlor fire and swallows, over and over again. Nausea surges in her guts, and she is shivering and can't seem to get warm enough to make it stop.

Shock? Yes, shock.

She pulls another pillow over herself for a makeshift blanket and closes her eyes and breathes in through her nose, out through her mouth, slowly, slowly, trying to come down from it all. She sleeps, somehow. The crash is bad, and in the morning she just lays there in the parlor, too drained to want to move. To be able to more.