There was something about spring that made Harry feel lonelier than any other time of year. He had his duties to do with the upkeep of his kingdom to distract him through the harshness of winter, his exhaustive reading list to distract him through autumn, and summer was a season for hosting balls and celebrating with his people. But spring...
Spring was a time for love. The lambs in his garden pushed themselves onto their feet for the first time, their mothers bleating encouragements. His people spent their days making music in the village—the same three songs, without fail—or harvesting the kingdom's fruit as they soaked in the sunshine.
Harry sighed as he leant back against his favourite tree, the bark digging into his back, familiar in its ridges and weight. He ran his hand over the piglet in his lap, smiling softly as it snorted and burrowed further into his stomach. Even though the Royal Tailor wouldn't care about the abuse of her painstaking creations, Harry felt a little bad about dirtying them. But this creature was only a week old and the weakest of it's litter; how could Harry resist? Harry had found the little sweetheart stuck in a pile of leaves as he left the castle to come outside and soak in the sunshine (something that did nothing towards lessening his brooding).
This piglet would have a short, happy life. It would eat and sleep and play and love and then, with any luck, die no sooner than when it's time came.
Harry had been ruling his kingdom for almost a thousand years, he had seen this cycle more times than he could count. He sat in his library, ruling and making decisions for his people, all the while he was frozen in time as the world passed him by.
He thunked his head back against the tree, closing his eyes and focusing on the sound of the fountain to his left. The water was green with algae, as rundown as most of his castle grounds had become, but Harry didn't have the heart to order his staff to clean it up. Who was he to interrupt the choices living things made of their own volition, when he wanted so desperately to be like them?
Harry heard footsteps approaching, but he kept his eyes closed.
"Sire?" a voice asked.
Harry sighed and opened his eyes. "Yes, dear?"
His page shuffled nervously, his hands ink-stained and wrinkled, smearing a small black stain over his waistcoat as he smoothed his hand over his stomach. It was the kind of small detail that used to trick Harry into forgetting how fake it all was. His subjects all had their little quirks, but after even a hundred years Harry had grown bored of the repetition in this elaborate illusion. "The Northern Duke would like to renegotiate our trade agreement to include persimmons, because his crops were damaged by a fungus—"
Harry waved his hand dismissively. He'd lost interest in the repetitive trading squabbles he was invited to partake in somewhere between winter and spring. The piglet blinked up at him, distracted from its nap by Harry's movement.
"Give him the persimmons, Jean, I'm sure you've already made arrangements for our compensation."
Jean still looked nervous. "Well, my liege, about that..."
Harry raised his eyebrows. "Yes?"
"What I requested in return was the loan of the Duke's World Glass, as you instructed when we negotiated last."
Harry stood at once, careful to move the piglet off his lap. He met Jean's nervous expression with a wide-eyed one of his own. "Did he say yes?"
Jean nodded with a tight smile.
Harry covered his mouth with his hands. "I've heard tale of his World Glass, they say it puts all the others to shame."
Harry himself was in possession of the remaining four, but in all his years of trying he'd never managed to complete his collection (even temporarily). He had presumed he wasn't meant to, that the fifth glass was intended to remain forever just out of reach.
