Disclaimer: Ownership. What does it mean? Is it of ultimate importance? Do I have it with regard to Animorphs? Well, I don't know about the first two, but the answer to the last question is no.
Sometimes, late at night, I come to her window and watch her while she sleeps.
It is not hard. I can assume any form, see with any pair of eyes (or larger grouping) that I desire. The larger question might be why I should desire such a thing.
I cannot give myself a satisfactory answer to that question. It is not because of her physical beauty; that may be present, but it is scarcely sufficient to allure me. Nor is it because of her particular temperament; I have met thousands of sentient beings with such a temperament, and have felt for them only pity. And it is not because of her position in space-time, although that position does make her distinctive; there are many who are more unique than she (including her own best friend), yet none of them have ever drawn me as she does.
For make no mistake, she does draw me. I do not make myself into an owl and gaze into her bedroom till daybreak because I enjoy the sport of it. There is something about her that compels me, that fascinates me, that forces me to feel that the universe will be incomplete when it no longer contains her.
No, that is wrong. There is not something about her that has this effect on me; it is her totality, her entire being, herself that does it. Questions of beauty, spatio-temporal significance, and so forth are based on a wrong understanding: such details are not, and can never be, central. They are merely the incidental, secondary things one uses to make one's devotion comprehensible to another who does not share it; the devotion itself is as unjustifiable, as apparently random, as the plintconarhythmic modulus that lies at the heart of reality.
It is also, of course, as cruel. Just as the Ultimate Coefficient necessitates that all matter must be forever tending toward dissolution and decay, so my feeling for her does not prevent me from seeing that we can never be true companions, that she has another for whom she cares, and, indeed, that one day I shall stand beside her as her consciousness fades into nothingness, she shall ask me what I am, and I shall create a story for her, just as I have created countless stories for countless tetra-dimensionals, rather than reveal that terrible truth of which my race has sworn never to speak. I know this now, and I have known it since before she was born, but that does not prevent me from harboring this irrational tenderness toward a creature whose race had not even evolved when I passed the age of courtship.
I wonder if my enemy knows. Surely he must. His servant has already realized that I personally selected four of the six of them; it must have crossed his mind to wonder whether I selected the other two, and if so, why. Indeed, now that I think of it, he has for some time seemed unusually eager to secure her as an ally; I wonder whether it is simply because he believes her the easiest target.
Is that why she draws me, I wonder? Because she is so precariously balanced between my enemy's allegiance and mine, and therefore calls to my racial drive to protect the weak and embattled? No; surely it is not so simple as that. But it is, perhaps, a factor.
But enough of this. The sun is beginning to rise; the limits that I have set myself are almost reached. Soon it will be time for me to discorporate this material form and return to the eternal conflict that makes up my life.
But before I do, I turn my head one more time and let my animal eyes dwell upon her, as she lies unconscious in her bed. So young, so small, so helpless despite her great power. So beautiful.
Sleep well, Rachel, and know yourself honored.
Few mortals have ever won the love of an Ellimist.