H.R.H. JARETH, GOBLIN KING TO THE RT. HON. SARAH WILLIAMS
Dearest Sarah,
It would seem that you are in need of a bit of levity, so I will begin this letter by telling you that the goblins have invented carrot and pumpkin warfare.
I blame Hoghead, who has long insisted on growing both pumpkins and carrots in his surprisingly bountiful garden. Anyone living in close proximity to goblins should realize that anything that resembles either a sword or a shield will eventually be used as such, but no, your friend must have his vegetables for that soup that he apparently likes to share with the ogre and the bog-guardian.
What is carrot and pumpkin warfare, you ask? As with most things goblin, the rules depend heavily on the participant (and the weather, and the time of day, and whether one is facing east or south-east). As far as I can surmise it involves stabbing things (other goblins, walls, the very air) with the carrots and using the hollowed-out pumpkins as a kind of shield.
Which might explain the scene I describe to you now: namely, a throne room full of pumpkin detritus and carrots of various lengths sticking out of every crevice in the walls.
I hope this description of the utterly undignified state of my throne room, as well as the fact that I might—might—have bits of smashed pumpkin stuck to my otherwise immaculate boots will both offer amusement and give you a brief feeling of superiority.
How generous of me, to give you on a platter a reason to turn your nose up at me. (Not that you have ever needed a reason to do so before.)
Good-bye? Really? I see no reason for your earthly union to cause me to lose interest in our correspondence. Unless your letters suddenly grow full of descriptions of your household ledgers, servant gossip, and the day-to-day achievements of your children.
(It is a truth universally acknowledged that one's own children are an endless source of awe and wonder; others' children, utterly mother may have told you otherwise, but I assure you, she was lying.)
Devouring time, indeed. My kind do not experience time in the same manner that you do, so I am grateful for this insight, that mortals see time as a tooth-filled maw. Truly horrific. I suppose if a faerie wrote a poem about time they might compare it to an intermittent summer breeze, or an endlessly running river.
And yet I think mortal hearts in some ways burn brighter for their fleeting existence, create madder works of passion and genius in their desperate desire to outrun that gaping maw. Faeries do not seem to produce much poetry.
Turning to the primary source of your melancholy…so now you know your father's true nature, and it troubles you. It is strange to know that you are in pain, and that I have caused it (though really your father is the cause).
I find it even stranger to write the following words, but it seems they bear saying: you are not a monster, Sarah.
Oh, an impossible creature, to be sure. A casual destroyer of goblin cities, a breaker of well-made ballrooms, and a refuser of incredibly generous offers of dreams and servitude. But no, not a monster.
I am perhaps not the best example of how one may differ from one's father, since you seem to have classed me as deviant and low-born long ago. But I will tell you anyway that my own father was so fearful that I would usurp him before his death that he tried to murder me almost weekly from the time I was old enough to speak. Poison, casual walks near cliffs, well-paid assassins. I survived through a combination of sheer luck and spite.
In the end he was satisfied with exiling me to this ramshackle kingdom.
He took pleasure in others' pain, particularly mortal pain. I will not describe to you the things that he did to the unfortunate young men and women who happened to find themselves in his clutches via a wrong turn near a faerie tree.
All of this is to say that I (and I imagine many other offspring of monstrous parents) have also wondered if I was helpless to the blood that ran in my veins. In the end I may be, in your mind, of questionable moral rectitude, but I am not my father.
(I might take pleasure in the power that I occasionally wield over others, in playing with mortal hearts and minds. But I am not a sadist.)
If you look within yourself and also find that you are not driven by sadism, or could not bring yourself to cut down a faerie tree for any reason, then I think you truly are as distant from your father as the sun from the moon, and need not worry that a monster lurks within you.
Regarding your uncertainties as to what gives you pleasure…given that I am master of all that I survey in my humble kingdom, I must also confess that I am a bit baffled by the concept of trespassing on my own body, or of being denied the right to whatever physical pleasure I should choose to either wrest from myself or engage in with willing partners. But then, I am not a mortal woman who has never truly been granted ownership of anything, even my own flesh.
I can see how your own hands on your body might feel like thieves. Perhaps, as you seem to have realized yourself, it might be helpful to imagine that those hands belong to another?
It is a difficult thing, I realize (and perhaps more easily accomplished with a draught of spirits, if such things are available to you), but I recall that your powers of imagination are stronger than most. Your hands may be small, but you could imagine them larger, stronger. Move them over yourself, tracing curves and sharp angles, and perhaps even slip them beneath your nightdress to feel the warmth of your skin. Let them feel the beating of your own heart, the warmth of your own breath. I could tell you the places that you might like to linger over and touch again and again until your heart beats much faster, but I believe you know where those places are, and part of the joy in pleasure is the joy of discovery.
Whatever you do discover, I hope it is a step toward breaking you out of your melancholy, which I really cannot abide. I had so many colorful jibes to send in your direction, but there is no pleasure in writing them when I imagine you downcast enough to end a letter by thanking me.
A final note: to be certain, my kingdom is not awash in wandering brides. I send them back when I tire of them. Or, more accurately, when they are completely soft-limbed and spent.
Though I have little faith in this outcome, I do hope, for your sake, that your wedding night finds you similarly spent. And if not through the ministrations of your husband, perhaps through your own discoveries.
Yours eternal,
J.
Author's note: There will be smut, I promise! Probably in the next chapter. ^_^