He was nine years old.

He had read all their books twice, and then begged them to get more for him. They held out for a time. But they could not ignore his quiet, polite requests. Truss brought him fiction, Liddy brought him poetry, and Loch brought him history.

Hycinthe read everything, without discrimination. He devoured as if he were starving and pushed on for more and more material to read. He requested it as often as he thought he could, without becoming an annoyance to his beloved caretakers.

He read. He yearned. He hungered.

It took him awhile to realize that his hunger was not so much for the written word, as much as he loved the written word, but for the content. For what the words conveyed, what they were about.

People, places, things, ideas. Distant places, strange things, interesting people.

Hyacinthe hated to think that he found the faeries "not enough." But it seemed as though he wanted to meet new people, make new friend, hear new voices. Human ones, perhaps. What were humans, after all? Were they all like Pip? Or the literary figures portrayed in fictional or historical texts? Would he like humans? Hate them?

He had so many questions, and it seemed that they were the kind of questions that he did not want to ask his caretakers. He didn't want to tell them about Pip, especially. To talk of these new desires was to admit meeting a human. And to admit meeting a human was to admit that he had kept that meeting a secret. He wanted to keep that initial secret. A private memory of an interesting human.

It was a difficult desire.

It was difficult to accept that, for once in his life, his caretakers were not quite enough for him.

--

The King was not getting any better or less sour. He grew only more gray with the passing time. Gray with fret and malcontent. Gray with disharmonious thought. Gray with stress and lack of confidants. Gray in hair, eyes, pallor, and countenance. Gray in both body and spirit.

It was disheartening to see a good King brought low like that, and the Regent did all he could to help the King -- his older brother -- to gain back some of his lost colour.

Parties were planned, not too big nor too small.

Women were introduced, not too many nor too few.

Extravagant dinners were held, not too often nor too infrequently.

Life and colour were shown to and given to the King. But the Regent found, more and more, that the presence of colour only seemed to drive away what little colour the King had left. He looked all the grayer when it was in comparison to a person with colour, life, and vibrancy.

That is, until Emilienne.

She was perhaps the thousandth women to be introduced to the King, during the hundredth party. Or perhaps she was the twelfth woman at the fourth party. Whichever it was, she smiled demurely, curtsied politely, and then proceeded to criticize anything and everything about the party and its decadence.

Not a wonderful first impression, one might think.

But it was... another way to impress oneself onto the King. And she did it with so little tact that the king was in a small fit of laughter.

The Regent had managed to strike gold, just as he had been about to give up to the idea that the King was unhelpable. That the King would be gray and grayer, never again the self he was before Mirielle died, or -- much closer to the current day -- before the Usurper cursed his only son.

Perhaps he would never be his old self again.

But Emilienne became a fixture in the palace. Every party, every dinner, and for several walks in the garden between those. She spoke to the king, criticized something or someone, and made him laugh. She seemed very proud of herself for it, too.

The Regent did not, perhaps, trust her as far as she could be thrown. But the King was so fond of her that the Regent could think of no reason to voice his misgivings. Emilienne was one in a million, one of a kind, irreplaceable. Mirielle had been the same way, but in different facets of her personality and self.

A wedding followed, perhaps a bit more quickly than the Regent would have liked to see.

It was an affair equal parts white, gray, and blooming garden. It was smaller than the parties, but larger than the dinners.

The People did not immediately welcome their new Queen the way they had welcomed Mirielle. But the King was in love when he had thought Love had left him forever. The naysayers were advised to be silent, lest the King take out his frustrations on them, or imprison them on the grounds of disloyalty to the Queen of their country.

The Regent sent out the advice, himself.

--

Truss was the first one to notice that Hyacinthe's gnawing hunger was not for words, themselves, but for the people and places they described. His response to the knowledge, to Hyacinthe's everlasting wonder, was to take Hyacinthe to the edge of the forest, where the two of them walked for a time, peering at the farmers who lived closer to the Wood, and the herdsmen who grazed their beasts nearby.

Hyacinthe was overjoyed to witness humans.

Too overjoyed, in Truss's opinion. "They're just like monkeys," Truss insisted.

"Then so are you, I, Loch, Liddy, and any faeries, fey, and elves," Hyacinthe retorted. "I think it's rude to both sides to compare one to the other, though. It's... unfair. They're different."

"But primal as anything," Truss pointed to a small stream with a small and almost unnecessary bridge. On the bridge was a girl in long skirts. Beside the bridge, on the stream's bank, was a boy wearing a tunic and short pants. Perhaps it was chilly enough that Hyacinthe should have been wearing pants, too, but he disliked them, rather. "See those two?" Truss asked.

"I do. What about them?" Hyacinthe asked.

"Creatures of habit and cliché. Watch them a moment," Truss picked up Hyacinthe and placed him on his shoulders. Hyacinthe would be too big for that, soon. Somehow, that made Truss a bit sad. Which was odd and laughable. Truss hadn't wanted to be a caretaker for the infant, in the beginning. Why should he miss lifting the boy's weight onto his own shoulders like that? "A mating ritual of the human monkeys."

"A mating ritual?" Hyacinthe wrinkled his nose a little. He'd read about those. He wasn't sure he liked them. "You mean like..."

"No," Truss shook his head when Hyacinthe fell to embarrassed silence. Perhaps the boy read too many science materials. And far too soon. "No, this is... courtship. It is different, albeit also the same, or leading to much the same." He pointed his chin at the boy, who was fidgeting with colourful flowers behind his back. "Those are for her."

"Why doesn't he just give them, then," Hyacinthe shaded his eyes unnecessarily. They stood in the shade. "Why is he shaking like a leaf?"

"He's afraid."

"Of her?" Hyacinthe looked down at Truss, eyes wide. "But why? She's not clawed, is she?"

It took Truss a moment too long to realize that the boy on his shoulder had never met a female of any of the sentient races within the span of his living memory. He rolled his eyes, anyway. "No, she doesn't have claws," he said. "The stupid boy is afraid of rejection. Not that stalling makes him look better, or would better his chances."

The boy suddenly thrust the flowers into the girl's hands, but then made a misstep that landed him in the stream.

"What a joke," Truss sneered.

Hyacinthe just laughed.

Truss carried him back to the cottage, satisfied that the boy's melancholy would be briefly chased away, with the excursion and people watching. But still it worried Truss that the faeries' charge had grown so easily malcontent. He wished that he knew what had caused it. Solving the byproducts of a problem was doing little more than glossing over the surface, it was the root that needed taking care of.

--

Prince Achille was born too quickly after the marriage of King Anthelm to Queen Emilienne. But not early.

The infant had not been an early baby, but it was not to be told to the people.

The Regent publicly announced that the babe was born early, once he had survived long enough to have his existence announced to the people, but he privately found himself in some distaste that the infant had been late, if anything, and that the marriage of his brother to Emilienne had only proceeded seven months prior.

A King should know better.

The Regent used the Prince Achille's birth as an excuse to release positive propaganda, in spite of his misgivings about the circumstances of the Prince's birth. But the misgivings remained ever present.