To say that she was difficult to get close to was… an understatement, to say the least. He honestly wasn’t sure what he had been expecting. She was the Moon, after all. What could possibly be more cold and distant?
She was pleasant enough, sure. She smiled at almost everything that he said, but she hardly ever said anything herself without some kind of direct address. She just… sat there, silent and shining, her legs dangling into the pool as she looked over the souls swirling within. At first, her strange, pale beauty had stunned him, but soon it just emphasized the fact that she was… Other. Something else. Something empty.
He had hoped that they could form some kind of relationship. A friendship would be great, but even an acquaintanceship would have been nice. But how did you become friends with a doll? With an empty vessel, who existed only to serve a purpose, and without any real thoughts of her own…?
Yet as the days passed, he began to see glimmers of it. When you spent all of your waking hours with someone, it was hard not to notice the inconsistencies. There was the way that she ate her meals, for example. While she always cleaned the entirety of her plate, he noticed that she ate the berries first and saved one singular one for the last bite at the end. When he asked her if she liked the berries best, she simply smiled and said that all the food she was served was delicious but… he made sure her plate was filled with more berries than greens the next meal and he was certain that he saw the smallest hint of a smile when he set it before her. A real smile. The kind that reached her eyes…
And so he drew it out of her, bit by bit. It became a kind of puzzle for him, trying to deduce what it was that she actually enjoyed, whether or not she seemed to be aware of it herself. She liked her water a little warm, for example. She touched her clothing less often when they were made of a certain material. And she twitched her tail ever so slightly when she heard flute music drifting over the Crystal Palace.
He liked to offer her his own opinion, when she failed to offer one of her own. Hoping, maybe, to encourage her a little bit… but mostly trying to keep himself sane. He told her about bickering with his brothers at home and how he enjoyed having his own room to himself… but how he sometimes missed the sound of their breathing. And he told her about how his sister, Zilla, had always insisted on the porridge being served hot and so in a huff he had demanded it cold and found that he had liked it that way– And the next morning, his breakfast had been delivered to him cold.
And he smiled to himself as he scooped up a spoonful.
Perhaps they could become friends after all.