The next morning, Henry woke up to ruby eyes staring into his own. At the sight of the Princeling looming over him, hands against the bed to each of his sides, nails cutting through the top sheet, he couldn’t help but scream. Almost as quickly as he started, though, he brought his hands up to cover his mouth, hoping to whatever gods might exist that no one had heard.
“Shit,” he managed once he calmed down a bit. “You scared the hell out of me!”
“Sunlight,” the Princeling answered, not yet moving from the bed. “Motivation.”
“Motivation, huh? It sounds like you’re pretty motivated. Enough that now you’re motivating me to get out of bed and get started too, huh? I can’t do it with you in the way. You’re gonna have to get down.”
In one smooth motion and without changing his expression at all, the Princeling removed himself from the bed, letting Henry get up and start his usual morning routine. As he got dressed, Henry turned his attention back to the creature now standing in the corner of his bedroom.
“You’re pretty lucky the others agreed to pitch in,” he said. “I ought to be working today instead of helping you with this. Not all of us can eat for a week on a single bargain bin flashlight. I, for one, have got to eat real food, and it gets expensive.”
Tilting his head, the Princeling brought a finger up to its chin. “Real food?”
Despite his usual patience for the thing, Henry rolled his eyes. “Fifteen years and you don’t know what I mean? Well, come to the kitchen and pay attention this time instead of sticking your head in the fridge. I’m tired of replacing the bulb.”
Obediently, the monster followed Henry as the man grabbed some eggs and a few pre-packaged cheese slices. He began scrambling them in a pan, adding a bit of hot sauce when he felt the urge. Admittedly, he may have added just a bit extra in some poorly thought-out attempt to make it at least a little interesting for his one-monster audience. Throughout the process, Henry could tell that the Princeling’s attention kept being drawn away by every little source of light. To the creature’s credit, though, it only ever lasted a moment. It may only have been because of excitement about the excursion, but it seemed he was paying attention.
“These are eggs,” Henry explained. “Real food for people like me. Humans and animals eat this kind of stuff.” After a brief, he followed up by asking, “You’re not some sort of weird plant are you? I never really thought about that.”
“Eggs,” the Princeling repeated. “Real food for people like me.”
Henry laughed and shook his head. “Almost. I’m me and you’re you, but the opposite’s true too, right? To you, you’re me, and I’m you. Uh… that probably didn’t make much sense. What I mean is…”
“I’m me and you’re you,” the Princeling interrupted. “Real food for people like you.”
After staring in surprise for a moment, Henry nodded. “Exactly! You’re you and I’m me! Real food’s for people like me, but you eat light.”
“I eat light,” the Princeling agreed. “Sunlight. I eat sunlight.”
“You will, at least. For now, we’re still stuck on your old diet.”
It seemed the answer didn’t satisfy the Princeling this time. One inhuman finger pointed at the kitchen window. It was a tiny opening just over the sink, and Henry always kept it half-shaded so some light would still get it. It looked out on the backyard. There was little chance anyone would see, yet he had only risked it a few times when he feared that the Princeling was ill. Not that he ever actually figured out if he was right or not.
Pausing in his meal, Henry thought. The Princeling pointing meant he understood the conversation they were having. It was tempting to reward him. Maybe it would calm Owen’s nerves to know that sunlight wouldn’t have any negative effect even after a long exposure. With that thought in mind, he stood up and went over to the window, opening up the blinds.
Immediately, the Princeling moved towards the beam that came in through the window and began gathering up the light. Eager as he was, his slender fingers had a certain grace to them as they pulled glimmering gold and silver strands of the stuff from the air, forming it into a ball and darkening the room. “Sunlight,” he said quietly to himself.
“Yeah, sunlight. I get it. Just hope you like the stuff.”
The Princeling turned to stare at Henry, though his hands kept working on gathering the light into a sphere. The look lasted far too long, and Henry began to regret allowing his charge this small pleasure. His own food was just about ready, so he moved to grab a plate. He stopped, however, when the Princeling raised up one finger. Bringing his hand to the ball, the monster pinched off a tiny glob of light, which he held between his thumb and forefinger. He then swallowed down the larger ball, the light creating a rainbow of colors on his teeth as it disappeared down his throat. Once it was gone, he moved towards Henry slowly and silently holding the remaining glob.
“Uh… everything okay? Not much I can do if you don’t like it…” Henry began, taking a step back.
Seizing Henry by the chin with one hand, the Princeling brought up that little remnant of the light, pushing it towards Henry’s mouth. “I eat sunlight. You eat sunlight.”
“Hold on, buddy, I don’t thi—”
It was too late. Opening his mouth to speak gave the Princeling the opportunity to push the glob past Henry’s lips. At first, he expected that it would be like nothing he had ever felt but, to his surprise, it was incredibly familiar. It was watching the sunrise with his first real sweetheart, when he was still learning what it even meant to feel love towards another human being. It was his first time playing outside with other children by the banks of the gulf on a bright and sunny day. It was sitting on his own roof at sunset and sobbing after hearing the news from Owen that his father had passed away. It was the soft glow that reflected off of the moon and the twinkle in every star the first night he actually grew comfortable enough to have a restful sleep after taking in the Princeling.
It had always been there. The sun he knew was simply an expression of its boundless glory. He and everyone he had ever or would ever know simply lived on a tiny speck orbiting one of a countless number of stars. Yet they were not insignificant. As children clung to the legs of their parents—depended so entirely on those who gave them life—so too did humans cling to and depend upon the light of their own life-giving sun.
And Henry had just tasted that very same light for the very first time in the nearly four decades of his life.
The smell of burning eggs brought his attention back to the room. There was little he could do about it at the moment, since the Princeling was still holding him by the chin. As Henry learned a very long time ago, the monster was far stronger than he appeared. Besides, there were more important matters on his mind than a couple wasted eggs.
“What the fuck was that?” he asked.
“Sunlight,” the Princeling answered simply.
“Yeah, I got that. That’s how you feel all the time eating this stuff? Why even share it with me? Not like it filled me up! What’s it even gonna do to me? And what the fuck were you thinking putting it in my mouth like that?”
Here, the Princeling let out something almost like a cat’s purr, underscored by a faint clicking sound coming from somewhere deep inside his throat. Allowing his expression to relax a tiny bit, the creature then pressed his forehead against Henry’s own, simply resting like that.
“Sunlight,” the creature eventually said. “How I feel all the time. Buddy. Pal. Henry.”
Immediately, Henry began to feel uncomfortable. His face was flushed. He could feel his legs tremble just a bit. After all, he had never stopped to truly consider how the Princeling viewed him. At first, he saw the little spider-moth-doll-thing as a particularly dangerous pet that he just fed and kept out of sight. Later, Henry instead saw him as a ward that needed a little bit of care and attention. Yes, he worried quite a lot, particularly in the earliest years, that the Princeling only saw him as prey, but he eventually came to doubt that something with a diet of the glow from lighters and the beams from flashlights would ever be able to process the flesh and blood and bone that made up a human being.
Of course, such a creature was also unlikely to have the right equipment to seek out mates among humans either, crude jokes aside. That thought gave him just a bit of relief as he brought up a hand, placing it on the Princeling’s chest and pressing on it slightly.
“It’s a nice thought, pal. Really. But I’ve got to get some real food in my belly, and I’d like to do it before those blackened eggs burn down the house. Think you can let me go?”
All he got in return was another purr and more of that quiet clicking. It seemed he wasn’t going anywhere just yet.