The Cursed Kingdom

FORTY-ONE

~ HER MONSTER ~

With ceiling-tall bookshelves that lined the navy blue walls and tall stacks of novels placed beside and on his desk, Henrik's office always reminded me of a miniature library. Although I typically preferred things to be extremely tidy, that room was the only exception, its unkempt structure giving it a sort of homeliness and overall feeling of safety—the epitome of how Henrik delivered himself as a person, frustratingly disorganized but still radiating a grounded warmth that promised content.

Our love of literature and hunger for knowledge were a few of our shared attributes that had originally bonded us together, although Henrik preferred books on economics and history while I liked ones on newfound discoveries, especially ones in the field of medicine. Very rarely we would have days, which would be the results of either Henrik finishing all the paperwork he needed to early or Evander generously offering to take his place, where we read next to each other on the sofa in his sitting area from breakfast until dinner.

There was once a time where we both deliberately chose books of the same page-length and font so that we could race each other and see who the fastest reader was, a pathetic attempt to settle a petty and quite lighthearted debate we'd had the day before. With me only having about fifty pages left, Henrik had ended up winning but I teased him afterwards that he'd only won since I found out later that his had graphs. He teasingly denied it and we ended up laughing it off, vowing to never compete against each other again, and concluded our night tangled in the bed sheets, smiles of content on both our faces until we eventually dozed off.

The memory felt like such a long time ago as I idly walked around Henrik's desk to slide out a thick book from one of the many shelves, the red-stained leather instantly drawing my attention the moment I walked through the door. But what had me ultimately deciding to pick it up after I had approached it was the swirling title pressed into its spine that was about the same width as my palm, The World of Humans.

It felt weird to hold it in my hands, especially since it was so thick and both the front and back covers had lateral creases near the spine as if it'd been opened an endless amount of times. Although I had read at least a hundred different books on other species, even a brief section on Dragons who used to live in Trellomar before migrating to a secluded island called Draterra, I'd never come across any on Humans and had settled on the assumption that they were simply very rare because of immortals' disinterests in learning about them.

My eyebrows furrowed after I turned it over and stared at the strange illustration on its front that depicted a naked man and woman with quite ugly features holding hands, their body hair overdrawn and bodies so distorted they resembled liquor bottles more than living people. It was disturbing to see and my stomach churned, already disliking the book without needing to read a single word.

Finally, after a silent argument with myself on whether or not I should or shouldn't look inside, I pride it open and stared blankly at the pages as I flipped through them randomly, seeing that they were full of facts and history about my species that ranged from our diets to which sounds we liked and disliked. It was all strange and some of it not entirely true, such as the chapter on Human stamina that claimed we don't need lots of space (only around five hundred square feet) because of our low energy levels and slow metabolisms.

Some of the pages' corners were bent, the sight of Henrik's terrible habit making my jaw clench more than usual, and his beautiful penmanship smothering the slight yellowed paper wherever there was empty space.

Growl less, was written in a corner with a few other notes Henrik had left for himself in the chapter about Human courtship, all short and never exceeding two words. Hold hands. Gifts. Dinner. Questions. Flowers. Apologize. They were such simple things that I thought it was odd that he felt it necessary to write them down at all, especially since I considered things such as holding hands to be a universal sign of affection equivalent to kissing.