"Princess Tutu," says someone behind her, "isn't meant to have an ending. She's not a character at all. Princess Tutu is her ending."

"What does that mean?"

"Princess Tutu is a moment. A symbol. She can hardly even be called one-dimensional. Would you call Euryale a character, someone who needed a resolution?"

"Who's Euryale?"

"Exactly."

That... explains very little, honestly, but OK.

"So what's she a symbol for?"

"It's difficult to say," says the boy, thoughtfully. "The prince never acknowledges her affections, so it's questionable whether we're meant to apply her lesson to him, but given that he's the central character, most things in the novel do, of course, relate back to the prince's own psyche. The only thing she ever does is confess her love - unfounded love, we must assume, given that she's never mentioned before or after her lone appearance - and then immediately vanish as a result. It could be commentary on the destructive nature of the prince's own unfounded love - he intends to sacrifice himself for the sake of the world, which can't possibly be capable of uniformly loving him back. This is doomed to end in tragedy, particularly for him."

"How d'you know it's supposed to end in tragedy?"

"Because it's obvious," says the boy. "You should pick an easier book if you don't know anything about literary theory yet. Anyway. I have to work, try not to be so loud."

"Sorry."

She goes back to trying to make sense of the book for the next very long while.

At one point she looks Euryale up in the encyclopedia, but the encyclopedia doesn't have her. 

"You've been here all night, haven't you."

" - huh? Oh. Uh. Maybe."

He takes a seat next to her, sets the lamp on the table, and nods to the copy of The Prince and the Raven she still has out. "Is that the book?"

"Mhmm." She slides it over to him. "S'not a very happy story."

"I'm not great at books but it seems important to know this one."

"Mhmm. Princess Tutu's barely even in it, though. It's mostly about the prince."

"What's he even a prince of, or does that not come up?"

"He has a kingdom and stuff. It's all kind of vague. It's a fairy tale, so it's not really about the politics. But there must be other kingdoms around, too, since there are other princesses from other places."

"So what happens?" he asks, flipping open the book to look at the first page.

"In broad strokes? There's an evil raven who's threatening the kingdom, and the prince is the only one who can stop it. First he has to gather his allies, but most of them die in the process of getting him to the battle with the raven. And then there's a battle. But it doesn't say who wins, it just stops in the middle."

"Sounds like kind of a bad book."

"It's OK. I like parts of it. S'hard to write a good book if you only get half the book to do it in."

"Well, fair enough."

She pages through the book to the page with the illustration of Princess Tutu, drawn in the process of turning into a speck of light.

"Princess Tutu's only there for a few lines. The only thing she does in the story is confess her love for the prince, and then she turns into a speck of light and vanishes. And nobody really says anything or remembers her at all, after that."

"That's... uh..."

"...concerning???"