Hug. Very much. 

Possibly excessively clingy hug.

"Didn't mean to make you sad."

"I just - I really liked the way you trusted me. I know you thought you shouldn't but it felt like you did."

"I did," she says, quietly. "I - don't know whether that's a terrible idea or not, but - you're nice. And you haven't hurt us even though you could."

"I don't know if it's a terrible idea either but I don't want you to stop."

Cling.

"I don't want you to - be disappointed, and leave - "

"Well, yeah, because then you'd probably die. I - didn't give my word because that's a really stupid thing to do even when you have a pretty good reason but I'm not planning on leaving even if I get mad, or bored, or - anything."

Nodnod.

"Thank you."

"I think I wish you had not been stolen by someone terrible so you did not expect being stolen to be terrible but - I would've had to be a lot crueler, to steal you, if you hadn't wanted to come."

"I think it's usually terrible, when humans steal each other. Maybe not usually as terrible as it was for me. Or maybe it's usually worse, at least I had - good food, and fine clothes, and a palace to live in. Though I don't for a moment regret trading it for underripe blackberries."

"It sounds pretty bad."

"I thought so."

"Do you think it's because of that that you don't like kissing or wouldn't you anyway?"

"I don't know.

" - may I tell you a story?"

"Yes."

So she tells him her story again, but with different pieces focused on, pieces that hurt too much and which were therefore elided in the first telling.

She tells him how she was raised to be virtuous, and good, and chaste, and to not let anybody kiss her or do anything more than kiss her until she was safely married to whoever her parents chose for her. And she meant to, she did, she was never once tempted to break this rule. But then she was captured. She told herself that if they'd marry her to someone then she would be able to stand it, she could live, bear her cross and submit to her husband and win him to goodness by her own good example. But they didn't marry her to anyone. She was given to the Emperor the spring she turned sixteen.

She'd been told that sex would hurt. She hadn't been told how much. She begged the Emperor to stop, the first few times, before collapsing into incoherent sobs. Never mattered, of course. Eventually she stopped screaming and learned to lie still. It still hurt, but it was over faster. 

She learned poetry. Epics, histories, Greek and Norse and Christian stories, collecting dozens of stories of heroes who were probably terrible, but might be less terrible than the monsters they saved their lovers from. She used to wish that someone would come and rescue her, and maybe they wouldn't be good, but maybe they would be better. 

And no one came, and no one came, and no one came, and she thought that no one would ever come.

And then she found a fairy ring. And there was a fairy in it, and he was kind to her, if maybe a little concerning and confused on some of the finer points of being human. And she wasn't very sure what she was supposed to do, really, but she had this hope, however ill-founded, that he might be less terrible than everything behind her. She knew, of course, the way girls pay for things in stories, but it would be better for her children, and she hadn't very much virtue left to lose, and it was so hard to care about being hurt when the hurt always came no matter what she did. So she decided she would go, even given the likely cost. And he was a much better person to belong to than the last one, or at least seemed to be, and for a while everything was good. 

And then one day he kissed her, and all she could think of was every time she'd been touched before, and everything that had come with it, and she panicked, and this upset him, and then she spent the better part of a day worrying that he wouldn't like her or help her or be kind to her ever again. And she doesn't really know what to do about any part of this situation, but she would like not that, please.

"Oh. 

Sex is not supposed to hurt.  I didn't think I was asking to hurt you. 's supposed to be nice and maybe a little bit frightening, like jumping off a treetop together. And you're not supposed to lie still. 

I guess I don't know anything about humans but that seems like a very terrible thing about humans, if that's how it is for them."

"I don't think for everyone. Or maybe usually only a little, after the first time. Think I'm just very unlucky."

Nod. 

"Well. If we stop getting along some sunsets from now or something and you still need a minder I can introduce you to someone who doesn't like sex with girls. Seems like it'd be less complicated than - trying to ask people how that story makes them feel. I think."

Nodnod.

"But I'm not - I liked you before, right? I still like you. I don't know if I'll like you in several sunsets because that's a long time not because it's - hard to like someone if you're not having sex with them. Or something."

"Okay.

" - do you still wanna hold me, it turns out being held is nice. When it's not mostly something else."

"Yeah." He would like to lie down on this moss pressed against her, warm and slightly less confused and sad.

That sounds really really good. She'll just keep clinging for a while, then. At least until she remembers that her children are probably awake now and she has parental responsibilities of some kind.

He bounds off to explore in a much better mood.