Page 46 of The Hopeless Romantic’s Guide to Enchantment

I almost make an exception for Miss Penworthy and the Bear Princess. Because that shit got impressively carnal.

For as long as I had been observing her, Miss Penworthy had known herself to be an enthusiast of the less literary aspects of Sappho, but her means, social circle, and cultural context had made it difficult for her to actually practise any thing beyond decorous flirtation and the occasional fumble in an arbour.

So when she got the opportunity to fuck, she fucked.

When at last she and the Bear Princess fell apart, drenched in sweat, covered in the marks of each other’s teeth and fingers, on a bed that they’d quite comprehensively ruined, I actually applauded.

It’s fine, neither of them could hear me.

“I suppose,” she said with what little breath remained to her, “I should ask you what’s going on.”

“Curse,” said the Bear Princess.

“Oh.”

And then Miss Penworthy felt the mattress shift again as her wife-by-all-the-laws-that-mattered slipped out of bed and away from her.

“Where are you going?”

Miss Penworthy herself remained unable to see but I perceive with the light-beyond-light, so I watched as the Bear Princess stopped, and turned, and said in a voice that used regret in place of explanation, “Curse.”

And then she was gone.

* * *

They went on like that for about a week.

It was in many ways, a very, very good week from Miss Penworthy’s perspective.

The nights were good, at least. The days were… awkward.

It wasn’t the fact that her wife was a talking bear that bothered her. That much she had grown accustomed to rather quickly. If anything, the issue was that her wife was a bear who didn’t talk enough.

“Can you truly tell me nothing?” she asked. She had asked it every day for five days straight.

“Nothing,” said the Bear Princess, staring out over a sea that was just slightly too green to be real.

“Nothing nothing?”

“I live under certain rules, one of which is that I must be vague about the rules.”

If she hadn’t been so frustrated, Miss Penworthy would have found that rather funny. “But whose rules are they?”

“I can’t say.”

With a stifled shriek, Miss Penworthy kicked the wall, causing a somewhat less stifled shriek, and some unladylike cursing.

“Be careful.”

“I agreed to marry a bear. I think we can safely say caution isn’t one of my virtues.”

The Bear Princess carried on staring out to sea. “Are you not happy here?”

“No. I mean yes. I mean… well, I’m happy most of the time. Extremely happy some of the time and” – she spread her arms wide and rotated in a slow, horizon-encompassing circle – “all of this is beautiful. But… it’s empty.”

“You’re lonely then?”

“No!” protest-too-muched Miss Penworthy. “Well… a little.”