Jania needed him to want her like she had never needed anything in her long, long life.
How unexpected, how sweet, like lifting an old stone and finding a colony of diamond-seed flowers blooming in the dark. Just like diamond flowers, she knew this love, this man, would only last the equivalent of a day to her, a single season; by the time she made her next shed, he would be gone, his lifespan spent in one of her breaths.
It was a waste of her time. He was the state scientist and he had one role: to build an incubation chamber for her soon-to-be-born offspring. And if he couldn’t do it in time, he would become that chamber.
There wasn’t a happy end to their story; the best possible outcome was her death and his heartbreak.
And yet she loved him. She needed him to love her back, to look at her the way he must have looked at females of his own species, but he didn’t. He was too polite, too kind, to put her into that sort of situation. And yet, she wanted him to, more than anything.
She wanted him to slip up and call her “Jania” instead of “Your Majesty,” just so she could know she was on a first-name basis in his mind. He would be so embarrassed if he did that, but that would be all right. He looked softer when he was embarrassed and even though she didn’t like to see him uncomfortable, she liked seeing him exposed.
But maybe that was a cruel way to think.
A/N: This is a little drabble written in the world of my larger science fiction/fantasy story “Eternal Her.”
I wrote this as an exercise in writing from a female perspective. I used to be more comfortable writing from a female point of view than a male point of view, but somewhere along the line, they switched. I’m working on evening them out again.
Protagonized. 
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