He sat there alone, in the back of my mind.

It wasn’t for long. Only four years. Four long…exacerbating years. He tried to think of the bright side of things, at least it wasn’t as long as the other characters in my head. Many sit and are never picked up again. Others sat for ten, fifteen years before my light shined on them again. That is the life of a character in one’s imagination.

For him, it was agonizing. He remembered her glance, my eyes, at first watch. The show was awful, but she saw him. And they couldn’t turn away. We sat in each other’s eye, then black.

The show, indeed, was awful. And so, he sat, like many other characters, waiting for her to come back, to unbox him, to play with him again. Like all other characters in other people’s minds, he sat patiently, waiting. If she would never come to unbox him, that would be okay too. At least he knew in his heart of hearts, he was loved. Even once.

The wait was even more agonizing as he saw from afar what I was going through all those years. Loneliness, the pandemic, the loss of friends and relationships, the loss of one’s hopes. He could not see clearly, but the pain and torture I felt, the others felt as well inside. All felt them. He didn’t know why, as he was so far away at the time. But felt all the same.

One by one, the days gone by, he felt the light deepening. I, the Mistress, was starting to see his show pop up on my Youtube feed. Clips here and there, but just as suddenly as I saw his reveal, I went “I knew it.” And more then suddenly, he was thrashed from his sealed darkness and into the full blast of cartoon light, where he placed the character in the show, and filled his shoes for as long as the clip played. And when the clip was done, most of the others stood still, and he saw my delight. And he was fulfilled.

More clips came, and more, and he was happy to play the puppet again. His purpose, like all copies of characters, was to make their One happy. He felt the love I had for the character, and that trickled down to him, the facsimile of the character.

Until one day, the episode came. A character, a show I once loved, returning! The one I waited for. I saw it and, it was awful. I came in expecting to love a crappy reboot of a duck, but instead I came out carrying a vulture in my arms. And oh, how he pleasured me.

A skip forward in time, as he looked over the kingdom of my mind. Many characters working together to make me happy, a barely functioning society. And there, in the center, was a blue beam. A blue beam, in the center a crystal, in the center, me floating. Comatose, fetal position, seen and felt, yet distant.

The ground shook as the echoes of weeping seeped throughout the mind. The copies all panicked, wondering what to do to calm me. Something was wrong, very wrong, he knew. He looked up at the ceiling to see the everlasting Star crumble. It is unprecedented. The Star has yet to be shook. Til now.

He had to do something, to calm the residents, to put matters into his own hands. Not even the #1 could calm her. A change in guard. A need for change. He knew he was coming up the ranks, but rapidly. He’s never seen it before, a copy make it so high so fast into the upper echelons of favs. But that is the position he was in.

He fled down the spiral staircase and marched with a straight face to my shaky presence.

“Hey, you can’t go down to her!” My #1 at the time shouted. “You don’t belong there!”

“Not yet, anyways.” He said in retort as he passed the shocked ghost man by. He was right, it was forbidden territory for him. Only the #1 can get this close to her, touch her, without melting, without breaking the presence, the jewel.

But he felt called. It was his job.

He stepped into the chambers, the rotunda, and did the forbidden.