Her Thief is sad.

Her Thief makes his sad face when he thinks no one sees but she sees, she always sees. She sees his sad face at the same time as his happy face at the same time as all of his other faces but even though all of his faces happen at once, his sad face is the most prominent of all his faces.

Her Thief is sad when no one is looking.

His head is full of Norwegian bays and unsaid words and glowing hands and metacrises and "We had the best of times" and Libraries and The River and so many boxes of light, boxes and boxes of light that make such horrible sounds and they fill his head with sadness and something too human for her to understand. His head is black and heavy and he makes his face when no one is looking and so she takes him to Space Florida.

Space Florida makes everything better.

But it doesn't because even when he gets back from Space Florida, shuffling in without even wiping the green sand off of his feet first, the boxes of light are still there and so is the Library and The River and The Flower and all of the others.

Sometimes she is sorry that she stole him. He is her Thief, but she is his thief, too, and maybe if she hadn't stolen him, his head wouldn't be full of human things and he wouldn't make his sad face. But he is only sad when no one is looking. No one besides her because she is always looking.

Girl Pond and Boy Pond make him smile and she sees his head fill with yellower things like weddings and fish fingers and custard and sunflowers and the boxes of light inside his head get quieter. She likes Girl Pond and Boy Pond.

She likes Girl Pond and Boy Pond so much that she gives them a present and she hopes that it rewards them for making her Thief smile.

And she loves The River and Girl Pond and Boy Pond love The River and her Thief loves The River, too, but she makes him sad because whenever The River is around he is full of libraries and promises and forests and spoilers, shhhhh, spoilers.

The River makes his face happy and his mind happy and his cleverness happy and she knew that kissing was good and that biting was better but she didn't know that you could do that and why does she have to store a pair of handcuffs near the control panel now? She should make them an extra room for that. The River makes him happy but she makes him sad too, and sometimes he makes the sad face even when people are looking.

She should not have stolen him.

He keeps on, trying to fill his head with other things, but the boxes of light still scream.

She will make it up to him. She will.