Chance and Gamble
In the evening dark, the Fool wanders corridors for which she needs no light, only memory, and is surprised for the first time in countless years. The princess sits reading within a library-chamber, as she had not for ages hence, sharp attention on the pages.
The Fool pauses in the doorway.
The princess does not look up. "Speak, Fool," she says, nonetheless.
"What wouldst have me say?"
"The Fool speaks as she would," the princess says, turning a page, and the Fool narrows her eyes.
"Marry, naunt, the Fool would not," she says, but does not move, awaiting counter-challenge, which takes measured seconds to come.
"On the subject of the knight," the princess says.
"Restless is the pointless knight," the Fool says, tone making it clear she's boredly quipping by rote.
The princess closes her book. "And is it also," she says, finally raking eyes over the Fool, "that pointless is the restless knight?"
The Fool leans on the doorframe. "The knight would rest forever, wherever your Highness points," she says. "What wouldst have me say?"
"Nothing," the princess says.
"I say nothing excellently," the Fool lies, making to straighten, but not half as swiftly as the princess rises; the jester stills as the princess crosses the room with quick strides, allows her head to loll back into the hand that grips around her nape, almost firm enough to threaten.
"Ser knight is a sensitive subject," the princess warns softly.
"Are not all your subjects sensitive? Even a Fool feels."
"Prithee, does a Fool?"
The jester huffs a small sigh. "Highness," she says, "consider my wits so matched that my head is wooden and burned out. Speak your piece plain, or let me be."
"Perhaps," the princess murmurs, "it is only that we have none of us changed in any particular in so long. I am disquiet at the prospect of chancing hurt to my faithful—"
The Fool wheezes something bitter and only somewhat like a laugh. "Marry," she says, wrenching herself from her princess's grip, "a humble Fool ventures it ought be the Ser knight, then, to whom you speak?" and pads away into the dark.