For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

   Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

   In her sepulchre there by the sea—

   In her tomb by the sounding sea.

-Annabel Lee

Edgar Allan Poe

Stepping out of the rocket he practically fell over when he saw the small blue flower just below his boot and in danger of being smooshed.

 “Interesting,” he said sitting there on the ground beside it.

Leaning closer he took a whiff of the flower and was initially met with the scent of ten thousand lavender buds, eight hundred roses, and something else he couldn’t place, but as the scent matured in his nostrils it seemed to sour as fresh milk would in the sun. Puzzling at this strange flower he stood up and began to explore his new surroundings. Nothing looked as he had imagined it. The moon was covered with a thick layer of luscious green moss, small blue flowers, and far off in the distance there sat a small erect castle. Truly intrigued and excited by this strange discovery, he began to walk at a furious pace and was able to arrive at the castle in no time at all. 

“Hello!” he yelled, rapping at the door, “anyone home?”

“Who goes there?” a raspy voice replied.

“Me!”

“Oh, why didn’t you say so!”

And with that, the large doors creaked open, and in he went. 

“We’ve never had a me visit before. You must come right away or she will be cross.”

“Oh?” said Edgar half in reply to and half in surprise at what at first seemed like a small blue man, but upon further inspection looked more like a small blue goblin or something, “who?”

“The queen of course,” the goblin retorted as if this was quite obvious, “come, come.” 

With that, the goblin threw open another small door to reveal a large and heavily embellished room with a throne at the other end. Sitting on the throne was what the man concluded, the queen, and what a queen she was. She sat with a commanding, but also soft air, long thick auburn hair flowing down the sides of her face, and although she wasn’t large in size, she filled the room and looked as though she knew it. Her eyes were a beautiful hazel color, but they were filled with fear or sadness or something of the sort. 

“Why hello!” she projected across the room, “you must be the me. I’ve always wanted to meet a me. I am Queen Eugenie ruler of this planet. What brings you to my kingdom?” 

“Very nice to meet you,” he said bowing, “I am Edgar and I have come to soothe my curiosity and try to find something to love.”

“Very good!” and turning toward the blue goblin, “Roderick take him to see everything, absolutely everything!”

Off Roderick shot. Looking at him in surprise, Edgar quickly ran after him.

Despite the castle’s small look in size, it seemed to house numerous wonders and extravagant sights, anything from larger-than-life birds with their bright feathers to whole rooms dedicated simply to certain smells. The two passed through room after room, each with something more shocking than the last and leaving the man’s jaw to fall lower and lower, until finally, they reached the very last room at the back of the castle. 

“This is where we keep the princess.”

“The princess?”

“Yes, Annabel Lee, she can be quite a bother at times.”

“Really?”

“Oh you just need to meet her and you’ll understand promptly.”

Roderick slowly creaked the door open and peered within.

“Good! She’s behaving today, she’s quite alright when she’s good.”

Once inside, Edgar was struck by the greatest wonder of them all fast asleep on the floor.

“Why she’s beautiful,” he said in surprise.

She had short little ringlets of gold encircling her face, dark eyelashes that curved over her locked eyes, and soft round lips. Her slight button nose was scattered with small angel kisses from the sun and the soft pink glow brought by warm sleep. 

“Yes, such a pity she’s such a vile creature,” said Roderick, “let me wake her up and show you.”

“No, it’s really fi…”

“WAKE UP! IT’S TIME TO WAKE UP! GET UP YOU FOOL!” barked Roderick. 

Up she sat with a start and looked about her to see what all the noise was about when she saw them. She smiled the sweetest smile he had ever seen. She was even more beautiful awake as her long eyelashes framed her large light brown eyes, brown eyes which held a small little star with her pupil at its center. 

“Hello,” she whispered, “who are you?”

“It’s a me of course, can’t you see it’s a me? His name is Edgar and he has come to see how vile you really are.”

“Oh, I know I can be vile but I want to try and be as good as I can today.”

“Just wait and see she won’t be able to last long.” clucked Roderick 

And with those last few words, bells began to ring, and off Roderick went saying something about needing to trim the flowers before the Queen woke up.

“How do you do?” he said

“What do you mean? I do however it needs doing,” she replied.

“Oh, I just meant how do you feel, I guess.”

“I feel fine. What an interesting question. Why do you want to know?”

“I guess it’s just a nice thing we do where I come from. It’s to sort of show you are interested in the other person and care about them.”

“Interesting,” she puzzled, “you must come from a very strange place then. What is it like there? Iv alwlike there? I’ve always wanted to go somewhere else.” 

“It’s quite pleasant at times. I used to live by the sea which was lovely, but now I can get lonely at times shut up in bricks all the time.”

“Oh, I feel the same way sometimes. It’s so hard to be happy sometimes,” she replied as she stood up and stretched, “I need to go make sure Roderick gets all the flowers. come with?”

“Sure” he answered following her out of the castle

Roderick had evidently already begun “trimming” the flowers, which Edgar quickly realized meant chopping them up completely until nothing was left except the stem and some scattered petals. 

“Why are you tearing them up? They’re so pretty,” he gasped as soon as he saw the wreckage.

“Because if we don’t she’ll eat them,” Annabel responded

“Who?”

“The queen and she gets so very bad when she does.”

Practically talking over the princess, Roderick put in, “Yes, and we’ve told her so many times not to…”

“What are you doing?” said the queen, “I told you, you didn’t need to do that. I’m perfectly over the flowers and I don’t need them anymore to feel good. See,” she affirmed pointing towards her smiling mouth, “see, perfectly happy. I hate when you two don’t have faith in me. I mean why wouldn’t you? I’m perfectly trustworthy.”

“Yes of course,” both Roderick and Annabel apologized in unison, looking down in shame and trudging back into the castle.

“What are you all talking about?” questioned Edgar walking behind them.

“She eats the flowers when she doesn’t feel good,” began Roderick, “but they only help for a little bit, and then she always feels even worse after, which just makes her eat more and more until she practically falls apart.”

“She usually gets better for a little while after that and says she’ll never eat them again, it’s always nice then,” put in Annabel.

“But then she always ends up feeling bad again and eating them in the end.” 

“Why can’t you just get rid of all of them?”

“They always grow back no matter how many we kill or pull and she always finds them.”

“What else does she do?”

“Oh well she leaves sometimes and we never know when she’ll come back again. Sometimes it scares me so much because I’m always worried she won’t come back at all,” confided Annabel Lee.

She seemed to shrink away into a thought somewhere else with this. The princess was trying to make sense of her world at that moment as she had done many times in the past. Explain away what had and was happening, make everything constant when nothing ever stayed as it should. All the while the man watched this, watched the various grimaces that graced her face disappear only to be replaced by another, watched her star-filled eyes reflect the sea below and spill its contents down her cheeks. He didn’t know why, for he had seen many people cry, but this hurt him more than anything else had ever before. He was instantly drawn to help, but he didn’t know how until it occurred to him that he should talk with the queen herself and see what could be done to help their situation. 

Running back out to the queen, Edgar called out “Why do you eat the flowers when they make you and everyone else so sad?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. They must be filling your head with nonsense as they often do with people,” retorted Eugenie.

“You said it yourself when you said you wouldn’t do it anymore.”

“Of course and that’s why it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m not doing it anymore so who cares.”

“What? You say you won’t do it anymore? How do we know you won’t do it anymore? According to them, you do this all the time.”

“What is it to you? This is my kingdom, those are my subjects, and these are my flowers to do with as I see fit.”

“And hurt your daughter more?”

“Oh please, she’s so dramatic. She always finds a way to turn things against me, when it’s me who should be getting the sympathy for such as useless daughter.”

“So you don’t want her?” he asked with a raised voice.

“Of course, you think I want such a wretched daughter. I should have…”

And without even listening to the rest of her sentence he shot off towards the castle. Eugenie was quite offended by this behavior and was about to call him back for his abuses when her eyes grew wide with fear as she realized what he was doing. 

She quickly ran after him screaming and hollering, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING? STOP! STOP! STOP!” 

He was too quick for her though and before she was even in view of him again, he had already taken hold of the princess and was running towards his rocket in the distance. Calling Roderick, the Queen ran as fast as she could after them but was only met with a small cloud left behind as they shot out into the stars. The queen collapsed onto her knees and sobbed as she should have done all along for her sweet baby, her star.

Edgar had never taken care of another before, he had never even been closely acquainted with one, but the one thing he knew was that he had been soothed by the sea, so he assumed she might be as well. The two built a kingdom by the sea and lived there for the rest of their days. Although not everything wasn’t perfect and two would be visited again by grief, it was as close as one can get to perfection. He brought her with him whenever he left, and when he couldn’t, he made sure she knew exactly how long he would be gone. He asked her each and every morning “how do you do?” to show he cared for and loved her, and eventually she grew out of her fears, blossoming into the woman she should have been all along.