mon mari

[beheld_beauty]

Belle settles very happily into her married life. There is no clear way for Beast to prove himself the missing marquis, so he doesn't bother; instead she studies and he translates foreign texts on magic for her and as the years go by she teaches herself enough Caelish and Suomish to read some of the non-Callian books without help and they eventually work through the entire library section on enchanting. By the time Belle is twenty-two she can invent spells on the fly, and can use mindreading to channel relatively simple spells through Beast while maintaining awareness of her own senses at the same time instead of dropping fully into meditation whenever she casts, and also to communicate subtly and nonverbally and silently in both directions with gentle tweaks to the castle that is her husband's mind. She has learned to read the writing on her rosepetals so all of her memories are forever preserved in their original clarity for her inspection, if she cares to look at them.

Using enough enchantment has wound up giving Belle a persistent aura. People stand aside for her if she walks down the street without deliberately suppressing it, sensing power without understanding it. She doesn't trip anymore; she's honestly not sure if she's incidentally cured her clumsiness or if the ground just adjusts to meet her steps and then ripples back into place after she's steady. Her hair and her skirts are continually stirred in a beautifully eerie way by a breeze that isn't there. Her voice carries as far as she likes, or as little as she prefers; she can whisper to one person across an oblivious crowded room. Sometimes she appears to be lit by an interior glow, when she's casting or using inlaid enchantments or just strongly emotional about something. Small injuries - she has tested no large ones - seal themselves with a faint hissing noise and a shine of sky-blue light, and she doesn't get ill anymore. Objects she reaches for move to meet her; plants bend to get out of her way if she strides through the forest, and some of them spontaneously bloom.

She is less likely to stride than to fly, though.

The books mention enchanter's auras, but not to quite the extent she's developed. It does, however, say that the aura is helped most by casting large spells through a willing vessel. Perhaps hers is just - more, because of her beloved Beast, because if she comes up with a way to fly or to cease to need sleep he's so eager to help.

She is just coming to the end of her last unread book on magic, wondering what is next, when there is a knock at the castle door.

Comments

[deslandes]

"Who the hell is that, I wonder," says the Beast.

[beheld_beauty]

"I'm not sure. Usually when people want things they just leave messages with Charlie; the castle spooks them."

(She's been unofficially serving as the public enchantress for the general region around Les Fourches, and breaks up the sameyness of studying by flying here and there and curing sickness, repairing buildings, and the like.)

She gets up and heads for the door.

It's a young man, maybe sixteen years old, and he takes a step back when the door swings open (of its own accord) to reveal the enchantress.

"H-hello," he stammers. "Are you the - of course you are."

"I'm the enchantress," says Belle. "Do you need something?"

"I - not exactly."

[deslandes]

Beast observes this interaction.

[beheld_beauty]

"Then what brings you here?" Belle inquires patiently.

"I want to learn magic," blurts the boy.

[deslandes]

"Awww," says the Beast.

[beheld_beauty]

"What do you want to do with it?" Belle asks.

The boy does not look like he has considered this question before.

[deslandes]

The Beast laughs.

[beheld_beauty]

"Help people, like you," the boy decides, finally. "I want to be your apprentice and learn to do what you do."

"I'm not sure just anyone can learn to do quite what I do," says Belle, with a surreptitious glance at the Beast.

[deslandes]

He snorts.

"No harm in trying, is there?"

[beheld_beauty]

I mean, Belle quietly writes on the walls of his mind, that he probably does not have a convenient channel like you ready to hand.

"What's your name?" she asks the boy.

"Luc."

[deslandes]

True. But there's still the little things, are there not?

[beheld_beauty]

That there are.

"Well, Luc, what do you know about how enchanting works?" Belle asks.

"A-almost nothing, madame l'enchanteresse."

"You may call me Belle." She pauses at the look on his face. "Or not, if that's too informal. Why don't you come in? Perhaps I will decide to take a student."

Luc steps beyond the threshold tentatively.

[deslandes]

Beast laughs again.

[beheld_beauty]

"Luc, this is my husband, whom you may call Jean," Belle says, "or M. Cygne, if that's too informal. Here, come into the parlor and let's see if you can find your dreamworld."

"My dreamworld, Mme. L'Enchanteresse?" Luc asks, sitting where she indicates.

"The first step to casting," says Belle, "is to find your own mind, to look at it from the inside; if you can't do that then I can teach you nothing."

Luc nods, and Belle walks him through the steps that first led her into her sphere of rosevines.

[deslandes]

Beast decides that the lesson will probably not be improved by him putting his head in his wife's lap. He gives her a kiss and then wanders away.

[beheld_beauty]

Belle comes and finds Beast some hours later. "I've put Luc in a room in the north wing," she says. "He's managed to find his dreamworld - it looks like a network of caves, he says - and to cast a simple spell, and he says that he can take the pain if he can use it to relieve more, which I think is a fine sentiment."

[deslandes]

"That is sweet," he declares, and hugs her. "I love you." With a giggle, "Madame l'enchanteresse."

[beheld_beauty]

She giggles and kisses him. "It does have a certain ring to it, even if it's terribly long."

[deslandes]

"Dear Belle, darling Belle," he says, between kisses. "I love you. I love you. I love you."

[beheld_beauty]

"I love you. And now I have something to do even though I've been through every last one of those books."

[deslandes]

"Good," says the Beast, and he wraps her up in a hug.

[beheld_beauty]

Belle's days begin to be occupied more with teaching Luc, an eager pupil, and she even begins idly talking of assembling more students - with enough of them she could distribute magical services over a much wider area, even if another channel as suitable as Beast were never to be found. Even small spells, used cleverly, can accomplish a great deal.

Beast himself is out of books to translate for her. He may be a little bored.

[deslandes]

He is rather bored, yes. But that's just fine. The crucial difference between their castle and the one he lived in for so many years is that he can leave this one.

So he does, and goes off wandering, with no particular destination in mind.

[beheld_beauty]

Belle checks in with him by mindreading once every morning and evening, and otherwise leaves him to wander as he likes. She knows he'll come back.

[deslandes]

He loves her. He loves her, he loves her, he loves her.



And then one evening, his mindscape is... wrong. The castle (which has begun looking more and more like the one they live in, gradually, piece by piece) has cracks in the walls and scorch marks around the edges of the windows.