ma bête

[beheld_beauty]

Beast seems to be sleeping in a bit this morning. Perhaps he has had a good dream. Belle can study on her own, anyway.

Comments

[beheld_beauty]

Belle takes this all in, nonplussed.

"That's a very strange dream," she agrees.

[deslandes]

"I tried to ask her what it was like to be in love," he adds, "so I could tell you, but she kept saying you wouldn't have any trouble."

[beheld_beauty]

"There's no good reason to expect your dreams to produce useful advice anyway," Belle points out.

[deslandes]

"It wasn't a very dreamy dream."

[beheld_beauty]

"No? What do you mean?"

[deslandes]

"I just mean it wasn't like my dreams usually are."

[beheld_beauty]

"What are they usually like, then?" Pause. "And what do you mean, you borrowed her husband?"

[deslandes]

"I mean I borrowed him," says the Beast. "That's what she called it."

[beheld_beauty]

"Even if we rely on your dreams to produce an accurate-apart-from-the-marital-status-and-the-wings copy of me, I do not know what that means," says Belle.

[deslandes]

"What uses do you imagine a husband has?" he inquires.

[beheld_beauty]

Belle opens her mouth.

She closes it.

"I will be frightfully embarrassed if you have caused me to guess incorrectly," she says after a moment.

[deslandes]

"That's enough to tell me you didn't."

[beheld_beauty]

"All right then. So you dreamed up an angel-me who was married to a you and then you borrowed him. I can only imagine what the traveling phrenologists would say that means about your psyche."

[deslandes]

"Well, of course I did. He was very handsome. And I haven't done any of that in a hundred years. I wasn't going to waste the chance once I was out of my fur."

[beheld_beauty]

"And her husband was perfectly all right with being loaned out, I suppose?"

[deslandes]

"Of course he was. He was a lot like me."

[beheld_beauty]

"This is not something I knew about you," Belle points out mildly.

[deslandes]

"Yes," he recalls, "the other you said you should know. I don't see what difference it makes when we're the only two people we can reach, but I don't have a problem with telling you, either."

[beheld_beauty]

"If I learn enough magic or figure out how to fall in love with you, you'll be able to encounter more people," Belle points out.

[deslandes]

He shrugs. "Well, does it matter to you if I borrow dream-people's husbands?"

[beheld_beauty]

"In dreams? No, dream about whatever you like. In fact even awake I have no particular claim on you, now, have I?"

[deslandes]

"Well, if it made you stop wanting to fall in love with me, I'd want to know."

[beheld_beauty]

She peers at him.

"I'd need to think about it," she says after a silence.

[deslandes]

"Then do."

[beheld_beauty]

She nods.

She falls into her mindscape easily, and waits for a rose to offer itself up, and she thinks on it.

It is a few minutes later before she opens her eyes again.

"There could be social consequences, which I would not like, depending on how we wound up situated," she says. "Apart from that I imagine I would not mind."