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

[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."

[deslandes]

He shrugs.

"That's fine, then."

[beheld_beauty]

"Your clever notions for avoiding the social consequences being...?"

[deslandes]

"Don't get caught. Or don't stay somewhere long enough for anyone to care."

[beheld_beauty]

"I am not sure I share your confidence in the reliability of those methods."

[deslandes]

"Well, what consequences are you afraid of?"

[beheld_beauty]

She closes her eyes again. "I don't like how this works, but it's been made clear to me that pretty girls are supposed to 'buy' themselves security and faithfulness and matrimony with the purchase price of their beauty and constancy and initial virginity. If I 'buy' less than that or 'spend' more than that - if I deviate from this pattern in any way other than perhaps growing into a lone spinster-scholar - then I stand a reasonable chance of being treated like a pariah. Certainly this could be alleviated with frequent travel, if I liked the idea of frequent travel. Certainly I could simply say that most of the people who'd treat me that way don't matter to me - but I've never had cause to test the borders of my father's affection, now, have I? And he matters. Certainly if you were not caught, no one could laugh at me - except anyone party to the borrowing arrangement, who'd have their reasons for silence likewise. If you could be sure you would not be caught. But I cannot imagine that things have gotten worse in this dimension in the past century. Perhaps you've only forgotten; perhaps the rules are simply different for men by enough that you never learned the counterpart framework."

[deslandes]

"It is different for men, but no one much likes a poor boy-whore with no home and no money, either."