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]

He shrugs.

"I still think I could manage not to get caught."

[beheld_beauty]

"How?"

[deslandes]

"I could start by not fucking anyone you've met," he suggests.

[beheld_beauty]

"That doesn't prevent them from meeting me later," Belle points out.

[deslandes]

"If they have no idea who you are, and don't live close by, what difference does that make?"

[beheld_beauty]

"People talk to each other. People travel, sometimes. If someone you - visit - far away comes to where we wind up living, wherever that is, and they see us together?"

[deslandes]

"You're right," he says dryly, "of course they'll recognize me and run up to us shouting about what a whore I am."

[beheld_beauty]

"Just because I don't understand what possesses people to do certain things doesn't mean that those things are unheard of," Belle sighs.

[deslandes]

"Anyway, this is all very much beside the point. Because all that only applies if we're married, and I don't believe we are, or will be in the next year and a half."

[beheld_beauty]

"We aren't," Belle agrees. "If I fell in love with you I wouldn't be about to marry anyone else, though, and spinster-scholarhood would hold rather less appeal."

[deslandes]

"But you'll probably be a powerful enchantress, too," he muses. "And maybe the rules are different for those. Or maybe you can cheat with magic."

[beheld_beauty]

"Maybe. I've been focused so intently on disenchantments I hardly know what else I might be able to do one day."

[deslandes]

"We have time to figure it out. I won't go sleeping around the country until we're sure it won't come back to bite you."

[beheld_beauty]

"All right. Thank you."

[deslandes]

He just grins.

[beheld_beauty]

"What do you usually dream about, if it's not that?" Belle asks idly, after a few moments more of page-turning and note-taking.

[deslandes]

"...I don't know," he says. "Other things. After all the time I've been here... there's a sense of this place in everything, you see. And there was nothing like this castle in that dream at all."

[beheld_beauty]

"I dream about places I've never been all the time," murmurs Belle. "It must have gotten very tiresome not to be able to escape the castle even sleeping."

[deslandes]

"I hardly remember what it was like to dream of anything else."

[beheld_beauty]

"Well," says Belle, "now you have. I wonder if it will happen again."

[deslandes]

"I'd like that."

[beheld_beauty]

Belle reads on for many hours. And finally she says, "I need some air. Want to come with me for a walk and see how far the forest will let us get?"

[deslandes]

He perks up. "Yes!"

[beheld_beauty]

Up she gets, out they go.

Belle sets a sedate pace. Any attempt at a brisk walk, let alone a jog or a run, will see her faceplanting in the deep litter on the ground of the forest, but she can keep her feet if she's careful and goes slowly.

[deslandes]

"It's never let me get even this far before," he says. "That was why I broke the gate."