mon père

[beheld_beauty]

Belle probably wouldn't have gone into the forest looking for her father if it weren't for the fact that, were he home, she'd never be allowed.

She understands his concerns. Really she does. If it weren't for the fact that he's the local lawman, she wouldn't even be allowed out into town on her own. She's beautiful (as no one can shut up about for thirty seconds at a stretch; is it any wonder she prefers books?) and while he can protect her in their tiny town, the Witchwood is another matter. People get lost there - sometimes the Wood spits out men and women and children from other villages entirely, near theirs instead, and they have to be given maps and sent the long way around to get home - and anything could happen and he has no jurisdiction over crimes committed there.

But the woods are beautiful, and she's going to bring a blank book to draw a map in, and her father has been missing for four days and even if Belle's only concern were her safety she'd need to find him. Because orphaned seventeen-year-old girls tend to find it in their own best interest to get married, and if she wanted to get married, it would not be to anyone in the village.

He chased in a highwayman (whose crime was not committed in the forest, so all is in its proper order).

The highwayman came out.

Charlie did not.

Charlie, apparently, has gotten lost.

And Belle is going to go in and get him.

---

Her map is wrong.

No - no, she was very careful. She knows people get lost here; she knows the woods are twisty, suspects the landmarks must include duplicates. She brought bits of ribbon to mark her way. She's been changing colors as she gets deeper into the forest, and she's been traveling for almost a day now, and that ribbon right there was tied in the first hour. She's not that turned around; it's broad daylight and she's been tracking the sun. Not even magic, if magic existed, would be able to move the sun.

That leaves her, and the tree. She has been picked up and put back where she started or she has been followed by this tree. Or the ribbon, perhaps, if it's magically untied itself and made exactly the same knot around a different branch. ...No, there is the bit of blood from where she tripped and scraped her hand against the bark of that tree, and blood and ribbon both following her is more of a stretch than her having been transported or the tree having walked on its very roots to heel like a dog.

Damnation.

Well. Most people who wander into the Witchwood are eventually heard from again. But it's getting dark, and she trips more than enough in daylight; she underestimated the treachery of the ground deep in among the trees.

She goes on. She keeps making her map - it's still possible it will be useful for something, and she has precious little else to do while she walks alone through the dimming woods - keeping an eye out for a place to sleep.

She finds one.

Comments

[beheld_beauty]

"...You mean to tell me that not only there are people in the world who can make magic, cooperative castles and entire forests' worth of responsive direction away or towards same, but there are people in the world who will do that over trivial things like that? If that's the case how did I get to be seventeen without knowing magic was real?"

[deslandes]

"She was the first witch I ever met," he says. "Also the last. And I don't think she told me the whole of the story."

He smiles slightly, revealing a glint of fang.

"I was seventeen, too, come to think."

[beheld_beauty]

Belle looks around at the library. "I was looking for my father, when I walked into the forest - he went missing - but if it weren't for that, I wouldn't mind being stuck here so much, especially now that I've seen this library... this is a nice castle. You say she was trying to punish you? With a nice cooperative magic castle and a prolonged lifespan and - well, I guess the entrapment and the cosmetic changes were probably unwelcome, but I dunno, I'd consider the tradeoff if I got to live to be a perfectly healthy hundred and seventeen." Pause. "The handwriting might be a problem if it was me. I write a lot."

[deslandes]

He looks away with a soft growl.

"I've been alone here for more than a century. I'd sooner be dead—I've tried to be dead. And the castle wasn't always so nice." He snorts. "I think I've charmed it, over the years."

[beheld_beauty]

"...Then... why didn't you come looking for me sooner, once I showed up? If you're lonely?"

Belle gets lonely, but it takes a long time. Introversion has its perks.

[deslandes]

He runs his fingers through his mane and shakes it out with a sigh.

"Because—I do know why the forest brought you here," he says. "Or I think I know. And I hate it."

[beheld_beauty]

"What is it?"

She wants to know. She always wants to know.

[deslandes]

"All this," he says, "this body, the forest, the castle - it's a curse. And the curse can be broken. She told me how."

He looks away, sighing again.

"True love. If I were to meet a person, and that person came to love me, and I to love them in return, the spell would be broken and I would be human again. And I could leave."

[beheld_beauty]

"...I can't leave either," says Belle. "How - how long will it keep me, if - Wait, people get lost in the woods all the time. You said you've been alone. Why wasn't it steering you any people before? Why me?"

[deslandes]

"It doesn't write me helpful little notes," he says. "I don't know. But I think the spell brought you here because you're the first person who's had a chance of breaking it."

[beheld_beauty]

"So -" Why not attempt levity, what harm can it do. "You're picky?"

[deslandes]

He throws his head back and laughs.

The sound is very human, even if the sight isn't.

[beheld_beauty]

"Well," says Belle, giggling a little along with him and looking at the bookshelves. "I don't suppose there's any books on magic in here? Because if I were you I'd have tried to learn it and just directly disenchant the place, with a century and then some to do it in."

[deslandes]

He spreads his hands. His enormous, clawed hands.

"Mostly, I try not to touch them. Never ends well for the book."

[beheld_beauty]

"Oh. Well. I'll just get started on that for you, then, maybe there's something."

[deslandes]

He grins.

[beheld_beauty]

Belle sets about taking each book one at a time off the shelf, inspecting its title, and putting it back if it is not about magic. (Not without regret, as there are many interesting-looking volumes that have nothing to do with the topic in question, but, priorities.)

"So," she says, as she's halfway through the first section of shelf, "if you can't even handle the books, what have you been doing, out here all alone?"

[deslandes]

"Eat. Sleep. Yell at the walls. Talk to the furniture. I like the smell of this room," he admits, with a gesture to the bookshelves, "that's why I hid in here when I heard you."

[beheld_beauty]

"Books smell lovely," agrees Belle. "Hmm, I think this section might all be fiction..." She abandons her book-by-book search for more of a random dip across the stacks, trying to triangulate the theorized magic section.

[deslandes]

Books about magic that aren't fiction take up the entire north wall; the ladder for the outermost shelves skates over on its rails to let her climb to the top, if she so chooses.

Many of these books are in archaic dialects, or other languages entirely.

[beheld_beauty]

Belle can make some progress on the archaic dialects. She is not, alas, a polyglot, but she notes insofar as she can what languages they are in and makes a note in her notebook to check for instructional texts on those languages. After all, if this doesn't pan out soon, she might be here a long time. "I don't suppose you know how to read -" She rattles off the languages she's found that aren't intelligible to her.

[deslandes]

"I could, once," he says. "These eyes are no help."

[beheld_beauty]

"Okay, if I'm desperate I can make hash of some pronunciations or copy everything into large print and we can decipher them, but I might be able to do with the material in the vernacular." She starts sorting through the books she's pulled, determining if they're introductory or advanced, theoretical or practical.

[deslandes]

Theoretical versus practical is about an even split, with a few that resist categorization, but almost no book on the shelves is identifiably introductory.

[beheld_beauty]

Almost...?