mes études

[beheld_beauty]

Belle studies magic.

It's tricky. Getting into and out of her rose-sphere is routine after a few days, but she still hasn't uncovered an explanation of how channeling works, though she's been informed that there are three options for how to do it (by herself, through a willing helper, or through an unwilling helper). Unlike the fourfold options for reaching the Dreamworld, this does not tell her how to begin fumbling towards a practical understanding, even though she can rule out the last one just on the basis of its description.

Beast can only do so a tiny bit of reading per day, and her pile of books that she can read shrinks much faster than his. She combs the library for multilingual dictionaries, so she can pick her way through the titles of the foreign-language books and at least prioritize them before handing them over.

Finally something in an obscure language that even Beast can barely read - Belle has to look up a lot of words - explains the channeling in a way she can understand.

Comments

[beheld_beauty]

She goes right on doing it. She only needs one hand to turn pages.

[deslandes]

And the Beast goes right on purring, curling up closer until his head rests in her lap.

[beheld_beauty]

She makes no objection.

She reads. She takes notes.

And she gets to a paragraph that makes her idly scritching hand stop where it is.

"...Er," she says. "How bad was that time limit again?"

[deslandes]

"...I don't know exactly," he says. "A few years. Probably more. Maybe less."

[beheld_beauty]

"How do you know?" she asks. "...Disenchantments are difficult. And dangerous. More so the more complicated the spell you're countering is. It could take a few years, maybe more, before I can try it on something like your curse and be reasonably sure I'm not going to kill myself trying."

[deslandes]

"There's a rose under glass at the top of the tower in this wing," he says. "It loses petals slowly - the floor is covered in them. When the last petal falls..." He shrugs.

[beheld_beauty]

"Can I see it?" she asks.

[deslandes]

"Of course. Now?"

[beheld_beauty]

"No. Lemme look up a spell to see if I can get a more precise time limit. The rose is probably the spell's fondement and I should be able to learn a lot about the whole curse if I look at it the right way."

Flip flip flip.

It takes her about fifteen minutes to find a spell that suits her; she's getting pretty familiar with the magic books she can read. She memorizes it, and copies down the key points into her notebook, which she picks up to bring along. "Okay, now's good."

[deslandes]

The Beast leads her up to the top of the tower, to a small round room whose floor is covered in dried and scattered rose petals. In the very center of the room, a round table seems to have a sprawling rosebush growing straight out of the middle, under an arched glass dome that attaches to the rim of the table by many slender legs.

There is only one flower on the bush still standing tall and hanging onto a full crown of petals. A few of the rest, drooping off in all directions, still claim a petal or two.

[beheld_beauty]

Belle casts. She works through herself; it's a light sting, and she can tolerate it without losing hold of the spell. And with enchanter's sight on her, she looks at the rosebush that she believes to be the curse fondement.

[deslandes]

Good guess.

The spell is very elegantly designed; the parameters for ending the curse are clear, and the open pathway for completing it is still in good order after all this time. A strong, focused emotional connection of romantic love between the Beast and anyone else will fill up the waiting power well and transform the spell, leaving the Beast in his human form again, the castle back at the edge of the forest, and both castle and forest completely unmagical.

If, on the other hand, he doesn't manage to fulfill the parameters... the pathway will close. The goal of forest and castle will turn from the complicated sorting it currently does, turning away only those people who are probably incompatible, to a simple and easy equal rejection of everyone. If there is anyone else present, it will pick them up and dump them out. The Beast will live forever in his lovely, lonely castle.

And he was wrong about how much time they have left. The ultimate deadline is in a little less than a year and a half.

[beheld_beauty]

"Year and a half," murmurs Belle. "And if it's not broken by then, I'm sent away, and no one ever finds this place again, and you're still immortal."

[deslandes]

The Beast growls.

[beheld_beauty]

"I - I think I'm progressing in the enchanting books at a decent clip," she says, still staring at the rosebush even after her enchanter's sight fades out. "But this is a huge, complicated spell - and disenchanting it will be hard - and it's very specific about the kind of love, too -"

[deslandes]

He sits down on the floor amid drifts of dessicated petals and buries his hands despairingly in his mane.

[beheld_beauty]

"I'm sorry," she says. "I'm only reading what it says - I can read very quickly - if you help me with the books in the other languages maybe I can do it, a year and a half isn't that short a time -"

[deslandes]

"Well, we don't have much choice, do we? Except you could give up and wait it out."

[beheld_beauty]

"I'm going to keep working on it," says Belle.

[deslandes]

"Thank you," he sighs.

[beheld_beauty]

"Sadistic overreactive psychopathic witch," mutters Belle to herself, turning to return to the library.

[deslandes]

The Beast snorts agreement and follows.

[beheld_beauty]

"I can't even figure out if she wanted you to break the curse or not. Some of the parts seemed helpful - sorting people by their likelihood of being a suitable other party, the long time limit from the beginning of the curse - but - some of the parts do not, like turning you into a - whatever you are. Cat-creature. Putting the entire castle in the middle of the woods so in all these years only one person has passed the minimum threshold of likelihood."

[deslandes]

"Maybe she couldn't decide either," he suggests.

[beheld_beauty]

"How come you're that picky, anyway? People get lost in these woods all the time. Even just in my lifetime and just in my village I've seen several girls about my age stumble out of the Witchwood having been lost for more than long enough for the castle to draw them in." She starts sketching a curriculum for herself that bypasses every skill not necessary for learning disenchantment. She does not need to become intimately familiar with all four power sources; she does not need to learn to channel through an unwilling subject (she wouldn't have needed that anyway), she does not have to learn a repertoire of even the most appealing spells for their own sake but only to build her own skills.