mon ami

[beheld_beauty]

Not much happens at the castle. It's the two of them and the magic. She studies. He wanders around. He's not very careful about standing behind things - he does when he remembers and there is something nearby, but it's plain that nothing about being visible in the less-than-fluffy nude bothers Beast except on her behalf.

Finally she excises an hour of study time to spend on being able to look at him without intervening furniture or flinching. She finds it's possible to do this in her mindscape, without having to use a notebook. She can zoom in deep into a rose petal, find a level of detail beyond which there are no patterns, and write, directly there. This isn't an ideal memory aid - if she looks later the words aren't exactly the same - but it's much faster for sheer processing, and the chosen modifications morph into the structure of the rose without special effort as soon as she's sure she wants them.

She behaves with more equanimity about his nudity after that. "You can stop trying to remember to hide behind things," she tells him.

Comments

[beheld_beauty]

"So," she says, "at least not within the time limit, then."

[deslandes]

"Yes."

[beheld_beauty]

"All right." She sighs. "I really don't know how to fall in love with someone. There are not - instructions, anywhere."

[deslandes]

"What do you think of me?"

[beheld_beauty]

"You're my friend," she offers after a moment. "You - you've been treated with appalling unfairness, and there's a sort of openness to you that I half-admire, and you have quite a smile. If unbeknownst to me that added up to love on my part I believe the curse would have noticed, though."

[deslandes]

"Half-admire?" he asks, laughing. "What of the other half?"

[beheld_beauty]

"Well," Belle says. "When I fully admire something like that, I copy it for myself. I'm disinclined to do that. It wouldn't suit me. But it seems to work for you."

[deslandes]

"I admire lots of things I don't want to be," he shrugs.

[beheld_beauty]

"Like what?"

She really ought to be getting to know him more diligently than she has. She suspects that's a prerequisite for falling in love. For her, at least.

[deslandes]

"You?"

[beheld_beauty]

She laughs. "I meant more specifically. Qualities, not entire people."

[deslandes]

He shrugs again. "I don't know, then."

[beheld_beauty]

"So you just sort of admire me as a vague entire thing with no characteristics?" she inquires archly.

[deslandes]

"No," he says. "You have characteristics - I don't know which ones I like so much, that's the trouble."

[beheld_beauty]

"Ah," Belle laughs. "That sounds frustrating."

[deslandes]

"It would frustrate you."

[beheld_beauty]

"Yes. It would. It doesn't you?"

[deslandes]

"I don't frustrate easily," he says cheerfully.

[beheld_beauty]

"Are you even curious about it?"

[deslandes]

He shrugs. "A little."

[beheld_beauty]

"Well, I am," says Belle. "I've - a handful of people have claimed to be in love with me before. But these were always people who'd barely spoken to me. Who thought I was pretty and knew nothing more about me than than that. If that was any kind of love I don't think it was a worthwhile sort. But if my merely looking as I do sufficed for you - for the curse - then I'd have seen it the first time I looked at the fondement, I think."

[deslandes]

"I don't love you because you're pretty," he says. "You are, and I love it, but that's not what made the difference. I love you because you're—beautiful. Like thunderstorms."

[beheld_beauty]

"I'm like thunderstorms?" Belle asks. "I didn't understand this the first time you mentioned it, and still don't, I'm sorry."

[deslandes]

"I mean..."

He trails off, thinks, then starts again.

"What's most beautiful about you is your nature - what you are, what you do. How you think, how you speak, what you say. Thunderstorms are beautiful for the same reasons—not the same things, not the same qualities, but the same... parts of them. Their essence and how they express it in the world."

[beheld_beauty]

"Is there," Belle says, "anything much to anyone that is not their essence and how they express it in the world?"