To Play With Dainty Toys
Each time he visited her dreams, he was filled with an ecstasy he'd never felt before. The look of adoration on her face as she gazed upon his beautiful, real face was something he would treasure always. That she did not shy away from him here, tenderly held his hands and allowed him to cup her face . . .
She was an exquisite sight in white, her golden hair cascading down in back in elegant braids. Her face had a glow about it that could only be happiness, only be love. Each time he saw her, he was struck by just how lovely, how perfect she was. Perfect to break the enchantment held so tightly over him, and love him for who he really was.
It was real here, among the imaginary-spun fog and the visions of forest and stream. Her affection, her sincerity; he wanted to stay with her always here. In her dreams. Here, her skin was cooled by the breeze and she found the companionship she had always desired. How he longed to be that companion for her. For her to love him outside this realm as well as in.
And yet there was something about her here that seemed wrong. She was timid and almost too eager to please. Claiming to love him and yet unable to name a reason why. Perhaps she was projecting an image she thought he desired of her, just as he was doing for her. Perhaps in this realm they were both dreams.
He basked in her love nonetheless.
~O~
Here, here she was brave, and defiant and compassionate and inquisitive, and not in love with him. He loved her from the first moment she removed her hood, father at her side. It wasn't her beauty – though she was easily the most glorious creature he'd ever seen – but there was something in her face. Her eyes, the belief that she was going to die and the courage to face it.
She only gasped once at his appearance, averting her eyes to hide her fear - that first night in what would become her private parlor. And she only ever cried once, the next morning after her father was gone and she thought she was alone. Wept on the steps to his palace and christened it with her anguish, as he watched. After that she always met his gaze and conversation. Always with the thinly strained Beast that suffocated and strangled them.
Then she would refuse him.
He wondered if she knew, knew that he would watch her in the library or the courtyard. To an extent she must have, the subject having come up once briefly. But it was quelled just as quickly, and had not been spoken of again. He would watch her dance with the statues and gaze longing at his portrait on the wall, and that gnawing feeling that had been plaguing him for days suddenly exploded with a name.
Jealousy.
Jealous of his handsome human half, that was free to soar in her love and affection, however fleeting. Jealous of her love for her family, which was so similar and yet different than the love for him.
That was the driving factor to allow her to visit them. The desire to see appreciation and gratitude directed at him for a change. But because he is a monster, the condition of returning at the month's end was weighed heavily with his life: he would die if she did not return. That she knew. But because of his jealousy he would no longer visit her dreams as her handsome Prince. That she did not.
They were warring factions within him. The Beast was bitterly disappointed that she did not love him. The Human tormented that she would not want to cause the monster pain and yet seemed flippant about causing it to himself. That they were two sides of the same coin did not seem relevant.
And so he allowed her to go, spirited her away in the middle of the night during one of her dream rendezvous. Yet he did ask for her hand in marriage that night at dinner. She refused as always.
Because he is a Beast.
~O~
The passage of time is a fickle thing.
While she had been with him, the year away from her family had only felt like a few days. Yet with her gone from his side a single month felt an eternity. Every day he felt himself grow weaker and weaker, both in mind and body. He would sit in her parlor for hours on end, holding a rose and staring at the empty chair across the table.
He would wander the courtyard, entreating the statues to dance for him as they did so long ago for her. However the movements seemed involuntary now, not natural. In a fit of depressed rage he forced the elegant white marble to a heartbroken grey and silenced their forms where they stood.
It was several days into the new month, while collecting a single red rose, that he finally collapsed.
As he lay there in the courtyard fountain, delusional and near death, he thought it only fitting. Only right. Of course she would forget him, hideous monster that he is. If she should love, it should be a man both handsome in her dreams and in her reality. Whose kindness and good deeds exemplify his temperament. He may have given her elegant clothes and a cool shelter from the sweltering desert outside the Castle; delicious foods and fine wines – even some of his magic to use as she pleased. But he still kept her prisoner to his will, against her own. Material things cannot excuse his ultimate failure of character.
He had made her just as cursed as he.
This death is most deserved. Letting her go in the end was the one decent thing he has done, the one redeeming act that might help him reincarnate as something more pleasant in the next life. Nevertheless, it does not change him. He is no man, perhaps he never truly was.
And the Handsome Prince he sent to her dreams was just that: his fantasy, and nothing more.
She could never love him, nor should she. She was a desert rose, a flower blooming in the harshest of climates. Something to be cherished above all else. For all his ugliness, he had no right to be loved, least of all by her.
For who could ever love a beast.
~O~
She could.
This piece was inspired by the 1987 Cannon Group movie Beauty and the Beast, directed by Eugene Marner, written by Carole Lucia Satrina and Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, and starring John Savage, Rebecca De Mornay and Yossi Graber.
Title is from a quote spoken by the Beast.
