Beauty

The problem with me, is that everything is directed at you, and also not at you.


We'd first heard of him over a year back.

Wolf was a terrible creature.

Mad, crazed with fear and hunger, he preyed on anything he found. The remains he left were not pretty. The villagers were terrified...and in awe of him. He scared their children and he inspired them.

K brought him in. I have no idea how she managed it, it cost her dearly, but she still did. Many stronger men than her had tried and failed. Foolishly, we put him in a cage meant for the other animals.

He broke the bars and then, almost casually, picked the lock.

We put him in a stronger cage after that, and we studied him.

He seemed to need no food. that's what we realized first. He ate little, if at all. and yet the stories of his carcasses he'd left in the jungle still haunted the villagers.

There also seemed to be no reasonable limit we could put on his strength.

A foolish shrink from the south had the brilliant idea of sending in some deer to "see him in action".
we're still trying to get the blood off the bars.

....

And so time passed. We could neither understand Wolf nor get him to understand us.
Music seemed to help him. Play Bach and he would sit and listen to it like he was dying. Nothing else helped, nothing.


....

I gave up on Wolf after a while. We all did. All my theses about him had come to nought.

Which is why we could scarce believe our eyes when it happened.

He'd managed to pick the lock again. And someone had walked right in. How she'd got here, I don't know. But there she knelt right beside him. The room seemed to glow.

Beauty.

Beauty.

She was watching him. And he was watching her. His eyes were guarded, and his hands clenched.

Nothing moved.

Why didn't I shoot then? I'll never know.

After what seemed like forever, he broke her gaze and turned away. She still stood there, watching him.

There was an eternity of silence.

Suddenly, he turned back around and howled. He bared his teeth and raised his hands to strike.

The dart whose path I'd diverted stood lodged in the wall behind him; quivering.

There was silence.

God help me. I closed the door and walked away.

They would speak; sometimes they would talk not at all, and sometimes, they would talk for hours on end. Sometimes, they would just sit and stare at each other.

Polite, soft spoken , courteous. Everyone thought well of him. A real charmer.


I was uneasy.

....

When he killed the deer it nearly broke Beauty. I have never seen a woman so desperate to....want to believe.There was lot of shattered innocence, and a lot of spattered blood.

And yet, she stayed.

Why? She would not say.

.....

Beauty was perfection. In every breath she took she echoed the perfection of her Creator. The world waited on her. And when she walked, the world closed its eyes, for to look on her, as she was, was impossible.

And so there was shadow. And in there shadow was Beast.

Beauty found beast. The part of her that cared for the world could sense him.

She doesn't see me the as I am- a hideous relic of a horrendous accident. She looks at me, and there is such a sense uf... pride. Rhere is no other word for it. she's proud of me; despite it all, despite all I've done.

And every day, i breathe that image into my head, of Beauty smiling at me, and pray for the strength to stand.

Maybe, I helped her as well.

.....


K was in front of me. Crouched against the sun, she drew a line on the ground.

I want you to vouch for yourself. I don't care who you are, Wolf. I don't care what people say about you.
I want you, to promise me.

YOU WILL NOT HURT HER.

And i placed my hand.
And left my mark.

.....