winnie and faust are in a (boredpursuit) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-12-18 22:18:00 |
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Entry tags: | beast, faust |
Who: Faust and Beast
Where: Beast's castle
When: Recently
What: Faust and Beast meet
Warnings: None!
Faust had taken it upon himself to explore the castle, spending only a few hours every other day there to climb the towers, chat with the uncommunicative invisible servants and find spare lumber for carving a fiddle. It was all enough to keep him busy in the darkness he was dropped into, but what other choice did he have? Braving the barren forest outside would be foolish and lonely, even without the curse breathing death and necromancy around him. And, he enjoyed the game he and Rose thought up. Having a friend and a confidant so quickly after being dropped here was good for a lost soul like Faust. Kept him from doing terrible things with magic.
In fact, staying at the castle kept him from doing magic at all. Normally, he’d light candles with a flick of his wrist or conjure himself up a fiddle instead of build one with his own hands. But he had no desire to anger the Beast or call it out of its reclusive chambers. A cursed creature understood another, after all, and he knew better than to prove he had the power to take away this castle or Rose. There was no gain in acting like some kind of greedy lord for the sake of pride. So, he lounged in the sitting room with the invisible servants, flipping through the journal for information about strange lands and unseen threats.
The Beast had been sulking. When massive Beasts the size of polar bears sulk, they pick a spot and stick to it except in the dead of night, when they feel like slipping out into the winter and killing something for the larder--or just to appease their tempers. After the fiasco with the bit of scrap with writing he’d given Rose in the hope she’d enjoy it (the scrap that turned into a feast with several invited guests), the Beast had not attempted to find the lost library again. He knew it was somewhere in all these winding chambers, but several of the passages had collapsed, and he didn’t want to make a further mistake. He might end up gifting Rose with some horrid book on spellcasting or architecture. She’d taken it into her head to plant the second-best ballroom with roses. One would be better treating her like a kettle about to boil over. If only she didn’t keep doing things that made him rage!
The Beast refused to understand why the stupid girl insisted on bringing people, especially men, onto his territory. It made him quite mad, and he was starting to realize that it didn’t always have anything to do with the men themselves. The fact that they were there in his space made the animal in him go crazy with an anger that consumed his intellect almost entirely, and there was very little he could do about it. He had decided, however, to attempt.
The first sign of the Beast’s approach was that the servants tended to vacate the area. Any candles that were floating for light, or pokers that were tending the fire, these all were dropped immediately as anything that knew the Beast’s temper scarpered. He prowled down the hall a moment later, sniffing at the scent of the fireplace, the tips of his wings dragging hissing sounds down the stone corridor. He passed, gave a wet sniff as he obviously scented this “brother,” and then backtracked on soft paws and heavy hoof-like feet. He was not wearing a cloak, and his mane gave the wolfish snout hints of the mad monster within. His eyes glowed in the firelight as his bulk took up the doorway and he stalked quietly inside. He watched the man without saying a word, and it couldn’t be more obvious that he was considering crunching his skull in his jaws and eating his head the way ladies ate cream puffs.
The candle next to Faust flickered suddenly as the sound of shuffling up and around the room raised his attention from the journals. The Beast, as he imagined, had the smell of dust and old fur like a dog who had been caught running around the attic. Nothing quite like the brimstone and rotting flesh of Mephistopheles, but still decidedly not human. And, when the monster swept into the room without a dramatic howl or even a growling demand, Faust wondered what was holding him back. Did the Beast love this Rose girl? Of course he did. She’d be thrown out, locked underground or eaten if the animal wasn’t in love with her. This made his role as older brother easier, if he could convince the Beast of it.
“I’ve been meaning to introduce myself.” Faust said calmly like a man who had seen much worse than a simple furry brute. And, he had. He smiled at the fiery gaze, trying to drum up any kind of true terror in his bones but failing quite miserably. “I’m certain my sister has told you, but my name is Faust. And, I greatly appreciate your hospitality.” Words spoken like some kind of diplomat. A princely politician who spoke so often that he never had to rehearse his words or work in inflection. His voice was delicate, charming and formal without having authority. And, while charm wasn’t going to win over an animal, allowing it to have dominance would.
The Beast had excellent senses, some of them inherited from the menagerie of beasts that took part in his haphazard construction, some of them accidental additions thanks to his magical nature. There were also some few things that the Beast had even as a man, but those things were buried very deep. Now, with a sniff, he examined the man in his sitting room. He was not afraid, which was a solid surprise. Everyone and everything in twenty leagues’ radius feared the Beast. He was also quite mortal, and, to the Beast’s senses, seemed not to have any magical inclination to speak of. Even Rose sometimes had a funny prickle to her that reminded the Beast of witches, usually when she was afraid or angry--or, more recently, mucking about in that garden of hers.
“Do not assume you are welcome,” the Beast growled. He had a great deep voice, as if speaking from the bottom of a pit of lions, and he prowled around the edge of the room, staying mostly in shadow, allowing the firelight to take up varied stripes, feathers, and rough fur in turns. His head was low between his paws, as if stalking, though he hadn’t yet come close enough to bite. “You expect me to believe your arrival was chance?”
Faust raised his brow as he tried to understand the different mountains of fur and feathers that decorated the Beast’s hide. What a strange animal that spoke like a man and showed suspicion the way a wolf or a dog would. This thing was of course cursed and while Faust was unsure if it were ever a man to begin with, he knew that it had been this way for a very long time. “It was by complete chance.” He said simply. “How could I have possibly passed through that darkened forest while it was still haunted by wandering souls? I wasn’t even aware of the cracked mirrored shards or the curse beyond these walls until Rose spoke of it to me.”
The Beast was a patchwork of animals, and only a great deal of scientific study, daring (on the scientist’s part) and patience (on the Beast’s part) would yield any kind of thorough understanding of just how many there were. He rounded the edge of the room and stopped short of the firelight, watching the man with a sullen gaze of fool’s gold that glowed eerily in the darkness. Despite appearances, the Beast used other senses to navigate in the dark, and his eyes were fairly terrible. He sniffed once more, then tasted the air with a wide, flat tongue under a wolf’s dark muzzle. The lion’s mane glowed gently in the firelight as he tipped his head and two velvet equine ears twisted forward. One paw, the one most like a bear’s, spread out and caught on the edge of the much-faded hearth rug. He dragged it toward him two inches before he thought to disengage his claws. “What mirrored shards?” the Beast asked, suspiciously.
The front two legs of his chair caught in the rug and Faust wobbled to his feet as it screeched towards the Beast. Rounding near the fireplace, Faust placed a hand on top of the mantle and turned his attention to the crackling fire. “Rose pointed them out to me. The reflective glass scattered across the ground outside. She said that you had one caught in your paw. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Faust turned his head a little to glance back at the Beast. “I would have died if Rose hadn’t insisted that I stay in the castle.”
The tall gentleman paused, eyes back on the fire even if it burned them dry. “She’s lonely here. You can see that. My company keeps her content, happy. I owe her at least that after years of being so far away from the homeland.” Faust exhaled lightly, showing the toll of being ripped from his own world and dropped here. To the Beast it looked like homesickness; which wasn’t that far off. “I can keep an eye on her for you. Make sure she doesn’t take any unnecessary risks as I can tell she’s prone to do. And, if I hurt her in anyway you can tear me to pieces.”
Satisfied his little ploy had at least made the man uncomfortable, if not exactly afraid, the Beast settled down on his haunches and forepaws, with most of his side and back hidden in shadow. He lay very much like a dog or a lion did, except that he had to twist mostly on his side because of the long, muddy gray shapes of oversize wings that were too large for him to sit upright. The shape of them in the confusing light seemed sleek and falcon-like, but their color suggested an owl’s. Bygone images of the gryphons and hippocampi sprung immediately to mind, mostly because you couldn’t see the wolf’s nose and the scaled, furred tail. The eyes glowed in annoyance, then narrowed, but he waited through Faust’s explanation. For the first time he showed discomfort, a flicking motion behind him suggesting a cat’s tail and the implicit annoyance. He did not want Rose to be unhappy, of course. “I may do that if I choose regardless of your permission,” the Beast humphed, but it no longer seemed immediately possible.
Faust smiled towards the fire, turned and took a step towards the Beast. “I have no doubt.” He kept his distance, trying his best not to stare at the oddity of the brute, even if his scientific mind was ticking with questions. No point in trying to study it. Not just for health reasons, but because it was cursed and anything created with magic wasn’t worth studying. There were very few laws to the mystical, after all. “I’ll keep out of your way.” Which was the plan all along, but it was worth giving the creature his word. And, with that he picked up his journal and started towards the exit.
Left alone in the flickering light of the small room, the Beast huffed very much like a sour old widow woman left alone in her shop. “Good.”