Who: Rose and Henry!Beast What: Fail! Where: A dream When: During the 13th fairy plot Warnings/Rating: Nope!
The cottage was lived in and warm. Even in the dream, it felt like a place that was loved. It was in the middle of a large wood and, unlike the waking world, there was nothing beyond the wood, no matter how far you traveled. And while the cottage was warm and inviting, the woods were not.
The tree canopies eclipsed the sky above entirely, casting everything in the woods into an eternal darkness that there was no hope of seeing through. Sounds echoed, fearful things, screams and cries, the clang of swords and the fall of echoes. The sounds reverberated off the dank-dark branches of trees, off the thick trunks, off the gnarled roots that reached out from the earth and tripped passersby. This was not a dead wood. This was dark and dreadful and protective. The branches grabbed and scratched, and the banshee screams chased whoever dared enter. Out, out, the wood hissed, it's slicing branches become thicker, more jumbled, more impenetrable as the wood deepened. Out, out, because it was easier that way, wasn't it? Behind the wood, at the beginning, there was the lying promise of bright and clear and sweet. But the wood never ended, and the promise was false.
The cottage was in a perfectly circular clearing of bright green. There was a garden beside the cozy structure, rows of radishes and carrots and cabbage. The cottage itself was stone, pale and covered in ivy. The thatched roof was brown and ivy-lined too. The single window had a pretty wooden pane that matched the door. Smoke billowed from the small chimney, and a warm hearth could be seen through the little window. It was small, no more than one room and a loft beneath the steepled roof. The air smelled of apples and roses and fire-smoke. The apples, likely from the apple tree that sat on the opposite side of the building. The roses, likely from the line of red-red blooms that swayed and preened beneath the window. It was like something out of a fairy tale or, perhaps, a dream.
Henry knew very well this was a dream. The sudden sharpness through which he viewed the world was in total contrast to the almost mindless anger and hunger that had driven the Beast through these now-unfamiliar woods, and Henry understood that it had been a colossal mistake to attempt to pursue Rose away from the immediate area of the his castle. In combined prison and haven, the Castle kept the Beast nearly ageless while also providing him with nearly human sanity, a sanity that quickly left him the longer he was away from the degrading walls. He had only to look down and see the unfamiliar length of his torso, the rough mottled tunic burnt and stained by many battles. He felt the weight of the blade on his hip and tightened his grip on the bow held strung in his right hand. Old scars clung tight across his back and shoulders.
Henry stood in the warm clearing for a while. He listened to the angry hissing of the trees behind him, watched the dark treetops waver in a nonexistent wind that never blew. He knew it was angry with him, but he had trouble caring. He was angry at the witch that had invaded his dreams, and knew with one quick intake of breath exactly who should reside in such a place as this. Rather than progressing forward, Henry kept his bow in his hand and scanned the treeline, resisting an itch under the quiver that hung behind his right ear. Gone was the musician, gone was the prince.
“Rose,” the soldier said, into the smoke and the lush scent of apples.
There was nothing at first.
Or, rather, there was more of the same.
Then, the door to the cottage opened. And it didn't open slow. And it didn't open careful. And it didn't open a crack or a smidgen. No, that wasn't her way; she threw the door wide, and she balanced on that place between in and out.
She was dressed in overalls that she'd acquired in Fabletown. They were loose, corduroy-red, and they were stained with green at the knee and hem. She wore a rose shirt beneath, also Mundane, short sleeved and simple. Her feet were bare, and her long copper hair was mostly hidden beneath a kitchen rag of oft-washed linen, wrapped and tucked away in a messy excuse for a turban. There was a sweat-sheen on her forehead from working over the fire, and there was color to her cheeks, health and confidence.
This was her space, and the branches waved in the breeze, and the ivy shook atop the cottage.
She cocked her head to the side, and she regarded him. He looked older. She recognized him, but he looked older, tired, haggard. He held no fiddle, and he didn't have the look of the man who'd refused her kiss in the Mundane desert.
"You saw her too?" she asked of the fairy, and she wiped her hands on her hips, dampening the red corduroy with her palms. "Come in. I'll get you something to drink," she offered, a witch's hospitality as she stepped aside.
Inside, the cottage was fireglow-warm. Two cast iron pots bubbled on the fire, and a rough wooden table and chairs lived to one side. There were two sturdy rocking chairs, padded with blankets, set before the fire. The floor was lined with clean rushes, and the wooden loft held only a lamb's wool and feather mattress, with a patchwork quilt messily thrown over one corner. Herbs hung to dry on twine, and a cupboard was locked tight, and candlelight warmed the corners that the fireglow didn't reach.
Henry’s eyes were moving rapidly over the treeline, watching for threat, as the clearing made him feel exposed; the itch on his back became nearly sentient in its insistence, but he continued to ignore it with a woodsman’s discipline. The hard, swift movement of the door had to attract his attention, however, and he broke his stillness to stare right back at her. She looked foreign to him, too, though not in age. Her attire reminded him of a farmer, and the frame of the cottage and brightness of the pale rag against her hair was much at odds with the spoiled little princess he was used to seeing.
He blinked at her twice and then smiled. It was not a laughing, thoughtless smile, but it was still a smile, as tired as the rest of him. He recognized her, as well, in a deep way. “Yes, I saw her too.” He turned then, and not looking back, walked toward the door on a long stride. The fiddler’s build supported the archer’s purposes well; he was sinewy, more willow than oak, wrapped in cloth and leather that had seen much hard use: scored by blade, branch and flame. His eyes were the hazel of leaves in the twilight of autumn, and his hair roughly chopped out of his way.
He was tall enough that he put one hand up to touch the frame of the door above his head as he ducked through, and the longbow was expertly lowered and then turned to mimic his posture as he straightened on the threshold. Henry had been in many cottages, but this one spoke to him of status and comfort--as cottages went. Not one pot but two, cast iron and not tin, well-made chairs and candles instead of rushlights. Henry leaned the bow against the door, but he left it strung, and he bent out of the quiver and the strap of a traveler’s roll to set beside it. “This is your home?” he asked, sounding relatively impressed.
The smile made her easier. She'd not seen him since the Mundane world, and she didn't recall that time with much joy. His assertion that he'd seen the fairy too made her hum. It wasn't fear, and it wasn't the respect a young witch showed to another witch; it was wariness. After Pitch, this was the second time her dreams had been visited and, while it made her feel better not to have been the only one this time, she still didn't like it.
Inside, she undid the rag that kept her hair out her face, youthfully concerned with his thoughts about her appearance, and not yet skilled enough to hide it. Her copper hair was as long as ever, to the middle of her back, and shining clean; another indication of prosperity, a water source, and a good washbasin somewhere in the cottage.
Closer, now, he looked more like himself than he had with fear chasing him and the dark woods at his back. "This was my mother's cottage. Snow and I grew up here," she told him, smiling. Whatever her situation with her sister now, before Snow'd gone they'd been inseparable, and she still remembered her youth as the happiest time of her life. Then, she hadn't needed anything more to be happy. The woods, her sister, magic. That was her entire world, and she hadn't wanted anything more for herself. Snow had wanted a prince and a castle; Rose had always wanted the wildness of this life, and it suited her. Faust said she was wild now, and maybe she had always been.
"Mother provided the three bordering kingdoms with poultices and healing and small spells, in exchange for seeds and beeswax and chopped wood. I'm not very good yet, but I'm better than nothing," she said honestly. She saw little point in lying to him about magic now, not when she wasn't at the castle, and when his interest in her had waned. "She consulted the kings, but I can't do anything like that yet." Yet.
"Take that tunic off," she said a moment later, remembering her manners, which were much better here, where she had control and didn't feel the need to stomp her feet to get what she wanted. "I'll mend it. And sit down. I'll get you some wine. It's from the south kingdom, and it's very good," she assured him, that familiar twinkle in her amber eyes.
Henry looked from her clean, pleasant face to the rest of the cottage. He tried to imagine the pale, irritatingly noble Snow in this relatively humble abode and failed utterly. Of course the Beast had disliked Snow on sight, and Henry had to admit to himself that he couldn’t be absolutely sure he would dislike her again, were the Beast’s territorial instincts absent. It was just a dream, but he was also very much himself, and he enjoyed that, enjoyed the feel of his weight on two feet, of his lips moving, of his fingers flexing against soft palms. It was in this attire that he occasionally saw Daniel, and in dreams such as this they had brief conference. Only the witch’s warning set him ill at ease.
Ducking drifting herbs and any low-hanging rafters, Henry circumvented the table to peer in the corners and look out the small windows. He looked back over at his shoulder somewhat sharply when she mentioned her mother’s occupation, his expression keen but not weighed overmuch by suspicion or anger. Henry decided to attempt to be polite, and herb- and kitchen-witches abounded in even his land, before the war. “You mean that she advised kings?” Henry asked, straightening again and returning to the table.
His eyebrows lifted together at her recent string of commands. “You intend to steal my clothes and bewitch me with drink?” he grinned, and then laughed. The laugh was all that remained of the fiddler without an instrument in his hand and it seemed to pluck at the magic of the cottage, like a finger against a harpstring--though to absolutely no real effect without his intentional direction. Henry sat down, stretching out much-mended gray boots in the direction of the hearth, he had long legs that were like to get in the way unless he moved them when she did. “I’m all over with dirt,” he informed her, still grinning, the hard leather that covered the fraying tunic creaking as he bent into the frame of the chair. “Should I wash it first, or you plan upon tipping me in the pond once I am drunk?”
"She did," she said of her mother advising kings. "She would go for days at a time when they summoned her, especially in the early days, before the war. Once the war began, it was harder for the witches, and we kept mostly to ourselves, unless someone came for something. The woods were kinder then. They were green and full of curses to break," she told him, that old exuberance in her voice when she talked about her childhood.
"Your clothes aren't worth stealing," she pointed out a moment later, as she pulled out an old, beaten metal cup and a flask of deep, red, sweet wine. "And I'm done trying to bewitch you. It hasn't done me any good," she said, the dream bringing calmness that she didn't exactly possess in the waking world, even out here, where she'd forged a life suited to her. She poured the wine, and she held out the cup. "There's a well behind the cottage," she added. "Drink, then wash up, but leave that terrible tunic here. I'll soak it in the boiling water once I'm done." Even in the dream, she had trouble with stillness. Stillness had never suited her.
Henry remembered many wise magickers coming to his father’s court. He recalled that they were treated kindly, but not with any serious fear. He remembered the second kitchen cook hung her herbs like that, and a sudden whiff of lavender from a fold of linen on the other side of the room made him think of his mother. This sudden flicker of memories in succession bewildered him somewhat, and he awkwardly shifted his weight, trying to find the floor under his feet again. “My mother knew some kitchen witchery,” he said, in a very quiet, somewhat bleak tone. He stared up into the rafters while he said it, and the chair creaked under his long limbs as he sat completely upright, shaking the reverie away.
After a moment’s consideration, Henry lifted his left elbow and began picking at the leather laces that held the stiffened leather of the cured tunic that protected about half of his chest; his back was bisected only by the strap of the quiver and the none-too-clean linen shirt. Looking up, studied her where she stood at the cupboard. “You think you are not bewitching?” he asked, eyes green and curious. One hand came up and he took the cup from her fingers, his own long and warm as embers in the cool morning.
She wondered that his mother knew any witchery, given how much distaste he had for magic. Or maybe that was the Beast, and not him at all. She would have had a much harder time getting the Beast through the door, she decided, even if he did fit. She didn't ask what had happened to his mother. Either she had died in his war, or she was lost to him. Neither answer would make that bewildered expression leave his face, and she wasn't exactly sure what do so with that vulnerability any longer. Faust said she had gone wild when, in truth, she just hadn't been around people very much in months. She'd always been a little feral, and nothing tethered her here. No hard castle walls, or invisible servants. No Beast that expected her to be a lady. No books to read. There was nothing but the sound of the woods at night and her own company.
"I think men will sleep with anything that offers, and bewitching isn't necessary," she said, with the understanding of someone far older than she appeared. "If there are multiple options, a man will pick the prettiest. If he's hungry, he'll pick the plumpest. If he's poor, he'll pick the one with the finest dress. And," she added with a wave of her fingers, after remembering that this - all of it - was just a dream, "I don't need need you to actually take those off." With the movement of her fingers, the dream shook, and his shirt and tunic were gone, bubbling away in her pot without her even needing to put them there. "Courtly love is just a story fathers tell their little girls." She pulled down some lavender, and she fetched a pot of soap flakes, and she tossed them into the boiling pot. "My mother never told us those stories. She told us we didn't need men."
Henry had time to lift the glass to his lips, but not much more than that. He lowered it again as she began to speak, and his expression grew stormy. Henry had an expressive face, sharp features that never came to a point, and he would have been handsome if he had been both clean and happy, a circumstance that seemed very rare, considering the state of his attire. As in many of Henry’s dreams, the details of his immediate surroundings drew in about him, as if to accentuate who he was--especially the green things; leaves, details, even thread, anything nearby with a shade of the color brightened.
As he found the shirt left him, he stood up. It was a rapid movement, and he had the angle to clear the table, and it was the position of a man used to dominating a room when he made the effort. His skin wasn’t dark, but it wasn’t the lily-white of a courtier either. He had no obvious marks on the front of his body, courtesy of the tunic, just a lot of time-hardened muscle. “You invite me here to disparage my sex. If I had done something to you like that, a charm, something to dislodge that dress, you would only think even worse of me than you do now. And how is that fair?” He folded his arms over his chest.
The storm in his features didn't bother her. It struck her as being more real than the charming facade. Or, maybe, it was just more Beast. Either way, she didn't fear it, and she didn't draw back. "You were going to give me the shirt anyway," she reminded him, smirk-wide and her bare toes curling into the clean rushes at his feet. "You're just upset I did it without your aid." As for disparaging his sex, that just earned him a look that, even in that time, was universally understood as Really? "I'm sorry you don't like my truth. I'm done pretending, Henry," she told him, no anger, not even petulance in the words. She was what she was; a strong witch, opinionated, born wild. He would either accept that, or he wouldn't. The femininity that clung to her like dew in spring didn't change that, and the fact that she was better suited to a dress than overalls didn't diminish it. "Can we not be honest?" she asked him. It was a bid for equality. She was born for equality, but she recognized that he wasn't. She had no idea if he'd be able to make that leap.
Henry’s chin came back and up, surprise and then anger moving fast over his features. The Beast would have growled, though Henry made no immediate sound. His shoulders came up toward his ears in a gesture not at all a man’s anger, far more physical and beyond irritation. He did not smile. “Aid. I’m upset you did it without my permission.” He did not think she really understood what he meant, and that it had nothing to do with equality at all. Henry could easily imagine her reaction if, as man or Beast, he took her clothes without so much as a word. “And you accuse me of dishonesty.” This time he did growl.
Then he straightened up, turned his head, and opened his mouth. He hit a low C and jumped a perfect octave. The sound had no effect on the human ear except to simply make a sound with a better than passable voice, but the water jumped to a high boil around the soap and leather. The magic made everything with senses in a half-mile radius quiver like the string of a bow. “Keep it.” He stormed from the cottage, shoving at the door to make it give way.
"You had already begun," she insisted, her hands settling on her hips when she realized he wasn't going to be rational about this. Even in a dream, he couldn't be rational. "I wasn't dishonest. I told you my intentions, and I was helping. You don't like what I am, or what I say, or what I know. I know men. You can't even contradict me. You can only get angry," she said tiredly. It was like this with them ever since he'd thrown her out, and she wasn't sure how to remedy it, not in the waking world, and not in a dream.
She remembered the magic of his fiddle, and the sound he made didn't surprise her. She understood the magic on a level that wasn't at all logical, and she merely sighed when he stormed from the cottage. Her hands slid from her hips; she did not follow. What was the point in it? He'd only become angry at her again. As a Beast, he listened and reassured. Or he had once, but not anymore. And now she was just something that frustrated him. She was like the small wild things in the wood that cottagers brought in as pets. Cute at first, but taxing as time passed.
She closed the door behind him, and the dream dissolved.