The Beauty, the Beast and the Bewitchment (a Wonderbat Story)

Chapter II

It was important to feel a sense of importance in your life. It was easy to feel important when you've always succeeded in what you do. When you know you've helped people with what you do. It was hard to feel important when you've been tossed in a dungeon by a werebeast who caught you doing something you expertise on doing.

Selina groaned when she was literally tossed in the rusty cell, her bottom landing painfully on the cemented floor. She knew it was futile, but she ran for escape while the bars were still open. The logic in her kicked the hope inside when the door closed and the girl ended up ramming her shoulder on the rusty bars instead.

But she didn't show pain. She wouldn't back down. Selina bared her teeth at the Beast making her look like she was the animal instead of the actual animal in front of her.

"Let me out.", her voice was hard. It had an edge at each syllable, showing the anger in her eyes.

The Beast looked down on her, his face a stern mask of power. A single word came out from his mouth, a word that would define the life that Selina would live if she doesn't escape this mystic castle, "No."

Selina only glared harder. With the might and anger the Beast managed to stir inside her, she declared with much force a statement, a promise. "I will."

/_\-/_\-/_\-/_\

Inside one of the bedless cells of the castle, a girl tossed and turned in restless sleep. The air was humid and no breeze seemed to enter through the single tiny window on the upper side of one of the walls. Her cloak trapped the warmth from leaving her body making sweat form on her hairline. Selina finally opened her eyes feeling hot and sweaty in the small tight space the Beast gave her.

The girl unclasped her cloak, tossing it to one side of the cell. She then leaned on the wall, her arms resting on her knees, contemplating how the Beast figured her out. She had been careful with her actions even when she thought no one was there. Years of stealing taught her to never let her guard down, and she had never been caught, at least when she wanted to. So how did the Beast see right through her?

Normally, Sel, she thought. He's a Beast. He has a nose better than that of a human. And who knows, maybe he's been living in this damned castle alone for years that he has every single detail of it memorized in his mind.

Selina remembered the Beast as the creature with large symmetrical curving horns and a big enormous body covered in dark brown fur, so naturally, when she saw a shadow with large horns and a bulky body, she immediately went to the bars, her voice screaming out threats. "Let me out, you bastard! I will skin you alive if you do not and I will feed your bones to the wolves. I swear by--"

Her thread of curses halted with a surprised gasp when the shadow dissolved into two items, a clock and a candleholder. And they were both smiling at her.

Selina's mouth stayed open when the candleholder talked, "You should probably close your mouth before you eat a fly."

"There are flies in here?", the amazed woman asked.

"Actually, no. We make sure to clean this place weekly."

"We?", Selina repeated. "There are more of you?"

"Yes, and we make sure to clean this place weekly. Well, more like Alfred here's the one making sure.", the candlestick gestured to the clock beside him. "But yeah. We clean this place weekly. I'm Richard, by the way. But you can call me Dick."