Morgana - A Tale of Beauty And The Beast

Chapter Six

Chapter 06

WHEN her eyes drifted open, she was bathed in candlelight, swaddled in a blanket made of the warmest cotton and down. She looked about her more closely and seen she was in her old bedroom. Her clothes had been changed again and she was in a night gown. Outside she heard familiar voices, her sisters. She couldn't help smiling. They were bickering among themselves as usual. It seemed the fuss was over how to make a cake or what to put in to. She wasn't sure until she slid out of the bed and padded out into the hall to watch.

"No, we must put cherries in it. She loves cherries!" her older sister was saying.

"She HATES cherries! We need to put nuts in it!"

"She HATES nuts, you... you... NUT!" screamed the younger.

A cake? For her? Perhaps her absence was missed by more than her father. She smiled at the sight, finally seeing the usual pattern of one chasing the other about the table with a spoon and the other had the bowl.

She tiptoed down the hall to her father's room and stepped inside.

"Freya... Daphne... please. Let me rest." he choked out, coughing between his words.

"Father? Father, it's me – Morgana."

"Morgana? No, no... she is lost. I have gone mad then for it even sounds like her voice." he said beginning to weep.

She shook her head and did her best to wipe the concerned look off her face, then stepped into the light.

"Father, it is not your imagination. I am really here." she whispered coming closer.

"Oh please, please. My sweet daughter, she left and I went to find her. But wolves and trolls. Orcs and goblins. All around. I couldn't find it... I couldn't find it..." he muttered and wept harder.

She rushed over to his bed and sat beside him, laying her hand on his. She almost jumped back from it, he was cold as a corpse. "Father it is really me! Can't you feel the warmth of my hand?"

He looked at her long and hard, then his tears began to fall in earnest, and he reached out to her for an embrace, "It is you! It is you! How did you get away?"

"He let me go Father... He's really not a horrible monster at all... More a Fae than any."

"But he threatened me. He threatened you! How could such a one be truly decent?"

"I do not believe you truly saw his nature when you met him in person. The person who fed and cared for you when you needed it most is more like him. He, I believe was desperate for company. Well, company of someone other than the pixies. As you know, they have their own way of conversing." she said it as sincerely, and encouragingly as she could as she took in the state of him. He appeared to be covered in tiny black cuts. Goblin knife and arrow scars no doubt.

"If you say that is his true nature I will believe you. But now that you are here we can go back to the way things were and you will never have to go back there again..."

"No, no dear father." she sighed, "I have to return. I promised him. He will die if I do not. He... he loves me, and, yes, I him. So, I must."

Her father looked horrified. "You... in love with him? Him with you? Are you mad?"

"No, quite sane my father, but I came here to tend to you. He heard of your bad state and begged me to come to you. So, please do not think so ill of him. Please." she felt guilty and slightly nauseous thinking of having left him at all. Her heart seemed to ache so. And she had said it. Out loud. She loved him. Yes, yes she did. "I promised him. As you know the promise of a Fae cannot be broken among their own – else we should die of shame."