So this is Love ● The Beast

Prologue

Once upon a time, in a far away land, a young prince lived in a shining castle. Although he had everything his heart desired, the prince was spoiled, selfish and unkind.

But then one winter's night, an old beggar woman came to the castle and offered him a single rose in return for shelter from the bitter cold. Repulsed by her haggard appearance, the prince sneered at the gift and turned the old woman away. But she warned him not to be deceived by appearances, for beauty is found within. And when he dismissed her again, the old woman's ugliness melted away to reveal a beautiful enchantress.

The prince tried to apologize, but it was too late, for she had seen that there was no love in his heart, and as punishment, she transformed him into a hideous beast and placed a powerful spell on the castle, and all who lived there.

Ashamed of his monstrous form, the Beast concealed himself inside his castle with a magic mirror as his only window to the outside world. The rose she had offered was truly an enchanted rose, which would bloom until his twenty-first year.

If he could learn to love another and earn her love in return by the time the last petal fell, then the spell would be broken. If not, he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time.

As the years passed, he fell into despair and lost all hope.

Inside, he began to fade into the monster he had been destined to become, his humanity sinking between the cracks of his previous human image. He could do nothing but wait, slowly slipping into the shadows of his castle finding out just how lonely he truly was.

For he knew he was doomed from the start.

For who could ever learn to love a beast?

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Down below the castle, in a small town just beyond the vast forest, a young maiden stood looking from her glass window which held a obscured view of the village she resided in.

She ran a finger over the thin glass, her finger tips leaving a blue residue, leaving a fading curve over the light blue sky over the small village. Her brown eyes traveled down towards the wooden palette she held in her right hand, the mixture of colors smeared across the indented holes made for them.

Dipping her handmade thin tipped brush into the mixture, she began.

The brush met the dark wood of her bedroom, it dragged across the wall smoothly making an intricate curve over the base of her work. Her eyes moved with her brush, it almost seemed as if it was moving on its own as she turned her wrist with a spiral movement.

Her mind flashing back to the previous night, she had been plagued with dreams for years, last night was no different.

As she ran a hand across the wet paint, she smudged it along the end of her work, it smeared across as if it were fading and slowly dissipating off into pieces.

The corner of her lips tugged upwards as she let her fingertips meet the cool liquid on her paint pallet, she began to smudge the blue paint around with the yellow. Around the blue it became an embroidered edge, like gold around a riverside.

She could hear her family downstairs, calling her as she made the finishing touches. Their voices careless and spiked with impatience, she could already visualize the irked marks along their faces.

Placing the paint down, she stepped away from her finished work. Rubbing the drying paint on her hands together, she smiled fully, her eyes lighting up as if she had made her finest piece.

The eyes. They were so alive, so real. Like she's met them before, like she's been basing him off a distant memory. Someone her mind was trying to make her remember, maybe it was a person she'd meet in the future.

As she found her hand around the strap of her bag, pulling it over her shoulder, she pressed her fingers onto her own lips feeling the red paint upon her fingers faintly leave it's mark. She let her fingers find the man in the painting, his face which seemed so familiar, brightened from the hint of color.

With that last touch, she began her descent down the stairs and towards her awaiting family.