Beauty And Her Beast

Chapter 1

This was a dream.

I knew for a fact that this was a dream.

The reason that I knew was because I've had this same dream ever since I turned 18.

Its always been the same, the setting never changing even slightly since the first time I've experienced it.

I stood amidst a seemingly endless plane, the color surrounding me just like a star-less night sky.

Nothing and no one else could be seen where I stood.

I turned my body to the right, as I did every time I had this dream, spotting the one other thing that was always here with me.

Laying atop a boulder that stood nearly as high as I did, was a wolf.

One could barely tell from the rise and fall of its sleek copper brown fur that it wasn't dead.

In all other aspects, it seemed like it was.

It was always like this.

Motionless, unresponsive, and completely silent.

In all my experience of having this dream, it's never once moved, never even opened its eyes.

It just laid there.

I've tried many things over the years. Talking to it, questioning it, even screaming at it just to get some sort of reaction from it.

I even once went as far as to hoist myself up onto that rock and nudge it.

Every single time, I've gotten nothing in response.

In all honesty, it was starting to get frustrating.

I've read countless books on dream interpretation and even visited the old man on the opposite side of the village who claimed to be a master at it for some kind of answer as to why this was happening to me.

Three years later, and I'm still just as clueless.

Maybe even more so.

I crossed my arms and glared up at the wolf.

At this point, all I associated with this dream was that it was going to be morning by the time I wake up.

But the time varied from dream to dream of when that moment was.

I huffed out a sigh, wanting that moment to come more than ever right now.

My dad and I had plans for today since it was officially the first day of spring, and the passionate ecologist inside him needed to investigate the new flora and fauna that it brought to the forest outskirts of our village

I for one was excited to go with him and found a bit of humor that the only thing stopping me was a fauna only local to my dreams.

Begrudgingly, I started towards it, thinking maybe if I mess with it enough that I'll wake up.

However, my intentions quickly changed, my entire body going deathly still when for the first time in my life, its eyes opened.

That fact surprised me more than what I saw within them.

Where I was expecting normal pupils and iris, was instead a bright gold color filling in the entirety of its eyes.

I stared, still standing completely motionless as an odd sense of fear ran through me.