#thank you both this is sensational
We’re allowed to post our Fantasy Zine pieces now, so, here’s the Beauty and the Beast piece which I worked on with @lucycamui! :D
A beastly but gentle Yuri <3For as long as Victor could recall, tales of the beast proliferated through the village. A prince whose family once ruled the land, now trapped within the castle walls and encased by his barrier of beautiful, fiercely thorned blue roses, in exchange for which a baron had promised a coach filled with gold. Yet none dared venture, the village living in fear of a beast that none would admit that they had seen. A fairytale, meant to keep children out of the woods, run amok. All to his benefit, for none would act as competition.
Snow crunched underfoot, crystalline. Victor shivered in his heavy cloak, chill sweeping through him. He kept his head tipped low, so that the wind would not beat his cheeks rosy. Step by step, left before right. A hood covered his silver hair as he made his way through the woods, counting his steps, making sure that each footfall was directly in front of the last. To go in circles would spell out certain death, lost in the thicket, his bones chilled by the snowstorm beating down. He refused to fall, not to a storm and not to a beast. An armful of roses and he could finally buy his coach out to a grander life than the one in the little town full of little people, where every morning was just the same.
Victor was not about to take the other route, of accepting the proposal to give his hand in marriage, unfond of his suitor’s signature style. Huffing, Victor tugged his cloak in tighter around himself. What a beautiful couple they would make, everyone said. As if Victor would let himself be wed to a man who, for some reason, kept painting his own name on his arm.
For what purpose?! In case he forgot? What did the JJ stand for, anyway? John Jefferson? Jack Jacobs? Perhaps actually just Jay Jay. At the very least, Victor was certain it was not Jean Jeans, for Victor had once called him that and was met by an hour of hopeless moping and lament, then a song of all things.
The snow before him turned to ice and Victor stopped. He had made his way through the vast, pathless, unforgiving woods and found himself before towering wrought iron gates, overgrown in vines. Through the blur of the raging storm, spiraling towers rose into the sky, draped in a blanket of snow. Even in the darkness, crystals twinkled off looming windows, beautiful with their stained glass. An ice castle, with no light of life flickering inside.
Victor clasped his hands together and blew warmth into his gloves before he gripped the iron of the gates. He did push once, for good measure, but they did not budge, woven shut by the overgrowth and frozen by the frost. Hand over hand, he scaled the gates, footing light and steady, tempting no chance to slip. As Victor cautiously pulled himself over the high gates, he could have laughed. Such dread had loomed over the village and for what. Let Jumbo Jackass or what be his name see the town beauty now. Just because his hair grew fine and long, and his fair features gathered him praise for his graceful looks did not mean he was demure by nature.
He landed sure-footed within the castle grounds. Apart from the howling wind rattling through his fabrics, not a sound nor soul stirred. All laid thick with snow, unbroken, undisturbed, only the elements at his opposition as Victor made his way inside the castle walls.
He searched, heart pounding rhythms, for the gardens in which the roses were said to always bloom. He was vigilant, dusting snow off mounds, revealing statues of carved marble, stilled fountains in which no birds could bathe, the dull of deceased shrubbery. He searched under the shadows of the towers, over covered cobbled paths, his fingers bitten brittle with each swipe at powdered white, hope for mythed blossoms fading bit by bit.
It was at the castle’s rear that he came upon the gardens, his body beaten by the blizzard. He would have not known it, amongst the prevailing white, if not for the gleam of brilliant blue like a beacon at the heart. While all else had been dominated by snow, the roses thrived, untouched. With petals like glowing silk, they beckoned and Victor approached, heart a rabbit’s in his chest.
As he neared, the flowers seemed to spread, opening in invitation, perfume bidding him welcome. His weight in gold. Victor slipped a knife from his cloak, dropping to cut the stems. Thorns grew like daggers, nicking at his gloves despite his care as he collected bloom by bloom until twelve counted in his arms. He cut a few to spare and stood, ready to depart with his spoils when he saw the blossom at the center. The only one not in bloom.
Its blue petals were wrapped tight and wilting, yet it beckoned to Victor, as if he would find the moon itself contained within. The flowers surrounding it glistened with the ice flakes riding them, yet neither wind nor snow seemed to touch the rose. The edges of the flower glowed, silver dancing off the lining of the petals, filling his eyes with a glittering light that drew him in. As Victor reached for the rose, the others around it leaned away, their leaves and thorns shrinking to grant him an opening to the bud. The wind blew off his hood, his hair escaping from its tuck within the cloak and billowing about him. His fingertips brushed blue.
“Don’t touch that!”
…
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