Beast - a re-telling

Chapter 9

There was a wariness in Raven's eyes, an aloofness that had never surfaced before. Part of her grieved its presence and part of her... part of her felt a fierce satisfaction.

Schadenfreude. Or was it? Should any person be complacent without plumbing the shadows of their being? Or were some depths too murky to disturb? Too much mud and nothing could be seen, much less understood.

Predator. Witch. Night-walker.

That was what she was at heart, a creature closer to beast than angel, but was she becoming the monster they called her?

What was there to gain to rip Raven's humanity from him? Would it benefit him? Or would it only obscure that clarity she found so alluring?

Regret moved through her, a rare pain, but it was too late.

The words were said, the decision made, and the veil couldn't be pulled back again.

"Warlock. Night-walker. Blood-drinker. You are all these things, but you are not defined by them as you are more man than not."

Something passed through his eyes. "Does this mean that our pact will proceed as agreed upon, or am I too human for your taste?"

She flinched, her hand rising with an involuntary desire to touch him, to reassure and be reassured.

His expression shuttered and her hand fell back to her side.

"The decision was made when you could accept our beastly halves. What halves compose the whole of you was never a factor."

"In that case, I will need to return to my home to make the necessary arrangements. With your leave." He bowed, the gesture correct and painfully proper.

Her breath caught in her chest, a sense of loss spreading like ivy digging into stone.

His jaw worked and then he shook his head before striding away.

Qianyu watched him go. Her beast snuffled sadly and curled up on herself, draping her tail over her eyes.

"Should I have kept quiet?"

Yi brushed a hand along her sleeve. "Who can know?"

"A man has the right to know where he comes from," Lumiere said, his voice low.

Danny stroked Tu'er'lang's ears pensively. "Perhaps that wasn't what he wanted to hear now, but I think he'll be glad of it eventually. Probably. A person should know what they are."

"I worry that I did it for the wrong reasons."

Yi's gaze drifted to the horizon before looking back at her, waiting.

"I..." she bit her lip. "Why was I happy to know that he's more than human? Why did I want to tear the illusion away from him? Wouldn't it have been kinder to say nothing? There isn't enough fey blood in him to make a difference anyway."

"It's been a long year and the harvest not what was expected," Lumiere said softly.

Perhaps. But how terrible was it to know that she was a person who would, who could take out her frustrations on a man who had only ever treated her with grace?

Yi bowed his head. "Knowing how you feel now, would you do it again?"

Would she?

Qianyu shook her head. "I don't know." And that was the most terrifying part of all.

"Then why regret? Own what you did and move on, whether you should rein yourself in further in the future or not."

"Yi's right," Danny said, "useful as it may be to know whether your intentions were good or not, ultimately it isn't your perception that matters. Was the information useful to Raven? Will he be helped or hindered by knowing this? Did you consider those aspects before you spoke?"

Lumiere lifted his hand, turning it palm up and hefting the air. "I don't think you told him anything that should have been a true surprise. He was the one who mentioned his family history after all."

Perhaps.

And perhaps she was allowing the disappointments of the past year to cloud her judgment.

Monster.

Other.

Beast.

Witch.

A low laugh escaped, bitter and salt on her tongue.

What was it they said about self-fulfilling prophecies?

She laughed it off at the beginning, just as they all did.

Who was it who said sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never break me?

That's what everyone liked to think, but the truth was that just as water could wear through rock, words had the uncanny ability to dehumanize a person.

Once, twice, thrice, and then a few hundred times more of being called a monster, of having mothers tighten their hold on their children when she passed, of seeing the lustful wariness in a man's gaze as they trailed down her body, of being jeered at by young boys, and it became a daily struggle not to become the monster they called her.

Was this the true point of the qianliqianxun? To see who could hold strong against a world that seemed determined to bring out the worst in a person?

Qianyu yanked on the sash of her robe, suddenly desperate to be free of her human trappings. The moment she felt the cloth loosen enough, she allowed her other half ascendance, content to be subsumed within the more simplistic needs and wants of her beast.

The familiar scents of her horde surrounded her, their affection an almost tangible caress against her fur.

She rubbed herself against them, marking them and allowing them to mark her.

Then the wide open beckoned and she gave herself fully over.