Once upon a time there was a handsome young man, who was popular with all that he met. He was kind and loving. But that wasn't enough for some people. The goodness in his heart was just too much for some people to cope with.
The young man fell in love with a kind and beautiful young lady, who was very charitable and easy to talk to. They had so much in common that he couldn't help but love her. But their love was doomed the moment it began, for fate had something quite sinister in store for the young lovers indeed.
Fate, as is well known is a cruel god, used to getting his own way. And from the dawn of time he had created soul mates, mortals conceived at exactly the same time. These mortals could only touch and hold their mates, though family members and friends could also hug and hold their relations. However these mortals would have matching birth marks and those that did not could not have soul mates. This was one such couple.
But one day Fate grew jealous of the handsome young man, of his friends and his popularity with every mortal that he met. For you see Fate had no friends, for he was cruel and deceitful to all that he knew, including his own family. And Fate did not want this mortal to have such luck, to have such perfection in his life. He wanted the mortal man to suffer the way that he had suffered. He wanted the mortal to be lonely, for that is how Fate had felt for centuries, for he had no true friends only his family.
So this god turned to the darkest of the magiks and summoned a creature that has not since been sought. Fate summoned the grand high witch of black magic. She was the cruellest and the most powerful. She had been born without emotions so she cared not that what she was doing was evil.
She disguised herself as an infant and placed herself inside a basket on the mortal lovers' doorstep, to the delight of the wife who could not bear children, for her womb had been severely damaged in an accident.
So taking the "infant" in as their own, and beginning a family they never knew that what would befall them would be so devastating.
Before the first day of the full moon, the infant had already decided upon her plan: to make the young man as grotesque as was possible. She knew this would please Fate as she believed, through her lack of understanding and emotion, that the young man's good looks and charm were the reason for his popularity with the people.
And as the clock struck midnight, the witching hour, the infant showed her true forms to the shocked and repulsed lovers. Yet they had not time to stand in horror, before she began chanting and casting a magic circle around the male.
And when she was done with her spell the male that stood before her was no longer human. No he had become a beast. Terrifyingly grotesque the young woman screamed in fear and raced for the door. He tried to follow but not knowing his new form he managed to kill his lover with his strong, unyielding claws.
And on his cloud far above the medieval village Fate sat and laughed, delighted with the witches work. He believed that nothing and no one could have performed a better spell than if they had been to kill him. The mortal was ugly and his lover dead, their momentary happiness at a family destroyed. No god could have been more gleeful than Fate on such a devastating day in humanity…
'Isabelle are you still reading that book about the beast?' Belle looked up with her beautiful jade green eyes as her best friend Red entered the library. Red, so named for her fiery ginger curls that fell in waves to her curvaceous waist. With bright blue eyes, and seductively blood red lips Red was the catch of many of their classmates' eyes. And not just the boys.
'Yeah, sorry it's my favourite story; I just can't put it down. I mean there's magic, gods and a curse that can't be broken. Oh and my favourite. Death.' A natural brunette Belle had dyed her hair black and painted her lips blood red, obsessed with dark magic and death as she was it matched her personality perfectly.
'Oh Belle you must give up this obsession with the gothic stereotype, you're going to get in so much trouble if the matron sees you wearing any of those dark clothing again. Do you want to get kicked out?' Red asked to which Belle shook her head.
Unlike many of the other teenagers at the boarding college Belle could not afford to get expelled. They had families to go back to, homes warm for them at the end of every term, but Belle did not. Many years ago, Belle's mother and father had died in a plane crash just on the outside of their home in France, returning from Italy.
They had died exactly at the same time the coroner had revealed at the funeral, as though that could make Isabelle comforted, that her parents had died together. It hadn't helped. And ever since that fateful day Belle had grown obsessed with death and how it worked; what made people want to kill others. And that somehow had led to her obsession with dark magic. Perhaps it was the fact that there were spells in there to curse and kill people.
'I will not,' Belle replied defiantly to Red's order. She did not like taking orders from others. Living back at home with her living parents she had been wealthy and had been used to ordering the servants around. Here at the college many ordered her around and she did not like it.
And just as she was wondering what the outside world would be like, the matron herself entered the library, but thankfully for Belle she was still in her uniform and did not warrant punishment.
'I have been asked to deliver to both of you girls a permission slip,' the woman replied just as they were both looking at each other wondering what the matron had wanted from them.
Taking the forms with a thank you the two friends sat and read them.
'Oh, my god!' they squealed with excitement as one.
'We're going to a castle in the southern part of the country. I love castles!' Belle exclaimed happily as she grabbed the book she'd been reading and packed it away in her bag. It was her own book after all.
'Maybe you'll find your dark prince there,' Red joked to which Belle punched her in the arm.