So many years…so many years as this…this thing. This beast. And now I was to be free by the arrival of this young woman. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
To begin I wasn't always like this; a ball of fur with a temper comparable to that of the burning sun. I used to be a beautiful woman, a queen, fair, and maybe a tad spoiled. But what could be wrong with this? Nothing, in my mind, as I lay on plush pillows with any partner of my choosing tangled in my expensive sheets. But all it takes for a life like that to turn sour is one woman.
A witch – unknown to me – arrived in my throne room one morning, her old and frail body cloaked in tattered rags. I took her for a beggar, a sickening specimen of the world, smelling sharply like piss and rubbish. My delicate nose crinkled in disgust as the woman asked for a bed for the night, whining about something with the chill of the winter air. I hadn't listened. Instead I looked down at her, my lips pulling into a smirk as I sat upon my golden thrown, "You come to me, in your filthy state asking to lie in my castle…just because your toes are a little chilly?" A scoff tumbled from my red lips as I stood, body thin and tall, chin raised as I pointed firmly towards the doors of the room. "I will give no charity to filth like you," I hissed through my teeth as the old hag turned up.
It was then I realized I had never seen the old woman's face and in fact she was in no way old. In a wave of freezing air the room seemed to still, my guards halted in their attack as the cloak fell from the woman's shoulders. She was a gorgeous, young, and her blond hair practically white in the candlelight as it tumbled down her back. Her vibrant amber eyes sent a chill down my spine as she stepped forward and instinctively I shrunk back. The action seemed to please her as her skin began to emanate a glow, rising to her eyes as she floated from the floor.
"You see this world as your toy without consideration for those worse off. You deserve nothing more than what I give to you: a curse for you and your castle. May you learn the error of your ways as the world turns in disgust at what you have created."
Her words paralyzed me as my blue eyes widened, fixed on her hovering figure in both fear and intrigue. But as I opened my mouth to speak, it was too late.
The freezing air around me turned searing as I cried out, hugging my pounding head. Slowly my cries turned into yowls as my body began to shift. My legs snapped at the bones, shifting and reforming into powerful hindquarters. My nose and mouth shifted forward into a muzzle, the delicate nose of mine expanding and becoming pink and moist. My teeth grew in my mouth, sharpening into points as the nails on my fingers and toes grew thick, black, and dangerous. "Make it stop!" I roared, but there was no one to hear my please as the rest of the castle had begun its own transformation.
My ears grew, pointing at the ends before a pair of dark horns sprouted from my skull, curling around my head and back up at the ends. Tears pour from my eyes from the pain as I doubled over, my expensive clothing ripped to shreds as the change continued.
The end came suddenly as I gave another roar of pain from my tailbone extending and splitting from my lower back. I had collapsed onto the floor by then, panting as golden fur began to grow along my skin, my new tail becoming bushy but still limp, and my long waves breaking from my head onto the floor around me as exhaustion took over my body.
I awoke to darkness and silence, searching around the throne room to only see coldness radiating from the walls. Something had changed more than my own body. I stood from my place, looking down at my body with horror as tears pulled at my eyes again. That witch had made me into the beast that I truly was, into the monster that I had become as queen. And had taken the rest of the kingdom with me.
But that was years ago. My kingdom abandoned and the inside of my castle in ruins simply from my anger. Every servant inside the castle's boundaries had become a living part of the structure: a table, a chair, a tea set. And while they seemed to continue their work as servants do, I withdrew into my quarters with the only thing left of mine that mattered.
A singular rose, glowing and sparkling under a glass case. It rested on a table by my balcony, able to be exposed to the moonlight in which it would bloom. The object was beautiful but after so many years even I had realized that it had begun to…fade. And when the first petal fell was when I realized there was something I must do. The only issue was that I had accepted my self as a beast and no longer had any social connection to the world outside my castle doors.
But as fate had placed me into this form, it was willing to help me be free of it.