Ahhhh second story! This is exciting! Will be Rumbelle
Looking out from underneath,
Fractured moonlight on the sea
Reflections still look the same to me,
As before I went under.
And it's peaceful in the deep,
Cathedral where you cannot breathe,
No need to pray, no need to speak
Now I am under.
And it's breaking over me,
A thousand miles onto the sea bed,
Found the place to rest my head.
Never let me go, never let me go.
Never let me go, never let me go.
Florence and the Machine – Never Let Me Go
Belle is the daughter of a merchant king. They weren't always rich, or even comfortable. Her father's trade is too reliant on the variable wills of the ocean and, more than once, ships and men have been lost to its depths. Her father takes the loss of the men the hardest.
Belle's father is a kind man. Her mother had died when both Belle and her father were too young for her loss. Belle doesn't remember her mother or how her father was before her death. She never felt the loss keenly, but she reckons her father still does. He never remarried. Belle thinks losing her mother made him more sensitive to the losses that others incur. So he takes the losses of men harder than when the loss of an expensive shipment of spices means that there is hardly money for food, let alone a maid. So Belle learns to clean and sew. Her father is also a practical man, so even when there is money in abundance – which her father never saves, but gives away – and money enough for a maid and a cook and guards, he encourages her to practice these skills.
Belle's father also encourages her to read. He brings her books, but she prefers when he tells her tales himself, weaving intricately detailed stories of distant lands that she hopes to see herself one day. Her father says the ships are too dangerous, but that there is a new design that may be safer. Or maybe she can travel with him next time he journeys overland. He promises her that soon, when she is older, he will take her to see the world.
At night, after dinner, when her father is tired and his voice low he tells her of love. Belle's mother had been the most beautiful woman in the world (except you now, my love) though to anyone else's eyes she might have seemed plain. Belle spent many nights sat at her father's elbow as he told her that while loving someone made you vulnerable; he had drawn strength enough from just one shared glance with her mother. He had loved her instantly. How even knowing how it had ended, knowing he would live a lifetime of heartache, he would make the same decisions again and pursue their short life together. Sometimes, he admits quietly that he still loves her mother enough to hate her for leaving him.
Belle learns much from these stories. For that is her father's greatest strength: he loves her, and her dead mother, and the men he loses to the sea, and their families. Later, when there has been a calming of the sea and a great many successful shipments and her father's home has grown to a castle, to a village of employees, to a town, Belle's father loves every single one of the people who live within the city limits. And it is this that leads him to a desperate situation when reports bring the news that the Ogre Army has suddenly swung southwards, headed for the sea. Their merchant town lies directly in its path.
The Ogre Wars have been fought for a long time. There had been a Great War many, many years previously and the ogres had been beaten back, somehow. There are rumours that this time around, there is a dark witch who sits beside the Ogre King in his chambers and whispers orders to him. It is said that he is besotted, and so sends his armies wherever she instructs. Belle thinks: if this is true, then love must be insanity, unable to see or react to reason. Untameable. She thinks of her father who, more than two decades following her loss, will sometimes lock himself in his rooms to read old letters from her mother. She has seen them, and the letters are not all love letters. In fact, they are mostly descriptive of what he is missing at home while he is abroad. Belle had found them boring and repetitive to read. Her father tells her that these letters are the dearest to him. They are, he says, a door between her mother then and himself now. He likes to think that he is bringing her mother along with him through his life's adventure, that somehow he is binding them together. Belle thinks that this is madness, too.
So, the only loves Belle has ever known of have been the love of her father for her mother, herself and his people, and the mysterious love of the Ogre King for the dark witch. She has always preferred adventure stories to romance, but in an effort to understand, she takes to her book collection and searches for another perspective. Love, she thinks, is complicated. Her life would be dark if her father did not love her. His life would be lighter if he had loved her mother less. The legends she finds within the pages of her books do not bring clarification. Love makes people do things which they would not otherwise do, and Belle is a sensible girl and does not comprehend it.
She has friends, and she asks them. Her friends say that they love this guard or that scullery boy, but they love them because those men are strong and beautiful. Belle isn't sure that this is true love, in any sense she is familiar with. Her friends fall around like idiots when these men pass, though, and Belle wonders whether her father did the same when he first knew her mother.
Her father has always impressed upon her the importance of marrying for love, but one night he calls for her. There has been an offer of marriage, he tells her. Sir Gaston's army has been successful before when combating the ogres. They have weapons and armoury and experience that her father is not sure he could provide his people otherwise. Belle has agreed to the union before her father can even fully voice his apology. Belle has seen what love has done to her father and the Ogre King and she does not understand it. She does not want it. There is no loss involved for her, but she understands why her father's face falls as it does at her words. His true love has shaped and wreaked destruction on his whole life, but he still does not regret it. He had hoped he had raised her to fight for love as he does, when he reads old letters for the thousandth time. Belle loves her father, but she does not understand the other kind of love. She smiles, and lies. Father, I understand. This is a great sacrifice. But I am willing, you see? Maybe in time I can love Gaston the way you loved mother?
Gaston comes the next day. He is handsome, yes, and very tall. Belle is sure he will have to kneel to kiss her on their wedding day, or else she shall have to stand upon a large box. He brings her a rose, a ring, and a book. Belle is touched by the gesture, although she sees that it is one brought a long time ago by her father from Turkey, if she recalls. Her father is trying to fight for a love between her and Gaston. She loves her father, so she does not look to him when she receives the book from Gaston. She curtsies prettily and thanks him and takes his arm for a stroll outside.
Gaston turns out to be friendly, and kind. He has her in hysterics as he imitates the chief palace guard, waddling up and down in front of a row of rose bushes as Belle lays on his cloak on the grass. "Now you get out of here!" he exclaims, gesturing with a pointed finger just as the guard does. They spend a whole happy week together in this way. He reads, too, but as he lives an adventure he prefers history books and war manuals. "Someone must fight", he proclaims, continuing that he'd rather it be him as he knows what he's doing. He tells her of a province which is recruiting children to fight. He's bull-headed sometimes, but Belle supposes that he rather needs to be. She wears the ring happily enough, but sometimes catches him looking at her sadly. Maybe there was someone he loved who he'd rather wore it, and he'd lost her – for that is what happens in love.
Before he leaves for another battle with the ogres, he brings her seven new books, piling them into her arms and knocking a finger on her nose affectionately. "Try not to read all of them before I get back!" He says, and then is gone.
Belle feels a strange ache at his leaving. She has never loved a friend before, but she thinks Gaston may be teaching her how, with his easy words and gestures. There is no heat in her breast, as she has read about, but there is suddenly a deep-rooted respect and affection for Gaston. It has surprised her. She returns to her rooms, and finds another book on the dresser, with a note. Just in case I'm late. G. Although this book looks the most exciting, she saves it until last, hoping that he won't be late.