The day that Roselle left was the real start of my new life. We started the day as normal, or what had become normal. We got up at the crack of dawn to forage for herbs and to check up on our clients. There were babies to be delivered, bones to be mended and hearts to be healed. All the time, Roselle took time to remember and care for everyone we met. She had a mind like a steel trap, she remembered someone's cousin who had come back from the city after an apprenticeship, she knew all of the children's favorite colors and knew by looking at a house who had died in the night inside. She was an angel. When I first met her, she was a blessing. I had been wandering in the woods for days, getting more and more disheveled. She started speaking French to me, and when she saw that I didn't understand, switched to English. "Are you lost?" I nodded. "Come with me." It wasn't a request, it was a statement. In my heart I knew that this was the woman who could help me understand why one moment I had been sitting in my room in Gilbert, Arizona and the next I was wandering the woods of southern France. For three years, I followed her. I learned from her and tried to emulate her. The day she left, she said to me, "It is time. I will leave you here. It will be easier to adjust for you if you stay. The house and animals are yours. I would suggest taking one of the girls as an apprentice." And just like that, she left. I returned to the house a little in shock, but felt like I did when I met Roselle, like it was the right thing at the moment.

A year and a half passed, and I continued doing Roselle's work. I became the best midwife in the area, took on an apprentice, Sabrina, continued to learn and add to my knowledge, was the maid of honor at my apprentice's wedding and got to love the French countryside. Everyday brought its own little miracles. Sure, compared the world I came from they would be minor even mundane things, but to us in that time they were miracles. A child with fever would survive through the night, a struggling farm would find good fortune, the winter held off long enough for the crops. Sabrina and her husband, Braden, moved in with me into my extra room and soon they were expecting. The energy in the house changed. Roselle taught me how to read a room, but at a deeper level. "Everything has a magic Isabel. And every magic has a color which can tell you more that you want to know. You must be able to see what color it radiates," she would tell me. Our house went from a calm, white magic to a more energized green. The energy of life. Any living thing had it, but some more than others, and you always could tell who was expecting because of the slightly green glow around the individual, and the others they were carrying. By my guess, this sign of life didn't appear until the second trimester, so not as quickly to be useful in telling if a girl was pregnant, but useful enough in those times to tell if the child would be stillborn or not. Sabrina's child was healthy, for now, but every woman knew the risks of having a child in those times.

Sabrina and Braden were with his family on the other side of the forest when I felt the change. It wasn't a sudden change, but subtle, like the smell of winter in the middle of summer. I was working outside in our garden, tending to the herbs when a shiver went down my spine. I thought nothing of it, sometimes the local fairies liked to play tricks, especially on people who knew they existed, like me. However, when I had to go calm down the chickens and the goats, I knew something was up. The typical magical beings didn't bother me much, and I could usually see their invisible bodies illuminated in yellow, the magic of mischief, but I could see nothing of the sort around that day. It was as if all of the sudden, I could feel something lost. I settled down the chickens and goats and ran inside. It was getting dark when I looked at my wall of mirrors. "Isabel, remember, you cannot see magic correctly if you yourself are not calm. White is pure and when you channel pure magic, you can see the truth." Even gone, Roselle's words of wisdom would still guide me. I took a deep breath and calmed my mind. A blank canvas showcases color best. But what kind of color would this portray? I couldn't even see the color of magic that disturbed me. I shook off that thought and cleared my mind again, looking at each mirror carefully. I was drawn to the castle mirror, and then after I decided the magic was coming from that direction, a face appeared on that mirror. Well, face is generous. It was a talking teapot.

"Oh Isabel! You are there! You have to come quickly and talk some sense into the Master!" Mrs. Potts looked rather worried for a talking teapot.

"I can't really leave right now. Sabrina is out visiting family and I cannot leave disappear in the middle of summer when people need me. I will come at my regularly scheduled time. If I just need to talk some sense into him, just get him on the mirror."

"He is in a right state of mind right now, I don't know if I can get him to come to the mirror-"

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" A voice roared on the other end of the mirror, outside of my line of sight. Mrs. Potts shivered. She turned to the disembodied voice.

"I'm talking to Isabel since you have lost all sense of humanity! This is wrong and you know it!"

"Alright, Adam get on the mirror and explain what just happened," I said. A hulking form settled down behind Mrs. Potts and refused to look at me. "I will get the truth out eventually, but it will be far less painful for everyone if you just tell me what is going on." The form slumped.

"I'm losing my humanity," growled the form.

"Tell me something new Adam."

"Well...there was an old man who ended up at the castle."

"How, I thought the spell meant that the castle was nearly impossible to find?"

"Apparently there was a storm and a tree was struck by lightning that led him to my doorstep."

"A storm? There wasn't any storm…around the time of this "storm" did you feel a strange magic?" Adam nodded. "Okay, that's one mystery kind of solved. So you showed him some hospitality and let him go on his way right? Right Adam? Look at me!" Adam turned his face finally to meet my eyes.

For most, Adam's appearance would be shocking, and the first time I saw it it certainly was. Adam stood 10 feet tall and was, by my guess, a combination of a wolf, lion, bear and, well his stubbornness was very goat-like. It would have been fine if his face were just beast, but his eyes were strikingly human. It provided a stark contrast and was honestly one of the most frightening things about his appearance. I could handle a beast at least 10 feet tall, with fangs and horns, but one that obviously had human intelligence and sorrow could be a bit much.

"No I didn't. Well, he was shown hospitality and then as he was leaving, he took a rose. All of the sudden, I felt it, the primal urge. The next thing I remember was locking the dungeon door on him."

"So just go and let him out! There is a simple solution to this. Prove you have become a better person." Adam just shook his head.

"That's what I was going to do, but he is going to tell someone, and so far, nobody has been actively looking for me. I don't know if the magic that has clouded our location from almost everyone would hold up with an entire beast hunt from the villagers. And I don't want the villagers coming to look for me in case I can't break the spell and I hurt them."

"So what are you going to do, just let that poor man rot in a cell?"

"I was hoping you had a memory spell that you could perform on your next trip out here."

"Magic doesn't fix everything you know, but I might have one. I have to do some research though. Have limited interactions with him, it will be easier that way to erase you from his mind. Put his meals out while he sleeps and stuff like that. I'm going to be coming in a couple of days when Sabrina comes home." I sighed. "Adam, since I'm calling, what about the flower?" He tensed at that.

"It is getting worse. Much faster."

"That's what I was afraid of, the spell is exponentially speeding up. You need to be able to find someway to restore your humanity yourself."

"The true love-"

"I don't think that was all that that spell included. I still think that you creating your own humanity has something to do with it too. Please just try while I am trying to help you out of this situation. That's all I ask."

"Alright, I will try."

"Thank you. Now get some sleep and get that man some food and blankets. For some reason your dungeons are the most impractical things up in those towers with open windows."

"It's supposed to help the prisoners talk."

"That's a lovely visual I didn't need Adam. Goodbye." I waved my hand and cut out the connection.