Hello readers. This is just a one shot featuring my OC Beast who seems to be appearing in all my stories hahaha. Anyway, i won;t be continuing with this one guys, but I hope you enjoy all the same.
Beast woke to the slightest pitter patter, and she opened her eyes lazily, and yawned wide, her tongue lolling out and then in again. The blanket covering her was warm and soft, and she didn't want to move from it. The tips of her ears and nose were slightly hilly, indicating that it was a cold morning. She closed her eyes again and shifted herself further beneath the blanket.
The castle was quiet. She could only faintly hear the maids starting to move around, and she swore she could here Lumiere somewhere nearby, probably exclaiming grandly about something.
Her mind wandered to her guardians fondly, and a small smile twisted her lips.
She wasn't sure if she had fallen asleep again, but she got startled by someone coming near her bed in the library. She lifted her head and tossed it, throwing the blanket from her to land on the floor below her high window seat bed. A thin shaped moved into the bluish grey gloom of the library, some of the clasps on the books glinting sinisterly.
Beast huffed loudly as a warning, standing. She lifted her nose and sniffed.
Lumiere!?
Beast could have laughed at herself from the realisation.
"Lumi!" she called softly.
"Beast!" he said happily, walking further in, the library door slightly ajar behind him. "You must open the curtain! Quick girl." He was making his way to the stairs that led up to her bed. He was wearing his usual height-of-the-fashion golden jacket with silver embroidery. His stockings were startlingly white and his boots gleaming like tar.
Beast turned and gripped the curtain in her teeth, throwing her head to the side. The sudden light made her lower her head and shut her eyes, but she blinked away the initial pain and looked up.
"What is that!?" She gasped, terrified. The whole world was covered in something white. The gardens were swallowed by it, the statues being suffocated, even the gargoyles could barely be seen beneath the hardened mist.
Beast stepped back away from the window. Lumiere laughed loudly, and ruffled the long fringe on her head. "My Beautiful Beast, that is snow! But I suppose you've never seen it." He said in his French accent.
Snow. She had heard of it. Cold and hard and sometimes so harsh you would lose parts of your body, but she'd also heard how much fun you could have among it.
"Wow," she said quietly, rising to place her front paws on the window sills. "Is Belle awake yet!?" she asked suddenly, turning to Lumiere.
"No my dear, but if there's anyone either of those two are eager to wake up to, it's you." He said cheerily, and watched as she leaped from her perch next to the window and bolt out of the library.
Beast passed through the door and turned down a corridor towards the entrance hall of the castle. Maids cried out as she raced past, and she heard Cogsworth's unimpressed grumbling as she almost toppled into him. The palace pooch barked happily at her as she passed by Miss Pots and Chip's room, but Beast paid no attention to it. To be honest, she never actually liked that dog.
She almost slipped as she skidded and turned to race up the main staircase, her claws clicking on the polished stone. She reached the top and danced right, going
towards the main bedchamber.
There were two guards outside their chamber, but they didn't dare bar Beast's way as she placed one front paw on the door to support herself, and used the other to pull down the handle of their door.
When it clicked open, she dropped silently, and pushed it slightly open with her nose, slipping inside without so much as a creak of the door. With her head lowered, she approached the king-sized bed.
Since Belle had saved the castle with her love for the Master Beast, his room had been returned to its former Glory with some hard work and determination. The bed was made of black hardwood, the mattress stuffed with the feathers of swans, the red covers lavish and thick.
Beast the King, known as Master, Prince, Your Grace, your eminence, anything really, had a muscled arm curved around his lady wife, Belle, who looked kind even in her sleep. Beast remembered seeing her sympathetic eyes curled with so much caring the day she had rescued her from the circus. The blue-dyed stripes in her fur were still a reminder of the colourful cruel life she had been pulled from with great relief. The Prince had also taken a great liking to the strange Hyena very quickly, and she had earned more rights than most of the village people within the year of living with them.
Prince shivered slightly in his sleep. Beast was surprised he hadn't reverted to his Beast form in this weather. His changing ability did have its advantages, and a thick coat of fur covering his body during winter was definitely one of them.
At first no one had known about his ability to change back to a Beast form at will, including himself. Then one day a few raiders had decided to steal away a carriage containing Belle's father, Maurice, as he went to his favourite fair.
Beast had been told that The Prince had been furious, and determined to ride out with his men, and Belle beside him, to re-capture the gold and carriage. Maurice thankfully had been unharmed and released, being the one who came back to tell the tale to his daughter.
But The Prince hadn't ever been so mad, especially since his turn as a human.
"These men humiliated and threatened my father in law. I'm not going to let them get their bellies full on food that they paid with our gold." He had yelled determinedly to his guards. Belle had been as fearless and as angry as her husband.
And when they finally found the thieves, one shot an arrow into the Prince's shoulder. He had roared, and in an instant, was larger than any bear, stronger than any ox, and angrier than any wolf. Her had throttled the men into clasps and tossed them into their cage carriage.
It was Belle who had informed him of his change, and she who had assured the suddenly ashamed and terrified prince that he was not going to harm anyone.
After that, he had been taking both forms comfortably. After all, he had been a Beast for many years, and some things felt more natural to him in that form than any other.
So his little Beast blinked at his sleeping form, thinking on how much she preferred him as a monster, than as a human. Belle had secretly told her that she never minded which one he was, though she told everyone else she loved his human form more.
"I fell in love with him while he looked like a vicious monster. Sometimes seeing a human there instead is a little…strange." She had said, and Beast laid in her lap.
Belle shifted in her sleep while Beast looked at them both. Then she smiled, and gripped their thick bed-covering in her monstrously sized teeth, and started pulling, whining her Hyena chuckle.
The Queen and Kind mumbled in their sleep, gripping closer to each other in the sudden cold. Beast remembered that she had fur, so any chill she was feeling was probably ten-fold to these fur-less things without a blanket. She saw Belle's hand searchingly reach around them both for the blanket, then raised her head when she
realised it was gone.
Beast dropped the blanket from her jaws and whined, skipping slightly side to side. Belle turned her head to see her, and smiled.
"Beast!" She said with a small laugh.
"What has she done?" The big Beast mumbled, hiding his face into his lover's side. Belle wore a simple bed dress, but the prince only wore light pants that went to his
knees.
"Taken out blanket." Belle said. "What do you want?" That smile again. The smile that reassured Beast, and the Prince, that no matter what they looked like- twisted and hairy and terrifying- that they would be loved.
Beast looked around the room and saw Belle's thick red coat hanging on a coat-rack nearby, and padded towards it, then returned and threw it over the two with a defined flick of her head. Belle looked at it with a raised eyebrow, then her eyes and mouth widened into a grinning face.
She threw her legs from the bed and half-ran to the window, Beast following happily.
"Belle come back." Prince whined, his arm stretching out, reaching for her. Beast turned and grinned at him evilly, then stuck her tongue out. He groaned, dropped his arm, and 'plonked' his face back into the mattress, his shoulders shifting with an annoyed sigh.
"Why did we save you?" he said, his voice muffled.
"Snow!" Belle exclaimed happily, laughing, and grabbed her coat and boots.
Whether the Prince was following or not, Belle and Beast raced out the chamber and down the corridor, down the stairs, and ordered the doors open as they ran towards them. The guards only managed it just in time as the two came to the doors and raced out. Belle stepped before the steps, knowing the dangers of ice on hard surfaces, but Beast kept right on running.
Too late.
She slipped on the frost of the steps and went tumbling down, landing at the base. She shook herself out with a care, and leaped towards the closest mound of snow.
"Beast, are you alright?" Belle gasped as she carefully stepped her way down, seeing one of the yardmen coming her way with a mop for the frosty stairs. She hopped down to the snow drift, and Beast's head popped from within it.
"It's freezing!" the hyena yelled, her teeth chattering, and she sifted forward until she had slipped from the snow mound. Her fur was soaked and her ears were tucked close to her neck to stop from freezing solid.
"Well of course. Snow is frozen water." Belle said, touching some of the drifts lightly, pulling wool gloves from her pocket. Beast made no answer. She was shivering dangerously. Her kind were used to the boiling, searing, burning heat. When the rains came they happily swam in the flooded plains, not afraid of the water, but water
was not necessarily cold.
Belle watched worriedly, then said loudly, "I know what we can do," and gripped Beast lightly on the shoulder, pulling her up the stairs again.
At Belle's polite request, despite the early morning, Madame de la Grande Bouche, a beautiful woman who had been turned into a wardrobe during the curse, quickly sewed up a scarf and even a small jacket designed personally for Beast. The material was from some of Belle's old dresses that had been moth eaten. Mostly they were sent down to the villager to the poorer people, but the left-overs served perfectly for Beast's new clothes.
"It feels strange." Beast mumbled, turning on the spot, feeling how the fabric rubbed against her fur, sometimes pulling uncomfortably.
"It'll keep you warm, which is more important." Madame Bouche said cheerily, and waved them out as they once again attempted to tackle the snow, laughing as they jumped and rolled. Beast quickly forgot she even had the jacket on, because the snow was so much fun. It crunched and muffled at the same time as she moved around. The cold bit at her paws and exposed, thin-fur covered legs. She yelled out happily as she jumped into deep snow and rolled, her legs flailing without pattern or purpose. Belle leaped and her and they rolled, laughing and crying out 'ouch' as they pushed and shoved each other.
Belle stood up and started making a snow ball. Beast spotted it, and ran quickly behind a tree. Belle laughed and followed. As she entered beneath the canopy of the leafless tree, Beast smiled to herself behind the trunk, then bashed her shoulder into the hard bark. Belle looked up, dumbfounded, just in time to see the snow clumps falling onto her head and face. She stumbled back and fell in the snow, then they laughed happily together.
The Prince Beast groaned as soon as Belle left the room. Two years ago, if she had done that, a fear never explained would have gripped at him and he barely would move until she came back. It had taken him so long to see new people after the curse had been broken. Only his servants felt familiar to him…and Belle. She was his soft, smooth, love of his life and sometimes his anxiety would make him shake, with her gone.
But he'd grown better, and now he easily could go into large crowds without her presence. But still, something was always missing without her there, it was just less severe of a pain.
Even the bloody hyena Beast they had adopted had grown so attached to him, that when she went out wandering for hours at a time, he missed her. Belle loved that Beast as well.
And the thing could talk.
Certain magic from the country she had come from allowed creatures like herself to communicate. It was why she had been taken as a pup for the circus; her mother had been a rare wonder of the talking Hyena's. Beast barely remembered her mother, and had no desire to go back to anywhere she had come from.
The Beast Prince raised his head at the sound of them playing outside. Today was one of the rare days he had off from his royal duties, which were few. The country he lived had not been ruled by his family since the curse, and only now was negotiations being made once more for that ownership and ruling power to be returned to him.
Him and Belle.
He saw tiny shadows floating around the room, and glanced again at the window, seeing the light flakes failing past the glass.
Snow. So that's what Beast had gotten so excited about.
Despite the lacking presence of the two things he cared most for, he smiled. Even though the snow always reminded him of the years where it always snowed around his castle. The curse had denied the castle and its grounds the sunshine, even in the height of summer. Frost, snow, sleet, that was all he had known for years. But with the breaking of the curse came the melting of the snow, and he'd been able to roll in the grass with Belle by his side for the first time in a long time.
The Prince couldn't help it. He rose from bed and grabbed his long coat. He wouldn't need anything else. He planned on shifting to his monstrous form once he went outside.
Every time he heard Belle tell someone she preferred and loved his human form, he knew she was lying. He didn't know why, but a lot of the time he was more comfortable as a big hairy beast than he was as a human, and he knew she secretly did too.
Maybe it was the familiarity of it. She'd spent more time with him as a human but somehow it was less…special. She loved either one of his faces, but she'd only initially loved one.
And he felt stronger, more impressive, even more tender as a beast. Beast the Hyena loved to cuddle him in the form, and Belle like laying on his soft chest while they rested by the fire, her head tucked beneath his ox-bearded chin.
And he felt he could protect her more from the world that way.
He just…felt more, as a beast. It was strange. He had once hated the form. Now he relied upon it.
He made his way down the steps, through the corridors, smiling at servants and replying to their cheery 'good-mornings'.
"Your Grace!" Exclaimed one of the maids, Lumiere's mistress, approaching down the entrance hall stairs with a load of washing in her arms.
"Babette, good morning."
"Good morning." She said cheerily. "I love Beast's new clothes."
"New clothes?" he asked with a confused smile. "Clothes must look weird on a Hyena such as herself."
"Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you would have known." She laughed. "Madame Bouche made her some warm clothes so she didn't freeze her tail off in the snow." Babatte's accent was lovely, so smooth, and other maids were very jealous of her beauty.
His Grace could see why Lumiere had fallen for her, and the light-limbed manservant had confessed to him that he planned on proposing soon, and asked his master if he could remove the girl from her duties so she could be his wife and do what she liked.
"But she's my favourite maid." The Beast prince had said with a laugh. "She knows exactly how to do everything to mine and Belle's liking. She's perfect in her job."
But of course he'd only been joking around, and granted Lumiere permission to marry her and would remove her from her duties as soon as she wished.
It was so good to see so much love in his castle.
"It'll be interesting to see Beast in clothes." His Grace said, "Oh, and Babette?"
"Yes your eminence." She said.
"My chambers fire place needs to be prepared every night and morning from now on. Beast pulled our bed sheets off this morning and we almost froze."
Babette laughed, then curtsied, saying, "Of course your majesty," and turned away.
The Prince smiled, then continued one his way.
The guards opened the doors without him asking, and the cold rushed to his face, almost like a giggle. Small snow-flakes flowed in and teetered on the air around his face. One of his guards tried to catch one as the Prince stepped outside, stopping on top of the outdoor stairs.
He breathed in through his nose heavily, ignoring how it stung the inside of his nose. And the way the cold spike into his exposed skin was merely temporary.
He turned his eyes to movement in the snow, and laughed just as Beast slipped and fell with her side bashing the ground painfully, but she paid no notice to it. Beast heard his laugh.
"Hey Prince!" She called, getting to her feet.
"So you decided to get out of bed?" his love asked, standing smugly next to Beast with her arms folded.
"Don't make me regret it." He growled with a smile, and the two turned back to their child-like games. The Prince cocked his head as he watched them, then tilted his head up to the white, white sky. He closed his eyes and allowed what Beast called his 'teddy bear form' to wrap his human self into its arms, and soon he was three feet taller, covered in fur with horns twisting back from his forehead. The cold shrieked away from his fur and he barely felt it as he sighed out happily.
Beast and Belle had their back turned and were staring out at the gardens. He lowered his head mischievously as an idea came to him, and he stepped forward slowly and silently.
When he came to the last couple of steps, he stopped, then tensed his long twisted legs, and jumped.
Belle and Beast yelled out as he collided into them, wrapping one in each of his huge, muscled arms. He laughed loudly as they crashed and then slid into the snow, tumbling and kicking up the white powdery ice.
"That was so not fair!" Beast exclaimed, mockingly angry, and gripped onto one of his horns with her jaws, huffing and chuckling like a hyena. Belle was breathing heavily and laughing as she watched her Prince growl out loudly as his head was tugged side to side, slightly painfully. A Hyena's jaws were so powerful that they easily ate bone and horn, and his were not indestructible just because they were still attached to his head.
"Come one let him go." Belle said, grabbing Beast lightly around the chest, pulling her back. Beast huffed, but let go, and the Prince kicked snow in her face, and in response Belle threw some in his.
The servants went about the castle all day, occasionally stopping and looking out the windows to watch the strange family playing.
They played until even extra coats couldn't keep the chill from getting in, and as the sun started to disappear behind the trees, they quickly retreated inside, running to the dining hall to cuddle next to the roaring fire.
And a day later all three came down with horrific colds.
The End
