"I'm off to the fair!" Maurice exclaimed, one arm held triumphantly aloft, the other wrapped tightly around his long-suffering daughter's waist. Belle gazed at him, her expression a mixture of pride and barely concealed amusement.
For as long as Belle could remember, her father had been trying and failing to design a machine that chopped wood. He wasn't doing this on commission. No one, as far as she knew, had asked him to create this machine or, indeed, intended to buy it. The villagers of the provincial town in which they lived, as Belle cruelly sang every morning, were poor with a capital P. A simple axe would cost these folk a year's wages: there was no way they could afford the automated version of wood-cutting her crazy old father was attempting to design.
Nevertheless, he persisted, and today he'd finally managed to cobble together a working prototype. Belle knew this was a huge moment for her father. It was also a huge moment for her, too: it meant that he'd leave the house for the first time since her mother had died, and she'd finally get the alone-time she'd been craving for the last ten years.
"It works! You did it! You really did it!" said Belle melodiously, in a tone that was only half as patronising as the one she reserved for singing about her neighbours' failings. "Let's get you packed up and ready to leave first thing in the morning."
Belle was unusual for a woman of the time - and, in fact, a person of any time - in that she had superhuman strength. The townsfolk had never thought much of Belle - a fact that she thought was due to her love of reading, but that was actually due to her love of treating people like they were beneath her - yet they had to admit she was handy to have around when you needed anything heavy lifted. She'd been known to hoist a fully grown man at least twice her size onto the back of a horse as if she were picking a pebble off the beach. It was really odd. Maurice had insisted it wasn't odd, but it definitely was.
"If you bring the cart around, I'll lift the machine onto it," Belle announced, disentangling herself from Maurice's grasp and heading towards her father's second-favourite creation to get a better view. This'll be a two-hand job, she thought to herself, as she assessed the girth of her father's bone-headed contraption.
Maurice nodded, running one hand through his snow white hair. He couldn't believe it. He finally had an invention worth exhibiting at the science fair, which was inexplicably held every week in the nearby village of Hingston. He could finally make his daughter proud. A shy grin crept across his face.
He exited his workshop via the back door. The air was cool against his face, making his eyes water and giving a ruddiness to his cheeks. He looked up at the night sky, full of twinkling stars and - for the first time in a long time, he felt - possibility.