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Chapter II - The Advisor

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Typically, he would rise at 4:00 a.m.

It was 10:57 a.m.

Then, he would go to the forest. He remained there until 7:00 a.m.

It was 10:57 a.m.

Seldom did he remain longer—but always he was in his seat by 10:45 a.m.

It was 10:58 a.m.

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"Raphael!"

Jean knocked several times, puncturing a hole in the door—no, not actually. He would never do such—unless it got Raphael into the business room. For Christ's sake, he would do anything to get that boy in there—or would he?

"Raphael! Come," he leaned his head onto the door in near defeat, "your advisor is not in peak condition this morning and he wishes to be in bed at this hour, too."

A sleek wolf slithered past Jean then. Suddenly standing on two legs, Raphael spoke, "I am not in bed, nor in third-person."

Jean whipped around, spinning about in his slippers and slipping slightly. "Bonjour, Your Grace." He grunted and straightened himself up, then took the cigar Raphael offered him. "I was merely doing as you do, speaking to and from and of yourself; you so often are caged in that mind of yours."

Raphael snaked over to the window—even on two legs he still snaked—and from the clear pane, raindrops of the outside reflected in his eyes. Or could it be the other way around—inside to out? The poor beast's face slumped more that morning, more than Jean had ever seen it slump before. A quiet sadness loomed above the count's head, sending rain showers over his body.

"Lovely morning, no?" Jean asked with a joking persona.

Raphael did not even chuckle—Jean pursed his lips and puffed his cigar and peered off into the lush, green otherworld the poor creature often disappeared to. His forehead crinkled up like the cigar as he looked off in the great green distance for Raphael's thoughts and wishes and wants.

"'Tis no use. I cannot go on like this."

The cigar burned bright red; so did his forehead.

"Jean, it makes two years that—"

"Not again! I can't do it again!" The aging man stumbled away from the window of melancholy and far-away thought and yet no thought.

"But you must."

He clasped his wrinkled hands over his ears, so as not to hear the beast, but the cigar singed slightly his skin. The aging man yowled. Raphael stood.

"Lovely morning," the beast contended.

"Yes, lovely morning," Jean agreed—the cigar smoke whipping around in his face, whirling him into a trance.

"A lovely morning to go into town—

"Yes."

"and then to search for a ripe young woman—"

"Yes."

"and bring her back to me, behind these walls."

"Yes."

Raphael smiled for the first time the whole morning—or was it a smile?

More knocks. "Your Grace?" A servant boy peeked out from behind the tall and dark door, like the extraneous moon hoping to be seen and yet not over massive storm clouds.

"Yes, come, boy. What have you got there?"

And did the boy not see Jean there?

"Do not be timid; how I loathe timidity."

With his cigar and singed forehead and hair?

"Give me the letter, boy."

Do not leave, yet, please.

"Will that be all?"

"Yes, Your Grace."

"You may leave now."

Raphael took his seat, commencing reading.

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Dear Count Raphael Lésagero of Bordeaux,

I should like to bring up an important matter, one you mustn't overlook. My name is Miss Dalia Elaine O'Bruadair. I am from the Confederate States of America and have recently moved from there to Bordeaux. Many servants, including myself, work at the Thibodeaux Manor on the east side of the city. We all work exceedingly hard in everything we do, from sufferings of the house to sufferings of the land. They are workers, people I can relate to and understand well, unlike the servants of your castle.

Having said that, each day, the lord and lady of the manor are to give us two meals. At the end of each month, they are to pay us for our service. Once each day is over, many servants leave for their homes. I live at the manor, however, and on more than one occasion have received no food at all. The same goes for other servants. I have no family to take care of, thus, do not have such problems aroused as other men or women might. But, the lord and lady have nothing to do with this. It is your servants. Several people at your castle are intentionally thieving food and money—the food and money meant for the working class of Bordeaux.

I am sure you have other matters to attend to. But please do not overlook this issue due to it being a rumor as of lately. I ask that you please take this issue into consideration, punish the servants who are responsible, and add strict surveillance regarding food and money.

In your honor, Miss Dalia O'Bruadair

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The cigar was almost burned out. Raphael appeared more frustrated the farther he read, and Jean covered his hands over his head, feeling over his coarse hair.

"Damn those servants." He crushed the cigar between his teeth, doing so as much out of fire as out of fear. The parchment waved back and forth in his trembling paws.

Jean lifted his head: bags crinkled under the beast's eyes, just above the line where his fur began. Raphael appeared to be lost.

"What is the matter, Your Grace?" The advisor pushed his glasses up on his nose.

The creature tensed up, the rain shower above his head no longer dull and dreary, but thunderous rather. He gripped the armrest, claws digging into the piece of furniture. Then the count laughed, his boiling anger suddenly solidifying into sarcasm. "Jean," he cackled, "do you deem the idea of my wife being of the village beneficial?"

The advisor cocked his head, burning and desiring to know what Raphael had meant by that. "A count marry a commoner? You are just the same as you were ten years ago," a skeptic, Devilish look from Raphael, "in the head."

"Well, if not beneficial, then clever. Would not it make sense for a village girl, compared to a favored woman of wealth? If, promptly, a daughter from the village vanishes, no one will pay attention. But if a daughter of prominence and ripeness does not return from her visit—"

"Then the news shall spread like wildfire."

The monster slithered closer through the air, his colossal frame sliding and twisting towards Jean. His vibrant eyes pulsed with violent intent; they were murderously beautiful, astounding. "Precisely, my dear friend—lovely old friend."

Jean sighed, looking off somewhere and muttering under his breath. "So, again you do not listen to me. You are afraid, that is all—afraid of what a prominent lady would say once she saw you, or what she would tell her gentleman father when she sprints out of the gates, screaming." He huffed, then his speech crescendoed. "Well, frankly, I am sick of inviting maids of manors and commoners to come, only for you to turn these women away later because you find them uninteresting, unattractive. When you ask for a servant, you receive a servant—not the wife you so romanticize in your mind." Jean crossed his arms and kicked his leg on the table, frustrated and knowing that the situation was hopeless. He watched the count, noting Raphael's quivering lip, and his cheekbones, like two defined planks of wood, slowly rising upward and bending into the creases under his eyes. The fur on his back spiked, shivering and tingling from a fervor too terribly wonderful.

"Just read it, Jean."

The count gave it to his advisor, shaking, delirious almost. He lifted his leg into his chair and held his foot, rocking slightly and gazing out the window. Jean squinted, skeptical of Raphael's strange demeanor. He pushed his glasses up again onto his nose and commenced reading.

The advisor read it promptly, then lowered the letter, gaping, his eyes bulging, almost bursting out of his head. "No, no, please, not an American."

Count Raphael snatched the letter from him, eyes scanning it over and over, repeatedly. Was it true? Was what he had just read real? He searched for a trace of this Dalia O'Bruadair; wrapped up in the white fold of the paper was her scent, in the curls and waves of the handwriting was her dignity and determination.

"Jean, who is this most tenacious woman?" he asked, wild, hungry.

"I will have to go into town to ask my longtime friends what of her." A desolate pause; eyes ceased to move, and hearts stopped. "I do not understand why she calls it the 'Confederate States of America' now, though. It is a part of the Union once more." He turned to face Raphael in a business-like manner, stating, "Those Americans cannot accept anything they do not want to. Stubborn is what they are."

"Hush with your babbling! I want to know more," Raphael demanded. "I want to have her." A passionate knot tied itself inside of Raphael during that moment. Perspiration threaded off his fur as he replied: "I desire for her to break the curse. Bring her to me, Jean."

"Of course," the advisor replied, defeated. He stood up and asked, "When would you like her?"

"No more than the third time the sun strikes the ground," Raphael butted in at once.

The advisor stood, grabbing his books and letters from nearby families. He stopped at the door, his hand resting on the knob. A smile crept onto his face, the heat from the fire that emitted off Raphael traversing to him. But the smile faded. He knew it would never work out, just like all the other times. Raphael's dreams of his mother would persist, and so would his quarrels with the servants.

Once the man departed, the beast found himself left alone in the pale dusk. Must and old furniture surrounded the room, furniture that his mother once sat in, settees and chairs she lounged on, reading fairy tales to him.

He gripped the letter tighter. All of his previous concerns vanished, as she was living at the Thibodeaux Manor and worked as a servant. However, unlike other ladies of the village, she possessed an education and acknowledged the city's issues. No woman had ever expressed her concerns for Bordeaux, besides his mother.

His mother