Compared to the last time Hilda left it, Marianne was far less anxious, but not by a great margin.

It was oddly confident in her return, which bothered it. Was it really hoping to find a friend in her? Foolish hope for a beast. That simply wouldn't do, no...no. That couldn't be it. It simply didn't want its prey to so trivially walk away. It couldn't think any other way, it wasn't meant to think in general. All it had to do was spill blood, it lived for that, its whole being craved it. It wasn't supposed to feel anything else, these feelings only distracted it...and yet it let it happen.

Chewing on the food Hilda brought helped empty its head. It focused on their taste and tuned out everything else until it started thinking about something else entirely. What other tastes were there? So far, it knew only two and they were completely different. Did other things taste more like blood or these treats? Or were they all different? And for that matter, what did human flesh taste like? It wasn't exactly thrilled to find that out, but it was still curious...up until it thought of what Hilda tasted like.

It was better to drift off to sleep instead. It could sleep for a very long time if it wanted to.

What it saw in its dreams that day wasn't unusual aside from greater clarity. It had only two human legs and most of it body was nowhere to be seen, but it wasn't alarmed like it should have been as if this was completely normal and the same went for the clothes it wore. Its surroundings were blurry and barely discernible, but it knew there were humans around though all it could see were vague silhouettes. It heard them speak and even if it couldn't make out any individual words, it stung as if swords and spears struck its hide and blood gushed out of deep wounds. It didn't even know why, it simply knew they were right.

And yet, it felt no desire to crush them. On the contrary, it merely retreated elsewhere, refusing to look at any of the growing shapes until it found itself in an entirely different area, one that put it at ease. Most of it was still blurry, but the sight of greenery was crystal clear and so was the tiny bird resting in its palms. The bird chirped and the beast replied, but no words actually came out of its mouth. Still, it was safe here, away from humans that hurt it and responsibilities forced upon it. It felt a smile form on its face.

The next thing it knew, its hands were covered in blood up to its elbows and so was its giant body. For a moment, it felt horrified, but that feeling was replaced with faint satisfaction. This was right. Its smile only grew when it saw corpses littering the ground. It was fulfilling its only purpose, as it should have been. But its work wasn't done. Its body ached in anticipation of more bodies to crush and devour though its heart felt numb. A barely audible voice it couldn't fully recognize protested that this was all wrong, but the beast ignored it. This is what it lived for, this was the only thing that validated its existence.

What it couldn't ignore was a second voice. Once again, it couldn't make out any words, but it searched for its source as everything around it grew increasingly more blurry. The voice spoke again and its thirst for blood no longer concerned it. It wanted to find that person, it wanted to find...

A familiar smell stirred it from its slumber. It was a pleasant smell the beast immediately recognized as Hilda's. Marianne found it odd how some humans - mostly females - had such a different smell from others, one that was completely foreign to their bodies. It didn't may too much attention to it until recently, when it met this girl. While its human body didn't have an exceptional sense of smell, the rest of its body did.

"Good morning, Marianne!" Hilda greeted it, waving one of hers arm while the other held a larger bag than the last time to her chest and a smaller one under it.

"Good morning," Marianne greeted in response, stiffly replicating her waving motion.

When it took a closer look at the girl, it noticed that she looked a bit healthier compared to yesterday. Now that it thought about it, she did look rather tired back then. Certainly not as bad as Marianne's human face, but it was very noticeable compared to her current state. Her hair was neater too.

"Got you some books as promised, but let's leave that for later. I think we should start off with a little bonding session. You wanted to befriend an animal, right? Let me teach you how it's done."

The explanation was pretty simple and Marianne made sure to remember it. From what angle it should approach, where to touch, whether it should remain silent or talk a little, it all seemed pretty important. The only problem was, well, its massive size. If it tried moving its giant body, the horse Hilda brought would immediately panic. At the same time, letting it climb up to the beast's human body probably wouldn't work and said body was placed too high. The only solution was lying on its side and awkwardly twisting the growth its human body was attached to.

It still doubted that this would work, but Hilda encouraged it to try.

"Alright, I'll go retrieve her."

It only took a few minutes, but they felt like an eternity while Marianne waited, going through the instructions in its head over and over.

It wasn't hard to see that the horse was nervous in the presence of something this large. They both were. Hilda didn't have to outright drag her over there, but there was still a bit of resistance. It wasn't until the two were only a dozen feet apart that it calmed down...and so did Marianne. There was still a bit of hesitation on both sides, but the beast no longer felt the same fear coming from the horse. It wasn't long before its human hand rested on the animal's nose.

"See? I was right! I knew you could do it, but this went even better than I thought it would!" Hilda exclaimed as she walked up to the two.

"What's her name?" Marianne asked, not minding how the horse pushed her face towards it.

"Sophie, I think."

"You should feed her. She's hungry,"

"Uh, I might have forgotten to do that...My bad," the girl said, rubbing the back of her head. "Wait, how could you tell?"

...How did it know? It could talk to and understand humans, sure, but both parties had to actually speak first, it couldn't just read their minds. But when it looked at Sophie, it just knew what she was thinking. She had yet to see the beast on its feet, but so far, she didn't feel threatened. While Hilda didn't display any signs of fear, Marianne had no idea what actually was on the human's mind, so, this was far more unusual to it.

Would other animals accept it just as quickly? It was eager to find out...but maybe that would be better left for later.

"Um...I'm not sure, I just...I know what she's feeling...Oh, and her saddle is chafing her back," Marianne replied as it rubbed the horse's neck.

"I didn't know. Sorry, Sophie, I'll make up for it later!" Hilda said before her gaze wandered else. "I guess this does explain...Anyway, How about we check out those book? You can still hang like that, right?"

"It's okay, I don't mind."

"If you say so...Well then, let's get started!"

Just as it thought, it was capable of reading with little difficulty. While they were looking through several books, its only problem was that it wasn't familiar with some concepts, whether they were entirely unknown to it or simply confused it. Fortunately, Hilda did her best to explain whatever it had problems with. Marianne still didn't quite get some of them, but for the most part, it wasn't hard to grasp. As good as the girl was at explaining them, there was clearly more to it. Sometimes, it felt as if it knew some of these ideas, but simply couldn't remember until they were explained to it.

While there were some books Marianne prefered over others from what little it managed to read, it chose to keep them all anyway. It wanted to read all of them and it had more than enough time to do so...but there was also something about reading it with someone else that appealed to it.

...or maybe it was that human specifically that it wanted to read with...