It had been exactly one year since Clover's father vanished and she still didn't understand. Why did he do this? Him of all people?
The only one who actually visited her a few times was the Beast and he wasn't very helpful for anything but making her feel less lonely for a short while.
As the sun went down, she sat on the low wall outside her home and stared blankly at the dark forest. Why had her father left her without warning? Wasn't she good enough? Didn't he care for her like she thought he did?
The air was cold but the wind was nonexistent. Soon, the girl felt warm tears run down her face. She tried to ignore them at first, but as they blinded her vision she finally attempted to wipe them away with the back of her hands. They kept coming anyway.
This instant, she would have given anything to see her father again ; however she wasn't sure whether it would be to embrace him or slap him in the face.
"Why?" she asked aloud, trying for the third time to dry her tears. "Why? Why did you… abandon me?"
Only now did Clover start sobbing loudly, her face in her hands. And then she heard a familiar voice singing. Oh, not now, she didn't want to be seen like this!
She turned around to face her home but, before she could stand up and walk away, the Beast was already close enough for her to feel his presence.
"It's been a year, hasn't it?" he said.
She only emitted a vague, meaningless sound instead of an answer.
"You used to say he would come back one day", he continued "I guess you were mistaken."
Are you here just to say that you told me so? the girl thought to herself but didn't say aloud in fear that the creature of darkness could hear in her voice that she was crying.
"Have you lost your tongue, Clover?"
The girl couldn't hold back her sobs anymore : in the span of three seconds she went from weeping silently to crying even louder than before. Being discreet definitely was no longer an option.
"I-I don't… e-e-even remember… what we were arguing about… before he left…" she told the Beast in-between sobs.
"Are you saying he abandoned you because of some meaningless argument not even worth remembering?" he asked.
"…You're not helping", she replied before sniffing loudly.
"I still helped you more over the course of this year than your father did", the creature argued, placing his hand on Clover's shoulder.
She froze. It was the first time he ever touched her. Usually he stood at a respectable distance, always hidden in the shadows where his glowing eyes were the only source of light.
As the girl was drying her tears on her own shawl, she realised something she hadn't thought of before.
Ever since she met the Beast, she had been wondering which one of the many souls trapped inside of him was actually his. And every time she saw him, she managed to perceive them more accurately. She could even tell whether a new one had just joined the others, and yet still had no clue which was the one he was born with. Now, the answer seemed so obvious Clover mentally slapped herself.
The answer was "none of them". As absurd as it seemed, he didn't have a soul of his own. Which made her very uneasy.
She quickly stood up to escape the grasp of the monster's long fingers, mumbled some excuse about having to go to sleep and then rushed to the safety of her little house. Once inside with the door locked, the girl went straight to bed.
The Beast's aura of mystery definitely wasn't going to disappear any time soon. What to make of a creature which had so many souls and yet was soulless?
Several more years passed. Any hope of seeing her father again had died down long ago. However, the Beast still visited sometimes. Clover hadn't seen him in a while though.
It was with steady hands that she chopped up large pieces of woods into ones that would fit in the fireplace. It was now without even thinking that she carried the heavy logs to the woodshed and put them down with the others. She wiped her hands on her skirt. The woodshed was now full.
She went back to where she had left her axe then brought it back where it belonged. Now, what to do? She had already taken care of her food supplies for the next few days, gone for water at the well, cleaned everything in house and read every book the previous owner had left multiple times.
Sometimes she wondered why she even bothered with all of this.
Clover sat in front of the unlit fireplace and sighed.
"I don't even know what the point is anymore", she said aloud. "I can work as hard as I want, I'm still an abandoned child whose only contact is a soulless Beast that steals other people's souls."
She grabbed the fire iron and pointlessly drew messy lines into the ashes of the previous fire. She could prepare a new one, maybe. She didn't really feel like doing anything anymore.
The girl let what she was holding fall on the floor. She wasn't waiting for anything or anyone anymore and no-one would miss her if she left ; so why was she still here? Surely this cabin in the woods could be much more useful to someone who actually still had a purpose.
"He said the souls who get lost in his forest become part of it. I wonder what he means by that. He wasn't very clear about it. But I wonder… can the forest be lonely?"
It probably couldn't.
She stood up and went back outside into the bitter cold to find out it had just started snowing. She used to love playing in the snow before she arrived in the Unknown with her father ; nowadays even the sweet memories of snowmen building weren't enough to make her smile.
By the time she entered the woods surrounding her home, the girl's nose, hands and toes already felt like ice and her hair was covered in snowflakes.
"Beast?" she called.
The sun was setting : if he were to appear at all today, it would probably be soon. She went deeper into the woods, listening for every sound, looking for shadowy figures behind every tree. She kept calling to him as the snow on the ground made her shoes wet and feet numb. She didn't care much about the inconvenience though. In fact, she didn't care about anything anymore. She had had enough of being alone and there was only one being she knew could do something about it.
Clover kept walking until the snowflakes stopped falling. Her entire body was numb. And he was still nowhere to be seen. He always visited her on random nights without warning her beforehand, but the one time she actually was looking for him…
She fell to her knees in the middle of the snow-covered path she was walking on, tired in every definition of the term.
"Beast? I- I give up. I don't care anymore. Jut… Just take me already. Make it all stop ; I don't give a damn how. Please…"
The only reply she got was silence disturbed solely by her own breathing. The girl closed her eyes and waited for what felt like forever. Why wouldn't he come for her?
"Pff. Of course the one time I actually need you, you abandon me too… I should have known. No-one wants to stay with me…"
She sighed and opened her eyes again. Maybe she could just wait for the Beast at home. He would come back one day. And this time, she'd ask him face to face, so to speak.
She stood back up and followed the direction she came from, hugging herself all the while in a vain attempt at keeping warm. By the time she reached the edge of the forest again, snowflakes were falling once more, making her footprints disappear as she walked to the cabin, entered it, closed the door behind her, lit up a candle and shook off the snow from her hair and clothes.
Then, she heard a noise right outside the house. The sound of footsteps on the porch. This couldn't be the Beast : he always moved silently no matter what and never ever went under the porch anyway. Then who was out there?
She went to check the porch, the candle in her hand.
She couldn't believe what she was seeing. It couldn't be real, and yet both her eyes and her sixth sense were telling her it was.
"Father?" she asked, just to make sure she wasn't just imagining things.
He stood up and gasped, his eyes wide : he was just as surprised to see her, if not more, than she was to see him.
Clover, who was now smiling for the first time in forever, and her father simply stood there looking at each other with tears in their eyes for a long time, not daring to move or look away in fear that the other might disappear into thin air.
Finally, she walked up to him, grabbed his hand, lead him inside the cabin, set the candle down on the table, closed the door and hugged her father tightly.
"I…I thought the Beast had taken you away" he said.
She moved her face away from his chest and looked up at him. He knew the Beast?
"And he told me you… abandoned me…"
"No! I did not! I would never… He tricked me. He was a filthy liar."
"Was?" the girl repeated.
She let go of her father for one second before grabbing his hand again and leading him to the chair near the fireplace and asking him to tell her everything so she could hear his side of the story at last.
Years ago, she used to think her father would come back one day. Now she wasn't alone anymore because that one day had finally come.