Author's Note: I want to thank my stepmother for her wonderful editing skills and my decisive English teacher. Without their help, the potential of this piece would have been a potentially significant pit of confusion. I wouldn't have been able to do this without them.
"The Divine Rose"
Nothing felt the same. He hadn't a prize to love, or his wife to hug. She was gone, and he was ravaged with lust. Neither the impulse nor the desire would lift him out of his chair and bring him to his bed. Not a cry of his Love or a cry from within would be enough to turn his head. He only had those languid eyes to rub.
Beast was reluctant to remember the day, or month. He never slept and he never shied away from his rose, and likewise, it slipped him the same eye. Fancy was his token and paralysis was her doing. The slightest thought of climbing her silky petals taunted the call of risky brilliance and flirted with a seething plot that shared no ambition. Desire became the very thing to hold up higher.
There was nowhere to run – nowhere to turn. She housed his reflection and aroused his imperfections. Beast, in turn, was a servant of her beauty…a slave to the rose and the shade of her color.
Her emerald spine glistened and rendered the touch of Beast's attention to a captivated awe. This falsetto of an angel's joke ripened her luminous thorns, and tore angrily into Beast's sitting accord. Her stem wasn't the stem of many – a cunning depiction of heaven's garden and the compost of Beast's affection. It obscured the darkness of his home, and filled every room with fragrant emptiness.
Beast wasn't to enter, or knock on her preserved dome. Only without weapons, would she entreat an eye for a sitting spy. Only with mercy, would her petals bloom and her thorns loom. A fanciful realization of her glorious shine was the seed of conceded lie. ...She guarded her nest well, and she guarded it on the fly.
There was never any beauty, never any color before... The flesh of heaven's layer was never there, but the inspiration always was. Beast's eyes lied still...drunk of curiosity and the rose's erroneous spell. His lids remained unblinking, and his fingers lessened their furious clicking . . . There was no sound. No bond that could stick. He was drowning in a slick scarlet wick.
Magic was the rose's art. Beauty was her elegant harp. Every cord was plucked without mark of effort or thought. Her flush petals riddled her songs with the same, desirable stain that was sought until . . . "Adam?" . . . a call from within became a cry destined.
". . . Belle . . ." Her name rushed out of his mouth like a flowing cascade. His eyes slipped and fell. "Where have I been?" His eyes parted away from the persuasive candy, and staggered on their way to a moonlit hallway. He had wanted to drift down its labyrinth to forget all about this rose's romantic hue. He could never move, never talk for his spitting fire, but now, he was ready to perspire from the eloquent beauty that wasn't in his clutch. He was ready to return to his former Adam – the one that Belle distinctly remembered. Not the Beast . . .
He was a humble man of his word – loyal to every other cause. He was a man who dreaded nothing to love something. He was the man who had strove for a loving hand…until love had strove back without a hint or a plan. Without hesitance, the messenger's rose overcame him, and sought for his stare. Adam tried to wear its shameful glare, but ended drinking in what ugly could only bear.
The messenger knew of its caliber, and personified its laughter. She was the rose's only master - a beautiful dame who inspired rapture, and the stately capture of the male stature . . . She was drunk with the same, tireless ambition...drunk of that muddled affair. It sat, but ached. Adam staggered to wait.
Unbeknownst to Belle, he wasn't himself; he wasn't ready to wait.
She had pleaded and pleaded for his sympathy, but she was too slow...too late to pull her lover out of his swallowed state. The scarlet curse was growing and showing. She quickly fixed him a silver locket with a name and a picture, and left it in his pocket. She quickly fled his gates… She didn't pause to stay. She didn't give him one more day.
Adam had no time to grieve, but to please. He stayed by that plant's lair, and remained ensnared by the rose's care. Every other day or night, she fueled his maddening passion and restored beauty back to its elusive action.
"Adam," she called again. "Adam, come down stairs for me, please." And then, he did. His feet crawled and his arms sprawled. He dug into his pockets as if nobody seemed to stalk it, and brought out Belle's spirit along with his smallest pocket. He carried it, cherished it, and wore it on his sleeve as if to tease the promiscuous sleaze.
He walked and walked, and still hardly talked. He didn't call back, as if a phantom call came and locked his heart all up. He reached the stairs and reached for his silvery dare...the image of his silver locket – his lovely Belle… His sweet to love. She was down stairs in front of his stare.
He reveled in her beauty and sank deep into her story . . . She was thinner than what he was compelled to retell; her eyes were beady, loosened, and less teary. A vast smile spread across her lips, and kissed her cheeks. Her brows slept without their tips, and dripped on a face that had never tripped.
"Beautiful," Adam whispered blankly to himself, collecting the dust of his lonely heart with a heavy finger, and a handful of stardust to welcome the spot that had throbbed so much. He smiled a little, even chuckled a bit to his luck. "Belle, I . . ." He couldn't tell what it was. He could only taste what it brought, because that was who he was.
Adam was confused…muddled like the beginning of his day. He didn't understand that his love was at unrest until now . . . until today's test. "…I won't ever leave you again… Belle, I – I've been so wrong." He took several steps down their staircase. Down and through their lovely home.
Her face was just a step closer. He was just an inch closer from holding her. "I've been more wrong than you, Adam." Their hands locked and their minds caught. Their feet guided themselves to rhythm's slow start. Their hearts smarted them a pace too tough, but the sky bore them a face above the stars as the whole castle stopped to marvel at beauty's glorious rise.
When the beat stopped, their eyes enchanted every other heart. A kiss broke to Adam's spot. "I love you," he finally said. "You're my everything; you're my divine rose."
True to him wherever he goes. Free to kiss Adam wherever he sits for an answer.
"Love all over," she sang for him again.