In The Works

The Grove

An Original Work

***

Summary

I don't have one finalized yet.

***

So, this one came out of my random musings shortly after the New Beauty and the Beast came out: was the Beast limited to falling in love with someone from beyond his castle? Or did someone within the castle have the power to break his curse? 

And thus: Clara was born. 

This one will draw more from the traditional interpretations of the fairytale (ie. the beast's servants being invisible rather than changed to objects) rather than the Disney-fied interpretation...though there may be a little influence...I mean....it is one of the greatest Disney movies EVER, after all.

***

Opening Excerpt

She was lying on the floor. And she had no idea how she'd gotten there.

As Clara came to, her head feeling heavy and hazy, her whole body tingling in the most peculiar way, her groggy thoughts were struggling to remember what had happened. It was there. She could feel the memory hovering, dangling just out of reach. 

But she could also feel the cool marble of the floor sapping away her body's warmth, the hard surface beginning to send aching spears into her hips and shoulders. How long had she been lying there? Oh, how much trouble she was going to be in! She had things to do; chores, tasks. Somehow she'd fallen and knocked herself out long enough that she was starting to feel chilled from lying on the rose-marble beneath her.

Well, she realized as she forced her eyes open, the hall's vaulted ceiling slowly coming into focus, she had certainly hit her head. There was a dull throbbing ache behind her eyes that had spread from a sharp, painful lump already forming on the back of her head. As she blinked to clear the haze from her eyes, it didn't abate either. Squeezing her eyes shut again in a futile attempt to alleviate the ache and its accompanying wave of dizziness, she pulled herself up until she sat awkwardly on her hip - her left one, as she'd been lying on her right, leaving that one aching from the floor. Mercifully, the metallic sensation behind her nose eased as she moved.

As one hand reached out to brace on the floor for balance - her fingers brushing over the mending she'd been rushing up from the laundry to the workroom she and the others worked out of - her other was lifting to tenderly explore the goose-egg from where she'd hit her head. It stung, but it didn't feel damp or sticky - another small mercy, she supposed - but still, as her fingers dropped from the injury her eyes  opened, not quite content to believe she wasn't bleeding until she saw some manner of evidence. Meaning clean fingers.

Only for her entire body to seize in panic when she registered what she was seeing.

Or rather, not seeing.

Clara couldn't see her hands.