A World of Fairy Tales

Beauty and the Beast

      Once upon a time, a girl was given a book. The girl put the book down, and went on to live her life. One day, years later, when the giver of the book was long gone, the girl picked up the book and began to read. She couldn't stop reading, constantly looking for her next book, and then she did. She searched and searched but she could never find what she was looking for. The girl grew tired of hiding how she felt by trapping her soul in literature. She grew tired of everything, from the people around her to the people she read about. So she didn't. She stopped pretending, and was turned into the beast by a sorcerer seeking to better the lives of those without love, cursed to live an eternity of solitude until her prince came. But she didn't want a prince, or even a princess, for who could love a beast such as herself. She sent away everyone who tried to cure her, and isolated herself. Eventually the girl passed, years stretched on, until another princess knocked on the castle door, an orphaned princess. Confused by the silence the princess stumbled into the castle for shelter from the harsh weather outside. The princess, cursed to live without love until she found her other half, philosophized to be a beast. Her last chance to find love. The princess searched the castle for her other, as she had searched other lands before. She opened the wide doors to the library, where she found the crippled decayed figure of a beast. Having lost her only chance at love, the girl lied down next to her other and slit her throat, for living without love, is hardly worth living at all.