Beauty.

An interpretation of the fairy tale.

***

You've been told that better times are ahead ever since your father lost everything.

You bury yourself in books and work, to try to dull the memories of the life that you had once had. Books let you escape into a better place; work keeps you so tired that you cannot possibly find the energy to weep over what once was.

You wish that your sisters would realize that better times are not really ahead. You wish that they'd pull their heads out of the past and help you milk the cow and scrub the floors and cook the meals. That's all you want right now--a little help.

Your father hears that one of his ships is coming to harbor. He is excited; your sisters are excited; even you are excited. Perhaps there is a chance that you will be able to return to your old life. Your father asks you if there is anything, anything at all, that you want. And you wish for a single rose, because you don't want to cause him too much trouble.

He is gone for several days--but when he comes back, he is a changed man, looking as if his very soul has been stolen from him. He is a dead man, he tells you all, for he picked a single rose from the garden of the Beast. He must pay for the delicate flower he placed into your hands with his life.

You don't believe it--yet at the same time, you know that this outrageously heartbreaking, terrifyingly confusing story must be true, because your father would never lie to you. And so, because you will not let him pay such a price for your rose, you go with him to the Beast's castle. You prepare yourself to die as you bid your father farewell. You prepare yourself to die.

And in that moment, you are no longer little Beauty, your father's favorite daughter, and you know that your father cannot always keep you safe and make sure that everything works out all right.

You've grown up, and you're on your own, though perhaps the both of you still wish that you were little Beauty, whose father who could always keep her safe.

Now, though, there is no one left to save you. You're blind and deaf and alone, because in this castle, you know absolutely nothing.

You don't know that you will not die tonight, or tomorrow night, or the night after that. You don't know that you will find true love and your happily-ever-after.

You don't know any of this yet.

And right now, though you wish you could be brave, you're simply terrified.

There is nothing more frightening than the unknown. And right now... you don't know anything.