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how dare you (she whispers in a still, small voice.)
And that is their beginning and their end.
All the spaces in between don't mean all that much in the end.
It's like this - she is flesh and blood and heat and warmth and life. He is shadow and words and dreams.
She moves through the world and she is flame.
He pretends that she is him and he is the one with his hand on the strings and his body moves all the ways he wants.
(She knows, she always knows, he is her. Let him be the smoke to her flame. She will destroy kingdoms and he will be the symbol of the remains, lingering in the air long after she has moved on.)
She is a little girl in heels (or not) with lipstick smeared on her lips as she plays at adulthood (or not) and she is new and fresh; he is air and rot and decay. She is purity and he is not.
That's the game they play.
Every night over candle flame the beast asks plaintively, will you marry me and doesn't see his beauty sharpening her nails into claws, doesn't hear her laugh deepening into a growl to rival his own.
She roams the halls of his dreamscape and there he is wild and she is pure. She is motion in the depths of stillness. He is caught in time and she is always in motion.
This is how it is - she grows darker under his watchful eye, but he can't see the shadows for her light.
This is what he can't see - she makes him long for movement, her laughter and her limbs and her hair make him long to leave the air and grow solid beneath her (within her).
This is the joke - the beauty was a beast all along.
And he is just the smoke in the wake of her destruction.
how dare you, she whispers as his life flashes before his eyes.
Every night the beast asks for love and every day the beauty grows more wild.
Here's the truth: only a beast can carry the burden of a beastly shadow. Did you really think this would end any other way?