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Enoch’s lax control of time irritates the Beast to no end.
At least in his forest time is linear, even if it doesn’t always pass at the rate it should.
He should notice the difference as soon as he sets foot in Pottsfeild, the moon’s phase has shifted, but there’s always drift in Pottsfeild, Enoch’s grip on time was a little loose, so it was not uncommon for the Beast to step a few days into the future or the past, but with Enoch’s piecemeal memory of future and his... somewhat reliable memory of the past it caused few problems.
But he doesn’t feel the years slip off his shoulders as he crosses the border and doesn’t notice the strange placement of Enoch’s barn, simply follows his nose and pushes his way into his barn.
“Harvest Lord, I have the most delightful news from Madame Summer.” A rumbling chuckle moves through his chest as his eyes swirl yellow. He hangs his lanter and turns to be hit in the face with the scent of cinnamon distress.
He stares up at the maypole.
“Is something wrong, Enoch?”
The maypole stares at him.
He stares at the maypole, trying to dissect the cinnamon smell emanating from the harvest lord.
The maypole clears its throat.
“Pardon me, but have we met?”
That’s The Beast’s first clue something is wrong.
He breathes in deeply, in short sniffs scenting the air, cocking his head.
He can't smell it.
He can smell rot and liquor and cider and cinnamon, but he can't smell himself on Enoch.
He makes a few connections very quickly, the lack of his smell, Enoch not recognizing him, and the drift in Pottsfeild’s time.
"No, I suppose we haven't yet." The Beast rumbles. "My apologies,"
He turns towards the barn doors, he'll leave and return, hopefully Pottsfeild will have returned to the proper time by that point.
"Wait." A single green ribbon lashes around his ankle. The Beast had forgotten, Enoch wasn't always so forcefull in his ploys to convince the Beast to stay, his commands had once been suggestions.
Slowly he turns to Enoch, an Enoch of the past, and hums.
“Yes, Harvest Lord?”
"You Know me." The maypole hisses, fabric rippling across sharp teeth. The Beast arches back, he and the Harvest Lord have never had an altercation that came to anything more than a snapped arm or antler, he doesn't plan to make this time a first. "Yet?"
"Yes." The Beast rumbles back. "I have stepped too far into the past of Pottsfeild."
"Who..." Green ribbons pool around him now. "Who are you to me."
The Beast's eyes swirl blue.
"One day, in the far future, we are companions. I must return to him."
The Beast takes a step back and ribbons close on him.
"No! Please! Do not leave!" Enoch surges forward gripping him, ribbons winding around his arms and through his furs. "Please, tell me about it, friend, please." The harvest lord begs.
The Beast forgets sometimes what it must be like to be a social creature like Enoch, surrounded by dead mortals with nary a companion who understood him as he was.
When was he in Pottsfeild’s immeasurable past?
Before Enoch had met the Beast surely, but after Enoch’s days as a warlord.
The depth of his loneliness bled into his voice as Enoch begs that he stay, and the Beast has never been able to deny Enoch when Enoch asks like that.
So he settles among the ribbons and he tells of His Enoch, the Enoch that This Enoch will one day become.
"We sing." He sighs out and closes his eyes. "That is how you captured a heart that doesn't beat."
"You invited me once, and then a second time, and I continued to return,”
"Years, decades, centuries pass, time in Pottsfeild is errant, between interactions it is hard to gauge whether you remember what or who I am between interactions, and yet,"
The Beast pauses and hums.
"Yet, we draw closer."
“You are infuriatingly persistent, you refuse to let me slip into the shadows and be forgotten. Over time the strange companionship between us grows. Your townspeople grow more used to me, and soon begin expressing their delight that I had captured your heart.” The Beast scoffs.
“I did nothing to capture your heart, in fact at first I did everything I could to discourage you. You were weariless, no matter what scathing barbs I spoke or how long I disappeared before reappearing, no matter how I shied from your touch and the light, you insisted on coaxing me from my woods.”
“I had grown to like you, my souls had come to like you, not that they weren’t enraptured by you from the very start.” Enoch’s puzzlement fills his nose but he forges onward, that will be something the Beast of this past will have to tell Enoch himself.
“With each passing decade it became harder and harder to distance myself from you. Harder to keep away from Pottsfeild for more than a handful of years. Harder to ignore your song when it drifted across my forest. Harder keep out of Pottsfeild when the moon was high. Harder to keep the illusion of wariness when we spoke.”
“I started to visit Pottsfeild to ease the difficulty. I would stand firmly in my woods and watch, I watched your people’s comings and goings, I watched your festivals and I watched at night when you would roam across Pottsfeild like an ever watchful omen. It was never enough, but it eased the ache growing within me.”
“If you knew that I lingered near the borders, you have never said a thing about it.” The Beast sighs, his fingers carding through Enoch’s ribbons as they twisted around his hand in desperation. “We began to exchange favors. A swath of land here or there with the promise that Pottsfeild would halt expansion if they found an Edelwood tree and consult me first.”
“A soul sent one way or the other, a clever illusion for an advanced warning when the next frost came, I have always guarded my debts zealously. I ensured I always had a favor, but found myself more willing to put a debt in your hands.”
“And then one evening we were in your barn, speaking of land and the moon and edelwoods when you offered me something. It was a feather from one of your ravens, enchanted to grant it’s user wings for only a night. I was curious.”
“I asked why you were trying to get out of my debt and you laughed and told me you weren’t repaying a favor. It was a gift, isolated from our exchange of favors. It would not be the last gift you gave me. As the years went on I would find myself in possession of a rope of wind knots, a bag of dragon teeth, a halo I have no idea how you got your ribbons on, and a cursed plate among other things.”
“Now don’t fool yourself Harvest Lord, I still hold you to every debt, but the lines of what is a debt and what is a gift begin to blur.”
“I am not well versed in the incraticies of mortal courting nor the courting of creatures such as us, so my ability to tell you when our companionship shifted from mere friendship.”
“But it has?” Enoch looms forward with his question.
“Yes.”
“And you come here often.”
“Often enough to know the goings on of your Pottsfeilders.”
Enoch seemed to consider this, fretting his ribbons.
“You will stay here a little while longer, neighbor?”
“I must return to the Enoch you will become.”
Enoch seems greatly troubled by this and the Beast sighs at the scent of heartbreak.
He must remedy this.
“Have you come into acquaintance with Lady Midnight and the Dutchess of the Clouds?”
“Yes?” Enoch questions.
“I shall follow soon after, at most in a hundred years or so, now I must leave.”
“Must you?”
“I cannot keep you waiting.”
“Very well.” There is still a tinge of hesitance in Enoch’s voice.
The Beast stands and makes it to the barn doors before looking over his shoulder.
“Walk me to the border, Harvest Lord?”
The stench of a pleased Enoch nearly knocks the Beast to the ground.
“Of course.”
They walk, and the moon looms above them, painting Enoch in silver. The Beast doesn't know how he didn’t see it, the crude stitching on the maypole wouldn't be allowed by Miss Clara, but she’s a handful of decades off.
Enoch is watching him too, studying him, memorizing him. The Beast doesn't know what he sees, but Enoch seems pleased with whatever conclusion about the Beast he comes to.
When they reach the border, the Beast casts a single glance over his shoulder at the silhouetted maypole that will one day be his Harvest Lord.
As he disappears through the shadows of the forest into his own time, Enoch watches his retreating form.
As the great maypole turns to return to his barn he comes to a decision.
The next time he sees this creature, he will do his absolute best to enrapture him.
He will not let such a wonderful creature slip through his tendrils.