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The Beast stands at the edges of the campsite, warm firelight casting a veil of shadow for him to drape about his shoulders and lounge in. It cuts through the darkness of the wood pressing in on the small clearing, and throws the trees into long dancing shadows that whirl in a dark masquerade around him.
He runs his claws idly down the edge of the matchbox tracing its paper edges.
The fire crackles.
He withdraws a match and lights it.
It sparks into a dancing orange light.
A tongue of fire tamed, kept captive on a wooden wick.
He watches as it licks down the wood, seeking fuel, its faint light caressing his forest in soft gold. It reaches towards the shadows he pulls close around himself, and the dark swallows its tentative light. The match crumples up, stained by ash.
It burns down until it singes along his bark-clad fingers.
It flickers up, dancing down his knuckles and turning white where it burns through the thin drip of oil running along his hand.
For a moment, he lets it burn and smolder, bright eyes peering down into the flame.
His bark smokes and splutters in the flame, the match bowing and curling, turned to charcoal.
A shift comes from beside the campfire, sending the sound of crunching leaves ringing through the air, and his head snaps towards it.
The boy is rousing.
The Beast hums, low and quiet, and shakes out the flame, flicking the blackened match corpse into the dirt.
The boy props himself up on one arm, and the Beast drapes shadows around himself, striking a second match.
Bleary eyes peer at the flame, and as realization dawns slowly in them, the boy begins patting his satchel, movements still slow with sleep, quickly hastened by panic, soon rummaging through the bag for an absent box of matches. Those eyes flick back to the small fire cupped in the Beast's hands, suspended, from an outside perception, in darkness like a star plucked from the sky.
The Beast watches as tired confusion melts away into fright as the boy realizes he will soon be without matches right before the first freeze. His hands search frantically through his belongings, turning them out before he scrambles to his feet.
The match singes his fingertips, and the Beast drops it.
The boy's eyes follow the match all the way until it falls to the ground, extinguished.
The boy hesitantly edges forward. The Beast retreats back further into the wood. His feet are light and silent as he walks through the ankle deep dry leaves and shadow.
The boy reaches out to touch the tree the Beast had been leaning against. His gaze falls on the matches disregarded upon the ground and flicker up to the wood, his face filled with raw panic. His eyes dart wildly, flickering between the deep shadows of the wood, trying to discern shapes in the deep ebony, looking for any indication of whatever had stolen his matches.
The Beast waits until the boy is practically quaking with desperation.
The Beast strikes another match.
It ignites a single beacon in the dark of the forest.
This time there is no hesitancy in the boy’s movements, only panic-fueled swiftness.
By the time he reaches where the Beast stood, the match has been abandoned, and the Beast has retreated further.
The Beast strikes another match. Bating the boy deeper and deeper into the forest.
With each flame, the boy becomes more frantic, as he watches his hope of surviving the winter burn away, never even sparing a thought to how far he has strayed from the warm fire of his campsite, nor the rations in his pack now unguarded, spurred on by his fear of the cold. He does not think to mark his path, nor does he spare a glance backward at the way the forest closes behind him, long spindly branches knitting together, swallowing the path.
Onward he leads the boy.
Away from food.
The match sizzles against his fingertips.
Away from the maps he so coveted.
He disregards it for another.
Away from his warm bedding.
Flame dances at his fingertips, thin plumes of smoke decorating his claws.
Away from a roaring fire, chasing after sparks.
The Beast drops another match, and as he walks deeper into the wood, seeping indigo blanketing his shoulders, he flicks open the matchbox.
Only one left.
A shame, he had hoped to lure the boy a little further from camp.
He strikes the match against the side of the box, and the brilliant flame sparks to life.
He lets it drop before the flame hits his claws and leaves it smoldering on the ground with the empty matchbox.
He slinks back into shadow with a low hum, with an elegant brush of his claws, he adjusts the volume of his forest. For now, it must be crushing, suffocatingly loud, to spurn the boy onward, to instill urgency and tear away any logical thought away.
The boy falls to his knees before the matchbox, and a note of his hope colors the air like perfume.
The Beast does not see the boy’s expression as he opens the box and finds it empty, but it matters not because he can smell the potency of hope souring into despair, only a few tattered remnants of misplaced faith remaining.
The Beast quiets the wood, and silence falls thick and heavy over the boy.
Fearful eyes dark about shadows, deep as soot, as the empty matchbox is clutched to his heaving chest, looking for the next spark against a backdrop of midnight.
Shakily, the boy gets to his feet and slowly spins around, taking in his surroundings. The Beast could croon with delight. He hadn’t even needed to disorient the boy. The boy had done it himself.
Later, the Beast will sing the boy a song as hope flags, and despair sets its roots deep, as hunger and cold and regrets wrack the body and the mind.
Later, he will join the ranks of the Beast’s forest, the little matchbox still clutched in his hands, regret upon a face rapidly consumed by bark.
Later, in death, he will be karmically returned to the fire he so foolishly chased after in life.
Later.
For now, he will leave the boy to the mercy of his wood. He needs to put out the boy’s campfire before it absconds with any of his trees.
In the boy’s haste to recover his matches, he had not remembered to kick out the embers and dampen the flame, and the Beast certainly wouldn’t let his forest pay the price of one mortal’s carelessness.
This autumn has been an awfully dry one, after all, and it wouldn't do to let his forest go up like a tinderbox.
No, the Beast thinks, as he douses the fire.
It wouldn't do at all.
The Beast is fast.
It's not often he demonstrates his speed. There's rarely a threat dangerous enough to come snapping at his heels to send him running, and there's even less he might run towards . And when there is nothing to rush to and nothing to flee from, there’s something to be said for meandering paths and slow, measured walk.
And there is, of course, the tricky problem his antlers provide when he does end up ducking and weaving through the trees. Something must give, and it's usually not the trees.
But, if it really comes down to it, he can cover a lot of ground very quickly.
Indeed, if he really gets it into his head that he needs to move, he can outrun the wind.
But fast as he is, he can’t outrun a fire.
You can run out of a fire, and you can run into one, but outrunning a fire that has already dragged burning fingers across its claim is a different matter entirely.
Forest fires don't often ravage his forests, but he makes a point of steering clear of them when they do. He's well aware of how much of his physical being is composed of wood, oil, and ice. Being caught in the grasp of searing flame was not a fate he enjoyed.
But sometimes, it cannot always be avoided.
His furs catch first.
They’re damp with frost melting quickly into steam, but they’re matted with oil, and tongues of flame lick greedily up along them, flaring bright with edelwood as their fuel.
A splintering crack fills the air, one of his antlers snapping against a burning tree, the roar of the fire nearly drowning it out. His head dips, suddenly unbalanced, and he forces himself to compensate. He clears a burning log with a flying leap as it crashes down, sending plumes of ash and cinder up into the air.
Heat creeps up his furs towards his shoulders, and he tears at the clasp, abandoning them in the fire.
The cinders, drifting like gilded flower petals through the air, smolder against him, and he’s begun to smoke as fire tries to catch along his bark.
If he can make it to the river, he'll be fine.
Like ravenous teeth, it tears against him, stripping his outer bark.
He refuses to falter.
If he can make it to the river, he won't have to regrow from ashes.
White-hot pain drips like liquid through the nooks and gouges of his bark, rending it, tracing channels of oil, and turning them to rivers of oil.
Sparks turn into a blaze.
His mouth is full of ash.
The fire pours into him, through the gouges and holes of his being and burns from within. It festers within like burning rot and eats away at his insides in a way his hunger never does. The world swims with heat, and his eyes burn, silver inlaid in gold, fire licking up around his face, flowing behind him in a dappled cape of gold and orange and red and yellow and blue.
His bark flakes away, turned grey by the ravaging grip of fire.
His arm has begun to feel disconnected from him as ornately decorated jaws crush through fuel, tongues lapping eagerly along his body, pulling it apart.
If he makes it through the curtains of flame, he will be more than singed, he will be charred.
Fire licks up through the holes of his bark. He’s burning from inside, the ice melting from within, doing little to combat the undauntable heat. It creeps from within his chest, up the collum of his throat, and spills from his mouth, burning away his song before it can reach his lips.
His vision is a medley of orange and black, the world blurred by heat, tainted by ash.
The act of burning is the act of being consumed.
Devoured by ornamental teeth, searing heat closing in on all sides, anguish alighting through every edge and crevice of his body as it burrows within, carving new paths in its wake, decorating him in scars charred black with ash.
He is cradled in warm claws, closing like a vice, blooming from within as he runs, fighting against ash and incandescent.
He is filled with it, and it spills out of him in brilliant radiance, a halo of flame wreathing his head, flaming wings lifting him towards what might be divinity but only tastes of soot.
It cuts through shadow and cards along his bark, a caress that burns.
Resplendance upon a pyre.
His feet barely touch the ground, and then they are in the air again as he runs, though to call it a mere run would be a disservice to his haste as he bounds through the forest in a dead sprint.
Behind him flow ribbons of luminous yellow, bound tight around his throat, licking up against his feet, curling up to catch his waist to tempt him to stay in its warm embrace.
The river.
If he can only make it to the river.
It wells up inside and bleeds out through his eyes. Orange turned to sharp white melted with yellow and green, flaring into brilliant stars.
Agony rakes soot-colored fingers along his flanks, and his sprinting leaps begin to stagger as it becomes harder and harder to coax his limbs onward, fire rending them pulling them from him, his legs buckle beneath him, and he lurches forward.
The heat is unbearable.
The sun festers beneath his bark. The world is torrid and sweltering, heat pressing in against him like a wall from every side.
His steps are through charcoal and embers, and winter melts, wilting under fire, he’s melting, burning, turning to steam, he is fuel but is not sure for how much longer.
He’s combusting, he’s alight, he’s going to vaporize.
It is only blind panic that continues to force him onward as fire cards its fingers through his antlers.
The world is molten gold.
The world is ash so thick it's hard to breathe.
The world is ablaze.
He’s boiling alive.
The world is fire.
The world is flame.
The water’s chilling embrace shocks him so severely that for a moment, his mind is utterly devoid of thought, only registering that suddenly everything had changed.
Freezing water plunges through him, through the old holes and gaps in his bark, and through the new ones carved by flame, soothing over the burns, flooding him, drowning ember and cinder freezing into him in wonderful respite.
His mouth falls open in his surprise, and water that tastes of ash but is blessedly frigid pours in.
He lets himself be gently held in it for a long while, hanging beneath the surface, watching as above his head fire dances in distorted gold, throwing long blades of gilded light into the dark roaring current of the river.
Slowly it washes away ash and soot, pulling apart chunks of him that are too burned to remain as part of the whole.
His eyes are the last thing to stop burning, at last, succumbing to ice.
Lightning is rebirth.
The Beast has no other word for it.
There is no other descriptor that fits it just right.
It's a terrible moment of everything all at once followed by quiet, embraced in the gentle lull of thunder as some piece of him is burned, torn away.
He’s been indulged by its splitting embrace more times than he cares to recount.
Tonight shall join the ranks of hundreds of others backlit by silver fingers reaching out for him.
His footsteps are gentle as he crosses the meadow, the storm a wild rolling gale above his head. The sky is dark with clouds, rain, and wind dancing together in a howling scream. Water pelts down sideways and clings to his furs.
In the distance, a fork of lightning lances across the sky, illuminating the tops of his wood in sterling silver before flickering out.
The snarl of thunder that follows shortly after shakes the earth.
It is inevitable.
The sky reaches for what is closest, and in the vast expanse of reedy grass, he is the thing closest to the gale.
The sky reaches down, and it finds him first.
The air smells of ozone. The taste coats the Beast's tongue and suffocates his senses.
Metal burning.
And that is the warning he gets before fire lances through him.
It starts in his antlers and pours through him like a raging river, an inferno burning through tall, dry grass, down into his chest.
He hears something crack, the air snapping and howling around him.
His eyes shine with brilliant light as hot, too hot, far too hot, energy plunges through him, razing the channels and corridors of his wooden frame. It scorches beneath his bark, dancing in the tunnels through his being in gleeful merriment as his body arches with its current.
It forces through him, and he bends in its wake, jerking like a puppet with pulled strings.
The world tastes of ozone and light, blazing and brilliant, imbued with blue and pink and white.
If he were mortal, or at the very least more inclined to nerve endings, he thinks it might hurt as it cleaves through him.
It still hurts.
But in an abstract way.
It’s far too fast for him to feel like he’s on fire or as though he’s smoldering, but he’s already past that. In an instant, no more, he has gone from fuel to ash. It is the only thing still keeping him upright as it pours through him, the only thing holding him together. He feels as soon as it leaves, he will be nothing but soot.
In an instant, he has combusted,
It is a great power.
And it has no care for him as anything other than a vessel. Racing towards the ground, falling towards the sky, tracing a path through him, searing, combusting, spinning a moment into white-hot eternity.
He is but a tool for it to use and bend and break as it courses through him.
He is fuel, he is ash, he is burning.
An exclamation, of pain, of fury, of something that he cannot hope to seal away, spills out of his mouth as the world crackles around him, swallowed by thunder, torn away from his lips by the storm as if he hasn't even spoken.
And then he’s lying on the ground smoldering.
He stares up into an endless sky, grey and angry, billowing overhead, vision framed by wet grass.
The split carved through his arms and chest burn with a much more familiar kind of fire, eating away at the oil that his body so readily supplies the wound. The edges of it have already gone grey with ash like some twisted infection.
The fire splutters in the downpour, eventually dying down into embers as he lays upon his back.
Rain soothes gently along the splintered edges left in the wake of the lightning, ripping through him, tearing him to pieces. It trickles along the split in his chest and gathers deep within him to freeze and pull him open once more when winter finally comes, but for now, it is a balm, tracing over the harsh edges and the burns, washing away soot and oil.
He lets out a breath, and smoke billows out from his mouth, lost against the charcoal-colored sky.
It tastes of ozone.
Typically, the Beast would never sink to such direct action.
He was more of a scavenger than a predator, lurking in the shadows, picking off those strayed towards the edge and were cast aside. It was rare he turned his attention from the scattered individuals that wandered through his wood towards towns or cities. When he did, and it was an incredibly unusual event, he worked slowly, instilling fear, kicking up rumors, whittling down the town’s numbers slowly, starting with the children and elders until only a ghost town remained.
He is old and practiced, and he is delicate. Every action is critical and refined, carefully calculated, and directed with elegant grace.
But fire, fire is a blunt instrument.
Fire leaves swathes of burned wood in his wake.
Fire doesn't grow trees.
Normally, he would never sink to using it.
Towns were a bountiful resource, one that could give and give for generations.
He could grow groves from towns, filling gardens instead of filling cemeteries.
Ah, but cults are an entirely different matter.
Cults are dangerous.
Cults grow, and they grow fast.
They have to be taken out before their roots run too deep and their faith becomes unshakeable.
So he resorts to drastic measures.
It's been a dry year.
The Beast had made a bargain with the Queen of the Clouds to arrange just such a thing.
The cult’s rations had remained enough to sustain them, but that was fine. It was never the Beast's intention to starve them out.
No.
He planned a much more… dramatic end for them.
He chooses a night soaked in shadows, so dark that the only indication of smoke will be the absence of stars.
The dry tinder of plants starved of water makes for excellent kindling.
He starts at the edge of town, kneeling as he strikes the firestarters against each other, throwing up sparks.
Stars of gold and orange decorate his hands, smoldering, as they catch along dry weeds.
He tends it carefully, a gentle breeze stirring it into wildness until he is sure it will not sputter out.
One spark might cause a panic, might take down a single house, perhaps, if conditions were just right, it might engulf the town. But it would be slow to grow, and some, if not most, would be warned by the smell of smoke and the glow.
One spark was an accident. No matter how much damage it caused, it was chance, carelessness.
One spark was panic.
One spark was recoverable from.
But five?
Ten?
Thirty?
Thirty was a message.
Thirty was the outrage of an angry and wrathful god.
Thirty was intentional.
The storehouse is even easier to set ablaze, dry hay simply begging to become smoke.
He works his way through town, his hands a mess of ink and stars, soot and ember, twined betwixt his claws, wrapped tight around scraps of flint.
The air is still clear and fresh, only the faint edge of fire at the edge of his palette, easy enough to brush off as someone’s woodstove.
He starts at the edges.
The fire will work its way inward, through their neatly lined streets, an insatiable maw of red and gold, and turn their precious little town into a tinderbox.
The town has cleared enough of his trees. He needn't worry about his wood unless the wind kicks up.
Unhurried, he makes his way deeper into their town, a jaunty tune spilling from his lips, soft enough it shall not arouse any suspicion. He traces along the neat wooden walls of their houses and leaves charcoal trails in his wake.
Ash drifts through the air, slow and lazy, like the first hint of snow.
At last, he reaches his destination.
The center of their town, their crowning achievement, their temple.
The stained glass window at its front is painted with faint glimmers of orange framed against the ink of night.
He withdraws the bottle from under his cloak.
It's a shame to waste good alcohol, but sometimes there is work to be done.
The rag is damp as he stuffs it into the mouth of the bottle.
It's a crude method.
But cults are crude.
Drastic measures must sometimes be taken.
He lights it.
The bottle is a good weight in his hand.
It spins through the air in an arch, leaving his claws and heading towards glass faces, serene, in an arc of spinning flame.
The sound of glass shattering echoes through the night.
And then, through what is left of it, a jagged toothed maw of glass, the beautiful light of fire sets it aglow from within.
A fiery halo of ringed teeth and jagged color cast in long kaleidoscope patterns through air quickly becoming cloying with smoke.
The Beast admires his work.
In its beautiful uncontrolled terror, it blazes wildly, in snarling glory it consumes, eating through wood as its hunger grows.
The air is hot and infernal, thick with smoke as fire closes in on all sides, the neat rows of wooden houses now corridors of flame. The ashes are thicker now, a storm all on their own, staining the world dark where it is not illuminated by flame.
Fire is a blunt and terrible tool.
But, the Beast will relent; it is beautiful.
Radiance incarnate drips liquid through the streets and paints them in gilded light, throwing deep shadows wildly.
People have begun to scream, yells, punctuated by wheezing coughs.
Some have woken, and they begin to rouse their neighbors.
Perhaps they will even manage to escape.
It does not matter.
One way or another, they will succumb as fuel to fire.
He turns away from their church and begins to pick his way back through town, each step measured and relaxed.
He doesn't care if he is seen.
Let them see him.
A specter of soot and shadow, draped in fire, a veil of smoke over his face.
Perhaps they will get the message that the being they have claimed as their god has no interest in their town nor their lives. His only loyalty is to flame.
The Beast has always referred to the lantern and the flame within as his.
His lantern.
His flame.
But to label it as simply that was disingenuous.
It was not his flame.
It was him.
The Beast is not like Enoch. He is not a bountiful creature that spans on towards eternities that spills out and fills as many forms as needed.
He was a flickering flame, cradled in walls of metal and ice, burning bright and ever consuming, devouring, fueled by hopes and despairs.
But he was a creature too, existing outside the lantern, with huge branching antlers and long stilt-like legs.
But he was also the forest, not quite in the same way a mighty aspen grove was but an individual that directed a great many.
He was fuel.
Oil and wood, trees and greenery.
He was fire.
Bright and crisp, ever consuming burning as cold as ice.
He was ash.
Leftover souls, remnants with hope and despair picked away, their usefulness stripped away by fire, bitterness left behind.
But first, he is fire.
Before he is wood and souls and trees, he is a little flame, small enough you could cradle it in your hands, spinning gently and blazing with an unfed hunger, always upon the brink of becoming smoke.
Before he is a creature of elegance and shadows, he is a flame that burns flat white, never putting out light but blazing all the same. The lantern is cold beneath his claws, the flame devouring warmth and turning the air to frost rather than lending any heat of its own.
He cradles it gently against his chest, claws locked tight around it.
It's not often, but sometimes, his lantern gets out of his hands and not simply into the hands of a lantern bearer.
He is never in greater danger than then.
It turns his world into a panic. Even as his voice is steady, in bargain or manipulation, worry grips along his bark, and it drives him to madness, the world becoming a frenzy of desperation until he gets his lantern back and is once more in possession of his own soul.
The Beast rarely brushes with fear personally. He knows it intimately, how it works, what causes it, how to draw it from his prey, how to manipulate it, and drive it like a wedge between logic and reason. It's a tool to be utilized against mortals, and when it does burn his hands, it is usually only scarcely, in a flutter, quickly smoothed over, but when his lantern is stolen, it consumes him in an ever-pressing crush of obsession.
It was one thing when the lantern was in the hands of someone who wanted to keep it lit under the guidance of his manipulation, burning on so long as their selfish desire remains lit within it.
It was another thing entirely when it was held by a mortal who regarded it as a simple flame, or worse, was wise to his tricks and the power they suddenly held over him.
Fear turns him into a dragon brooding over his hoard, possessive and desperate to get his lantern back.
Once it is safely back in his hands, he calms enough to allow fury to take the place of fear as he deals out punishment for daring to steal from him.
But once the dust has settled and trees are grown, he is left, without fury or fear, cast in stark relief as the looming maw of paranoia casts long shadows across him.
And so, in moments like these, when he has managed to get it back, he indulges in a rare moment of self-reflection, its bright light chasing away the shadow of fear left behind.
The lantern's face is cracked, and he traces its thin silver line from one edge of the disk of light to the other.
His soul spins unhurried behind the glass.
His hands are shaking too badly to open the lantern and reach out for himself, just to tether himself, to be reminded of what he is. So he waits.
He watches his soul spinning, traces the edge of his antlers outlined inflame with his gaze, and breaths in the smell of the forest.
It smells like frost and wet rot, but beneath it all, the faint smell of his lantern.
Metal, worn by decades of use. Oil, tart with despair. Fire, like smoke.
And as he calms, he allows himself to flip open the catch of the lantern and dip his fingers into cold white flame.
His hunger sharpens in response, a gaping void making itself known, the one universal truth about himself, the fathomless desire, never sated, he is never without.
The fire dances along his hands, touching without burning as he steadies himself. Slowly, the world begins to come into focus, and his senses expand back through his forest, through crisscrossing root systems, and between tightly woven trees.
His eyes fall closed, and he leans back against the tree, grip still tight on the lantern, though slightly more relaxed.
The sounds of the forest begin to creep back in as the last of his lantern-deprived haze finally fades away, distant birdsong echoed by insect clicks as the wind whispers through the trees, tickling gently through the leaves and sending a rustle through the wood.
He flips the lantern shut, the flame creeping along his hand going out in an instant, unsustained.
In a smooth, practiced motion, he hangs his lantern on the lowest bough of his antler.
The phantom sensation of cold fire continues from his hand until it has finally engulfed him in sharp hunger.
He opens his eyes and sets off through the wood.
His forest won't tend itself.
Enoch has a habit of getting what he wants.
When there were ribbons gently tracing along his antlers and contentment and plenty so thick in the air the Beast could drown in it, he couldn't exactly be faulted for giving in to Enoch’s whims.
Sometimes he sets his sights on things the Beast does not anticipate though
“Can you feel your lantern, neighbor?” Enoch asks as he runs a ribbon along the glass face.
“No,” The Beast says lazily from where he lays sprawled a nest of Enoch’s ribbons. Something faintly like disappointment taints the air, though he can't be entirely sure. Enoch is so rarely anything but pleased in his direction. He glances up at the maypole and finds its expression as unreadable as ever.
Enoch hums, and that note of disappointment rings clearer.
“Ah, the rumors I’ve heard must have been untrue.” The Harvest Lord says, clearly intending to leave the conversation there and turn his attention to other topics.
The Beast’s eyes narrow, slivers of moonlight.
“What rumors?” He demands.
Enoch chuckles, and his ribbons flicker in a movement of dismissal.
“Nothing of great importance, dear. Plenty of good folk find their way to Pottsfield, one way or another, and I hear all sorts of stories about you. Not a shred of truth in most of them, I’m afraid. We give them a good turnaround. They don't know fact from fiction about you, don’t you worry, Sugar.”
The Beast grabs a ribbon and tugs. The maypole bows towards him without resistance, Enoch letting out a billowing puff of contentment as he laughs.
“What was the rumor, Enoch?” The Beast reiterates.
“Something about your feeling through the lantern, it being your soul-”
“I can feel my soul.” The Beast corrects.
Enoch pauses, and the maypole’s head tilts back consideringly.
“Oh?”
“The lantern is merely the vessel in which I carry my soul.”
Enoch seems to turn this information over in his mind several times, and the Beast lets him, relaxing back into Enoch’s ribbons.
An easy silence fills the hayloft, and the Beast becomes distracted, trying to remember how to tie butterfly knots in Enoch’s ribbons.
Eventually, Enoch asks:
“May I touch it?”
The Beast’s eyes spark with confusion.
“You’ve never bothered with asking to touch my lantern before,”
Humor rolls off of Enoch in waves.
“Let me rephrase, darling,” Enoch hums. “May I touch you ?” Clear intent drips from the word and a ribbon taps against the lantern’s glass face in emphasis.
The Beast’s claws still in the middle of pulling a knot tight in Enoch’s ribbons, shoulders stiff.
Fear does not precisely cover the snare of emotions that his souls are suddenly tangled in. He is not concerned with Enoch putting out his soul, he knows the Harvest Lord could be trusted above anyone else with the care of his flame, but the idea of his flame being handled directly by someone other than himself fills him with a distinct sense of unease.
Mortals never want to touch his fire, even when they believe they are carrying something precious in it.
Fire burns, even when it is as cold as his.
He doesn't understand why Enoch would want to, though he understands very little of why Enoch does anything.
A ribbon runs soothingly along his shoulders, and he realizes Enoch is still waiting for an answer.
He taps his claws together.
“So long as you do not touch the root of the flame.” He says, unease prickling through his voice. “And you only touch the veil. I see no reason you cannot.”
It might be pleasant even.
Enoch touching him has never brought him any pain before. The Harvest Lord is so gentle one almost forgets the immeasurable strength in every fiber of the maypole.
Thinking about it fills him with an odd excitement.
“If you’re perturbed by the notion, neighbor-” Enoch begins, concern lining his voice, and suddenly the prospect of Enoch not putting his ribbons in the Beast’s lantern seems almost worse than the idea of foreign touch through his flame.
“As long as you are careful.” The Beast cuts Enoch off hastily.
The maypole’s mouth twists into a gentle smile.
“I’m always careful, darling,”
The Beast chuckles, unease flooding from his body.
“Mmm,” He replies with a hum.
The click of the lantern’s face open makes his insides into a jumble of the anxious need to pry the lantern away from Enoch, but he takes a deep breath of burning liquor and caramel plenty and forces calm through his body.
“It’s going to burn your ribbons,” He warns. “Quickly.”
“Luckily, I have plenty to spare.” Enoch intones evenly.
Enoch gently deposits the open lantern into the Beast’s lap, one ribbon tracing around the mouth of the fire.
It's a blatant action to make him more comfortable by placing the lantern into his control, letting him have the option of backing out.
It's dreadfully saccharine and incredibly Enoch’s style.
Enoch gives him plenty of time to snatch his ribbon away, to slam the lantern shut and yank it against his chest like a child depriving their playmate of a toy, and in truth, there is a large part of the Beast that wants to do nothing more.
But there’s another part of him, thrumming with excitement, that keeps him from doing so.
The ribbon dips into the flame, like a mortal testing the water before diving in, stirring idly along its flickering veil.
The flame leaps up eagerly to greet it.
A tickle runs along the edge of his soul.
Something plentiful and abundantly flammable teasing the edge of his fire.
The Beast watches it, the ribbon dipping into fire, green against stark white, tracing across phantom antlers the same way they trace across his wooden ones.
The flame catches.
And suddenly, the Beast is burning not just oil but ribbon and plenty.
A pleasant shudder wracks through his flame before making its way through his wooden body.
Being in Enoch's presence has always been an intoxicating experience, with so much plenty, so much contentment, always close at hand, laid out before a starving creature like him.
But this was like drinking wine after a lifetime of drinking water that had seen a grape once .
It was plenty feeding directly into his hunger, into him , like being submerged in a font when he had only before sipped from its surface.
Enoch’s ribbon flicks along the inside of his lantern between tongues of flame, tousling the edges of his soul as the ribbon Enoch has to work with quickly begins to run out, white-hot flame creeping greedily up it, consuming the plenty imbued within and the fibers alike.
It's an oddly disorienting sensation of watching the feeling bloom.
It's disorienting, but it infuses every ember of his being with contentment as Enoch spills directly into his flame.
The Beast has no idea why he was so concerned.
His eyes flicker brightly in tune with his lantern.
Why on earth had this seemed like a bad idea?
He’s quivering, hunger sharp and consuming, or perhaps that's his soul speaking.
He so rarely considers the fine line he draws between himself and his soul until he’s reeling and tripping over it backwards.
Typically, it's a feeling accompanied by panic, but this time it feels as though he’s stumbled backwards into bliss.
The ribbon burns away, but hardly a moment passes before Enoch replaces it with a second, just as gentle and playful as the first, frolicking through the edge of him, a gentle push feeding into his being.
The Beast lets the senses of the body fall away into the feeling of flame, of an unending hunger finally sated, for only a moment, the edge of a blade constantly held against his throat finally dulled.
It is a stark antithesis to how he normally lives, and for once, he revels in change, however brief.
His soul dances eagerly, glowing with a blinding flat light as plenty runs through it, removing the edge of an ever-consuming hunger, softening the edge, gently warm autumn traces along the cusp of winter, warmth fading, devoured by ice. The ribbon dancing through him, burning, becoming him tastes of burning sugar, caramelizing and turning alcoholic, sweet at the edges with cider humor, boiled down into a delightful perfume, turned to incense, and it makes the air divine, a taste of heaven against his soul.
And heaven burns. It burns sweet and bright and makes his soul flutter.
The Beast croons, the sound spilling out from the lantern, a delighted crackle of flame.
His soul reaches for plenty, dancing upward, reaching out of its familiar confines into the warm sugar-stale air of the barn turning it to ice, burning through light and plenty eagerly.
Enoch indulges him.
The low hum of Enoch’s delight makes the flame waver at the edges, flickering.
Eventually, the ribbon recedes, having been several times replaced as it was eaten down by the flame.
The Beast allows the disorienting transition between the lantern and his body. His head and stomach pitch in different directions, and he is very glad he is lying down as he blinks his eyes open in the faint light of the barn.
The lanterns have mostly burned out and have turned the barn soft with shadow, the rough wooden planks smoothed over by darkness and painted by gentle orange light spilling from the few remaining spluttering lanterns. Dust dances in lazy patterns through the spotlights of the lanterns, their glow spilling from them like ichor, bleeding from wounded guttering flames into darkness and haloing the maypole in gold.
The maypole grins down at him, expression draped in shadow as it arches over the Beast, ribbons curled about him in a gentle caress.
Soot tapered streamers dangle around the maypole’s head, fluttering over the Beast’s head like a mobile.
The Beast peers up at it through half-lidded eyes, feeling very content.
Each movement feels as though it's through molasses, but he can barely find it in himself to be bothered.
He lays back against Enoch's ribbons, feeling wholly and utterly relaxed, the edge of his hunger staved off.
Already it is beginning to kick up, and in a few minutes, he is certain it shall be back to its typical fervor, but for now, he indulges in the feeling of being sated, a Beast tamed and docile, perfectly at ease.
“Well,” Enoch drawls. “I believe that's an experiment that bears repeating sometime.”
The Beast can only hum in response.
“You seemed to enjoy yourself.” Enoch purrs when it becomes clear the Beast is not capable of coherent speech beyond a handful of pleased noises and something rather like a purr that comes from the back of his throat.
Enoch plays with his antlers, pulling ribbons into bows as he waits for the Beast to regain coherent thought.
Eventually, the Beast manages to pull together the place of mind to string a few sounds into a word.
He's not entirely sure he's up to a sentence yet, still basking in the splendor of letting Enoch futz about with his soul, so he stays on the safe side and offers up a single word as an answer.
“Perhaps,” His voice is low and lazy, dripping from him like honey, the sound of it glinting gold in the soft luminance of the dying lanterns. It sounds satisfied, and it startles him because he is not used to hearing such a thing in his own voice.
Idly he snaps the lantern's face shut.
He looks up to Enoch and blinks up at him, eyes ringed with blue.
“Perhaps,” Enoch echoes with a laugh, a light edge of teasing in his voice. He seems to understand that is all he will be able to pry from the Beast when he is still savoring the experience. And so he hums and reaches down to caress the Beast’s face with a ribbon shorn short in ash.