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Hunger.
Hungering.
To hunger.
A fire burns. A fire has burned. A fire continues to burn. A fire will always burn. A fire must be fed.
A fire needs fuel to burn. And fuel must be acquired, lest it sputter out.
Such a thing cannot be afforded.
…
The Beast is a creature. He does like to deny it. Of course he does, no thing like himself would enjoy to bask in its own unfortunate physicality.
Hiding in metaphor and tale, resting within a shawl of legend and song, folklore and whispered truths— it is all so very much simpler than acknowledging that he is, unfortunately, physical. A being.
A being in need of food.
And that, dreadfully enough, he must consume.
The beast is starving.
…
Edeloil is a curious substance. It is thick; it pours oh so slowly. More of a sap than an oil. But when it burns, it goes up like a match. Paper in a bonfire. Worms in a bird’s gullet. Bubbles in a fishpond.
Edeloil is not aplenty.
No matter how he rations, no matter how he grinds every drop of oil from twig and bark- the grinding, the milling, the toiling of its creation takes time. And time is burning. And burning is Edel. He only ever has enough reserve to last through his next hunt, and the process begins again.
To hunt.
To grow.
To bleed– to tap. To harvest. To mill. To process.
To burn.
Then to starve. Fire flickers. Nearly sputtering out.
To hunt.
To hunt.
To hunt.
…
There simply must be a more efficient way to do this.
Mustn’t there be?
…
Within the lantern, a fire flickers. Within the lantern, what is him spins, dances. Within the lantern, he hungers. And hungers. And hungers. There is never enough. He is always burning. The fuel chamber runs low. He hungers.
…
It storms. It storms like he hasn’t seen in years. Rain hailing down in torrents as The North Wind storms past. The Queen has freed the Wind from his cell again, or so it seems.
An annoyance.
The Beast would not be surprised if The Queen had done it to spite him and him alone. His cloak is soaked to his bark, pelt catching against eyes, knots, and burls.
It is dreary, it is wet, foggy and frustratingly windsome, and yet, The Beast must toil the same. His westmost Edel has been tapped dry, and the wood must be seen to. He does not have the stores to retreat dryward until the Wind has tired. The Edel must be felled.
And fell it he will.
He rears back, strikes the tree. Axe splits limb, splits bark. The branch tumbles to the ground beside its twins, to be bound, carted to his mill, splintered, tossed to the fire.
He rears to strike again, but—
Oil.
Edeloil drips from the gash. Running rivets down bark, and flying skyward in the wind. The Beast falters, it had been dry, he had checked, thrice now, to be sure .
It is a waste.
He cannot afford waste.
He cannot afford dilution.
He leans forward to examine the gash, can he tap it? Patch it? Can he—
cliunk.
His lantern, hanging from an antler, hits the edelwood. He startles, turns towards the noise, which only worsens his problems, because the hatch glass door twists open.
A spark jumps from the fire, his Fire, to the tree and—
Well. The bark takes.
…
Full does not approximate the feeling of burning.
Full is not something that The Beast can be. A fire cannot be full.
But fire can be wild.
It spreads, and in seconds, despite the rain, despite the wind, despite the storm.
The tree goes up in brilliant white flames.
And The Beast feels—
It is a good feeling. It is a powerful feeling, as he is—
His fire, he consumes, he is, plenty, fullness, so much, all at once, not a trickle, not enough to just and only sustain, firespread, uncontrolled, powerful. Growing. Changing shape, brighter than the lightning, brighter than noon sun, brighter than the harvest moon, than snowshine, than—
He is a forest fire.
He is above a raging storm.
He is an endless thing, larger. Plenty, a roaring, a crackling, a consuming. A burning star, a roaring fire, he warps in place, eyes flicker green then yellow then red, he can feel every footstep for miles, he can hear every bird within the woods, and he is burning.
He is the burning
It is eclectric. It is ecstatic. It is---
It is a waste of fine oil, to be burnt to quickly, it is months of time burnt in seconds but it feels—
Good.
It feels good.
He stands before the burning Edel. As the rain pours around him, he burns anyway.
He burns anyway.
Quickly. Inefficiently.
(But gloriously, in that he is, for once, something of plenty)
(he is, for once, full)
…
The firetree burns out. The firetree dies. Soul choking out, once there, gone. Lowered awareness follows, and the hunger returns, louder, thrumming, through his everything, through his everything.
He aches to burn another tree, one less dry, to see where it would take him, how nice such a thing would be. To go up in a pyre, to be so much more than a flicker in a lantern clutched to one's chest.
But Edeloil is not a thing of plenty, and a hunger ache is only somuch as he makes it, perhaps an annoyance, perhaps a problem. He will not let it be either..
He will weather the starvation and lack. As he always has.
To live is to ration. To sustain. To keep the small flame burning.
A pyre would never be able to be sustained, as much as he wishes it to be.
(it would make him unrecognizable, to change. A woodsthing with a lantern, a light in the dark. Such a fire would change him. He would not like to change.)
…
Toil. To keep himself lit is a toil. And, as a sickly summer crawls forth, the Beast realizes he does not have the Edeloil to stretch the months it takes to whittle a Soul to seed. Not unless he is lucky, or if he can pull time from where there ought to be none.
It is a doom, to look at his trees, two, then, one dry and being pressed, another with naught enough to tide him through. He must spend more time singing, misleading, sending them to be in circles, hopelessly lost.
He cannot tend to the milling.
He must find himself assistance, or he will burn himself out trying.
It is a mortification. But a necessary one.
…
The flame flickers low. The Beast watches. Gnawing all through him, like termites have found their way inside. An itching, a sickening. Pouring oil to the reserves, only a trickle, until the itching fades to an ache.
Starvation.
…
There are witches in his woods.
They work with him, in a manner, some call to him. A cursed babe there, a missing dog then, a need of Scissors where.
He has done many of them a good turn. They do not get lost in his trees.
It is only fair that he receive a favor.
He approaches. The house is small. From the outside abandoned. From the inside alight. Inhabited.
“Witch,” he says, stands before the door. “I have need of you.”
The door creaks open, loud, the wood rot-ridden, hinges loose. The witch is young, her hair long, tangled, greasy. Eyes wide as tree rings, skin pale as frog’s belly.
“Beast,” she whispers in greeting.
“You are to fell an Edelwood tree. The one over the hill, where your father forbade you from walking. You have been there. I have seen you, picking blossoms from its branches. You owe me for them.” He holds his axe to her. “Grind the wood to a pulp. Bottle any oil that seeps. I will return when the deed is done.”
She does not take the axe. Only stares at him.
“You will be rewarded for hurriedness.” He tilts his head, drops the axe at her feet. “Do not disappoint.”
…
To not have control is a worry.
But to hunt, and not to pause is simple.
Branches sprout from eyes, from mouth, from belly. Branches spread, unfold, oil drips from glassened eyes.
Bottles of oil on doorstep. Tinderwood dried and tied.
It is efficient.
He hunts.
…
Oil does not run thin. He indulges, burns twigs as he shapes a new tree to be tall, to be thin, fresh oil to the flame not the well.
He indulges. His eyes glow bright.
It is not plenty, that is a certainty, but well...
His oil well stays full. His flame does not flicker.
He shall stay fit as a butcher's dog, so far as he can see.
He shall always hunger, but he will never starve. Not to nothing, that is.
Not to nothing.