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Heart never had a name for her rescuer. His true name was unprounceable by the small mare's tongue,
and besides he had not used that name in a century. She called him Beast, and that was enough for him, and for her.
She had been *made*, crafted together from pieces of things better left alone. A doll, for all intents and purposes,
missing too many pieces to make a real girl, but the creature who'd called himself a man--a wizard-- had made her anyhow.
Calling together ancient magics, he made a mare of exceptional beauty. To add to this, he fused into her skull
a spiraling crystal shell, to make her resemble a unicorn. But of course, she had no arms, no legs, and in a twist
of horribleness, she had no life.
Magic had crafted her but could not give her life. A simple set of limbs could be made, but life could not be given
so easily as the carving of wood. The doll mare lay on a simple stone slab, under a sheet to hide both her modesty though
she had no consciousness to bear it, and the vacant space within her chest.
This was how Beast had first found her, and he mistook her for a clockwork in progress. He had once worked for the wizard--
cursed to serve him until a debt could be repaid, a debt he would never speak of to his grave. He admired the craftsmanship
of what he had presumed was merely a shell.
His contract ended, and he left the castle. And he left behind what he thought was The Clockwork Unicorn. But though he
expected that the unicorn would be displayed across the land, he saw nor heard anything about it, and eventually, he put
it out of his thoughts. Perhaps it had been far too complex, or perhaps it was still a work in progress. The larger and more
complex clockworks could take decades.
But he recognized the mare at once when he spotted the evil wizard at the court of a weakling king, who paraded her about
like the clockwork Beast thought she was. However her demeanor and soft, sad face were too real. The wood bore
no signs of chafing, though nothing could hide the heavy collar around her neck. The plain wooden
limbs hardly suited her. He felt a sharp dismay that he had left the mare behind in the castle.
He slipped away from the festival, and planned for many nights how he might rescue the mare from her captor. He
used a number of spells to shield his passage, and eventually found the room in the tower where she was being kept.
The window was so high, and so far from anything, that only a handful of leaves were visible if one were to strain to see it.
The angle was so odd that it meant she would not even know the sky was blue.
And in the center of her chest, as she lay in tableau on a bed hard as the stone beneath it, bared by the simple shift that had slipped
over narrow shoulders, was a great pulsing ruby. Beast wept as he freed the tiny mare of her collar, and as he gathered her, still
sleeping, into his arms, wrapped in the sheet, and fled with her into the night.
Though she was frightened at first, eventually she grew to trust the gentle giant who had rescued her from the evil creature
who had created her. And it was Beast who named her. He called her Heart.Heart, Beast, and their story belong to me inkstars
Timelapse: https://youtu.be/mCGEzVZrRmM
Category All / All
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File Size 519.2 kB
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