This is just one of many projects I have been working on for my Creative Writing class. My colleagues and I have decided to make our own remake of certain fairytales, so I picked a classic one for a re-telling with a change of face.
My name is Beauty. Many men had offered for me to marry but unfortunately, I never had the time. My mother would snatch me up and tell me, never fall in love with wolves who are hungry and thirst for your heart. They will lock you in their castles and make you thirsty until you turn into a wolf. I never thought that mother would be so demanding for she herself hunted wolves and put them as her trophies on a shelf in display.
I used to think it was my name that people were attracted to, but it was not. I was the village beauty and everyone who saw me was immediately attracted by my looks. But I wanted someone who was wiser. Someone intellectual and protective. Some one who knew the real me. Not for my looks, but someone who loved me for my intelligence instead of the girl that everyone knew.
Everyday I would pick strawberries and figs from the forest that the wolves ruled over. It was dark and near the lake and everything was calm, green and filled with patches of moss.
I longed to be a wolf. To run free and observe the beauty of the dark wood. To feel the mossy areas and rule with the and roll playfully on the grassy knolls of green near the lake.
My mother was wrapping a basket for my grandmother who also, was a wolf hunter. I had to go over the river and through the woods where there was a narrow bridge. As I walked form my house it took two whole miles and I was suddenly hungry and so I reached into the basket and ate. I know I shouldn’t have but I did. I ate all the chocolates, figs and strawberries and I had decided or at least I think I did to go forth onto the bridge. As I crossed, I saw a bushy tail and a blue tailcoat with white trousers in the forest. It was a wolf.
I stopped and stared. Don’t mind him! Run away! I thought to myself.
Finally, he had revealed himself. I sighed and thought that if I could at least stand still that he would go away. In the distance I heard a scream. I knew that wolves were dangerous and if they found a soulmate that matched their minds and hearts, they would immediately marry and turn you into a wolf until you became the hunted, the predator but also the prey. I new that if you were not the one, they would eat you. Whole. The blood flowing down their lips. I knew wolves were wise and intellectual and sometimes if you got to know them, very playful.
“Hello pretty one.” The wolf had said.
“H-Hello.” I stammered.
“What brings you into my neck of the woods? I heard you were the most beautiful girl in my kingdom of the forest. I’ve seen you, you know?” He looked at me keenly.
“You forbiddingly pick strawberries and figs form my gardens. So, what should you want now?”
“N-nothing.” I stammered again but this time he took my hand and kissed it. As he took my hand, he imprinted on me by making my hand bleed. I cried aloud. Magickly it healed.
“You’re a monster!” I shouted.
“I shall never be with a creature like you!”
He howled in pain. “But Beauty, I have watched you grow.”
I blushed. The world inside my mind churned and twisted. I wanted to be a wolf. Free and most of all, wise.
“Take me with you.” I sighed breathlessly.
And there he told me that he was an alpha of his pack because he was once a God; a symbol of intellect and wisdom and trust; about the other Gods and how he the wolf had stolen a golden apple from the kingdom of Zeus’s gardens himself. How he ate one and turned immortal. He told me about the stars and constellations how we were once made of stardust and how one day we will go back to the universe as one. He told me myths and that we were made of not only stardust but of magic. How crystals were emanated into energies that we couldn’t know about. How Atlantis sunk and how the people there became mermaids. He once had a lover named Arie who turned into a mermaid and how he howled at the moon to remind the sun that he had to let his lover, the moon breathe until thee eclipse would arrive so the sun would make love to the moon.
“You are as such.” He told me. “You are like my moon for you will have to leave me. Meet me here everyday and for each time you come I will tell you fully how the world came to be.”
Every day I would leave my mother’s house with the basket and share what I had with the wolf.
One day after a month or two, my mother had gone hunting and found out about my whereabouts. She let my grandmother come over to beat me every day until I was black and blue. I cried and howled at the sun and the moon howling for the wolf. I spent my days looking after my new stepsisters who had treated me like a slave for my mother was drunk and hated me for ever going into that dark, dank forest to meet the wolf.
Suddenly out of my mother’s drunken stupor, she made the basket and put the same things in it. Chocolate, figs and strawberries and pushed me out the door. My stepsisters who were uglier than me laughed and jeered.
I went over the bridge and suddenly, I died.
I had become a wolf. A shadow creeped over me. The wolf creeped over me as I cowered. He held my beautiful wolf face and quietly loved me and said, “You have been beaten.”
As he held me close to him, I cried into his arms. And I howled and as I howled leaves rustled throughout the forest and as my legs became hind, fur grew all over my skin.
“Now and forever, you will be mine,” He said “you are my true love and my soulmate.” He kissed me and gave me my happily ever after.
I trusted my heart for I was a wolf deep inside, and in the forests with my soulmate as I shed my skin to be with the alpha of the pack; stronger than any female wolf, I walked the narrow path in my heart and trusted him within my mind, body, heart and soul until I became the hunted. Until I became both predator and prey with my beloved husband, the alpha male of the pack who ruled the forest.