Title: In A Dark Wood
Author: sheldrake
Fandom: Beauty And The Beast
Pairing: Beauty/Beast
Summary: On the nature of beasts.

After her father has gone, she takes herself off to bed, because she doesn't really know what else to do. A palace seems too big for someone on their own, even when they aren't really on their own at all. And she knows she isn't. Invisible, silent things are everywhere. The sorts of things that hide in the dark. And somewhere, lurking... him. It. The Beast.

Methodically, she undresses, unbuttons, unhooks. She hangs her clothes very neatly over the back of a chair. For some reason, they (whoever they are) have put far too many mirrors in this room. They seem to be everywhere, and they catch her off-guard. She finds herself almost scuttling to the bed, like someone who's afraid of her own reflection

Can't talk! Have a baby on my lap! Read it, it's good!

Title: Book Of Hours
Author: Person
Fandom: Beauty And The Beast
Pairing: Beauty/Beast
Summary: Somedays it seemed that her old life was the enchantment, and all that was or ever had been real were the castle, the lands, and The Beast.

So she listened to the noise in her heart, beat after beat after beat. When she returned to the shore The Beast would help her from the boat and she'd try to hear his as well, but the space between her ears and his heart was too great, and, though she no longer flinched away from his touch, she was unable to close it.

I do like a good re-telling of a fairy tale, although in this case I'm still looking for a story where the Beast stays a beast. It always breaks my heart when he changes back into a man. But this was lovely and shows a mostly bewildered Beauty trying to take control of her life in the castle.

Podfic: Rough Diamond
Reader: luzula
Author: lyrstzha
Fandom: Beauty and the Beast
Pairing: Beauty/Beast
Summary:A bard might, perhaps, give you a prettier, more satisfying story. But I, I will tell you what truly happened to Belle and her Beast.if you're sure it's truth that you'd prefer.

Take Cinderella, if you will. You'll have heard the way the bards tell her story, I'm sure. But what would you say if I told you that scarcely a week before her whirlwind wedding, her father-in-law--the old king--had her poisoned to prevent the shame of his son marrying a commoner? The prince, so I hear, laid her to rest in an elaborate tomb and took up writing especially morbid poetry, none of which is remembered now in even the most arcane of anthologies. This makes more sense than the story the bards tell, but it doesn't sit so easily in the ear, does it?

I've always been a huge fan of re-imagined fairy tales, I used to tell my sister wildly varying versions of the same story when she was little. But this fairy tale has done what I could only hope to do, it's taken a fairy tale and given all the power to the female character. In so many of these Grimm Tales the women are the victims of fate/circumstance/family, they don't have an effect on events, events have an effect on *them*.

This is a story that I would read to my children and not cringe away from how the female character is written. For better or worse *she's* the driving force behind the story and I can't tell you how happy listening to this made me.