The Many Forms of Beauty

It was rare that Marie Voisard got scared. Despite her normally beautiful and almost angelic appearance, she had seen more gruesome sights than most grown men. She had watched a person scream as their internal organs were removed one by one, on her orders, and done little more than blink.

Marie liked to think that the reason why she was so happy with her existence was because she lived what was effectively two rather fulfilling lives. She was Marie Voisard, the beautiful Frenchwoman whom had somehow managed to work her way up the ladder to Deputy Ministry of the English Ministry in a few short months. That had been more luck than anything else. The Lupin’s had needed someone they could trust would be against the Marriage Law as Undersecretary, and Marie had just so happened to be applying for another Ministry position. Her application had been noticed, and the witch had been pleasantly surprised. Then Elijah had stepped down, and Marie had stepped up into the Deputy Minister position. Power suited her.
The other half of the time, she was Le Papillion. Le Papillion was queen of the French underground, best friend of the infamous assassin Katrina-Carlotta, capable of communicating with butterflies, and very at odds with a great number of people.

When one ignored the great amount of power she held, Marie was not all that special. She didn’t have a photographic memory, nor was she a genius with words or arithmetic. She was not a good person, but she wasn’t a horrendously terrible one either. Not like her best friend, who was practically legendary for her casual torturing and murdering tendencies.

Marie was, however, a brilliant strategist. As a student she had been able to ace tests after barely studying, able to predict what the Professor would ask before even glancing at the paper. She knew the best ways to make friends, always appearing far more charming than she really was. Marie could tell which parts of a building would be more or less crowded, taking into account the time and what had happened that day. Which was why her current situation was so surprising.
The woman was cornered. She’d been attacked by a gang of men, and apperated away in an attempt to evade them. Obviously they’d had some sort of tracking charm on her, because the men appeared only moments later. All six of them were dressed in all black, and one of them look suspiciously like the right-hand man of Pierre Rousseau, the leader of a French gang who had wanted her dead for years.

Despite her usually flawless strategically-inclined mind, Marie didn’t know what to do. She was on the defensive, throwing up a shield charm against the spells being thrown in her direction. She knew that to escape she’d have to remove the tracking charm, but doing so would leave her exposed. Marie tried her hardest, but six against one was far from fair, and a bright orange curse connected with her right leg. Crying out in pain, the witch fell, gasping from the agony of whatever curse had just hit her.

One of the men laughed, and walked over to kick her in the face. He managed to get in two kicks, each expertly aimed at an eye, before Marie was able to grit her teeth and roll over. Whatever had hit her leg certainly wasn’t light magic.

Anger beginning to accompany the adrenalin pulsing through her veins, Marie forced herself to think. She had never before encountered a situation she couldn’t figure her way out of, and she’d be dammed if that started now. Grinning, teeth bloody from where she’d bit the inside of her lip, Marie could have laughed at how huge of a mistake the men had made. All six were now standing together, chatting about how happy their boss would be that they’d caught her, but none had thought to take away her wand. They’d underestimated her, figuring that Le Papillion would be down for the count.

Grip on her wand tightening, the woman channeled all her anger, pointed her wand in the general direct of the men, and cast. Six bolts of lightning shot from her wand, hitting the men. The spell was dark magic, but Marie was not particularly powerful, and in her current state her spells were even weaker. The spell had just knocked the men out, and probably not for very long.
Knowing that she was too weak to apperate, Marie slowly pulled herself up, gasping as weight was put upon her cursed leg. Feeling the magic that masked her natural appearance falling, the woman cursed, but was too fatigued to remedy the problem. Looking around desperately and finding herself in the middle of nowhere, a far shot from where she’d been aiming; the woman began to limp southward. Letting out a sharp cry with every other step, Marie’s vision began to blur. She was just about losing hope, when the brunette spotted a structure in the distance. She blinked, and the building was gone. As Marie lost consciousness moments later, she could only hope that the sight hadn’t been a hallucination.

Winter was beginning to thaw.

Slivers of brown peeping amidst the white, seeds of life long asleep under the ground blinking their eyes awake, green plumules curling up to taste their first breath of air. Branches shaking in the wind, life sneaking through their renewed veins, the burdened snow sliding off to the ground to melt to a colourless pool that the thirsty ground drank of to live again. Thin, golden shafts of sunlight wandered in through greyer clouds, sparkling not off snow but whiter, sweeter blossoms nestled in emerald grass just beginning to flutter in the wind.

Life was borne on branches, on the grass, shimmered in sunlight, was carried by the wind as it blew in from the North in search of new places. It knocked on the doors of the little village nestled at the borders of a forsaken estate, whistled through the chimneys of the homesteads and gently, softly crept into the borders of the land that seemed untouched by the world’s grasping, greedy hands. There it found a forest just beginning to shake off its winter slumber, a waterfall that bubbled over pebbles and rustled through rushes growing courage day by day to be louder, meadows long overcast with white with blades of dew soaked grass beginning to emerge- and a stone castle, looking over the land. The wind skittered over the stone slabs, meandered over turrets, flitted over bolted wooden doors and iron grates, searching for a way in.

Then, in the northmost tower, there was a creak- the squeak of cold-numbed iron bolts being pulled out, wooden shutters banged open and the wind fleeted joyfully in, bearing the smell of forest and water and grass and new beginnings. It caressed past long, raven-black locks, flimsy white gauze of sleeves and the girl at the window rubbed her palms down her bare shoulders and smiled.

“It’s going to be a beautiful Spring.”



Tristan seemed unusually animated today, whinnying plaintively with hooves raised high and nudging aside the offered apple to nuzzle at Vanora’s neck with a cool, soft nose. Vanora smoothed a hand down the horse’s muzzle, past brown, doe-like eyes and pressed her lips between them.

They raced past the doors of the stable, Tristan’s hooves thundering against the newly softening ground and bore down the sloping meadows to see if the air really did taste better with every burst of speed. They headed towards the forest, they always did, and every leap over a fallen log filled Vanora’s chest with rapidly expanding, choking life. Gravity seemed not to matter, not when they were dodging through trees and she leaned forward to snag the first bloom of the year, white and delicate and painfully fresh from an overhanging branch. There, beyond that chestnut tree, the baby chicks called for food in their nest while the mother winged through the trees, following the horse and the girl in their flight through the woods.

Then Tristan reared up suddenly, neighing in distress. The abrupt stop threw Vanora forward, breath colliding suddenly in her lungs, but when she glanced downwards to see what had upset the animal.......

The world was growing closer all of a sudden, the trees crowding around, the cloud-laden sky bearing down upon them. The forest had grown curiously still, the birds voices silenced, the running water muted- or maybe only her ears were ringing. Because it couldn’t be. It wasn’t. All those years before and after, and no one had ever......no, it wasn’t possible....if fate hadn’t meant it for so long then why...

Then the woman rolled to her back and coughed, the sound echoing over and over in the silent clearing. A little dribble of dark, horribly dark liquid seeped past her lips and ran down her jaw, staining the ground.

Before the world could start making sense, her legs had already swung over the horse and settled on the soil. Her dress rustled as she dropped to her knees, not daring to touch, eyes skittering over the prone figure like a frightened deer’s. The woman’s face was bloodless, blue shadows sunken and settled beneath paper-thin eyelids, lank hair plastered with sweat on her forehead, lips white and pale as ice. Widened blue eyes watched trembling fingers as they outstretched, to a whiter, bruised throat and stutter as they felt a pulse jump beneath the skin.

Minutes later, hooves were thundering on the ground again but the wind blowed in the reverse direction, as a white horse bore two figures through the forest back towards the castle, one supporting the other. Vanora breathed, feeling not life but panic congeal deep in her lungs, while the woman’s dwindling breath created a damp patch on her shoulder.