“They smell,” rumbles her host—she has long since stopped thinking of him as her captor—“of whatever pleases you best;” he sounds half-apologetic, half-ashamed as though this newest oddity is yet another offense, until Beauty laughs in delight. Of course she does; it is pleasant, after all, to walk in the gardens surrounded by the scent of the chocolate her sisters served at their fetes, the coffee the servants brew for her in the morning, the crispness of an unread book.
Until the day she leans too close to a barely-unfurled bloom, only to recognize the tang of cinnamon and close-cropped fur; her cheeks flush, her stomach turns, and her heart—that fool!—is no longer to be trusted.
Beauty and the Beast, Beauty/Beast
“They smell,” rumbles her host—she has long since stopped thinking of him as her captor—“of whatever pleases you best;” he sounds half-apologetic, half-ashamed as though this newest oddity is yet another offense, until Beauty laughs in delight. Of course she does; it is pleasant, after all, to walk in the gardens surrounded by the scent of the chocolate her sisters served at their fetes, the coffee the servants brew for her in the morning, the crispness of an unread book.
Until the day she leans too close to a barely-unfurled bloom, only to recognize the tang of cinnamon and close-cropped fur; her cheeks flush, her stomach turns, and her heart—that fool!—is no longer to be trusted.