Author Note
Both are optional, and not needed to understand the story. You are more than welcome to skip ahead to chapter one if you want to jump right into the voice and story.
But if you do read these, I think they heavily add to the experience of the story for those who want payoff.
Thank you for taking a look. I genuinely hope this story is capable of reaching someone, especially on a personal and emotional level.
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Beauty and the Thief.
Epigraph
"There is many a monster who wears the form of a man; it is better of the two to have the heart of a man and the form of a monster."
― Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, Beauty and the Beast. (1756)
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Prologue
Like all great fairytales, this story starts with the classic "Once Upon a Time."
Ah, ah! But not in the traditional sense of the word "time," nor is time conventional to our earthly understanding.
I know this can be confusing. All mysteries and all riddles are confusing; that's why they earn the name riddle and mystery.
But, fear not, you're not alone with that confusion; the princess in this tale would agree wholeheartedly with you, and perhaps more!
Doubly once you learn his story of how he went from being someone so thoroughly humiliated and unloved to the weakest hero to potentially save the entire country of Zhonalai.
A country of many who didn't deserve him, and many who thought him better off dead—both for good and bad reasons.
And just how could someone as small and insignificant as this protagonist do such a thing?
That answer is both simple and complicated; it exists in a realm where both can survive all the same.
This man, no older than twenty, was nothing more than a bookworm. He couldn't wield a sword, couldn't compete with cultivators, and certainly couldn't brave the confines of a ghastly forest alone.
Yet, he attempted to change the world through a single act of earnestness.
He dipped his trembling hands into fate's encounter, but not through force. This princess chose to denounce fate through a screaming plea and a tight hug—one more stubborn than an illustrated picture, with paint made of deep red and blue, splotched with gold.
Cheesy, right? Let's continue.
Now, there wasn't anything powerful about that hug—it was no more human that it was a hug. But the thing about this hug, it was going against powerful gods, trained warriors, and an ancient curse.
This hug existed through the purity that hid behind the emotions that powered it.
The question is whether that hug secured a happily ever after for this princess, or if it cosmically destroyed the entire world.
But that decision didn't come easy, met with hardships and realizations, and challenging one's self-worth against difficult emotions.
That's where you come in, Dear Reader.
You and that princess are alike in many ways.
For this imaginative man is condensed into someone as humanely as you and I. He's met with hardships, desires, and the fear that taking that step onto a swinging bridge brought forth two possibilities.
The first ending in his demise.
The second welcoming him to a world as magnificent as the ones he'd escape to in books.
In a way, it was a chance to venture into the unknown and escape his already defined life. Our princess is a man so misunderstood that his own self-worth puddles like ink.
He is human.
But even puddles of ink can be smudged into something beautiful, no matter how messy, and no matter who looks at it as a burden over art.
This is the story of a young man discovering the power and cost of loneliness and embracing that art for all its flaws, trusting it even when told to clean it up.
Just like this princess learnt through patience and preserved that art, this fairytale also asks the same.
This story was once upon a time, and is still upon that time.
One where time that was once is now, forever then, and will eternally be at the stroke of a quill.
Our story begins two centuries before the birth of the princess and starts at those two words converging at the mere collision on a busy street.