Beauty and the Beast Pt. 1

I'm burnt out doing comic book stuff so this is a return to prose and an experiment. If you like it then leave a message because I've gotten like one freakin' comment since I started this thing. Geez. -B

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST according to 'B'

A peddler was making his was home from a long trip through the northern lands of his country and was only a day away from home. He had taken the path he normally would have taken all the way to the point at which I've begun telling this tale and here is where it becomes a tale indeed for only a day away from his home the peddler decided to take a shortcut.

"The forest is spacious and has little danger." He thought to himself. "If I go west through here I shall surely be home before sundown."

And so he went through the forest, a forest he had known since he was a child and that his family had known longer than he could conceive of. It was a dark place and strange but that was what the peddler liked about it. The mysteries of his homeland were a comfort to him for he always knew he could stumble upon something strange.

But he never considered that he would stumble upon something so strange as...

"A palace?" he cried. Even the two little donkeys who pulled his cart stopped and balked before the grand ruin. The peddler searched his memories and when they failed he took out his map which he never looked at until that moment and it too failed. "How could there be a palace here?" and he said this aloud but got no answer.

The peddler thought about going home, running home really, but as he looked at the palace his eyes grew large. Gold? Silver? Jewels? More likely than not there were no such things inside but the peddler was no rich man and to find such things would be a great boon. "At the very least I can get a present for Beauty." he said and with that he shook the reins of his donkeys and they dragged his cart forward, ignorant of what lurked inside.

Look forward to part two...