Prompt Post 2!

Mar 20, 2011 02:21



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Only She, Who is Beautiful anonymous December 9 2011, 21:54:37 UTC
Quite often, Gaston thinks about the triplets.

A lot of the town can't tell them apart, but it's quite possible really. Claudia is the one who loves red, and Gaston has to admit that it suits her. She is the eldest of the three, and the most forward, who enjoys pressing her breasts into Gaston's arms and pouting her full lips. Her idea of being a woman is to be beautiful, and to be desired, and Gaston knows that she resents Belle for not appreciating what beauty she has.

Laura is the middle one, and for some reason thinks that yellow suits her best. Gaston isn't so sure, but it's never wise to disagree with the triplets over fashion. She wants the most to settle down, and to raise children, and sometimes when they have all had rather too much ale or wine she will stick a cushion beneath her stomach and drape herself over Gaston's lap and declare that she would bear all the sons that any man could ever desire.

The youngest is Paula, who likes green, and generally follows what her sisters say although Gaston sometimes wonders that there might be a few actual thoughts that bubble through her head from time to time. Gaston knows that she can actually sign her name, unlike her sisters, and that she loves the outdoors. Collecting flowers and watching butterflies and whatever things women are supposed to do.

Occasionally, he thinks about the other women of the town. Marie, who really runs the bakery and has her husband firmly under her thumb, a bustling matron of a woman who seemed to have replaced the flit of a girl that had married him. The gloriously self-aware Gabrielle who lets her bosom draw the eyes of men, then laughs when their wives realise what is happening. Suzette the milkmaid with her rosy cheeks and her shy flirting with the shepherd-boy Lucien.

Most of the men in the town think that Gaston does not care for the women, that Gaston thinks all the women are the same, that Gaston has no respect for the women.

Most of the men in the town are fools.

They see, of course, the way that Gaston will give Claudia's rounded hips an appreciative look, the way that one muscular arm will wind around Paula's narrow waist, the way that blue eyes will linger on Gabrielle's cleavage without a wife to intervene.

But, most often, Gaston thinks about Belle.

Some would argue that Gaston is obsessed with Belle. They could be right. The way that she absentmindedly tucks a curl of brown hair behind her ear as she reads. The way that she bites her lip as she looks over the bread at the bakery. The way that she moves, all fluidity and grace, and the way that she talks with such confidence and eloquence.

The way that she acts in a way that is so unfeminine, not what a woman is supposed to be, and yet the way in which she is so perfectly a woman.

Gaston looks down at the body which is what her father always wanted in a son, and wonders what he would have thought of having a daughter like Belle. Wonders whether he would rather have a daughter who can hunt and drink and ate four dozen eggs a day in an attempt to be what he wanted, or a daughter who had the audacity to be herself.

That makes Belle the best.

Gaston shoulders the blunderbuss and claps Le Fou around the shoulder. Perhaps Belle, with her knowledge of books and her big words, might actually have understood. In another life, in another place, perhaps Belle might have understood.

For in town there's only she, who is beautiful...

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Re: Only She, Who is Beautiful anonymous December 12 2011, 03:12:06 UTC
this is so gorgeous! i love every choice you made in writing it -- gaston being so observant of the other womens' qualities, trying to figure out where she fits in with them, what they can mean for her and her identity. lovely!

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