The Gentle Monster

“But sister,” Anna-Maria pondered, passing on a piece of clothing to be pinned. “What is the Spirit of the Forest?”

The flower gazed down, the midday light framing her visage like that of an angel. “The Spirit is a caring being,” she answered as softly as the plush green that grew from trees. “It watches over us and protects all that lives.”

Beyond the wood, within his refuge, the Creature pressed his face closer through the open space. Aching somewhere in his chest to draw nearer to her. This woman of fairest vision was akin to the dawn that broke over desolation. Soft, radiant, and utterly beyond his reach.

He had seen light before, cruel and scorching, as the fire consumed his Maker’s laboratory. It raged and burned, leaving him half-born amidst the ruin as he made his narrow escape into a world that would only fear him. Yes, he had seen light before, but never like this. This was gentle, living, as it poured through her hair as though the heavens bowed to crown her.

Each day thereafter, the Creature lingered in his dim sanctuary, the scent of straw and dirt clinging to his stitched-together skin. And he listened for her voice. When she sang, it carried through the cracks of old wood. A melody as sweet and cruel as longing, trembling through him until even his monstrous heart dared to quicken. He dared to hope for her light to shine on him even for a moment.

But he told himself revealing his presence would be unwanted. He told himself such beauty was not for him. Forces beyond his control and understanding seemed to conspire for something different, though. For on the fifth evening, while the moon hung silver and splendid in the sky, she unknowingly came to him.

The night air was crisp, and his breath came in pale clouds as he trudged through the copse. In his immense hands he carried another colossal bundle of kindling gathered from the forest floor. It was but a humble offering he gave the family, one of the many benevolences he bestowed upon them. He knew not why they coveted the wood so greatly, but the smiles that graced them the following mornings compelled him to keep acting.

So he crept to the front of the cottage, taking care to be as silent as his large stature would permit. The windows were dark save for a single glow that glimmered faintly like the pulse of a living thing. He dared not draw near enough to be seen. Not thinking himself able to bear seeing the terror he inspired in every soul who glimpsed his face.

He bent low, placing his offering by the door, arranging it with care. His great, marred fingers trembled as they brushed away dirt from the threshold. He put his back to the cottage, meaning to retreat once more to his sanctum.

And then—

“Wait.”

The voice froze him in place. Soft, uncertain, but unafraid.

He turned, slow as the turning of the world. She stood there—the flower, wrapped in a woolen shawl, the moonlight making her seem carved from milk and mist. Her eyes darted from the wood to the hulking figure before her. She should have screamed. His brief experience in the world had taught him to expect nothing else. But instead she took a hesitant step closer.

“It’s you,” she murmured, realization blooming in her voice. “You have been helping us.”

He shook his head—a clumsy, desperate motion—for he had no words. No tongue or ability fit to answer her grace. But she saw the denial as humility; her lips softened into something that pierced him more than fear ever could.

“Spirit of the Forest,” she whispered. “You are real.”

The title struck him like a benediction and a curse in one. The flame light from the candle she held flickered over his discolored skin, the seams of his creation, the ruin of his hands. Yet still she looked at him with reverence. Awe.

He tried to speak, to tell her he was no spirit, no savior, only a wretch born of a man’s folly. But all that left his throat was a rasp, broken and low.

Still, she seemed to understand him even though no words were uttered. Some gentle intuition stirred within her eyes, and she stepped nearer, the leaves crunching softly beneath her bare feet.

The air trembled between them, a fragile bridge that might have carried something transcendental had he only been brave enough to cross it.

But the Creature knew what he was. What his Marker had forged him to be. Not a spirit, not a guardian, but a grotesque parody of man. Her nearness felt like light falling upon decay, a warmth meant only for those truly living.

So when she stepped closer, he recoiled. 

A low sound escaped him, neither a growl nor a word, but the guttural cry of something wounded by grace. He staggered back, the candlelight dancing wildly across his face, revealing for the briefest instant the horror of his scars. The flower gasped, still not in fear, but in startled pity. And it was that pity, not terror, that drove him into flight.

He turned and fled into the dark.

HE DID NOT VENTURE NEAR THE COTTAGE FOR MANY DAYS AFTER. The shame of his flight burned through him like a sickness. Not that of fire or gushing wounds, but something quietly crueler. He remained within the barn in the lightened hours, and once the sun sank on the horizon, he wandered the edges of the forest. Where lush green clung to trees like velvet, where no light reached save for the twinkling glow of the stars.

Yet still, his gaze was drawn each night towards the small house beyond the trees. The faint chimney smoke rose like morning mist, and he wondered if she still thought of him. The monster who had fled her mercy.

When he crept back to the barn, hunger gnawed at him. The wind carried the scent of the family’s hearth and bread, and with it the ache of longing not wholly born of the body. Near the doors of his refuge, something new awaited him. 

A bundle wrapped in cloth.

He approached it warily, the night air holding its breath. Within the wrapping lay not scraps as before, but a meal: bread still soft, a wedge of cheese, and an apple with its skin polished by a careful hand. Beside it, folded neatly, was a shirt. It was plainly sewn yet made with care. He did not know then to realize that the sleeves had been remade to shroud his distorted limbs.

He touched it with reverent fingers. It smelled faintly of floral and woodsmoke. Of her, the flower that smelled of flowers. He smiled at the thought.

The Creature bowed on his knees beside the gifts. No soul had ever given him such a thing; not since his first moment of breath had anyone looked upon him as something worthy of gentleness.

In the days that followed more gifts appeared. A clean blanket one night, its edge freshly hemmed. A flask of some rich broth still warm when he found it. Each token bore her hand, her thoughts, her defiance of the fear she should have held for him.

She had dubbed him Spirit, and now she honored him as one.

But he dared not let her see him again. Each time her figure crossed the yard in the dawn light, his heart quaked with both yearning and dread. He hid deeper in the shadows of the barn or the folds of the forest, afraid he might unmake the kindness she had built between them.

Until the night she sought him out.

The forest was thick with mist, the air soft with the scent of dewed earth. He heard her before he saw her, her steps light, a lantern swinging from her hand like a captive sun.

“Spirit,” she called softly, voice trembling with the hush of anticipation. “I know you are near.”

He pressed himself against the rough trunk of a tree, scarcely daring to breathe. The light danced closer, golden through the fog.

“I only wish to thank you,” she said. “To see you. To know you are real.”

Her words struck through the night like the muffled chime of bells. Distant, but unbearably beautiful. He felt himself drawn toward her helplessly. 

And yet, something within him spoke of ruin. Of the evil that created him and the horror he carried.

Still, his foot moved. Just once, and then again, the twigs whisper crunches beneath his heel.

The flower turned.

The lantern brushed across his form, the broad shadow, the stitched hands, and the ruined face half hidden in the mist. Her eyes widened, but she did not flee.

“Please,” she breathed. “You need not hide from me.”

Slowly, he stepped forward through the veil of shadow. The ground seemed to groan beneath his weight, and she startled. Not out of fear, but from wonder. His figure, vast and terrible, emerged from the mist like something half remembered from a dream.

When it was clear he would not flee again, the flower smiled. A gentle trembling thing that exhibited her bravery. She held the lantern higher, its glow quivering over the ruin of his form.

“I… was not certain the shirt fit you,” she said, her tone uncertain but tender. “You are broader than I imagined. I did not know your measure.”

The Creature looked down at himself, at the coarse linen stretched across his chest, the seams simple yet sturdy under his fingers. The cloth was somewhat clean still, but no longer white like the moon’s glow. He wished to tell her it was perfect, that he had never worn anything so fine, but he struggled to find the right words.

“G-Good,” he managed, trying to articulate more, but he knew not how. When he tried again, all that escaped him was a deep sound of defeat. 

Her brows knit together in confusion. She took a tentative step nearer, the lantern’s light swaying between them like a fragile heartbeat.

“You have trouble speaking?” She whispered.

He was injured by the shame of that truth. He slowly bowed his head, a gesture of both apology and submission.

“Oh,” she breathed, and the sorrow in that single syllable was so pure it might have sanctified the night itself. “Forgive me. I did not know.”

He raised his head just enough to meet her gaze. Her expression was not of pity, but compassion. A quiet, human grief for what had been denied him.

Her stare lingered unwaveringly—curious and searching—as though she wished to piece together the mystery of his being by sight alone. The lantern light carried over his frame, tracing over the dark folds of the coat that cloaked his massive shoulders.

“That coat,” she murmured after a long pause, her tone softer still, touched by wonder. “It is of a soldier’s make, is it not?”

The Creature shifted beneath her gaze, his shoulders hunching instinctively as though to hide the garment. The fabric was old and singed in spots, the places where brass buttons would’ve been laid bare. He had taken it from the graveyard of bones below his Maker’s laboratory.

She mistook his silence for something gentler. “Were you wounded in battle?” She asked, her voice filled with sympathy. “Is that why you’re wandering these lands?”

He said nothing. His hands, those clumsy, ugly things, brushed at his sleeves as though to erase the question itself. How could he tell her that which he did not know? That his scars were born not of musket or blade, but of the creation of himself that he could not recall. 

When the silence grew too heavy, she filled it once again with her voice. “Why are you here?”

He opened his mouth. The first attempt of speech broke on his tongue, harsh and raw. He tried again, forcing air through his lungs that were never meant to breathe.

“Tr…avel,” he rasped. The word came slow, uncertain, like something newborn.

Her lips parted, a small sound escaping her. A sigh, or perhaps a breath of amazement that he had spoken at all. But before she could answer, a voice rang faintly through the trees.

It was a man’s voice, urgent and near, calling her name and coming from the direction of the cottage. Another cry followed it, an older woman this time. 

The flower’s eyes widened. She turned her head towards the sound, then looked back to him, torn between two worlds. “I must go,” she said quickly. “They will come searching if I linger.”

He straightened, his great form looming in the pale haze, and for a fleeting instant she looked up at him as though she beheld something sacred. She turned then and vanished into the fog, her light flickering between the trees until it was swallowed whole.

THE NEXT EVENING THE BARN BREATHED WITH STILLNESS. Moonlight spilled through the slats, pooling across the straw like silver dust. The Creature existed within that stillness, his broad back pressed against the worn beams. Each hour crept by as his mind remained caught between dread and longing.

He did not know if she would come searching for him again. He told himself it was unlikely. She had been drawn by mercy alone, and mercy was fleeting. Yet, as the night deepened, he heard once more the whisper of footsteps biting through the leaves.

And then came the glow.

Through the narrow crack of the door, a small light wavered, warm and golden. The latch lifted slowly, and she entered. 

The fair flower.

She moved carefully, shutting the door behind her so that the light would not betray them to the house. Her shawl clung to her shoulders, her cheeks faintly flushed from the night’s wind. In her arms she carried a small bundle, and as she crossed the threshold the faint scent of candle wax and parchment followed her.

“Hello again,” she kindly greeted, setting her lantern on a wooden crate. Its glow revealed her burden, two thin books bound it depleted leather, a stub of wax taper, and a small box of matches. “I waited until they all slept,” she said with a smile that seemed both proud and conspiratorial.

He stared, unsure of what to make of her presence, of her gentleness and empathy. Of how willing she was to be before him and all his inadequacy. 

“I brought these for you,” she continued, carefully arranging the books and candles between them. “I thought… Perhaps you’d like to learn your language again. And to read. If you wished it.”

The Creature’s gaze fell upon the books as though they were relics of a forgotten god. Their pages whispered faintly as she opened one. He had seen such things before—his Maker’s laboratory had been filled with them—but never had he been invited to touch them.

She hesitated. “Would you like me to teach you?”

He did not answer at once. His tongue felt clumsy in his mouth, his throat a grave of broken sounds. At last, he inclined his head in a slow, deliberate bow. “Y… yes.”

Her eyes brightened. “Then we shall begin.”

She sat upon a low stool, the hem of her dress brushing the straw. He remained kneeling before her, great and ungainly, his shadow engulfing hers against the far wall. She drew the candle nearer and turned the book toward him.

“See here,” she said gently, pointing to the first letter etched in ink. “This is A. It begins the word apple.”

Her voice was soft and patient in a way that made his chest ache. In a way that was so unlike that of his Maker. He leaned closer, his brow furrowed, tracing the shape of the letter with one big finger.

“A…” he murmured, the sound rough but clear.

She looked up at him, her smile luminous in the candlelight. “Yes, very good.”

Something delicate stirred within him, something like pride, but it was tampered down by disbelief. He dared to meet her eyes then, and for a moment he forgot the spoil of his face, forgot the monstrosity that he was.

Her light gilded his features in gentle gold, softening what nature had not.

“You learn quickly,” she said, turning the page. “There is no need to rush, though.”

He nodded once. The movement was awkward, almost childlike. His heart, that strange and stubborn organ, beat hard within his chest.

She turned another page, her fingertip gliding over the next letter. “This is B,” she said softly. “For bread… or barn.”

He repeated the word after her, the syllables rumbling like stones in his throat. Buh… arn. She smiled at the effort, at the way his voice tried to shape itself into gentleness.

Then came C. Then D. She took her time with each, her tone calm and warm, her laughter quiet when his clumsy pronunciation tangled the words. And though he did not quite understand her teasing, he knew the sound of her laughter was something worth earning again.

When they reached E, she brushed a lock of hair from her eyes. “E,” she said. “Like earth.”

“Earth,” he echoed, the word coming slowly. His gaze drifted toward the ground, toward the straw that cradled his knees. Earth, yes, he thought. He knew that, that which gave life to all things. Even him, though he was born of its corruption. 

She turned the page once more. “And this,” she continued, pointing to a letter that curved and crossed like a branch bent in the wind, “is F. Like for friend… or…” She trailed off, smiling faintly as though caught by a whim. “Flower.”

Her voice softened on the word and she did not know how it struck him. 

Flower.

He repeated it slowly, his tongue stumbling over the shape of it. “F…low…er.”

She nodded encouragingly. “Yes, very good.”

He said it again as the sound carried more meaning than she could know. Then he lifted one massive, scarred hand and, haltingly pointed toward her.

Her brows lifted in surprise, and then she laughed, a sound bright and startled. “Me?” she asked, eyes glinting like the lantern flame. “You think I’m a flower?”

The Creature did not answer, but his hand remained where it was for a single moment before he reached forward and touched the place where her life thundered under her skin. He let his hand linger for only a beat then he dropped it down once more to rest upon his knee.

Only the faintest breath of sound escaped her before she was smiling timidly. “You are kind to say so, Spirit,” she said softly. “But I am no flower.”

He watched her as she bent again over the book, her lashes shadowing her cheeks, her voice returning to its normal rhythm as she named the next letter. Yet, he no longer heard the words clearly. Instead he, for some inexplicable reason, solely focused on the shape of her mouth as she spoke.

DAYS FOLDED INTO NIGHTs, AND NIGHTS INTO A QUIET ETERNITY WITHIN THE BARN. There, by the soft flicker of candle light and the murmur of her patient voice, the Creature learned.

At first, words came haltingly, raw and jagged things that scraped against his throat. But the more she visited, the more he conquered them. Sounds that once betrayed him now obeyed. Sentences stumbled, then steadied, until at last he could speak with a fragile grace that astonished them both.

“You learn faster than any common man,” she confessed one evening, grinning over the open pages between them. 

“I am no… man,” he replied, and the ache he saw settle within her eyes nearly unmade him. Sweet flower.

“Then what are you, Spirit?”

He had no answer that did not sound like defamation.

Her lessons continued, gentle as wind songs. She came to visit him when the house slept, her shawl drawn tight around her, carrying books like offerings. He devoured them, tales of kings and creatures, of cities that rose and fell beneath divine wrath. He read of a man called Adam and a woman named Eve, and felt something stir deep within the marrow of his being, though he did not yet have a name for  it.

When she read aloud to him, her voice filled the hollow barn as though she were breathing life into its very bones. Sometimes she laughed softly when his pronunciation faltered, and he would find himself smiling. An act that still felt foreign upon his face.

She taught him the world through words. He, in turn, watched the world through her.

Her hands were small, but strong from labour. Her voice shook when she grew tired. When she smiled, the whole space seemed to glow, as if the moon bent low to touch her. He began to crave that gleam, though he did understand why.

What was this strange pull within him? This ache that made him linger in her space long after she had gone.

He thought it curiosity at first, admiration for her grace and goodness. But when she brushed his arm by accident and warmth thundered through his chest like fire reborn, he knew it was something else entirely.

And she, though she would not admit it even to herself, had grown to wait for the hours after dark when she could see him again. Her hands trembled not from the cold, but from the thrill of it. His eyes—dark, fathomless things that had once unnerved her—had come to hold an affection that unsettled her peace.

One night, when the wind howled through the eaves and the candle guttered low, she brought him a different kind of book.

“This one is mine,” she said, shyly, as though confessing a secret. “I thought perhaps you might like to read it too. Since you have finished all the others.”

He took it carefully from her hands, because anything in her possession was a sacred thing. Its leather cover was worn soft by years of touch, and inside were not words of God or burning cities. But of love. 

A tale of hearts that yearned and could not be.

He read by moonlight long after she had gone. Each page seared something new into him. He read of a man who would have crossed death itself for the warmth of his beloved’s hand. Of a woman whose name was whispered like a prayer. Of the kiss, this strange, holy act that seemed both promise and undoing.

When next she came, he spoke in a voice that was once again unsure. “This is a story… of lovers,” he began, his words cautious. “They… suffer for one another.”

Her gaze lifted, startled. “Yes, that is love.”

He tasted the word like it might poison him. “Love.”

“It is the greatest of joys,” she breathed, her eyes growing distant, “and the cruelest of pains.”

He studied her then, the way the candlelight lingered in her hair, the way her breath trembled in the still air between them. He wanted to ask if she had ever known such a thing, if her heart had ever burned for someone beyond reach. But he feared her answer, so instead he said, “Tell me, could one such as I—” He faltered, unable to finish.

She reached across the space between them, her fingers brushing his hand. “You are kinder than most people I’ve known,” she assured. “If such a one can love, then why not you?”

He looked down at their hands—hers perfect and delicate, his vast and marred—and felt the world narrow to that single point of touch. Her pulse leaped against his skin.

He could not name the look that passed between them, only that her eyes held such a heat that made his obstinate organ of a heart roar within his chest. The sensation felt forbidden like a secret the stars themselves turned away from so as to not overhear.

Long after she had gone that night, he whispered her name into the straw and felt it echo in the cavern of his ribs as surely as his polluted blood rushed in his veins.

PEACE WAS A HARD FOUGHT THING. The more he learned of her—the music of her laughter, the way her breath clouded in the night air, the soft cadence of her speech—the less rest he found. Reprieve fled him as though chased by some invisible hand. When he did close his eyes, she lingered behind his eyelids. The pretty curve of her cheek, the tremor of her lips when she read aloud, the stardust in her hair that caught the firelight like something celestial.

She haunted him. Not as a specter does, but as a dream too unattainable to reach.

Since reading the tale of the lovers, something had come alive within him. A fever that burned quietly, sweetly, and cruelly. He yearned not merely for her voice, but for her nearness. For the brush of her skin against his, the scent that clung to her, the sight of her lips that seemed to be made for uttering loveliness.

It felt as though the words on the page cursed him with knowing what he could never truly possess. Desire lodged itself in the seams of his flesh and the hollows of his heart. He thought himself driven mad by it.

Each night she came, he told himself he would not stare, that he would not linger upon her face. Yet the more he forbade it, the more his gaze betrayed him. He began to memorize her. The tilt of her chin when she smiled, the way her lashes quivered when she looked at him for too long.

In time, their lessons gave way to small walks through the woods when the moonlight was full enough to guide their path. She said the air there was lighter, that the stars seemed to breathe brighter beneath the branches. He always followed a step aside, his shadow large and silent against the golden glow of her lantern. 

It was on such a night that it happened.

The forest was alive with a thousand whispers. The sigh of leaves, the faint call of an owl, the quiet rhythm of her voice as she spoke about nothing in particular. Until her words broke upon a sudden sound: the soft tear of fabric.

Her skirt had caught on a thorn thicket.

“Ah— bother,” she murmured, half-laughing as she tried to free it, her slender fingers fumbling with the snare.

Before she could move further, he was already there. He bent low, his great form folding to the earth without even truly thinking. His hands, though monstrous, were careful, his touch reverent as he eased the fabric free from the clutching bramble. 

She watched him in silence, her breath held as though afraid the smallest sound might break the spell that had fallen over them. When at last he lifted his head, the torn hem fluttered free.

Their eyes met.

Something shifted, subtle, but vast as the rising and setting of the sun. The air thickened between them, charged with something he could neither name nor withstand.

He rose slowly to his full height, the motion drawing him unbearingly close to her. She tilted her head back to look up at him, and for the briefest of moments, she seemed afraid. Not of his form, nor of his ruin, but of what she herself was about to do.

She leaned forward—soft, trembling, and impossibly brave—and pressed her lips to his. 

It was no more than a fleeting touch, a breath’s worth of contact. But to him it was as though lightning had struck. His entire being shuddered with it, that single instant blooming through him in fire and light.

She pulled back at once, her face draining, her breath unsteady. “Oh,” she gasped. 

“Oh, forgive me,” she stammered, stepping away as if waking from enchantment. “That was terribly forward. I— I forgot myself entirely. I shouldn’t have—”

He could not speak. His hand lifted, ghost-like, to the place her lips had touched. 

He did not recoil. He did not curse the moment as sin or mistake. Only silence consumed him. Silence and the fierce, bewildering joy that raced through the vessel of his body.

She noticed it then, the slight tremor in his hand, the wonder dawning across the shamble of his face. Her voice softened, almost breaking.

“I am sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t know what came over me.”

He wished—how he wished—he could tell her that it was not unwelcomed. That her touch had not disgusted him, but redeemed him. That he would sooner choose to burn in her fire than to live again in shadow.

The only thing that came, soft and stunned in his throat was: “You gave me the lover’s kiss.”

The sweet flower froze, her hands twisting in the folds of her skirt. “I— it was foolish of me. I shouldn’t have—”

“May I return the favor?”

The words surprised them both. They seemed too bold, too human for him, yet they left his mouth with startling certainty. She looked up at him, her eyes wide in the lantern light. “You… you needn’t feel obliged,” she whispered, her voice catching. “You owe me nothing. It was only my lapse in—”

“I want nothing more,” he said, rough but clear. “Nothing more than you.”

Something fragile broke in her chest at that confession. She searched his face, the excrescence of it illuminated in the soft gold, and found no deceit there. Only awe, only hunger carefully bound in admiration.

“I’ve never…” she began, her voice trembling.

“Nor I,” he said, a shadow of humor touching his tone, almost shy. “You have taught me many things, flower. Perhaps… You can teach me this as well.”

She hesitated, but her breath betrayed her, coming quick and shallow. “If you wish it,” she finally murmured.

He nodded once, the motion slow, deliberate. Then, as though fearing he might wake from the respite of a dream, he bent toward her.

His lips met hers like a greeting first whispered, uncertain and aching. His breath was shaky, his hand hovering near her face but not quite daring to touch. For a heartbeat, there was only silence and the trembling brush of their mouths.

Encouraged by her hands coming to rest against the breadth of his chest, he deepens the kiss. She pressed the least bit closer, and that simple contact sent a shudder through him. When a soft sigh slipped past her, he drew back an inch, startled by the sound she’d made.

“Did I—” His voice faltered. “Was that wrong?”

Her cheeks warmed, her lips parted with a shy, breathless laugh. “No,” she said softly. “That was… a good sound.”

Something old stirred within him then. A pulse, deep and electric, thrumming through sinew and bone as if awakening some long buried remnant of a life not wholly his. He wanted to hear it again.

This time when he kissed her, it was changed. No longer so hesitant but certain, fervent, and alive. His hands, wavering with craving, found her waist. He felt her draw closer, her body fitting to his as though the space between them had never been meant to exist. Her fingers clutched tighter to the rough wool of his coat, anchoring herself to him as the world spun quietly out of time.

The kiss deepened, not hurried or unrestrained, but full of something that burned low and molten. When she sighed again, softer now almost like a small whine, he moved without thought. Instinct guided what reason could not. His arms enclosed her fully, pulling her against him as though to shield her from every cruel thing the world had ever known.

Her back met the rough bark of a tree before she realized he’d moved them. Still, she made no protest. The sound that escaped her was half gasp, half plea, and he answered it with a low growl that rumbled from somewhere cavernous in his chest.

For a moment—one suspended, rapturous moment—they were not woman and monster, nor spirit and supplicant, but two souls caught between creation and ruin. They were the lovers themselves. Adam and Eve. And their garden, the forest, seemed to still around them, holding its breath. As if to witness the impossibility of love blooming where light should not reach.

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