Having dared to tell a beast that he needed a bath, Lydia had expected to go through another round of throttling from him, but contrary to her expectations, he had silently agreed to her words.
She thought of fetching him some water from the lake behind her cottage, but then she wondered how many basins of water she'd have to fetch if he was to wash out a four-hundred-year-old stench.
Wisely, she ushered him to the back of her cottage where the lake was and provided him with enough soap to last six men for a month.
She lit two oil lamps and placed them two feet away from the lake so as to light up the dark and silent night. And when she saw that he was moved into the lake, she turned to scurry away.
"Where art thou off to?" His voice reverberated through the silent night.
"I am merely going back inside, Sire."
"And whom shall I call upon for assistance?" He asked and she turned to him with blinking eyelids, wondering what he meant.
"I-I— Whatever do you mean, Sire?" She stuttered the question.
"Come hither and be of use to me." He said and Lydia's eyes opened wide in both disgust and confusion.
For the life of her, she could not fathom why he would need assistance in washing!!
Worse, she was trying to run from the stench and yet he would have her wash it off herself?!
"Y-Your Majesty, h-how dare a witch like myself—"
"Worry not," He didn't even give her the chance to finish her speech, "'I do not mind that thou art a witch."
What could she possibly say? Lydia panicked because the least she wanted to do was stand next to that monster who had just strangled her some minutes ago.
The stench aside, she was worried that she would pull a fur by mistake and lose her life for it! What would happen if she got soap in his eye? He'd strangle her on the spot. She didn't want to experience that again.
"S-Sire, I am but a dirty maiden who should not be worthy to touch your feet. So how can a dirty Labkan like myself place my hand on you?" She cried out with much seriousness and sincerity, trying her best to convince him that she was not good for the task he wished to entrust her with.
"Labkan? What does that mean?" He inquires.
"It's the name for people that look like I do." She simply says.
"How do you look?" He questioned further.
Lydia was shocked by the question.
It made her wonder if the beast had some kind of eye defect. Why else would he ask something so obvious? Maybe being a beast, he didn't see things like humans would, that would explain why he asked that.
"My skin is as pale as fresh snow on the roofing, my eyes are the colors of violet, my hair is as white as the flesh covering my bones and my eyebrows and lashes are the same with my hair." She explains quickly in a bid to break free and run if he'd let her.
"People like me are considered cursed, most do not even get to live to the point where they can crawl. They are killed the moment they are born."
"Ah," He said in a tone that showed he understood her words. "Thus the name… Lab-Kan is from ancient words meaning White curse." He didn't read into the words at first but after she explained, he had easily realized that those were what the words meant.
"Aye." She nods.
Now the beast understood better why Duke Obadiah had been freaking out earlier. It was because people who looked like she did were considered cursed.
"So you see why I cannot touch you, Sire. I do not want to rub my accursed hands upon you."
For some seconds, he stared at her. From her waist-long white hair to her pale skin, he wondered what exactly was the curse.
A curse was supposed to cause deformation. Either physically, emotionally, or mentally.
Physically, he could not for the life of him point out what was wrong with her. Other than her skin being fairer than usual and the hairs on her body being whiter, there was nothing wrong with her physically.
Her eyes were nothing but beautiful.
Those features were not even worth being called a curse… unless the curse was to make her enchantingly beautiful like the moon goddess herself, the beast saw no physical flaw.
He didn't think she was affected emotionally either, and she seemed mentally stable.
So what exactly was the curse?
"Sire?" She called to him.
"It matters not." He finally spoke.
"Huh?
"Be thou an accursed or not, it matters not to me. An accursed touching another accursed, what could possibly go wrong."
"S-Sire I—"
"So I give thee the permission." He says and extends his huge beastly hand towards her.
"Oh thy Labkan named Lydia, witch of this forest, I Cassius Zadok Thaddeus, give thee permission to touch me."
It wasn't something romantic, neither was it something overly lovely, but something about being called Labkan suddenly seemed pleasant to Lydia.
So pleasant that she found herself walking forward without any further resistance, and she said, "I Lydia, daughter of Lyanna, witch of the forest will do as his Majesty has commanded." She curtseyed.
The deathly silent night no longer felt suffocating. Lydia suddenly had this feeling deep within her that she would get along very well with this beast