Work Text:
Roxy is a superhero in a time when superheroes were called witches, and witches are not liked very much. They're liked almost exactly as much as ducks, actually, and it's widely accepted that they can be found using a duck as the opposite side of a large scale.
Roxy takes it upon herself to be a sort of undercover power for good, always traveling and always leaving where she goes better than when she came. So when she hears about the monster in a castle terrorizing and enchanting an entire town of course she has to go.
What she finds in the town is that it's even worse than she'd feared. They have a statue in honor of the fearsome looking beast, and seem to treat their unholy ruler as a harmless, lovely, generous girl. And Roxy obviously is concerned as fuck. She tries to use her powers to break the enchantment laid on just one person's mind but it's so sophisticated that it's invisible even to her powers.
She's finally met her match.
Three days in she gathers the courage to go to the castle after exhausting every other avenue of rituals and spells she can think of.
The hike through the forest is long and exhausting, though there is a path it's so overgrown that she wonders at how the monster ever comes down. At this point, flight is her best and only guess.
At this point, she remembers she can fly, and also remembers why she doesn't do shit when she's suffering from spell exhaustion.
After running straight into a tree before even fully lifting off the ground, Roxy decides that walking is best, so she trudges on. It is not long, however, before she collapses in exhaustion.
She wakes in a room of faded finery, well worn by use and time. On the bookshelf are tomes that she had only heard whispered of by ancient crones, and an awful lot of romance novels. Like, a lot. Most have realistic drawings of people who look rather similar to the villagers on the cover.
Roxy shakes this off and when she opens the door finds the stone corridor deserted but for a tray by her feet with fresh clothes and a beautifully written note inviting her down for breakfast. There is a simple and yet elegant map inscribed on the thin paper as well.
It takes her several moments longer than she'd like to admit to realize that she's been kidnapped by the beast, and embarrassingly enough this realization comes at the same moment she sees a polished green skull.
The beast is truly hideous, cheeks a lurid lime green and face skull like in its extreme angles and sunken cheeks. Some form of hardened shell, like a bug's, coats the prominent bones. Roxy recoil in horror--she has never seen such a large and buff and ohmIGOD ITS JAWS ARE OPENING SHES GOING TO DIE DEAR SWEET BABY JES-
"Do you eat meat?" the beast asks in a rather sweet tempered voice. "I wasn't sure if you did but I'm afraid it's all I have. When I tried to pick some apples they were covered in worms and not ripe besides."
"Uh," Roxy utters. She finds the fact she could say anything at all to be very impressive.
The beast's face falls in a way that could only be described as crushed. "Oh you don't, do you? You never know with witches, I'm so sorry."
Roxy somehow finds herself jumping to reassure the beast, and then sitting across from it, and then having a meal filled with idle chatter and the growing and utterly horrifying realization that she was Wrong with a capital w.
In much the same manner she finds herself agreeing to stay the day, and then the night, and two weeks later and she has the despairing knowledge that she's fallen irrevocably in love with a beast whose name is Calliope.
And two months later, as she slides a ring she made herself of her own hair on Calliopes finger, she knows that the spell is real, and it is called kindness.