"You truly are human." The Beast laughs, harshly and loudly.

I remain quiet, even as he looks on me with disdain.

"So be it," he decides, scraping his large eagles claws upon the mountains of gold. "I will indulge you for this night, and perhaps the rest should you offer a proper alternative. --Oh, look not surprised, Guest Chao. Such a script I have been following for centuries. To have a reason to break it is entertaining, for puzzles in nature and speech appeal more to beasts such as I. And you," he leers, climbing down and towards my end of the table, "are quite a puzzle, Guest Chao. Your thoughts are common enough but they are curious."

I won't be eaten tonight. And it seems I won't be eaten if I can convince him of something else that'll make me more of a "curious" puzzle to him. That's more than I thought I would get. Breathing comes easier again like I'm in control, even if the Beast himself draws closer and closer.

"Note that I will, of course, eat you following your death. A Beast cannot ignore his nature. What have I to gain from this game elsewise?"

The air itself seems to shrivel in his monstrous presence.

"Why did you let me live, the first time?" I dare ask. He's talkative tonight. Talking is good.

"Dead meat is less delicious than alive."

Opening his jaw, the Beast sets his teeth along the edges of the plates and his forked tongue, dark red with black tips, snakes out to take take the food in. His jaw doesn't quite unhinge as it is large enough to take the table with the plates entirely, and he lifts the ornate table into the air. When he sets it back down, all the dishes have been consumed, and the table is clean.

I stare at the table, once filled with food I couldn't have even made a dent in for a few days' worth of meals, and then back at him. "You said I'm a puzzle?"

With a huff, the Beast settles himself on his haunches, claws gently stroking, grooming at his whiskers. He seems disinterested, though his tail curls in front of me, dividing me from the door. He seems less like he'll kill me himself just so he can eat me. "Humans are a vain sort, Guest Chao. Your answers to your ultimatum have been to convince me to let you live, not to make you beautiful. Not give you full limbs to your body, repair your face, present you so heavenly the immortals themselves would be jealous."

Hearing he could possibly fix me makes me realize exactly what kind of power this Beast has. And in a realm like this, full of monsters and evil spirits, I wonder if this sort of thing is why we send chosen few to the Beast. I've never questioned it before. "Nobody would pick beauty over life."

"Oh? To be anything permanently without or having less of what you once took for granted is more crippling than you would imagine. You are not the first to have asked to live, but you would not be the last to ask for beauty, and you would not be amiss to ask for gold."

"I wouldn't have asked for beauty anyway." I look back at the pile itself, knowing when I pass my gaze over them, that these have been pulled off the bodies living or dead of the chosen people who have come from my world. This is all means nothing in the end. "Or gold."

The Beast rumbles pleasantly in his throat. Almost harmless, with the way his voice is now lilting: sweet and almost hypnotic, like the hissing of a snake. "And why not, Guest Chao?"

"Because even if I was..." I have to force the word out. "Beautiful. Even if I was, it wouldn't mean you wouldn't eat me anyway."

The Beast cackles. "Good. Very good." He drapes his large head over his claws, and stares at me with one lazy golden eye. "Your answer has pleased me."

I don't know if I should be happy about this. Either way, if I can keep this up for the next few days, maybe I'll be able to find some sort of compromise. Perhaps we can even be conversationalists about the human nature, if the Beast enjoys the puzzle of them.

Maybe, I should ask about the curse. Before I can, the Beast speaks up.

"What shall the new wager and stakes for tomorrow be, Guest Chao? I, this realm's lord and Master, await your answer."

I've thought too soon. As I'm desperate to think of something, I think back to our conversation. Uneasiness begins to build as the seconds grow longer. When I get a thought, I almost blurt it out.

"Puzzles."

"Puzzles," the Beast echoes. "Explain what I have to gain from that."

"You like puzzles. Things to do with the mind. And the reward of puzzles--the puzzles." It hits me, then. "The greatest puzzle is the mystery of another person's life. The greatest loss is never knowing."

Those were the things I regretted: not being able to live out my life. Not ever knowing what it could have been like. All these what-ifs, and all these conditions.

The great Beast monarch of this realm breathes out a cloud of hot smoke into my face. "Acceptable," he says, and his tail slithers out from blocking my exit. "You are dismissed, Guest Chao. I will see you tomorrow night."