Chapter Text
There was once a lonely monster, left on it's own with no one else like it to accompany it.
It weeped on its lonesome, day and night, through the hottest summer days and the coldest winter nights.
It yearned, as all do, for kin to call its own.
It searched among the humans around it for a person willing to be called it's kin.
Many politely declined it, citing the kin and friends they already have as a reason.
Some said it was too strange to be their friend, let alone their kin.
Few were hostile when it, weeping as it always then, approached them. The violence only made it cry harder, which only spurred the violence further.
The monster thought it would be lonely forever. So it gave up and watched the humans, with their families and friendships. It watched the humans build up their village around it.
It didn't die. No, it couldn't bear to waste away like that when there was the smallest bit of hope lingering in it that there was something, someone, out there that would want to chase away the monster's loneliness.
So, it lived besides the humans. Watching them, learning from them, adapting to them.
Until it made a mistake. It ate the wrong thing, something that had belonged to one of the humans and had gotten lose. The humans wanted it dead, it's mistake being seen a crime, a threat, to the humans.
So it hid, disappeared from the human's sight.
It stayed away, cowered, and watched from an even greater distance, a physical distance.
Until, a man wandered his way to where the monster hid. He found it among the trees, weeping as it had from its very beginning, and he made an offer to it,
"Come, I'll show you how to be human, and you will no longer be so alone."
It, having seen humans and their ways for so long now, did not believe the man. It refuted,
"No. No you will not. You will make a spectacle of mine eyes, mine tail, mine horns… You, as a man, will make a show of mine sorrow."
The man did not know the monster was so well versed in the nature of humans, but he deemed himself smarter than it, and again he tried,
"I promise, my friend, I will do no such thing. All I ask of you is your company, in return you shall get so much more."
The monster was still suspicious, but was so, so tired of being lonely. The man seemed genuine to it, he seemed to share it's lonesome sorrow.
Foolishly, it agreed.
The man smiled, and took the monster with him, back to the village that had now grown to a town.