"I had the strangest dream," he yawns as he wanders into the library.

"Oh? What was it about?"

"You were there," he says, "but you weren't yourself, you were someone named Isabella with huge feathery wings like a bird's. They were very pretty. And you had a husband who they said looked just like me. And I talked to the person who wasn't exactly you about you and the spell, and she said you might be afraid I'd be angry with you if you tried to help me and failed, but I told her I wouldn't, and then she turned me human and I borrowed her husband."

"I tried to ask her what it was like to be in love," he adds, "so I could tell you, but she kept saying you wouldn't have any trouble."

"There's no good reason to expect your dreams to produce useful advice anyway," Belle points out.

"It wasn't a very dreamy dream."

"No? What do you mean?"

"I just mean it wasn't like my dreams usually are."

"What are they usually like, then?" Pause. "And what do you mean, you borrowed her husband?"

"I mean I borrowed him," says the Beast. "That's what she called it."

"Even if we rely on your dreams to produce an accurate-apart-from-the-marital-status-and-the-wings copy of me, I do not know what that means," says Belle.

"What uses do you imagine a husband has?" he inquires.

"That's enough to tell me you didn't."

"All right then. So you dreamed up an angel-me who was married to a you and then you borrowed him. I can only imagine what the traveling phrenologists would say that means about your psyche."

"Well, of course I did. He was very handsome. And I haven't done any of that in a hundred years. I wasn't going to waste the chance once I was out of my fur."

"And her husband was perfectly all right with being loaned out, I suppose?"

"Of course he was. He was a lot like me."

"This is not something I knew about you," Belle points out mildly.

"Yes," he recalls, "the other you said you should know. I don't see what difference it makes when we're the only two people we can reach, but I don't have a problem with telling you, either."

"If I learn enough magic or figure out how to fall in love with you, you'll be able to encounter more people," Belle points out.

He shrugs. "Well, does it matter to you if I borrow dream-people's husbands?"

"In dreams? No, dream about whatever you like. In fact even awake I have no particular claim on you, now, have I?"

"Well, if it made you stop wanting to fall in love with me, I'd want to know."