Twelve Days of Monstermas: Day Eight (male minotaur x female character - SFW) (Patreon)

So this one is a little different in style, partly because it's written from the minotaur's point of view since you told me in a poll you were up for that. I hope you enjoy it. Edmund has become a favourite of mine, and not just because I have a soft spot for minos. 

“Ah, it’s raining again,” I murmured to myself, standing at the window of the farmhouse, absentmindedly running my rough, knuckly fingers along the wooden sill. My eye snagged on the little cottage that had sat empty for years now, just on the edge of the vegetable garden. “Morag was right: this place needs some more life.” The selkie who had been housekeeper to the previous owners had insisted she remain here with me, and since money was clearly no issue for me, she had felt no compunctions about imposing herself on me. In fact, she was one of the very best things about the farm, and I’d be utterly lost without her. That first year after the unexpected inheritance of the farm had been one of the hardest of my life. 

As if to prove me wrong about the need for life and excitement on the farm, Hazel bounded into the farmyard, his little faun hooves skittering slightly on the wet concrete, a tiny lamb tucked under one arm. It hung limply, and I frowned. It was early in the lambing season for one to be born, and I turned away from the window, hurrying down to meet him. Life on the farm never rested, so why should I?

“Hazel?” I asked as he shot into the farmhouse kitchen at the same time as I entered from the hallway. “What’s wrong?”

“She’s half frozen, sir,” he said in his high tenor, concentrating on rubbing the little lamb with a soft towel. “Found her in the field with no sign of her mama nearby.” 

I sighed. Our shepherd clearly had everything under control, and there was little I could do. A ewe rejecting her lamb wasn’t uncommon, and it was something he’d seen countless times before, even at his tender age of seventeen. I reassured him that he was doing an excellent job, which drew a beaming smile from him despite his worry for the lamb, and stepped out of the doorway, ducking so as not to bash my horns on the architrave or lintel. This farmhouse had not been built with a seven foot minotaur in mind, but it was home now, and I loved everything it represented. Still, it needed a change. 

Whether it was the subtle whisper of spring in the air, or the driving rain washing away the slosh from the runnels of the farmyard concrete, or something else entirely, I soon found myself cleaning up the little cottage - it still needed redecorating, but I thought I’d let my tenants see to that as they wished, if I ever had any. 

I honestly didn’t expect that anyone would want to move out to a farm in the arse end of nowhere, but I felt better for having at least placed advertisements in the local papers. Nothing came back to me for at least three months and I had almost entirely forgotten about it. The summer was in full swing, and I had just returned from repairing a fence post with Leah, my overseer and farm manager, when I found the most beautiful creature I had ever laid eyes on standing uncertainly in the farmyard, gazing about. 

Her dress was long, hem dirty six inches up, suggesting she had walked all the way here from wherever she’d started, and she looked frankly exhausted. 

“Can I help you?” I asked, forgetting that I had no shirt on and was hardly in any state to be receiving guests. I also had a sledge hammer held in one hand. Gods above, what a sight I must have looked to her. 

“I… I came to look at the cottage,” she faltered, taking half a step back, eyes wide at the sight of me.

I’d clean forgotten about putting it up to let. “What?” I blinked.

“Briar Cottage?” she said, her lovely eyes still wide and wary. 

“Oh? Oh!” I laughed, shaking my big stupid head. “Of course, I’m so sorry. Chalk it up to heat stroke, will you? It’s over there,” I said, nodding at the empty cottage. “Feel free to explore it. Just let me… um…” I fumbled the long haft of the sledgehammer and turned awkwardly back to the farmhouse. “Let me go and… I’ll… I’ll meet you over there.” Thank heavens that a minotaur’s blush is always hidden beneath a thick pelt, or she’d have seen my face and chest burning. 

“Thanks,” she murmured, and she turned shyly away towards the cottage. 

Leah, who had witnessed the exchange in polite silence, slapped my chest with the back of her hand hard enough to make me wheeze, and growled, “You, sir, are an idiot. If you want someone to take the cottage, you’ll have to stop acting like a complete beast.”

“Thank you, Leah,” I grumbled, leaning the sledge up against the house and ducking inside to rinse my sweat-drenched coat off and find a more suitable shirt. 

By the time I had changed, the young woman was nowhere in sight, and I made my way through the rows of raggedly growing vegetables in the garden with a surprising amount of trepidation. What if I frightened her? I knew I looked imposing, with my large horns and thick, reddish, curly hair, and my stature did nothing to ease the sense of innate strength that my kind projects. My early career in the city hadn’t exactly been conducive to building muscle and fitness, but the years of labour on the farm had suited my body much better, and I had nearly doubled in size. 

A movement inside caught my eye, and I peered through one of the windows. The dusky teal paint was peeling a little on the frames, but I paid that no heed as I watched her walk slowly around the room, running her fingertips over the sparse, covered furnishings, turning slowly like a dancer with a smile as wide as a summer day on her beautiful face. I ached in that moment to know her. I wanted her to smile like that forever. 

Then she saw me watching her, and the smile flickered. My heart sank like a stone through my body, but I took a deep breath and headed inside, knocking on the door first, though announcing my presence by then was hardly necessary. 

“How do you find the place?” I asked, trying to keep my gruff voice from booming in the small space. I had always loved the cottage, but if the farmhouse was unsuitable for a minotaur, this felt more like a child’s playhouse these days. 

“It’s beautiful,” she said softly. 

“Do you have any questions?” 

“When can I move in?” she said immediately, a pretty blush heating her cheeks. “If… If it’s still available, that is.”

“Of course it’s available,” I said quickly. Too late I realised that in my rasping voice, the hastily barked statement sounded more like a snapped rebuke than an excited exclamation. I tried to smile, but she had turned away. “I’ll… I’ll leave you to have a final think. Why don’t you come and knock at the farmhouse door when you’re ready to leave?” 

“Leave?” 

I turned to go but was brought up sharply by her startled question. “Well, yes… I assumed you’d be returning at a later date with your belongings?”

Her beautiful eyes flickered to a bag in the corner of the room. “I have everything I need right here. But if you’re not ready for me to move in, I can return to the village. I believe there’s an inn there where I could stay.”

I gaped at the small bag. “That’s it? That’s all you have with you?”

She nodded mutely. 

“But the bed doesn’t even have a mattress upstairs,” I blurted. 

She sighed, but looked determined, and I knew in that moment that, as delicate and fragile as she might seem, this woman was no wallflower. She had fight in her, regardless of the circumstances that had led her to my cottage with nothing but a single bag of belongings to her name. “As I said, I’m happy to return to the inn. Though I don’t have much with me, I have sufficient funds to -”

“Out of the question,” I barked. “You must have a guest room at the farmhouse until the cottage is ready for you.”

“Thank you, but I wouldn’t want to put you and your family out…”

“I have no family,” I said quickly. 

“Oh.”

“Not those of blood or formal bonds, at any rate. Those who work here are the closest I have to that, and they will be delighted to have a guest.”

I snatched up her bag from the floor and turned back into the hot day outside. I was so warm I was sure my coat must have been steaming, but I ignored it. My hooves rang too loudly on the flagstone path through the cottage garden, and the fragrance of the roses made me sneeze. She trotted after me, and told me her name, and I apologised for not having introduced myself properly before. 

“My name is Edmund,” I said, and she smiled. 

“I know,” she said. “It was on the advertisement.”

“Oh. Of course.”

“It’s nice to meet you at last though, Sir.” 

“Don’t call me that,” I snorted. “My employees call me ‘sir’.”

“Apologies,” she sighed. 

“No, forgive me,” I said, pausing and closing my eyes. “It’s been so long since I’ve had a guest here, I’ve completely forgotten my manners.”

At that moment, Morag emerged from the house with an arm full of laundry, heading towards the washing line at the back of the building. When she saw the young lady beside me, she gasped, her eyes lighting up. 

“You didn’t tell me we had a guest, sir!” she berated me. “I bet he hasn’t even offered you a cup of tea, has he? No? The big brute. Come inside, lass. Let’s get you some refreshments. Goodness, you look parched…” and she did an about turn and marched back into the house with the laundry basket still in her hands. 

With a smile, I ushered her inside before me, and set her bag down beside her chair once I saw that Morag had pushed her down into a comfortable seat in the little drawing room. 

I took my leave as Morag plied her with iced tea and lemon cakes, deciding that life was definitely more exciting already, but that I had got off completely on the wrong hoof with the young woman. I was too big, too brutish and too gruff for my own good. She seemed to me like the roses that climbed the cottage and gave it its name: tough, armoured, but immeasurably sweet and beautiful, and a creature that, if I tried to get close to, I might just crush the beauty right out of it. 

It took only a few days for the cottage to be made ready for her. Dale and I took the cart into the village, with me walking beside the heavy-set centaur in companionable silence both there and back, and as he drew to a halt in front of the cottage, he asked in a quiet voice, “That her, sir?” 

“Hmm?” I grunted, halfway through heaving a new mattress off the bed of the cart. I looked up and saw her deep in conversation with Hazel, and one of the sheepdog’s new pups flopped contentedly on its back in her arms. I nearly dropped the mattress in the dirt at the sight of her, but I forced myself to concentrate. “Yes, that’s her.”

The wheel of the year turned slowly and yet far too quickly for me after that. 

The young woman who had taken up residence on my farm changed the whole place in the most unexpected of ways. She always payed her rent on time, slipping it through the farmhouse letterbox if I were not around, and I noticed how neat her handwriting was. I later discovered that she was a writer, and sent her chapters off to her publisher on a regular basis, and after she had come back soaked from one such trip, I insisted that she take the carriage next time. She didn’t, and ended up bedridden for a week. Hazel tended to her fever, with Morag providing willow bark tea and hot compresses for her, while I continued to run the farm, ever on the edge of things, ever looking in. 

I invited her to the harvest festival that we always threw to celebrate the safe bringing in of the wheat, and I watched from my position at the head of the table as she danced after the meal with Hazel, Leah, and even Morag, but she never looked my way, and I never rose to ask her to dance with me.

A great storm shook the land that winter, and in the wake of it, Dale and I set to clearing up the worst of the debris. We worked together to saw the massive trunk down to a manageable length to drag back to the farmyard to use as good timber, clearing branches away first, and to my surprise, I saw her watching from the edge of the field. 

I’d just attached the trunk to Dale’s harness, and was preparing to pick up a chain and drag my share of the weight over my shoulder, and, deciding to put my brute strength to use in her presence for once, I heaved beside the centaur, steam billowing from my nostrils as we laboured up the slope towards the farmyard where she stood. It was childish of me to act like a teenage bull in front of her, and I nearly wrenched my back out, but at a jovial, snickering laugh from Dale, I reined myself in, and the pair of us dragged it up the field towards the yard in a steady harmony.

Once we’d dumped it, we stood panting, muscles burning, recovering our breath for a moment, before she came gingerly over towards us, two large mugs in her hand and a basket over one arm. 

“Here,” she smiled, looking first to Dale and then to me. “You must be thirsty. And… I made these this morning.”

Dale laughed breathlessly. “Get me out of this harness, boss,” he chuckled, prancing almost playfully on the spot as much as his tired hocks would allow. “That smells like banana bread!”

“Banana muffins,” she smiled. “And tea.”

“Oh my hero!” Dale guffawed, only making that beautiful smile on her face widen further. I dutifully undid the straps of the centaur’s harness, and felt something break in me then as I observed Dale’s easy confidence with her, and her unrestrained warmth towards him in return. To me she simply offered a mug and a tiny smile. 

“Thank you,” I rasped, taking a staggering half step backwards. “I… I should… go and clean up. Thank you,” I rambled, and then turned away. 

“Wait,” she laughed, and I stumbled to a halt. “You didn’t take one!” 

“Oh, thanks,” I muttered, and as my large, dirty hand came down to take one, I noticed once again just how small she was beside me. 

She gazed up at me and said, “Can’t have you missing out, can I?” 

“No,” I breathed. “You’re too sweet to allow that.”

She graced me with one of her purest smiles, and I felt my heart stall before I bolted.

That winter, Morag insisted that she dine with us some evenings, and I got to know her a little better. She had a sharp, incisive mind, and a quick sense of humour. Hazel was nearly always laughing around her, and my own heart felt lighter just by being in her presence. But by the time I realised I was falling for her, there was little I could do to stop it. 

Spring came round again, shoots pushing through the earth, seeking the sun, and the bleating of lambs filled the dales in a constant cacophony of needy cries and happy frolicking. I watched from a distance as her friendship with Hazel grew, and she helped him unflinchingly with the birthing of the lambs. Hazel had asked me if we could gift one of the sheepdog puppies to her, and I had immediately agreed to it, unable to deny her anything. She trained the puppy well, and the little ball of fluff trailed her constantly. 

Later that year, I injured my hock falling from a ladder, repairing the barn, and it was one rainy afternoon in late summer that I sat in my drawing room, a book in my hand and a pot of tea on the table beside me, that I heard a gentle knock on the door. 

“Enter,” I murmured, wondering who it could be. Morag knocked, but usually only to alert me to her imminent arrival. When my beautiful tenant stepped inside, I nearly choked in surprise. “Everything alright?” I asked, setting the book aside and wincing as I lowered my leg off the stool, preparing to stand. 

“Please,” she said, gesturing for me to stay put. “I only came to see how you were. Hazel said you had an accident?”

I rolled my eyes. “My own stupidity,” I snorted. “I overbalanced and took a tumble off a ladder. Fractured the bones in my hock most likely. Morag is tending to me most diligently though.” 

“I’m glad to hear it,” she smiled. “I… I actually brought you something.”

“Oh?”

“I had an early crop of blackberries this year in my garden, and I made you a blackberry and apple pie. Morag said you were rather fond of them. I left it in the kitchen.”

“Rather?” I laughed, delight making my big, waggling ears prick up. “Oh that doesn’t really begin to cover it. Better make sure Hazel doesn’t see it though. I think he’d actually fight me for it…”

And then she laughed and I forgot the pain in my leg. 

“You’re marvellous to me,” I sighed. “Far more than I deserve.”

“You’ve been so generous to me,” she countered, stepping closer to my chair. When she laid a delicate hand on my huge shoulder, I turned my gaze to it and, on instinct, reached my hand up across my chest and touched hers. Her skin was so soft beneath my callused palms and I found I could hardly breathe. “You gave me a new life here,” she said. “A new family. It’s been almost perfect so far.”

“Almost?” I asked tentatively, my light grip faltering. 

She giggled. “Yes,” she said teasingly. “Almost.” 

I visited her a week later to find her in the middle of decorating the cottage. She had asked my permission to change things around, and she and Hazel had gone into the village to buy the necessary supplies, which I had insisted on providing for her since it was my fault the cottage had been left to become so drab. I found her half way up a shaky stepladder, her sleeves cuffed up to the elbows, speckles of paint covering her face and flecking her hair. She had never looked more beautiful. Or precarious. 

I let myself in, being careful not to lean on the walls or gouge the plasterwork with my stupid horns, and chuckled softly at the sight of her. “You know, it’s dangerous to be up ladders without someone to foot them. I should know,” I added, looking down at my hock which was still painful.

She gasped and scuttled down the ladder, abandoning the paint and pulling up one of her dining chairs. “You shouldn’t be walking around on that foot!” she fussed. “Here.”

“Thank you,” I grunted, half falling back into the chair and resting the walking stick I’d used for support against the table. “I… I had to come and see how you were getting on though. It looks like an entirely new house,” I beamed. 

Instead of sounding pleased, she turned to face me with worry in her eyes. “Is it alright? Morag told me that this place means a lot to you. I… I hope I’m not overstepping…”

“No,” I breathed. “No, quite the contrary. This place does mean a lot to me, but it means more to me that you have a beautiful home to live in, and that you’re happy here.”

“What’s the story with the cottage?” she asked. “Morag just said that it was special…”

I smiled, feeling the old, familiar tug of nostalgia. “I was born here,” I told her. “My mother rented it from her best friend, but she died when I was young, however, and I went to live with my uncle in the city. When my mother’s friend died childless, he left the place to me. That was quite the shock, I can tell you. I woke up one day a banker, and went to bed the owner of a farm.”

“Why didn’t you just sell it?” she asked, pushing a strand of her hair back from her face with the back of her hand to avoid smearing it with paint. It fell forwards immediately and she grumbled. 

“Here,” I said, and she leaned forwards. I tucked it behind her delicate ear with unnecessary slowness and care, and I didn’t fail to notice the shiver that ran through her at my touch. When I pulled back, she was blushing. “I couldn’t sell it,” is said. “I came to visit, fell in love with the place all over again, and never left.”

“I know exactly why,” she laughed. 

That year at the harvest festival, I was not quite ready to be on my feet for long periods of time, but when she approached me halfway through the dancing, her face rosy and her cheeks glowing, she held out her hand to me, and I was compelled to get to my feet. I limped heavily, and we didn’t dance so much as I spun her around me, but she laughed and smiled the whole time and as the tune wound to a close, she took the front of my waistcoat in her surprisingly strong hands and pulled me down to kiss her. 

Her lips were gentle and I swayed with the gesture. The force of her feelings knocked the wind from me, and when she drew back she was laughing. Seeing that, I put my hands around her waist and simply picked her up, raising her high, straightening my arms. As I lowered her down again, laughter bubbled up from deep in my chest and she threw her arms around me. 

“I love you,” I murmured in her ear. 

She embraced me tightly and kissed my cheek. “I love you too,” she laughed, adding in a teasing whisper, “Kiss me again!”

And so I did, much to the amusement and applause of the small gathering of friends around us. 

That same group of friends gathered and cheered and flung flower petals at us on our wedding day, and I still wonder every time I see her that she fell in love with me and chose to stay here. But who am I to question it? 

Do let me know, as always, if you enjoyed it by leaving like, and a comment if you feel like it. 

Tomorrow's is a badass white lioness rakshasi, and it's nsfw again.