The Beast watched Steven don his new cloths and had to deal with a variety of emotions it wasn’t fully equipped to handle. Before this point, the Beast only had a handful to deal with and each was quite simple. It had hunger, anger, fear, and this warm fuzzy feeling it got during a successful stabbing. As the Beast watched Steven cover the many metal markings on his body with the second skin, it didn’t feel any of those straightforward feelings. Even then, it tried to see if any of them fit. Hungry didn’t work, It didn’t want to eat Steven that much anymore, especially now that he was covered in his artwork. Fear was right out, there was no way the Beast would be scared of Steven after he’d stabbed him repediatly and then watched him almost drown in a puddle of mud. The through levels of willpower that shouldn’t be possible, the Beast had pushed down the need to stab Steven. What it felt was a little like anger, but not at Steven, hunger but not the same. There was a little of that warm fuzzy, but he hadn’t stabbed anyone since the deer.

the Beasts artwork was being hidden from the world and it just felt not good. The Beast also felt pride at the cloths it had made, and how Steven swooshed back and forth in the metal second skin with a smile on his face. Eclipsing that pride and sadness though was something else, something very personal. Why did Steven get a second skin like that, and the Beast had these rags? That wasn’t right. The little green monster felt envy and wasn’t willing to let it sit.

There were only scraps left from the deer, so the Beast would have to get creative, but it would do. It had learned from making Steven’s second skin, so many mistakes. It was a shame really, now that the Beast thought about how the poor Steven had to wear such a crude and haphazard second skin. It wasn’t much better than wearing nothing, maybe it was worse since Steven wearing nothing would at least show off the Beast’s artwork. Looking down the Beast already had so many more and better ideas for its own second skin. It was going to make Steven feel that odd angry/hungry feeling in the pit of his stomach when he looked at the Beast.

The world darkened and lighted again before the Beast finished its task. Steven tried to interrupt many times, waving his arms around and looking scared. The Beast saw the things in the woods around them, smelled their hunger. Reluctantly, the Beast stopped its work. It raised a hand in the air, there was a show of lights and a building pressure as the Beast twisted a shard of a sword into existence, and then drew it down, shattering what was left of the deer’s body. Whether it was because of the sudden violence, or the loss of the food, the things in the forest left.

Steven was more than a little worried about what the Beast was doing for it to hold so much of its attention for so long. There wasn’t much for it though, the only thing worse than wandering around the woods with the little green thing of murder, was wandering with it. So he sat and waited for the Beast to finish and tried not to think too much about the future.