To Love

I remember it. The sensation was not of life, no, buut of the damp earth, pressing roughly against my skin. It was indeed a slow, agonizing awakening, much like a seed pushing its way through the soil, except instead of being greeted by sunlight, I was greeted by the pale, haunting glow of the moon filtering soundly through the graveyard's willow canopy, giving the illusion of peace. I was Emily, the Corpse Bride (yes, the tales are true), and my life, or rather, my death, had been quite the affair not to bother anyone, it had indeed been an overlooked whisper drifting in the forgotten annals of time. Then, one unexpected day, an ungenteel, noisy young lad bequethed the name of Victor stumbled (basically tripped) into my unnoticeable grave. He was rehearsing his wedding vows (the nerve!), his voice reverberating eerily in the frozen stillness, and in his timid fumbling, he dropped the wedding ring onto my finger, thinking that it was only a tree-root (he has to be forgiven for that, because in the circumstance, that is what it looked like). The exact moment that the metal met my skin, I was quite gracefully tugged from the shadows, a spectral figure now rising from the earth--at last! Victor, partnered with wide, spectral eyes was quite the sight to see. I was a bride lacking a groom, and he was a groom lacking a bride (we were perfect for each other), and we were bonding with one another in somewhat of a spectral union. He was very petrified, for those first moments, clearly, though I could see the flame of a flicker of curiosity in his humble glance, the way that he gazed at me not with disgust, but with an odd sort of mystification. In my most previous setting of the Land of the Dead, I was an anomaly of sorts, a novelty. The others of my fellow spirits with their similar to my own veils and walls of sorrow, treated me with a combination of both pity and envy. They'd never witnessed an actual, living soul so closely, and I, in their own return, was greatly intrigued by their own narrations of the upper world (at least it was upper to us), the glowing warmth of the sun, the warm delicious scent of freshly baked bread, all only things which I had solely dreamed of, by chance. My days transformed quickly into weeks as I attempted to tour this strange, but inviting new world partnered with Victor at my side, who indeed knew more than I did. We gracefully danced in the graveyard, just over where the dead bodies lay that was lit only by the moon, the wind darting between the trees, similar to a mournful melody, and he would tell me of his current living life, his family, his hopes, and his dreams. I, in turn, would share with him what my life had been, both the good and the bad in a series of bittersweet reverberations of a life cut much too short. Although, I must admit that the pull of the living world was strong and very tempting, Victor, with his gentle heart, yearned to return to his previous fiancee whom he had in the world of the living, the woman he was supposed to marry. It was admittedly a sore and painful realization for myself, however I know too well that I could not expect any real emotion while I held him captive. And so, with the heaviest of hearts, I devised what had to be, in my opinion, a sound plan. In the light on the night of the fullest of moons, we stood at the very edge of our two realms, the veil between both the living and the dead was only as thin as a quiet, nearly mute whisper I watched as my darling Victor stepped back into the world, well, his world, his face, painfully etched into my memory with a mixture of both great relief and great sorrow. he turned around to look at me one last time, his eyes with such a great look of gratitude it cannot be accurately described using just words. As I saw his figure gradually disappear into the darkness I felt a baffling sense of peace settle stilly over me. I was still, and would always be the Corpse Bride, but now, I was a bride, and yes, a corpse, who had actually found love, a love which had permitted me to finally let go. I slowly drifted back to my grave, not with regret, no, but with peaceful, cherished memories. The subtle reverberation of love that had only shortly come into literal contact with both the realms of the living and the dead. In the still, soundless nature of the graveyard, I waited (not for the next life which I was sure I was bound to live but for the next story to be told...or which I would tell, considering).