Sorry for the delays -- I'll try to get through my backlog more quickly...
Chapter 62: She Has Gone the Distance
It was another morning, another wedding. Another bit of power into the cosmos, waiting for me to use it.
Still so far away...But it seems that, for one more time, the wedding and the power will collide.
The bride is nervous. She is wearing a dress especially for the occaison. She has pipe-dreamed from her wedding. And suddenly it became a dream, and she feels the air has taken on the water qualities of a dream. She tries not to think, tries not to wake up.
"Yes, Yes..." Aster croons over her daughter's final ice sculpture. "It's so close... I wonder what she'll know, knowing this...Knowing the forever crawling through her blood... Another one down...."
And with that done, it's time. It's something that must be done, before she can see her son wed. It seems, to her, traditional, after one generation. Grandiose, after being carried out in silence. Nothing at all like a solitary girl, pooling energy for two beings, herself and I, to escape their rotten shells of existence.
Like her grandmother and mother before her, she takes a moment to look over her life. Her ice sculptures from the start and ends of her life flank behind her, giving the room a chill. That bold person, who set out to live without compromise...
Now, she cannot help but wonder how compromised her life became. And yet, compromise or no, she does not have regrets. This is enough, and in the room of her life, she puts her hands on her hips and laughs triumphantly.
"I have won! All life lies behind me, beaten in the dirt!...But...Before all you Orchids, past and future, weep... Alexander cannot weep, for the worlds to conquer are infinite!" She crows. She still has plans -- many, now, would not. Is that...The human spirit? What a puzzle.
She begins her meal, the taste slamming and sparking across her tongue.
"Ooh, sparkly," She exclaims, "Kind of sweet-and-sour...It's odd."
She's no oracle, no maddened waif -- she doesn't catch it, then, the power flowing into the world, wrecking it to pieces. Soon, I'll be able to make my power felt...Before the next one's done, certainly.
In the meanwhile, there's a wedding to get to.
Heath's face suits a sort of nervous smile; Mildred, used to bottling, is more subdued. Both, at any moment, expects something to stop them. Expects the sky to fall.
Expects something to come in and ruin everything, because there's no world in which they are meant to be so happy. Because if this succeeded, if this one moment didn't fall to pieces, some part of them would be happy in this moment forever.
That's what they believe.
Ariel looks on with all the wonder and pride of someone who knows what they were really seeing. The angels of the Silver City were the first to realize a crucial fact: a world cannot be created alone. To make world, to make it whole, there must be at least two.
And humans were the first to realize that worlds are also made in the heart -- that love is the sensation of a world coming into blossom between two people.
And Ariel knows this, and the sight is enough to make her weep.
She isn't the only observer who knows more than flesh, or I -- the ghosts crowd around on the edge of reality, jostling for space.
"If she chickens out...I'll find a way to wring her neck!" The Specter of Billy shouts.
"She won't. It's her only chance." The ghost of the doll-girl smiles faintly, perhaps recalling her own story of love not siezed.
They have become accustomed to the feeling of my presence. Except for one moment, they've all but forgotten me.
"That doesn't matter. She loves him. He loves her. That'll keep them both going in the face of any darkness," says Reed.
"But there's a lot of darkness coming for them. She's not got so long..." Norman, oldest of them all, says.
"And for their little one..." Elain, the most silent of them, whispers. None of them can bear that.
They fall into a lonely silence.
"MMmm..." Billy mutters. Everyone shushes him.
It's starting.
"Mildred Oakley, you are the most amazing thing to happen in my life -- a life, I'm sure, that'll be full of amazing things. And I want to share them with you, forever. I want to face the future with you at my back, in front of me, and...By my side."
"And...Gosh, Mildred. I love you. And that's why I promise... I'll always have you in my heart."
"And you'll always be the one who fills up my life with happiness, and the only one I'll want to be with forever."
The hearts from the arbor begin to tumble like snow -- the world created, that existed only for the two of them...Was a world full of heart-shaped snowflakes, full of the sudden chill of a fresh ring on the finger, pulsing with their heartbeats together.
""And with this ring, I thee wed.""
And it was the fulfillment of all their wishes.
The rest of the day was a flurry of partying, of cutting cake,
Wedding day congratulations,
Pre-consumation excitement...
And all sorts of fireworks.
And, in the darkness, the voices of the ghosts reaches me....
"Do you think...Mister...Maybe you can do something, to help matters along when their little one has less time with its mother?"
I laugh, a sound no being alive has ever heard.
"I can't stop death...But...Perhaps there's something, to make the world...Less alone." After all, one more thing I can throw in the face of the Silver City, particularly this one, will certainly help me out.
And anyway, there will, with certainty...
Be a little one soon.
Orchid Seraphim's Requirements -- Complete!
Lifetime Wish: Physical Perfection
Career: Sports
Supermax Skill: Martial Arts
Building/Property: Everfresh Supermarket, Riverfront Swim Club
LTR: Opportunistic, Learned Relic Hunter, Jetsetter
Best Friends: Aster Seraphim, Ariel Seraphim, Linden Seraphim, Waylon Shwarz, Jamie Neff, Sunshine Ivanov, Natalie Shwarz, Jennifer Cleary, Teddie Links
Black Ops: Mustle Hustle, The Ultimate Challenge, Ticket Counting, Meditation Benefits, Health and Wellness Seminar, Showing off for the Scouts
Portraits: Toddler, Child, Teen, YA, Adult, Elder
Sculptures/Photographs: Toddler (sculp&photo), Child (sculp&photo), Teen (Sculp&Photo), YA (Sculp&Photo), Adult (sculp and photo), Elder (Sculp and Photo)
