Marry The Night

Marry The Night - Part One

'If someone were to have told me previously, that the worst day of my existence, was to be followed by the best night of my existence, I seldom would have believed them. I would have feared a madness had taken them at this most absurd declaration! And yet, here I stand; an unwed maiden after the closure of her wedding, and I believe it to be truth that I have never felt more contented.'

~~~

October 31st

The last of the wedding guests made their way from the abbey ruins, heads bent towards the floor, hands clasped tightly before them. As if they were a funeral cavalcade who turned up to the wrong ceremony. An ivory streamer billowed on the wind beside them; a decoration ripped free from its post. As the courtyard gave way to the outer gates, the guests cast their sorrowed gaze to the jilted girl once more. A woman in a pastel-blue dress started to cry again; her bearded husband wrapped an arm around her quivering shoulders.

The bride sat on the cliff-edge; her back turned to the ruins, her stocking-clad legs dangling towards the thrashing sea below. She had lost one of her elegant little slippers to the watery depths, but she hardly cared about that. The salty bite of the ocean breeze brushed against her tear-sodden face, chilling her pallid cheeks. 

'Darling. Please..' her mother pleaded behind her, 'He's not coming. You need to come home now..'

The girl wasn't listening, and didn't even care to acknowledge her mother's presence. Her pale grey eyes - pale grey, as if all the colour and life had been leached away - remained focused on nothing at all. Her thin fingers fussed at the bouquet of roses in her lap; ripping the petals from the stem, and tearing them to dust.

'It'll be dark soon..' her mother said, gripping one of the girl's pale shoulders with a gloved hand. She didn't even flinch, 'You must come home..we'll get you out of that dress, and away from this accursed abbey..'

'Leave her, dear.' That was her father, in a voice that sounded none too pleased. More likely over the cost of an unfinished wedding, than to the welfare of his broken-hearted daughter, 'Leave her a while. She'll come home when she's ready.'

Her mother sniffed into a lace handkerchief, using it to dab at her red-rimmed eyes. 'Very well.' The hand gave a little squeeze. 'Be sure to hail a carriage once you've..accepted it.'

The grip on her shoulder eased off. She listened to the crunch of her mother's boots against the gravel, gradually becoming quieter as she walked away. Her father's gruff voice became muffled, talking frantically against her mother's hair.

'Did we not forewarn her? Ignorant, unyielding child! Nothing good nor worthy could ever arise from the ruins of this damned abbey!'

The girl waited for the sound of wheels and trotting hooves. When the carriage finally disappeared through the gate, she let a sigh slip through her parted lips. Glorious silence finally settled about her, save for the tide against the rocks below her, and the odd crow overhead. She spied minuscule boats bobbing along the horizon, and created fantasies in her head about where they were going. Part of her longed to be aboard one, sailing far, far away from here.

'Nothing good nor worthy could ever arise from the ruins of this damned abbey!'

The furious, hushed curse from her father resonated deep within the caverns of her skull. She gripped the roses, crushing the petals in her gloved fist.

She had chosen the ruins of Misgarth Abbey as the venue for her wedding because she had fallen in love with its harrowing past. When it had been a practicing, still-standing building, the abbey had become infamous for death. Once the abode of the Misgarth nuns, it soon became defunct as a religious domicile following a series of witch-slanders. The Misgarth sisters were forced to flee from the abbey, after the uneducated, backward villagers stormed the building with hoes and torches of fire. Various stories say that several of the younger sisters never made it out; you can still hear their passionate cries from where the attic was once situated.