The Garden Witch

Part 8

It was hard to live with this reality - the reality that my life is over. There's no turning back from this. Apollo is just like everything else, a fantasy. Now it's time to live with reality, to marry wealthy, to please my family, and to let my dreams die. Perhaps I was a fool for feeling I could have dreams anyway.

As the wedding comes closer, it begins to feel like a death of my soul. The marriage of me and the prince is the key to my family's happiness. It is plaint o see that they are so wrapped into their own worlds that they are ignoring the end of my happiness.

Prince Alexander emphasizes absolutely everything that is wrong with men. He has 3 wives already - to be married to him is something of little consequence. It would be even worse, however, to be his concubine. This was the reality that was posed in my head the numerous nights I thought of breaking it off (rumor has it he likes to share with other men.) That's why I have to pretend to agree with the things he says - so that he finds me just as charming and mysterious as one of his other wives that do not have a choice.

It feels so twisted that I have to take part in this in the first place, but it's Apollo and I's fault. This was never love between me and Apollo, just stupid lust. I had been celibate for a year, all to break my vows with some 25 year old. I know I'm not relationship material, but the more I try to remind myself that it is pointless to try, the more I want sex.

Apollo has become closer with the family, wanting to be friends with them. It is because of his growing connection to the human world that he wants to deny ever meeting me. He has become Grandma Luna's favorite, while Artemis and Diana eat dinner with and laugh over his jokes.

Maybelline notices, but she never knew of our tryst, and I struggle, not saying a world. I smile, even though my heart is broken. I pretend everything is fine, even when it feels as if the world has turned upside down.

The truth is, my desire has gotten worse. Why have I always been alone? Why has my solitude kept me away from love for so long? It's as if I believed I would have it as a kid, and went about entertaining dreams where I would have it - someone who would love me as much as I loved them, but all too quickly it would go away just like every one night stand in college - with promise and no follow through.

I thought that there might have been a chance with Apollo, but now destiny rips that away from beneath me. I know life is leading me down a series of twists and turns, but how can I trust when it feels as if so much is being taken away?