[482] To be wedded

A very short story about a bride. There is a theme suggesting the bride has a condition. I want to know if it is clear enough from the writing was that is exactly.

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The bride sits waiting. Around her move the blur of familiar voices singing a crescendo of excitement. The scent of perfume, various paints and powders thicken the air. They insist on using more here, less there. Gyrated to fit every conceivable position her head is tired from the abuse of what she knows as a makeover. Twice over she has heard the term, ‘to look good is to feel good’. Who is looking? And for who is she feeling? The mirror has no reflection and the image of colour, contour and shape is an unfeasible abstract idea in this void. Still there is joy to be found in the care given by others. Even if said care is given through actions of ignorance, they are not a part of her absence, and thus are innocent and so let them play. 

Their insistence is over, and she is applauded and endeared for enduring it. She has let them play and hope’s they are satisfied. 

‘Ready?” Calls her father from behind. 

“She is!” Answers the room for her.

Hoisted up from her chair like a wounded soldier, she turns around and walks towards the sound of the piano playing Gymnopedié. She follows the melody, picturing its movement in her right hand, the tenderness for which the piece demands dancing over her heart like a feather falling to the ground.

Just as her father takes her left arm, she stops. At once it is clear something is missing. She feels her dress, the beauty of its intricate fabric sending waves of elation through her body. 

“Your daisy, my dear” her fathers voice whispers, ending the brooding anxiety she could feel in her stomach. 

As he pinned it to the breast of her dress, the smell of the flower brought upon her a throw of silence. She was transported to the field where the ever so familiar smell was strongest, and holding her was the body of endless warmth sought by all of humanity. She could feel his hand in hers, slowly stroking the top of it between the finger and thumb, each a signature of love staining her heart. As they kissed, she felt his smile. The energy beamed off them both as she envisioned in that moment their souls dancing above them, coiled around each other and drifting with an inertia of content into the warmth of above. 

“Hello my love”, she heard, like a breath of tranquility against the murmurings of what must be hundreds of other’s behind her. It was the sound her soul sings to in her dreams. The sound that gives her a voice. 

“Darling” she elated, as her right hand was taken. Her left arm was released from her father, and she couldn’t help but be amazed by the greatness she felt for this figurative handover from her father to the man she could only see in her dreams.

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