Kaden | ✓

part twenty-one ♚ senescent

Emmaline refused to have the wedding on any day other than the spring equinox. She wouldn't explain why. I had to ask her older brothers, who had only just begun to like me (Emmaline said it was because I was marrying their baby sister and they were angry that she was getting married before them, but really, they just thought I was a self-absorbed prick).

They didn't explain. Instead, they sat me down in the library and slid a stack of old, brown leather-bound notebooks across the table to me. The pages were yellow with age and the elastic ties that held them shut were fragile, if not already snapped in two. The marks from pencils and ink were faded, in some spots barely legible, and there were splashes of light brown stains that were the cheap coffee and tea she used to drink every morning and every night.

I learned a lot from those journals, secrets and stories that never would leave Emmaline's lips. I discovered that she did remember her father--though she would insist otherwise to her final breath--and that she missed him dearly. I learned that she took her coffee black in the mornings because that was what he drank, and that each day had a specific tea that she drank before bed because he did the same. There was a table laid out in one of the first journals that thoroughly explained each tea and the reasoning for scheduling it that day. She liked warm milk with honey during the winter when she was young, drank hot chocolate in the summer when she had the money to afford it, and it was always her father that sang her to sleep. Never her mother.

She failed her audition to the Players' Place, and she had known it. However, a wide-eyed, dedicated flutist by the name of Caroline Reeves had told the three judges that if they didn't let Emmaline in, they'd have another spot to fill. Several other players stood behind her, and so Emmaline got in. I also learned that Emmaline and Caroline played a game to keep people coming in, although Caroline did really sleep with a lot of people. They pretended to hate each other and have a rivalry, but in reality, they were close and wrote a lot of music together.

She wanted to be married in the spring because spring meant a new beginning. She wanted to be married on the equinox because it was the beginning of a beginning, the start of a new chapter. A new chapter, a new stage, a new life. She thought that was beautiful.

She wanted a white and blue wedding because blue is a symbol of trust, stability, depth, loyalty and truth, among other things. She wanted a bouquet of phlox because the meaning was our souls are united, and she wanted baby's breath and forget-me-nots as centerpieces and woven into her hair because baby's breath meant everlasting love and...well, the meaning of forget-me-nots was obvious.

I took the journals to Eadlyn, who helped me write out every detail Emmaline had written down in her notebooks. I wouldn't let Emmaline so much as glance at the preparations, wanting it to be a surprise. At one point, she refused to so much as speak to me for a week. I was mostly amazed that she pulled it off--she and I slept in the same bed, generally occupied the same space. Somehow she did, but after a week she cracked.

The wedding turned out perfectly. It took place at dawn, and we said our vows as the first rays of daylight stretched their pastel fingers out, testing the chilly planes of the dark sky like a small child in a swimming pool. Her smile was as bright as any aurora, as pure and cloudless as the ashen sky unfolding above us.

Hours after our vows and greetings and thanks, Emmaline seemed to have disappeared, though nobody really noticed. They were all too caught up in the festivities and the drinks they were nursing to notice much other than the already sinking sun and the music.

I found her in that grove of trees, fresh petals of pale blush raining down on her in the cool afternoon breeze. She was seated in the sandstone grass, her back against a tree,  braiding strands of the thick grass together. Her bouquet sat beside her, the blue ribbon a shock of color against the sepia scene.

I sat beside her, and she rested her head gently against my shoulder. Her eyes fluttered shut, eyelashes delicately brushing her cheekbones. I pressed my lips against the top of her head and sat beside her in silence. We needed no words.

Everything was, for lack of a better word, perfect.

And it stayed that way. Per sempre.