RotM 1.74.2 -- Marriage
Sep. 17th, 2007 10:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Never ever discount the idea of marriage. Sure, someone might tell you that marriage is just a piece of paper. Well, so is money, and what's more life-affirming than cold, hard cash? Dennis Miller
It isn't something meant for me, for all my mother's goals and machinations. A moment, a prince, a kiss, a time of love, a ring of eternity binding two hearts...Though she, of course, meant the prince literally and the hearts were a sideshow she never intended me to care about or need. But what I am...the thing I am, and the things I do...it isn't a dream they make available to me easily.
I could marry a mortal, only then they would die, young and mad and aching for my touch, for an eternal glimpse I could never have. I could marry an Immortal, I could have twisted him to it long ago, but what would that bring but madness and despair. Loss, in its own way, just as bitter and sharp, and always with the knowledge between us of what I am and what he is and how they never can separate, and never be free. What sort of life would we have, if we twined them closer together than already they are?
There is no one so foolish as to bind themselves to me that way, and none I would curse so. To love...I would mean it, you see. I always do. I love. I feel. I grieve. I want...but I poison everything I love, and drive it away. I twist it all up and turn it 'round on itself, and I could bind him to me that way, with promises and pleadings, but he would hate me in the end, and promises mean so little in the vast stretch of eternity.
I could not bear to trap him so, tied to me by honor and vow and chains of gold. I love him too much to condemn him to the rest of his lifetimes with me. So there are promises, and perhaps, sometimes, I beg for them softly in the night, the assurance that now, here, I have not done so much to drive him away. Not yet. Now, still, he can say things like “never” and “always” and mean them with everything that is good and pure in him. When it changes, when it turns, when it sears itself through me and the hatred echoes back where once there was love, or worse, when indifference chills the air between us...I would have him free to go, hearkening only to whispered words in the dark, in the heat of passion, with no formality to be broken.
A lover is so much easier tosend away let go than a wife, and that is how it should be.
I am content that it is so.Most days.
It isn't something meant for me, for all my mother's goals and machinations. A moment, a prince, a kiss, a time of love, a ring of eternity binding two hearts...Though she, of course, meant the prince literally and the hearts were a sideshow she never intended me to care about or need. But what I am...the thing I am, and the things I do...it isn't a dream they make available to me easily.
I could marry a mortal, only then they would die, young and mad and aching for my touch, for an eternal glimpse I could never have. I could marry an Immortal, I could have twisted him to it long ago, but what would that bring but madness and despair. Loss, in its own way, just as bitter and sharp, and always with the knowledge between us of what I am and what he is and how they never can separate, and never be free. What sort of life would we have, if we twined them closer together than already they are?
There is no one so foolish as to bind themselves to me that way, and none I would curse so. To love...I would mean it, you see. I always do. I love. I feel. I grieve. I want...but I poison everything I love, and drive it away. I twist it all up and turn it 'round on itself, and I could bind him to me that way, with promises and pleadings, but he would hate me in the end, and promises mean so little in the vast stretch of eternity.
I could not bear to trap him so, tied to me by honor and vow and chains of gold. I love him too much to condemn him to the rest of his lifetimes with me. So there are promises, and perhaps, sometimes, I beg for them softly in the night, the assurance that now, here, I have not done so much to drive him away. Not yet. Now, still, he can say things like “never” and “always” and mean them with everything that is good and pure in him. When it changes, when it turns, when it sears itself through me and the hatred echoes back where once there was love, or worse, when indifference chills the air between us...I would have him free to go, hearkening only to whispered words in the dark, in the heat of passion, with no formality to be broken.
A lover is so much easier to
I am content that it is so.