Northstar Vale & prayer-pale stars that pass the drowsing-incensed hymns (mtr.)

It cannot be!

A bride before her big day;
dressed all in white with a blush that sets off the colors of her dressing room  —  but is not the pinking from the knowing that she will wake up and love her betrothed more than the dawn before; it's a drunken blush, a despondent blush; glossy eyes looking up at him through lashes and over the rim of one too many bourbons. Here she is again: wanting something stupid. Wanting a wedding all under-the-hat, all midsommar and under-willows and thrumming fireflies; a stupid, hopelessly romantic little wedding with some priest even though this bride is godless; wants it all and runs from it;
runs from it through the deep dark all fevered and frightened because this had been a fantasy for-ever. And now, now that the wool of her wish had been tugged from lidded eyes, the truth that she was wanted —

"When I am with you, I feel as if I am walking through a dream. I can no more fathom that you’re real, and here, and that you ...”  It was like saying that fairies don’t exist; it was like saying that such dreams do not come true and she is faltering, featherlight. Astynome:  “I do not like what she saw. We should have been alone,”  stuck-breath and stilted and stupid, stupid starlit, unthinking!  “for ze moment I fell in love with you.”  She's a far, faraway land, again; flushing, fraying;
she's the rickety bridge o'er the chasm  –  the too-trampled one that tethers all you've ever known to all that is uncharted. But perhaps she could be; be an Ansbjørn for an hour
or two, or three. Four. Five.

“Please show me, melitse,”  honey-hesitant,
“show me what it means to be only yours.”