This may be followed by other chapters but I'm not sure yet. Hope you enjoy.
Nothing
"...Banished from Salem." In that moment, I broke. Whatever had occurred before, it had all faded away, any shit with witches, with religion, with God- it didn't matter. Because something more had taken me over, dark and spreading like fog in the Creek.
Loss.
Through everything I had kept sweet Gloriana at my side, through pain and upset, anger and fear, and she was to leave. My father's hateful gaze did not leave my back as I ran forwards, of that I was all too aware, of the blaze in his eyes as I reached out for my lover, the bitter look on his face as she screamed for me. In just a few short months Gloriana had become so much, she held the only place in my tainted heart still capable of love. Her name held the light of the Lord himself, a woman of glory, beauty and kindness incomparable.
"Cotton." Her breathing hitched between tears, soft blue eyes wide and afraid. I wanted to hold her forever, climb up to the cart to sit beside her and disappear to wherever the night would take us- have her as my wife, perhaps even a family one day if she so desired.
But my father...
My father...
Even through a crowd that bays for blood, his disapproval shines strong. He has already shown me the lengths to which he will go to keep the Mather line his own. No matter how little I care for his opinion, I would begrudge him my stay, only so as to avoid being ever hunted by his men and his dogs. Though I long to with every fibre of my being, I cannot leave with my one sweet love.
Her name is on my lips as they find hers, in a desperate plea for remembrance as though we both already know that we are unlikely to ever meet again in the land of the living. I do my best to savour every second that the kisses linger, memorising the feel and taste of her mouth and the way that my name falls from her tongue as she cries it between breaths. Her voice is desperate, broken, pleading, but there can be no solace, not from the frozen, impenetrable soul of Increase Mather.
Though I do my best to remain, I am no match for three soldiers and my fingers slip from her deep red hair that I have so often whispered her name into. Falling backwards, my world tumbles with me, and I barely see her leave for my eyes are so filled with unspilled tears. Someone is screaming her name, and it takes me until my father stands beside me to realise that it is my mouth calling out to her.
"What will happen to me?" She had said as she once lay beneath me, tears wet on her cheeks as her mind drifted always to the ghastly image of dear Bridget hanging with a rope around her neck. I had laughed a little, held her body close to mine and said something stupid, something which I thought then to be true:
"Nothing is going to happen to you."
