The Bride made her way across a dead spot. The tines of her heels impaled the earth drawing verdant blood up from the deeper reaches.

She paid it no mind.

If one had looked at her it would have been easy to assume she was on a death march; some sort of funerary pathway toward the ultimate end, whether that be hers or someone else’s. A loved one maybe.

But it was none of that, at least not literally.

The Bride, as her sobriquet may have revealed, was on her way to her wedding. It was a long walk to the next town and she elected to take what some might call a scenic route. Through the glades and glens, the bogs and thickets of the dead spots rather than the safety and relative comfort of the roadways.

She was not brave enough to face life after walking out on her would-be husband. The shame would get her if the judgment of the other villagers would not. But if something were to happen to her, even if she might get lost let’s say, on her way through the wood, that wouldn’t be her fault, now would it?

It was indeed wishful thinking.