Story the Eleventh:
Princess of Cups (Page of Cups)
The Little Mermaid
Joline, Éponine, you two already know: when I turned eighteen, I donned my officer's uniform and we decided to celebrate my coming of age on the yacht. Colourful lanterns and flags lit up the masts in the evening, only Venus shone brightly above, and we were already in international waters, no land being seen anywhere, worlds away from mum and dad, all of us young and carefree. Indeed I was a charming young fellow, the loveliest person on deck, with those large dark eyes and that fluttering hair the same midnight shade, reaching out a friendly right hand and smiling to everyone as my favourite operatic tunes filled the evening and night with harmonies.
As those eighteen fireworks candles were fired, turning the night into day for an instant, and loud hoorrays rang in my passage into adulthood, we hadn't seen the impending storm clouds. We were all, from the captain and Yours Truly even to the lookout, all flustered with flowing cups.
Then, as we steered course for home, lightning flashed (turning night to day in a more sinister way), rain poured down, it all soon turned to clamour and chaos... and, as the waves tossed and tore at our nutshell, one of them packed my ankles like a liquid rope, tearing me down into the dark deep below.
It was icy cold.
Within an instant, all the strength in my limbs wavered, my weary eyes shut, and pale, parted lips let out precious bubbles of air, cold liquid darkness streaming down into my lungs. I was to surrender everything...
Then, I rose. Carried to the surface, I gasped and breathed for air. For how long did my eyes remain shut? How deeply unconscious was I?
In the end, my eyes opened but for an instant. To see you, Joline, giving me first aid; my ankles bandaged and my head turned to the side, to expel all of that saltwater. Twice my eyes opened but for an instant ere the lids shut, exhausted by such a slight effort.
Joline then called for real doctors, and I was brought in a stretcher to her bedroom, where I awakened. In a convent on a foreign shore, overlooking a beach of grassy dunes.
Soon I would, when I returned home (indifferent to everyone's elation at the fact that I was still alive), yacht along the coast, with opera music and the usual colourful lanterns; or spend hours on my own, staring at the magnificent full moon that reflected itself in the glittering deep below the cliff that overlooks my balcony.
For four or five years I never heard of my dear Joline, locked away from the outside world, sworn to chastity and to perfect their learning. Detached and intellectual, yet loving, outspoken... telling stories by my bedside as I recovered.
Then, when I was no longer a stripling, I discovered you, Éponine. That girl of a child down on the cliff, a maiden in her mid-teens innocently wrapped in sail canvas. Surely a castaway whose voice had been wrested from her by the shipwreck.
"Wie geht es dir? Comment allez-vous? ¿Cómo va?" No reply she gave, nor in any other language either.
My little castaway with deep azure eyes that spoke louder than words... whose steps wavered as I first took her by the hand... You couldn't speak, and still you needn't.
I dressed you, Éponine, in silk and satin, remarking that you preferred a coat and breeches to a gown and petticoats. So you mostly wore un costume d'homme, which had been tailor-made for you, and even rode your pony straddling on horseback, one leg on each side. We were all right with this arrangement, my parents and I. Every now and then, I daydreamt of Joline in a man's costume (what would she look like?), only to see my little blue-eyed castaway instead. Always silent, yet always full of pluck and resourcefulness, free spirit challenging assumptions.
At the opera, you looked sad as the primadonna who starred as Persephone sang her duet with Hades. However, Éponine... in the dance afterwards, you seemed to soar, or swim, in the waltz across the ballroom. With unearthly grace and lightness. Your eyes spoke more eloquently than all the songs in all the operas ever written. And we could even share a bedchamber, no matter what they said about a young man taking up a female valet. Truly, you were the loveliest child ever seen upon land.
Was I the Hades to your Persephone?
Sometimes, when I couldn't sleep, I saw you, Éponine, going down the staircase hewn into the cliff and dipping your feet into the ocean while sitting on the last step. No matter how cold the water might be. Such pluck... You could also swim like a porpoise, like an orca. Even in the icy December. Always ready for adventure. Never afraid of the water, neither of oceans nor freshwaters (in spite of the wreck you had suffered), as seen also when we went out for a sailing trip with the new yacht, the one I conveniently named Joline...
"Mistress?" They whispered the word, Éponine, but though I loved you, you were always a child, five years my junior, never meant for serious fun; but rather as a merry child, a sister or a friend. A confidante. Clasped you in my strong arms and kissed that lilywhite brow of yours... as I thought of Joline. The look in your blue eyes, far more innocent than hers, so expressive that I understood.
And still I had to tell Éponine the truth. Of my eighteenth birthday out on the wide blue, the day that should have been my last one. The waves that tossed me upon the shore, not far from that nunnery. The youngest of all the novices, Joline, found me on the beach and nursed me back to consciousness. I merely saw her as in a dream, for my eyes shut as instantly as they had opened. "What ever happened to her? I know nothing. She was the only one I could have ever loved and I will ever love upon this world. But you, my dear little one, resemble her, and you are within my heart like her mirror image. Thus, we shall never part."
Chance takes some really interesting twists and turns.
Like, I thought you, Joline, were sworn to be estranged forever from the world and sworn to chastity. And that we should, thus, never see each other again.
While Éponine was by my side, I still missed you dearly. I missed those emerald orbs that shone with wit, the fact that you were rarely seen without a book or a puzzle at hand, how learnedly you discoursed, the fact that you had an answer for everything. Someone I could share my opinions with, engage in lively conversation with, earnest discourses, my intellectual equal. Someone mature, a young adult, serious fun.
Then the whisper went about. That my parents had betrothed me to this foreign noblewoman called Joline, whom I had never seen even a portrait of.
At first, I thought it was only a namesake. Who knew the secret thoughts of the rightful heir, but himself? At best, the speechless maiden whose golden hair I played with, whose head I lay to rest upon my heart, could even guess...
"I am the rightful heir, my parents and hers wish for the betrothal, but they will never constrain me. I would never know how to love her, since I will never love anyone except one who resembles the fair novice Joline who saved my life. And, since until now I haven't found anyone more like her than you, Éponine, my poor little azure-eyed castaway... in spite of your eternal silence, I would rather have you to wife."
I said that to her a fortnight before everything changed. A month ago, Joline. Though it feels like an eternity ago.
Within a few days, trumpets were sounding fanfares, and regiments were holding reviews with throbbing drums, flattering flags, glittering bayonets; pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war. Now there was a tennis tournament, now Orpheus and Eurydice, and soirées followed upon soirées... every day brought new entertainment in preparation to welcome the bride. Joline. They said she was raised in sacred ground on the coast of her land, to fulfil an oath her mother had sworn while expecting her, and in that sacred convent she had learned all the courtly graces and all the virtues of royalty.
I caught that rumour as our eyes caught sight of the mast of her yacht.
However, when the bride strode upon the gangway plank...
It felt like a gunshot right between the eyes.
Éponine was forgotten like a character in a dream. I never expected that you were the bride, my Joline. That the fates had thus entwined our threads of life.
"Joline... It was you... all along!!!" I ran up the gangway towards you, my arms outspread, my eyes swimming in unchecked tears. "It was you who saved me... when I lay bereft of life, dying upon those dunes!!"
And I clasped you to my heart, drying up my tears on your flaming auburn crown of hair, as you blushed with modesty, warming my uniform and shirt and heart. The heart I wore upon my sleeve.
"If I were to die now, 'twere to be most happy!" I quoted. "What I desired most in the world has become reality..."
I encouraged Éponine to share our happiness, but she shyly turned away from us, with tears in her downcast, large blue eyes. Though she was smiling, I could see it was a brave face. And still I paid no heed to it.
And soon, after some most lively discussions on literature and music of the present day, we announced (Joline and Yours Truly) officially our resolution to take one another to husband and wife. And thus, all the fanfares were pealing, all the drums were throbbing, the whole apparatus of warfare was displayed even more than the day of your arrival.
Heralds went about on horseback announcing the marriage, journalists motioned towards us to look into their cameras, on every altar incense was burned in golden recipients... in the end, as bride and groom, the two of us entered the church hand in hand --Yours Truly in ceremonial uniform; you, Joline, in white silk with a white lily crown--, held one another hands, slipped rings into left ring-fingers, and both our houses received the wedding blessing from Monsignor Runius.
Of course Éponine was there too, among all the high society and courtiers and journalists and acolytes. She was a bridesmaid, clad in white gold brocade, carrying Joline's airy tulle veil and her satin gown-train off the ground. She held the first place in the ceremony excluding us, the third place --after the bride and the groom--.
On that very same evening, the honeymoon took place. At twilight, all three of us boarded the sailboat now named after my unexpected and intelligent young wife, with a smile and a voice as warm as springtime. The cannons along the cliff were fired in salute, and all the flags of the other boats on the docks fluttered in the evening breeze.
And thus we set sail. Since the weather was fair and everyone was sober --and a lovelier night sky you might never had beheld before in the middle of the ocean--, right on deck they had raised a magnificent tent of gold brocade, where the two of us young newlyweds would spend the night together.
My ordinary bunk was now all Éponine's: both you, Joline, and I were in the mood for serious fun. For being undressed in the dark, with the stars (and hopefully not the lookout) as our witnesses. The two of us. My hands lost in your petticoats, perspiration coursing down our spines. And your clever eyes of emerald green reflecting my dark midnight orbs, reflected in them as well.
With the evening breeze in our sails, on such a calm that one might have taken the ocean for blue land, the sailors were lighting, upon the masts, colourful lanterns... just like on that day I turned eighteen. The day our threads of life entwined. We were both of us still dressed, and I motioned to Éponine to join the dance; you, my dear wife, had only heard of the maiden's light feet and never seen them in motion. There was a standing ovation in awe all across deck after her riverdance and jig performances; even tough sailors whistled in a tune that I knew spoke of lust for the flesh.
The revels lasted until midnight, as I kissed you, my lady wife, and you played with my beautiful raven hair, as curly as springs. I took your hand and we peered out into the starry, moonless springtime night together.
"How wonderful the stars are," I said to you, dear Joline, "and how wonderful is the power of love!"
Then, your left arm around my waist and my right arm on your shoulders, we headed for the resting bed under our magnificent brocade tent. Once there, my hands slipped under your petticoats. I ripped your corset open as you unbuttoned my uniform's coat and shirt. Something hardened between my legs. A feeling that I had never had with Éponine.
Our serious charade rested for how long? Intoxicated with the poisonous draught of love; it was exciting, fiery, unquenchable. Until both of us sank down, exhausted, undressed, under the covers. The hot auburn head of a mature young woman resting upon the middle of my chest, listening to my heartbeat, as I ran fine fingers through her soft hair and, as I lay dreaming, whispered the name "Joline..."
We woke up as the first dawn crept up the waves, startled by the lookout's loud:
"WOMAN OVERBOARD!!"
Gasp!!
The morning sky was softly pink, and so was the tide below.
We didn't have to search far and wide.
There, overboard, lay Éponine. Unconscious, her eyes shut, her golden locks a halo around her pale heart-shaped face, her limbs tangled in a thicket of kelp, her coat and breeches drunk on brine and pulling her towards the deep... as she disappeared within, as if she had dissolved into azure liquid herself. Into currents the colour of her eyes.
Racked with guilt, I could only stare in dread as I put on the bravest face I would ever put in a lifetime.
The morning breeze planted a kiss upon my young lady wife's forehead and loosened, slightly, her auburn bun.
Then the same breeze seemed to smile upon me, mussing my raven fringe and whiskers, before it softly filled our sails and flitted among the cotton candy clouds.
My little voiceless maiden, now vanished into thin air, had just said her fondest last farewell.
Our sailing proceeded smoothly, without any storms, as if some gentle spirit of the air were watching from above. If merfolk existed, why could sylphs not?
As we landed back home, Joline requested un costume d'homme, a page's suit, ein Knabentracht, en mandsdragt, a man's costume. She now wears peridot-green breeches and coat to match the colour of her bright eyes, through which her wisdom and wit so clearly shine, and her flaming hair in a queue. It fits her even better than the gown and bun.
After all, my head and my virility may be all hers, but half my heart is still Éponine's... and it hurts to have shattered that half myself.
Wounded hearts heal overtime, Joline says, her arms around my slender waist. Now that she is expecting, I feel that both of us cannot be more fulfilled. It's finally healing at the end of the day.
If it's a girl, we agree, we'll call her Éponine.
ANNOTATIONS:
The prince's (here, lieutenant's?) POV for the Little Mermaid story was one that I have thought of for ages. Thinking of, for instance, Lacombe's Madame Butterfly as told by Franklin Pinkerton.
The name of the (ex-mer-)maid Éponine is for her counterpart Éponine Thénardier in Les Misérables, while the more mature, speaking bride Joline is named after the Dolly Parton song.
I would also like to thank Oscar Wilde and William Shakespeare for providing some inspiration. Also because the drowning and dissolving Éponine at the end is clearly Ophelia as painted by Millais.
The ending, with Joline's remark about wearing un costume d'homme and the narrator remarking that his head and his virility are all Joline's, but his heart is still half-Éponine's (clearly in mourning)... is brilliant.
Princess of Cups (Page of Cups)
The Little Mermaid
Joline, Éponine, you two already know: when I turned eighteen, I donned my officer's uniform and we decided to celebrate my coming of age on the yacht. Colourful lanterns and flags lit up the masts in the evening, only Venus shone brightly above, and we were already in international waters, no land being seen anywhere, worlds away from mum and dad, all of us young and carefree. Indeed I was a charming young fellow, the loveliest person on deck, with those large dark eyes and that fluttering hair the same midnight shade, reaching out a friendly right hand and smiling to everyone as my favourite operatic tunes filled the evening and night with harmonies.
As those eighteen fireworks candles were fired, turning the night into day for an instant, and loud hoorrays rang in my passage into adulthood, we hadn't seen the impending storm clouds. We were all, from the captain and Yours Truly even to the lookout, all flustered with flowing cups.
Then, as we steered course for home, lightning flashed (turning night to day in a more sinister way), rain poured down, it all soon turned to clamour and chaos... and, as the waves tossed and tore at our nutshell, one of them packed my ankles like a liquid rope, tearing me down into the dark deep below.
It was icy cold.
Within an instant, all the strength in my limbs wavered, my weary eyes shut, and pale, parted lips let out precious bubbles of air, cold liquid darkness streaming down into my lungs. I was to surrender everything...
Then, I rose. Carried to the surface, I gasped and breathed for air. For how long did my eyes remain shut? How deeply unconscious was I?
In the end, my eyes opened but for an instant. To see you, Joline, giving me first aid; my ankles bandaged and my head turned to the side, to expel all of that saltwater. Twice my eyes opened but for an instant ere the lids shut, exhausted by such a slight effort.
Joline then called for real doctors, and I was brought in a stretcher to her bedroom, where I awakened. In a convent on a foreign shore, overlooking a beach of grassy dunes.
Soon I would, when I returned home (indifferent to everyone's elation at the fact that I was still alive), yacht along the coast, with opera music and the usual colourful lanterns; or spend hours on my own, staring at the magnificent full moon that reflected itself in the glittering deep below the cliff that overlooks my balcony.
For four or five years I never heard of my dear Joline, locked away from the outside world, sworn to chastity and to perfect their learning. Detached and intellectual, yet loving, outspoken... telling stories by my bedside as I recovered.
Then, when I was no longer a stripling, I discovered you, Éponine. That girl of a child down on the cliff, a maiden in her mid-teens innocently wrapped in sail canvas. Surely a castaway whose voice had been wrested from her by the shipwreck.
"Wie geht es dir? Comment allez-vous? ¿Cómo va?" No reply she gave, nor in any other language either.
My little castaway with deep azure eyes that spoke louder than words... whose steps wavered as I first took her by the hand... You couldn't speak, and still you needn't.
I dressed you, Éponine, in silk and satin, remarking that you preferred a coat and breeches to a gown and petticoats. So you mostly wore un costume d'homme, which had been tailor-made for you, and even rode your pony straddling on horseback, one leg on each side. We were all right with this arrangement, my parents and I. Every now and then, I daydreamt of Joline in a man's costume (what would she look like?), only to see my little blue-eyed castaway instead. Always silent, yet always full of pluck and resourcefulness, free spirit challenging assumptions.
At the opera, you looked sad as the primadonna who starred as Persephone sang her duet with Hades. However, Éponine... in the dance afterwards, you seemed to soar, or swim, in the waltz across the ballroom. With unearthly grace and lightness. Your eyes spoke more eloquently than all the songs in all the operas ever written. And we could even share a bedchamber, no matter what they said about a young man taking up a female valet. Truly, you were the loveliest child ever seen upon land.
Was I the Hades to your Persephone?
Sometimes, when I couldn't sleep, I saw you, Éponine, going down the staircase hewn into the cliff and dipping your feet into the ocean while sitting on the last step. No matter how cold the water might be. Such pluck... You could also swim like a porpoise, like an orca. Even in the icy December. Always ready for adventure. Never afraid of the water, neither of oceans nor freshwaters (in spite of the wreck you had suffered), as seen also when we went out for a sailing trip with the new yacht, the one I conveniently named Joline...
"Mistress?" They whispered the word, Éponine, but though I loved you, you were always a child, five years my junior, never meant for serious fun; but rather as a merry child, a sister or a friend. A confidante. Clasped you in my strong arms and kissed that lilywhite brow of yours... as I thought of Joline. The look in your blue eyes, far more innocent than hers, so expressive that I understood.
And still I had to tell Éponine the truth. Of my eighteenth birthday out on the wide blue, the day that should have been my last one. The waves that tossed me upon the shore, not far from that nunnery. The youngest of all the novices, Joline, found me on the beach and nursed me back to consciousness. I merely saw her as in a dream, for my eyes shut as instantly as they had opened. "What ever happened to her? I know nothing. She was the only one I could have ever loved and I will ever love upon this world. But you, my dear little one, resemble her, and you are within my heart like her mirror image. Thus, we shall never part."
Chance takes some really interesting twists and turns.
Like, I thought you, Joline, were sworn to be estranged forever from the world and sworn to chastity. And that we should, thus, never see each other again.
While Éponine was by my side, I still missed you dearly. I missed those emerald orbs that shone with wit, the fact that you were rarely seen without a book or a puzzle at hand, how learnedly you discoursed, the fact that you had an answer for everything. Someone I could share my opinions with, engage in lively conversation with, earnest discourses, my intellectual equal. Someone mature, a young adult, serious fun.
Then the whisper went about. That my parents had betrothed me to this foreign noblewoman called Joline, whom I had never seen even a portrait of.
At first, I thought it was only a namesake. Who knew the secret thoughts of the rightful heir, but himself? At best, the speechless maiden whose golden hair I played with, whose head I lay to rest upon my heart, could even guess...
"I am the rightful heir, my parents and hers wish for the betrothal, but they will never constrain me. I would never know how to love her, since I will never love anyone except one who resembles the fair novice Joline who saved my life. And, since until now I haven't found anyone more like her than you, Éponine, my poor little azure-eyed castaway... in spite of your eternal silence, I would rather have you to wife."
I said that to her a fortnight before everything changed. A month ago, Joline. Though it feels like an eternity ago.
Within a few days, trumpets were sounding fanfares, and regiments were holding reviews with throbbing drums, flattering flags, glittering bayonets; pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war. Now there was a tennis tournament, now Orpheus and Eurydice, and soirées followed upon soirées... every day brought new entertainment in preparation to welcome the bride. Joline. They said she was raised in sacred ground on the coast of her land, to fulfil an oath her mother had sworn while expecting her, and in that sacred convent she had learned all the courtly graces and all the virtues of royalty.
I caught that rumour as our eyes caught sight of the mast of her yacht.
However, when the bride strode upon the gangway plank...
It felt like a gunshot right between the eyes.
Éponine was forgotten like a character in a dream. I never expected that you were the bride, my Joline. That the fates had thus entwined our threads of life.
"Joline... It was you... all along!!!" I ran up the gangway towards you, my arms outspread, my eyes swimming in unchecked tears. "It was you who saved me... when I lay bereft of life, dying upon those dunes!!"
And I clasped you to my heart, drying up my tears on your flaming auburn crown of hair, as you blushed with modesty, warming my uniform and shirt and heart. The heart I wore upon my sleeve.
"If I were to die now, 'twere to be most happy!" I quoted. "What I desired most in the world has become reality..."
I encouraged Éponine to share our happiness, but she shyly turned away from us, with tears in her downcast, large blue eyes. Though she was smiling, I could see it was a brave face. And still I paid no heed to it.
And soon, after some most lively discussions on literature and music of the present day, we announced (Joline and Yours Truly) officially our resolution to take one another to husband and wife. And thus, all the fanfares were pealing, all the drums were throbbing, the whole apparatus of warfare was displayed even more than the day of your arrival.
Heralds went about on horseback announcing the marriage, journalists motioned towards us to look into their cameras, on every altar incense was burned in golden recipients... in the end, as bride and groom, the two of us entered the church hand in hand --Yours Truly in ceremonial uniform; you, Joline, in white silk with a white lily crown--, held one another hands, slipped rings into left ring-fingers, and both our houses received the wedding blessing from Monsignor Runius.
Of course Éponine was there too, among all the high society and courtiers and journalists and acolytes. She was a bridesmaid, clad in white gold brocade, carrying Joline's airy tulle veil and her satin gown-train off the ground. She held the first place in the ceremony excluding us, the third place --after the bride and the groom--.
On that very same evening, the honeymoon took place. At twilight, all three of us boarded the sailboat now named after my unexpected and intelligent young wife, with a smile and a voice as warm as springtime. The cannons along the cliff were fired in salute, and all the flags of the other boats on the docks fluttered in the evening breeze.
And thus we set sail. Since the weather was fair and everyone was sober --and a lovelier night sky you might never had beheld before in the middle of the ocean--, right on deck they had raised a magnificent tent of gold brocade, where the two of us young newlyweds would spend the night together.
My ordinary bunk was now all Éponine's: both you, Joline, and I were in the mood for serious fun. For being undressed in the dark, with the stars (and hopefully not the lookout) as our witnesses. The two of us. My hands lost in your petticoats, perspiration coursing down our spines. And your clever eyes of emerald green reflecting my dark midnight orbs, reflected in them as well.
With the evening breeze in our sails, on such a calm that one might have taken the ocean for blue land, the sailors were lighting, upon the masts, colourful lanterns... just like on that day I turned eighteen. The day our threads of life entwined. We were both of us still dressed, and I motioned to Éponine to join the dance; you, my dear wife, had only heard of the maiden's light feet and never seen them in motion. There was a standing ovation in awe all across deck after her riverdance and jig performances; even tough sailors whistled in a tune that I knew spoke of lust for the flesh.
The revels lasted until midnight, as I kissed you, my lady wife, and you played with my beautiful raven hair, as curly as springs. I took your hand and we peered out into the starry, moonless springtime night together.
"How wonderful the stars are," I said to you, dear Joline, "and how wonderful is the power of love!"
Then, your left arm around my waist and my right arm on your shoulders, we headed for the resting bed under our magnificent brocade tent. Once there, my hands slipped under your petticoats. I ripped your corset open as you unbuttoned my uniform's coat and shirt. Something hardened between my legs. A feeling that I had never had with Éponine.
Our serious charade rested for how long? Intoxicated with the poisonous draught of love; it was exciting, fiery, unquenchable. Until both of us sank down, exhausted, undressed, under the covers. The hot auburn head of a mature young woman resting upon the middle of my chest, listening to my heartbeat, as I ran fine fingers through her soft hair and, as I lay dreaming, whispered the name "Joline..."
We woke up as the first dawn crept up the waves, startled by the lookout's loud:
"WOMAN OVERBOARD!!"
Gasp!!
The morning sky was softly pink, and so was the tide below.
We didn't have to search far and wide.
There, overboard, lay Éponine. Unconscious, her eyes shut, her golden locks a halo around her pale heart-shaped face, her limbs tangled in a thicket of kelp, her coat and breeches drunk on brine and pulling her towards the deep... as she disappeared within, as if she had dissolved into azure liquid herself. Into currents the colour of her eyes.
Racked with guilt, I could only stare in dread as I put on the bravest face I would ever put in a lifetime.
The morning breeze planted a kiss upon my young lady wife's forehead and loosened, slightly, her auburn bun.
Then the same breeze seemed to smile upon me, mussing my raven fringe and whiskers, before it softly filled our sails and flitted among the cotton candy clouds.
My little voiceless maiden, now vanished into thin air, had just said her fondest last farewell.
Our sailing proceeded smoothly, without any storms, as if some gentle spirit of the air were watching from above. If merfolk existed, why could sylphs not?
As we landed back home, Joline requested un costume d'homme, a page's suit, ein Knabentracht, en mandsdragt, a man's costume. She now wears peridot-green breeches and coat to match the colour of her bright eyes, through which her wisdom and wit so clearly shine, and her flaming hair in a queue. It fits her even better than the gown and bun.
After all, my head and my virility may be all hers, but half my heart is still Éponine's... and it hurts to have shattered that half myself.
Wounded hearts heal overtime, Joline says, her arms around my slender waist. Now that she is expecting, I feel that both of us cannot be more fulfilled. It's finally healing at the end of the day.
If it's a girl, we agree, we'll call her Éponine.
ANNOTATIONS:
The prince's (here, lieutenant's?) POV for the Little Mermaid story was one that I have thought of for ages. Thinking of, for instance, Lacombe's Madame Butterfly as told by Franklin Pinkerton.
The name of the (ex-mer-)maid Éponine is for her counterpart Éponine Thénardier in Les Misérables, while the more mature, speaking bride Joline is named after the Dolly Parton song.
I would also like to thank Oscar Wilde and William Shakespeare for providing some inspiration. Also because the drowning and dissolving Éponine at the end is clearly Ophelia as painted by Millais.
The ending, with Joline's remark about wearing un costume d'homme and the narrator remarking that his head and his virility are all Joline's, but his heart is still half-Éponine's (clearly in mourning)... is brilliant.