Under Lough Owel

A Venetian Fable

In the city, they still tell the story of the Glass Bride. They say she appeared one winter's night that was thick with fog. It was just after midnight--not the Latin one, the other, the older one--that she was first seen walking across the Ponte del Silenzio, the café lights flickering as her footsteps fell, her veil trailing behind her like a page torn from a hymnbook. And somewhere in the high domes, a stillness gathered, and the pigeons turned their heads toward the water. This bride walked with no procession, no groom, no music --only the creak of old hinges and the faintest sound of two bells ringing ever so slightly out of time.

The legend says she was not born but poured, like glass from the island of Murano. She was shaped by artisans. She was meant to be the bride of no man, but of the city itself. Her dowry: a memory no longer written down, a promise sealed in two calendars, and a clock stopped one breath before midnight. She came not to be married, but to witness a marriage. A real one.

Loud and golden and far too rich for the basilica it was held in.

The groom arrived by boat and by drone. The guests filmed each other more than the couple. The bride wore a dress of molten light, and her veil was stitched with hinges. No one noticed the other woman -- the one in the glass veil -- standing at the far end of the transept, behind the column with the forgotten saint. But the bells! They rang for her.

Some say she stood there as the vows were exchanged. When the crowd applauded and the drones flew higher, she stepped forward, just slightly, and looked into the golden mirror behind the altar -- the one no priest has polished in decades, the one covered in dust since Venice lost favour with the cardinals. The mirror did not show her face. It showed the church as it once was -- candlelit, crumbling, humming with song. It showed a child in the front pew with a broken watch. A priest who had forgotten the end of the blessing. A bride, yes, but with her eyes closed, and her veil made of ink.Then the bells stopped.

The wedding party moved on. The applause faded. And the Glass Bride stepped outside, where the fog was waiting. Some say she walked back across the Ponte del Silenzio. Others say she entered the water, where she dissolved like old vows left too long in the rain.

Only the oldest gondoliers remember her now. They speak of her just before sunrise, when no one is looking, and they polish their oars not because they are dirty but because something must shine. And sometimes -- on nights when both calendars align and two clocks strike the same minute --a figure is seen in the window of the empty chapel. As if she is still waiting for the real wedding -- the one where no one films and every bell rings at once.

Mari29/06/2025

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