The Fourth Night

“The next night she simply refused to go to sleep. Instead she walked and read and did needlework and drank cup after cup of steaming tea from the Indies. She felt sick with weariness, of course, but such was her fear of what she might dream that she preferred any waking discomfort to whatever sleep might have to offer, and at dawn her mother was pregnant - no more than pregnant; her mother was having a baby - and as Buttercup stood there in the corner of the room, she watched herself being born and her father gasped at her beauty and so did her mother and the midwife was the fist to show concern. The midwife was a sweet woman, known through the village for her love of babies, and she said, ‘Look - trouble - ‘ and the father said, ‘What trouble? Where before did you ever se such beauty?’ and the midwife said, ‘Don’t you understand why she was given such beauty? It’s because she has no heart, here, listen; the baby is alive but there is no beat’ and she held Buttercup’s chest against the father’s ear and the father could only nod and say, ‘We must find a miracle man to place a heart inside’ but the midwife said, ‘That would be wrong, I think; I’ve heard before of these creatures like this, the heartless ones, and as they grow bigger they get more and more beautiful and behind them is nothing but broken bodies and shattered souls, and these without hearts are anguish bringers and my advise would be since you’re both still young, to have another child, a different child, and be rid of this one now, but , of course, the final decision is up to you” and the father said to the mother, ‘Well?’ and the mother said, ‘Since the midwife is the kindest person in the village, she must know a monster when she sees one; let’s get to it,’ so Buttercup’s father and Buttercup’s mother put their hands to the baby’s throat and the baby began to gasp. Even when Buttercup was awake again, at dawn, with fifty-seven days to go till her marriage, she could not stop gasping."

Chapter Six: The Festivities

Stock Used:
(background) ([link])
(blanket) ([link])
(baby Buttercup) ([link])
(female hand) ([link])
(male hand) ([link])
Buttercup's dress texture came from google.

The Princess Bride (c) William Goldman/S. Morgenstern

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