Hanging Church (Storm Night 2023)

The ringing of church bells pierced the cumulonimbus clouds as the salt grains of the seven waves crystallized in the forest.

This stone church, built into a cliff in the eye of the storm, is being carved by lightning into the shape of a wedding ring.

Gabriel untangled the roots of the rose between his wrists, and the dewdrops on the tip of the thorn reflected a thundercloud image from the 1953 wedding.

"The wedding ring that won't fall is in the dome cross."

Lin Lo's bone ring suddenly contracted, revealing a blood stain from 1927, "and Madeleine sealed it with seven unfinished weddings."

The painted church Windows oozed wine shades in the thunderlight. When Lin Lo steps onto the vine carpet in the nave, the vines suddenly come back to life, dragging her into a 1943 trench wedding fantasy.

Gabriel grabs her dangling wrist, only to find himself wearing Louis's military uniform, with the touch of Emily's plaster leg on his fingertips.

"Repeat the vow!"

The sound of gunfire outside the trench turned into the friar's Latin prayer. Their clasping hands were forced to lay on a bloody astrolabe, and the oath was revealed in the torrential rain to hide the clause:

"If the wedding ring rises three inches from the ground, all vows will strike at the heart of the one who makes the covenant."

The dome of the real church cracked open, and the real wedding ring hung in the middle of the lightning bolt.

The mirror image of that bone ring, with a corneal slice of a Martian baby embedded in it.

A third thunderbolt shattered the painted window.

Lin Luo uses vine marks to catch the falling glass, each fragment reflects the tragic wedding of different centuries: the embrace of the mill collapse in 1927, the kiss in the bomb wave in 1953, the vows dissipated in the quantum storm in 2097...

Gabriel's rose birthmark burst into bloom, its petals enveloping the void beneath the wedding ring. As lightning strikes the flowers again, ashes of roses spell out in the sky Madeline's warning:

"The comet will take away the heart that hurts the most."

Lin Luo bit the tip of her tongue and sprayed blood into the ashes. The cries of the Martian baby suddenly materialized, shattering the supporting columns of the hanging church.

With the collapse of the rose petals, the two men fall to the sea cliff, and the glass shards in their hands are oozing blood wine.

The midnight waves are crashing down the cliff into a bridal train. Gabriel grabs an old vine in the crack and finds Emily's astrolabe stuck between its roots.

When Lin Luo's bone ring touched the copper rust, the cliff wall suddenly emerged a luminous map of the line - all centuries of wedding sites, connected by grape roots.

"Jump."

Her birthmark burned in the storm's eyes.

"The Tide Bible says falling is the most pious prayer."

They let go in the thunder, and the fall becomes the rise. The wedding ring was suspended three inches above the head, with small words on the inside:

"Love is an exception to gravity."

Wine-colored foam rises from the sea before dawn.

By the time Linlo picked up the wedding ring from the waves, Gabriel's rose birthmark had spread into an entire collarbone tattoo.

The eye of the storm begins to close, and the remains of the hanging church reassemble in the clouds as observation towers for a Martian colony.

"Look at the inside of the ring."

Gabriel's synesthesia tasted the bitterness of cosmic dust.

The platinum layers of the wedding ring peel off to reveal a holographic message inside the silicon-based core:

"When the comet brushes the shoulder, the wearer must say I do in seven dimensions at once."

Lin Luo's birthmark burst open, revealing the blue pupils of a Martian baby. The moment the storm dispersed, they heard their 2097 selves pleading in the quantum channel:

"Don't make our children indentured sacrifices!"

In the rain, Madeleine, seven centuries ago, is planting a reflection of her wedding ring in a vineyard.

And in the rain at this moment, floating all the oath that has not fallen.

Lin Luo spread out his palm to catch the raindrop oath, and the water beads condensed into pearls when touching the birthmark. Gabriel scratched the surface of the pearl with rose thorns, and Emily's voice overflowed with the aroma of the wine:

"... Please plant my vow under Madeline's vine on the night of the comet..."

The rain suddenly stopped, and the suspended raindrops formed a clock running backwards. As they rewind to the stormy night of 1927, they see young Madeleine burying her wedding ring in the ruins of the mill.

Vines emerged from the reflection, wrapped around the hanging remains of the church of this world, and bore seven emerald grapes in the moonlight.

"Eat it." Gabriel's hand picking the grapes suddenly shows Louis's gun cocoon. The moment the fruit entered her throat, Lin Lo's retina reflected the image of a Martian colony:

her clone kneeling with the baby in front of Madeleine's tombstone, which was engraved with today's date.

At midnight the eye of the storm begins to breathe. Each gasp set off the folds of time and space, and Linlo's bone ring split in the folds, and silver vines protruded from the ring and pierced Gabriel's rose birthmark. Symbiotic pain allows them to see at the same time:

on the comet's shoulder night in 2097, the baby's moonlit birthmark is absorbing the Earth's contract energy.

"It's a paradox cycle."

Lin Luo vomit jade grape seeds, the Madeleine gene on the grain begins to photosynthesize, "our marriage contract in the nourishing end."

Gabriel breaks up the grain to reveal the remains of the parchment hidden in the endosperm.

The final chapter of the Tide Bible is revealed in lightning:

"When the wounds of all centuries bloom in the same body, the comet will carry true love forever from the chain of cause and effect."

Before dawn, the shoreline floats in the shape of a wedding dress.

Lin Lo's birthmark falls off and grows on the sand as a prototype of Madeleine's tombstone. Gabriel uprooted the rose birthmark, and the barbs of thorns showed fragments of a 1953 bomb - now resonating with the heartbeat of a Martian baby.

Seventh-century wedding bells echoed in the clouds as they embraced.

The remains of the hanging church were thoroughly quantized and reassembled into a ring of stars over the heads of the two men. Madeline's shadow descends from the ring, scattering fragments of Emily's chart into the waves:

"To the end of the storm, where the last..."

The shadow was shattered by the comet's wake. The emerald grapevines of Linluo burst into bloom, and on the petals appeared the weeping notes of a seventh-century monk:

"Love is a voluntary eternal catastrophe."