A love story, I think.

[spatch]

They inexplicably wake up in each other's arms, he and she, but her other fiancee is there. The recently-awakened husband quarrels with this other fellow, then dashes away.

The married couple meet back up with a local clergyman, whose plan makes less and less sense as he goes on. Abandoning the plan, the lovers go to their familial homes and learn that the the other fiancee has dropped the engagement. Aglow with love they sleep together, but annul their own marriage the next day.

Their feuding families battle over them, disapproving greatly of this relationship, but soon the two sides turn their attention to petty, less significant squabbles and eventually forget about the whole thing. The town is a lot less upset, but still annoyed by their constant bickering.

Alas, a happy ending is not in sight for our couple as their ardor cools and they gradually drift apart. There is one final spark of passion when they attend a party and their gazes are intense upon each other, as if meeting for the first time, but it too fades and they end up walking out in separate directions. From then on it's as if they'd never met.

Comments

[phonemonkey.livejournal.com]

Time running backwards? I like it.

[pecosy.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's because I just woke up from a nap, but it reads like a dream.

[littlegirltoast.livejournal.com]

Ah, feuding families, time running backwards, now I understand.

I thought I was going to have to ask for an annotated flow chart or something.

[tyopsqueene.livejournal.com]

It looks like Eternal Sunshine in my head as I read it (backwards or otherwise).

[batyatoon]

Slaughterhouse-5 meets ... I can't place the other story.

[jotasbrane.livejournal.com]

I think it's just the story-of-the-week from a popular hack who lived a few hundred years ago -- the kind of guy who'd use actors in double-drag and trained bears and jokes about body parts and flatulence for a quick laugh. And to be honest, he stole the idea from someone else anyway. And they surely stole it from someone else, and so on... who can really pin it on any one writer?

[batyatoon]

See, yeah, I thought of that guy too, only these lovers don't end up dead, and his lovers-from-feuding-families always did.

[desireearmfeldt]

These lovers start dead. :)

[batyatoon]

*rereads* Oh, so they do. But not by suicide or overdose of lions! And where does the other fiancee come in?

[desireearmfeldt]

If you picture "time running backwards" more like "play the film backwards" it starts making more sense. The opposite of dying is waking, the opposite of meeting is parting, and so on...

[batyatoon]

No, no, I got all that -- it's that I can't think of the story that begins with lovers from feuding families, goes through a wily clergyman marrying them, and ends with the woman's other fiancee showing up, quarreling with the man, and killing them both (or showing up and quarreling right before they die some other how).

[jotasbrane.livejournal.com]

I believe this gentleman is the fiancee in question.

[batyatoon]

... huh. That would fit there, but that doesn't explain the simultaneous awakening/dying.

(I confess, I'd forgotten all about him.)

[spatch]

I could have said the two men fight while she's taking a nap, but was trying to keep it simple (HA!) near the beginning. I think.

[jotasbrane.livejournal.com]

And years later, Ovid heard the whole story and stole it for Thisbe and Pyramus.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

In fair Anorev, where we lay our scene...

[susskins.livejournal.com]

Oh look, there's pie.