Night had gathered over the sea, thick and thunderous, when I at last beheld the small chamber where my destiny was to be fulfilled. The air quivered with storm; the lightning flashed like celestial fire upon the windows, illuminating the instruments of my creator’s art — those same instruments that had first wrenched me from nothingness into this living misery.

Yet tonight, that same unhallowed science might redeem me.

For months I had followed Victor Frankenstein — my father, my enemy, my only kin — watching him with feverish dread as he worked by the desolate shore. His countenance had grown wild and wasted; he spoke little, ate less, and laboured as one under a curse. And I knew well the source of his torment: me — and the promise he had made, however unwillingly, to grant me a companion.

Now the appointed hour had come. I stood in the shadow beyond the threshold, my heart — if such a thing may be said to dwell in my breast — wrung between terror and rapture. For upon the table lay she who was to be my solace, my mate, my Eve.

Her form, still and incomplete, was already beautiful. Frankenstein had chosen with care the features that should compose her — eyes that would one day open upon me with tenderness, lips formed for speech and sweetness, limbs in fair proportion. Her hair, dark and abundant, fell across the pallor of her brow like a veil of midnight. I trembled as I gazed, for she seemed less a creation than a promise — the promise of peace after years of anguish.

Victor’s hands moved with nervous haste; I heard his breath come hard; his mutterings rise and fall as he adjusted his apparatus. Outside, the sea raged, and thunder rolled across the cliffs like the voice of God rebuking His creature’s defiance. And yet, amidst that tempest, I felt a strange holiness descend — as though the world itself were holding its breath for her awakening.

When at last the lightning struck, the room filled with an unearthly glare. I saw Victor start back; I saw her chest heave once — faintly, then again — and a low moan, half sigh, half wonder, issued from her lips.

She lived.

I fell to my knees. My limbs shook with ecstasy, and tears — bitter, unlooked for — welled in my eyes. “My beloved,” I whispered, though she could not yet hear me, “my companion, my equal — no longer am I alone upon this earth.”

Victor turned then, his face ghostly in the lightning’s pallor, his expression one of horror and revulsion. But I cared nothing for his dread; his anguish was but the shadow of my joy. For I saw in her the reflection of what I might have been — a being born not for vengeance, but for love.

All that I had learned, all the mysteries of thought and language and feeling that I had wrested from the world, I would share with her. I would teach her the warmth of kindness, the beauty of the natural world — the song of birds, the glimmer of sunlight upon leaves, the soft murmur of the sea. Together we would build our home in the remote wilds of the New World, far from men’s hatred and fear. There, no hand would strike us, no eye would recoil. We would tend our garden, raise our chil.dren, and speak of the past only as one speaks of a nightmare long survived.

Such were my dreams — vast, tender, impossible.

Yet even as I gazed upon her, I saw the flicker of doubt in Victor’s eye, the old horror stealing across his features. He looked from her to me as though he beheld not a union of souls, but the birth of some new calamity. I felt the chill of foreboding creep into my veins.

Still, I would not relinquish hope. “Father,” I said softly, stepping into the light, “you have done what is just. Let her live — and let us depart. You will see us no more. I swear it upon the life you have restored.”

He did not answer. The lightning flared again, and in its flash, I thought I saw his hands tremble — not with exhaustion, but with resolve. A terrible fear seized me then, though I could not name it. I turned once more toward her — my bride, my salvation — and watched as her fingers twitched, as though she would reach toward me.