will you marry me?

[small_magics]

When the party has been going on for a few hours but no one has left yet, everyone is called into the main room. (The dragons will have a sufficient view if they prefer to perch at the outer doors.)

Angela has worked out a ceremony that will satisfy the involved parties, a reworking of standard Samarian traditions with some revised wording and adjustments for the fact that the groom inhabits two bodies. This ceremony, unlike the elven one, doesn't involve any jewelry.

And then Sarion and her beloved are married. Again.

Comments

[carillons]

"I'm not very findable in here," she says. "Did you have to look hard?"

[pina_colada]

"I looked for a while, but you were still more findable than Hyacinthe."

[carillons]

"I bet she is somewhere you wouldn't expect anyone to be," says Ariel.

[pina_colada]

"Maybe. Why's that?"

[carillons]

"Because I go places like that, and if you found me before her she's probably even less findable."

[pina_colada]

"Suppose so. Do you want to be alone, when you do that, or is it something else?"

[carillons]

"Not alone, exactly," she says. "But out of the way. There can be other people there if I don't mind them."

[pina_colada]

"Do you want to go looking for Hyacinthe?"

[carillons]

"Okay."

[pina_colada]

And awander they go. Kerron lets her take the lead on the theory that the same sorts of places will look like appealing hideyholes.

[carillons]

"Can she fly, do you know?" she wonders.

[pina_colada]

"Probably. Not with wings, I imagine."

[carillons]

"Then I'll look at flying places." She heads for the outside of the plant.

[pina_colada]

Kerron follows her, and flies when she flies.

[carillons]

She checks the top of the plant first, but she doesn't have to do much more than peek at the arch of the domed roof, covered in magnificently enormous flowers, before she shakes her head.

The bottom of the plant is much more promising; there are lots of little spaces amid the tangle of roots to tuck oneself into. Ariel investigates them.

[pina_colada]

Kerron follows her, humming.

[carillons]

There are lots of little spaces. And some of them are too small for either of them to fit, but could probably admit a six-year-old human.

"Hmm," says Ariel, contemplating such a gap.

[pina_colada]

Kerron starts listening for small breathing noises such as those a six-year-old human might make.

[carillons]

There are some! They are faint. Hyacinthe is somewhere very deep in the roots.

[pina_colada]

"Hyacinthe?" he calls.

[carillons]

The small breathing noises become small crawling noises, and then a small face peeks out of the small gap.

"How did you know?" she asks.

[carillons]

"Me," says Ariel.

The two of them look at each other.

[pina_colada]

Kerron laughs. "Hyacinthe, meet Ariel. Ariel, Hyacinthe."

[carillons]

"You're big," says Hyacinthe.

"You're little!" says Ariel.

Hyacinthe thinks for a moment, and nods gravely. And then thinks for another moment, and asks, "Do you think a mouse with wings would be happy?"

"...I don't know," says Ariel. She finds a dangling loop of root to perch in, since she'd get tired of hovering otherwise, and looks at Kerron. "What do you think?"

[pina_colada]

"Well, that'd probably depend on how it was made," he muses. "People with wings seem pretty happy, though." He pats Ariel illustratively on the head.