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

[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.

[carillons]

Ariel giggles.

"Yeah," she says, "if I was a mouse I'd want to still have wings. But maybe if I was a mouse, I wouldn't want to if I hadn't ever."

Hyacinthe nods again. "Maman says she will make me a winged mouse if I want but I don't know if I do."

[pina_colada]

"Well, can she make it come out happy?"

[carillons]

"Yes," says Hyacinthe. "But I don't know if that counts."

[pina_colada]

"Huh."

[carillons]

Ariel is nodding. Despite the age gap, they really are very obviously similar.

[pina_colada]

"I guess I don't know either," allows Kerron. "I never asked for a magic pet. I did use to ask to get turned into things."

[carillons]

"I've never done that," they say simultaneously.

[pina_colada]

"Different tastes, I guess."

[carillons]

"My sister has a griffin," says Hyacinthe. "I don't want a griffin."

[pina_colada]

"I don't know what I'd do with one of those either, no."

[carillons]

"Mice are small and fuzzy," says Hyacinthe.

"They are!" says Ariel.

"And if a mouse with wings was happy then it would be good. But it wouldn't otherwise. And I don't want one. I just want to... meet one."

"And experience its smallness and fuzziness," says Ariel, nodding.

[pina_colada]

"Maybe you'll find a world with winged mice."

[carillons]

"That would be good!" says Hyacinthe.