"Uh, nothing? Alts aren't even reliably that similar to each other, cultural context seems to affect some people a lot, so..."

So Imliss tells the story of the Shit That Went Down before they came to Valinor

"I'm so sorry." Hug?

Hug. "So to answer your question, Idaia married your alt because she was fantastically insecure about the ability of people other than me and our late parents to meaningfully love her."

"Okay. I'll tell Edie."

"For the record, she married him because he had demonstrated the ability to meaningfully love her and she was clinging to that like a desperate octopus, not because she didn't trust him without the soul bond."

"I mean, it was clearly working fine until it was a disaster."

"I don't think it would be less of a disaster if they had waited."

"Yeah, fair. Thanks." And he relays all this to Edie.

Wow. 

I'm glad we get a better courtship than that.

I'd say it was cute if not for ensuing horribleness.

It was cute and should not be blamed for subsequent horribleness but I'm still glad we're doing it this way instead.

Yup. And our kind of marriage isn't even irreversible!

D'you want to get married?

Yes. I was thinking it'd maybe be nice to have all my family present but on the other hand that involves waiting a century and everyone'll be super busy once they're back in the timestream.

Yes, pity about that. What are your culture's marriage customs?

Uh, you get engaged, you're engaged for a year, you make each other custom blessings and then select some of the marriage ones, you declare whose family the children'll be part of for inherited title purposes, you have a party.

Measuring a a year in here would be...non-trivial.

Yeah we can probably just announce it's been long enough whenever we feel like it.

Agreed. At least long enough for me to learn blessing design, I think, I wouldn't have the foggiest clue how to do custom blessings now.

They don't have to be fancy, lots of peoples' are entirely for show. 

Yes, but I don't know how to do it at all and you deserve something legitimately excellent.

Alright. Go learn blessing design, dear, and then we will get married after something resembling a respectable wait.

She kisses him. Any cultural signals of engagement?

You usually annouce it but no. In yours?