"I think -

"I was thinking about marriages, earlier? And - I don't really want you to promise anything to me. Both for practical reasons about not wanting either of us to turn to stone, and because there are always going to be weird things that happen and make whatever specific promise you made a bad idea, and I trust you a lot more than I trust whatever the magic is holding you to, and if I didn't then I don't think I would want to be with you forever anyway? But - I kind of thought maybe it would be safe to say a part of what we would say if we got married, only without any vows and just saying - that we intend to do what married people do, or at least intend it today, maybe, if that’s safe enough, and then - we wouldn’t have quite what humans have, and we wouldn’t have quite what fairies usually have, either, but I think that’s all right, isn’t it, since we’re not both one or the other, are we, and then - then I would know how to think of us. I think. If that's not incredibly silly or anything."

"That doesn't sound silly."

"Okay.

"Um, I have't heard a proper one since I was small, but I think - husbands are supposed to say that they're going to love and to honor and to keep and to comfort their wives, and wives are supposed to say that they're going to love and to honor and to keep and to serve and obey their husbands, as long as they're both alive, no matter what, and they're both supposed to say that they won't have sex with anyone else, but obviously that doesn't really make sense as a thing to intend to do in this case, so - maybe if - maybe if you just said that you didn't intend for anybody else to be regarded as married to either one of us.

"That would be enough, then. I think. For me. Then I could say the thing, and if it was something that sounded right then you could say 'I do', and then we'd be - married. Ish. And at some point we could figure out how to have some rings made or something."

"Love, and honor, and keep, and comfort," he says slowly. "And not take anyone else to be married to ...

...it doesn't seem likely to come up but it's possible that if we can't make you immortal and then you died and then a lot of winters passed I'd meet another you - and then it wouldn't be like it was taking away from you, to keep her -"

Headshake. "Only until one of us dies."

"Oh. Okay. Then - yes, definitely."

"Okay," she says, face lighting up a little. "Then - do you, Tyelcormo, this day intend, that this woman, above all others, should be regarded as your wife? Do you this day intend to love her, to comfort her, to honor her, and to keep her, from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, as long as you both shall live?"

"Yes, I do."

"Okay. And then - I, Catherine, this day intend, that this man, above all others, should be regarded as my husband. And I this day intend to love him, to honor him, to keep him, to serve and to obey him, from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live.

" - and then if you want to follow custom you ought to kiss me again."

Sounds like a good custom.

Isn't it?

" - I think if you - wanted to do more than kiss me - I think I would like that now. Probably."

" - I actually just wanted to kiss you. But with less clothes on."

"Oh. Okay," she says, blushing. "That's - plausibly a better place to start anyway."

All right then.

She's not entirely sure how much kissing is improved by lack of clothes and how much it's improved by being married but at least one of these things is really really good. 

He should be wearing fewer clothes too. Presumably he, like, has a body, somewhere.

"Isn't that the sort of thing you should clarify before you get married?"

It turns out, though, that he does, shaped like a human one, very pale and unusually soft. He is careful about setting his clothes aside because otherwise he'll have a terrible time finding them later.

"Well I'm fairly certain I've been hugging something every night, but I don't actually know that I would regret anything if you turned out to be a magical cloud. - you're astonishingly pretty, though, wow - "

...she is not really sure how anything works past this point, at least if you're not following a model where mostly you lie still and silent and allow other people to do things to you without trying to think too much about it, but prooobably if she runs her hands over his shoulders and back while she kisses him this will not cause any horrible misfortune to befall her. 

Well, you can try kissing the neck, some people like that, and the jaw, and the collarbone. And the fingers. Wearing clothes doesn't actually prohibit kissing of fingers but very carefully and thoroughly kissing fingers works better not wearing clothes for some reason.

-  she is still kind of bad at actually saying which things she thinks are nice, but probably the various delighted sounds are something in the way of a hint that she thinks that all of this is very nice. He is so pretty and so good and she can kiss so many pretty parts of him.

And then there are lots more things from there, none of which involve lying still and none of which the emperor was ever interested in and, maybe relatedly, none of which hurt.

- okay wow a lot of things about society make a lot more sense now.

Also her husband is very very very good, wow, and she is going to tell him this many many times, at least as soon as she is back to feeling like saying very much.

The not saying very much says it too, honestly.

Being stolen by this specific fairy is the BEST THING EVER.

See this is much more the reaction to kissing he expected the first time he tried to kiss her and instead made her very sad. He sleepily tries to think if there's a way of saying that which won't make her sad by reminding her of things, and can't immediately think of one, and falls asleep.

She falls asleep holding him. She is not sure she has ever been so uncomplicatedly happy in her entire life. And she gets to have this forever, probably, or at least as long as she's alive, and maybe actually forever someday.

Everything is incredibly good.