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Time passes. Canada is cooperative about portals and now there's one each in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, on a second floor of the hub with customs agents Isabella is tolerating for the time being as long as they're well-behaved. Japan and Australia and the UK all follow suit at roughly the same time, so then there are portals in their big cities, too, a couple new ones per week. Other nations are slated to trickle in as they handle their red tape to deal with sudden new national borders that don't have the built-in delay of airplanes. Some of the parking garages are being replaced with custom-built installations. Isabella pays off her loan, renegotiates for the continued use of her shiny credit card, and has reason to be grateful for her retained law firm, which is kept busy by frivolous lawsuits by airline companies. She's not appreciably cutting into their traffic yet - sure, the price point is dropping, but they're still competitive. They can just smell their own demise coming from a mile away.
Five witches besides Isabella ward the colony site. Robots guard the site of the portal, obligingly letting colonists through during scheduled trips and reporting to Isabella by mirror if anybody else shows up. Other robots help the colonists with setting up their farms and houses in the warded area. It'll hold a city, no problem, although another transfer of silks and bags to pay for warding a second site is going to be called for before they get literally everyone across, since in addition to city they need farmland, and since they can't build vertically as effectively as fully industrialized Earthlings or the deceased aliens.
One day:
"It's been exactly a year now since you crashed my picnic. Let's go to a fancy restaurant and celebrate."
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dark_light
prodigal_miser
"Oh! No. No, he's not going to wait that long. That would take ages. I mean, if you and Isabella decide you want to have kids then he will want stable multibillionaire status and having the mages reasonably pacified so the children are safe first, but - we see that as a long way off."
dark_light
"That is reasonable," agrees Path. "We probably would want to be married before having kids but were not committed to the idea of having them at all, let alone soon."
(Snuggle.)
(Snuggle.)
prodigal_miser
"Agreed," says Vernaia. "It's - a lot of responsibility, for us. Considering the bloodline thing. Also children in general."
(Snuggle, snuggle.)
(Snuggle, snuggle.)
dark_light
"We would want all purpose immortality first. That or sex selection, which we might want anyway."
prodigal_miser
(Nuzzle.) "If all purpose immortality isn't possible we would try to find a way to have only girls. For witch immortality."
dark_light
"Exactly. But the alethiometer seems to say we can do it. I hope we can. For you, for everybody."
dark_light
"Yes we are. And you too. We love you so," sighs Path. Snuggle.
prodigal_miser
"We love you, too." Snuggle, snuggle. "Thus, why we want to marry you."
prodigal_miser
Vern giggles. "We think so, too." Wingsnuggles! All of the wingsnuggles!
dark_light
So many wingsnuggles! The activities of their people would be incomplete without.
prodigal_miser
Quite incomplete! It's a really good thing they're cuddling!
"Happy anniversary of picnic crashing," says Vernaia.
"Happy anniversary of picnic crashing," says Vernaia.
dark_light
"Happy anniversary. If we get married we should do it on this day."
prodigal_miser
Vernaia giggles. "Sure," she agrees. "That clears up the talking of 'When will the wedding be,' at least."
prodigal_miser
Nuzzle, nuzzle. "We will go fishing with Charlie and Kesathi first, so they're... Eased into the idea of us marrying you. Though maybe they will be entirely fine with us. We'd like to check, first - we'd marry you anyway, without permission or something, but we would like to not cause any sort of strife in your family."
prodigal_miser
"Ranata too, but we have a less obvious 'This is a place to talk about things' option. So Charlie is the first choice and then we will try to figure out Ranata. Maybe asking Zeviana and Lecasryn for help."
dark_light
"That makes sense. Should Isabella be asking Zeviana about marrying you?"
prodigal_miser
"Feel free, but she's going to be fine with it. She may or may not want to take some part in the wedding, but we've got no doubt she's going to be fine with it."
prodigal_miser
".. How do your weddings go, anyway? Like we have just been assuming it would be some hybrid between the two customs but we don't even know what yours are."
dark_light
"There isn't much of a witch custom. If two witches marry each other their queen handfasts them, but usually we just go with whatever the mortal's tradition is. Ranata wore the white dress and carried the bouquet and so on."
prodigal_miser
"... White dress? Bouquet? We don't have those. There are candles and there's a thing about each person lighting the other's candle, and wow does it sound dirty when I say it like that," giggles Vern.