Adarin laughs. "Fancy restaurant, sure. Is there some specific brand of restaurant you'd like, or just the fanciest?"

"Oh, let's look up something ridiculous in Manhattan with Michelin stars."

"We could get some kind of floating candle holder, I am certain," says Isabella. "Whether it would look like what you have in mind I don't know, the colonists have had non-glass-related priorities."

"Some kind of floating candle holder, then. Later we can get the proper kind, but for now we can just do something cute."

"Yes. But first fantastic dinner." She picks an appetizer and an entrée and anticipates wanting a soufflé so she puts that order in too, since they're make-ahead. An excruciatingly professional waiter collects these desires.

"It has its valleys as well as its peaks. But I approve on the whole."

Adarin snorts a little. "That too. I was politely ignoring the valleys, though. You have a cloud-pine."

"That is a terrible joke, I love you."

Adarin giggles. "I love you, too. I couldn't resist. At least it wasn't a pun."

"It was a play on words, even if not exactly a pun, but I will allow it. I'm nice like that."

"A play on words is wit, my dear, not a pun. I do agree that you are nice like that."

"I am nice, you are witty, we fight crime. Indirectly with economics."

Isabella laughs and seizes his hand and pulls it across the table so she can kiss it, because she doesn't want to test the fireproofing of their outfits right now with the candle by leaning over to kiss him properly. "I can completely see that, there would be moments like the dipping followed by the thrice-damned doorbell in half the season finales..."

Adarin laughs, pleased with hand-kisses. "Yeah, it'll be terrible. But it'll also make millions. Our backup plan in case portal-capitalism fails?"

"Maybe when we've fixed all the things and get bored we can go into TV."

"Sure, though I'd rather hire actors to play us, since the TV show would involve lots of us almost kissing. It would get dull."

"Well, when the cameras turned off you could actually kiss me to make up for it. I would let you."

"I would be extremely surprised if I went to kiss you and you didn't let me. Also sad. Perhaps also a touch broken hearted."

"But what if I had morning breath? Maybe I wouldn't let you kiss me if I had morning breath. You don't know. You sleep a lot later than I do."

"I'd probably let you kiss me if I had morning breath," she acknowledges.

"That makes me feel better. I'm still not getting up earlier, though."

The rest of the dinner also proceeds deliciously, including the soufflé, which Isabella was very smart to order.

Adarin has cheesecake as a dessert, instead. Not quite as nice as the soufflé, but still delicious. He enjoys it, along with the rest of the dinner, quite a bit. He's not sure he could deal with going to a fancy restaurant all the time, but it's certainly nice on their anniversary.

"Huh. Yeah, that'd be annoying. How would you steal bites of my cheesecake if you couldn't eat it? I'd have to order something else."

"I couldn't have had the soufflé either! It'd be tragic."

"Very! I'd have to change a third of my recipes, as well, possibly more, just to cook for you."

"Awwwww."

"It would be very annoying," says Adarin, sappy smile on his face. "I would probably just stop cooking with dairy products entirely so I didn't have to have multiple cooking books."

"You would give up butter and cheese and cream for meeee?" says Isabella. The sigh is exaggerated. Her reciprocal sappy look isn't.

"Ah, so you'd give up dairy for me but you would not alphabetize. I see how it is," she teases.

Adarin snickers. "A man has to have boundaries, my dear. Alphabetizing is one step too far, I'm afraid."

"How fortunate that I do not much find there to be much call for it in my life."

"Very much so. I like our relationship, let's not let alphabetizing come between us."

"So now that we have finished our desserts we could go look for floating candle holders."

"Yeah," agrees Adarin, grinning. "And a suitable body of water."

"River, ocean, or lake?"

"River or lake. Lake's the tradition, though - ocean isn't calm enough."

"There's ponds in Central Park, or we could portal to Chicago and put 'em in Lake Michigan." She heads out of the restaurant and starts peering around for likely places to buy floating votive candle holders.

"Either would work, though a little puddle would be kind of disappointing." He follows after, helping with the search.

"Could recolor them," she points out, meandering to the register to show her shiny black credit card. "Isn't that fairly simple?"

"True. That works," says Adarin with a smile. "What colors would we like?"

"There's not specific traditional ones?" she inquires. She pays and the cashier bags their candles and out they go to head back to the Manhattan portal.

"There are, usually reds, blues, and greens, golds if these were wedding candles. I just think our relationship has varied enough from tradition that we shouldn't feel required to fit with it." On the way to the Manhattan portal, he will hold her hand. Because that seems like the thing to do.

"And we are not getting married today." Handholding! "How about the imperial color scheme, then, or is black too somber?"

"I would be extremely surprised if we were getting married today and I wasn't aware of it. Black shouldn't be too somber if used correctly, I think."

"Black and ice-blue and forest green, then."

"Basically, that. At weddings there's a whole thing to them, the wedding itself ends with them being sent off and they are traditionally directly involved in it. Just casually and there's nothing required."

"Okay." Isabella kisses him, then kneels by the edge of the lake, her candleholder cupped in her hand, and murmurs a verse to light it up.

Kiss! Adarin joins her, and decides for the sake of theatrics to light it with magic. Into the water it goes, to be released at the same time as Isabella's.

And off they go, shooed off into the lake together by the waves. Isabella kisses him again.

"Ooh, are we lucky? I hadn't noticed. Our lives are such disasters, you see, nothing nice going on at all, you'd think I'd offended all the goddesses or something." Kiss.

Adarin giggles. Kiss! "Truly, perhaps the candles were mistaken. They could be lying to us, do you think we should go retrieve them to interrogate them?"

"I don't know, would that improve our luck or worsen it?"

"Worsen it, but we would have answers."

However, her companion makes an 'Eep' sound, looking embarrassed. Her new tiny bird flies to hide under her hair, and she murmurs, "Perhaps this is a bad time...?"

"That saves us an explanation," says the taller woman, archly.

"They wanted to come."

"... They're really all quite nice," says the smaller one who is - cringing an awful lot like Enathira did. In fact, she looks very much like her.

"...I don't see any ghosts?"

"What are you and your ghosts doing here?"

Adarin looks between the two, and focuses on the cringing one. "... You're Enathira's sister."

Another wince, some more shrinking. "Yes. I am."

Vern snuggles him. She preens Path, a little. Adarin currently has his cold poker face on, he's unreadable. (But he takes Isabella's hand.)

"This is a long trip and a serious soul renovation to undertake to issue an apology for something you didn't personally do." Isabella squeezes Adarin's hand.

"She wasn't - doing it, it's the sort of thing that someone should apologize for and I don't think anyone else was." She looks down. "So I am."

"Thank you," says Adarin, but he's not calming down. Not right now.

"So you've apologized. Now what? Are you going to get an apartment in Skokie and breed exotic lizards, what's the plan?"

"Actually," says the other mage, "we are here because we agree with you. So we're offering help."

"... What?"

"That's really not an excuse for not at least trying."

Wince, cringe. This is becoming something of a theme. "No, it's not. I'm so sorry. I didn't know what to do. So I suppose I didn't do - anything."

"So what changed? Did Enathira tell you the story yesterday?"

"... No, she didn't."

"But before yesterday," says the redhead, "she hadn't met me. And she couldn't get here on her own."

"So where do you come in?"

"I am two hundred and twenty eight. I have long grown weary of politics and marriages of convenience, while I watch the ghosts of wronged innocents pile up. I give them some measure of peace before they fade away. But I would much prefer if they didn't have to die needlessly." She cuts Adarin a look. "So if I must act to prevent further bloodshed, I will."

"That," he replies, "was in defense-"

"Yes. It was. But I would prefer to avoid it, all the same."

"Reasonable. All right. What can you do, what are you good at, how far can you convince us to trust you?"

"I am reasonably strong, magically speaking. My talents lie in earth and stone - I tend to use it to make tombs, memoirs, tablets outlining a person's life. It could be reasonably re-purposed to include architecture. While I will not claim their talents as mine - I have ghosts with me that will lend aid if it seems appropriate. Searching, finding, past wards and defenses. I don't know of a way to convince you to trust me, and frankly I don't care if you do."

"We can use an architect, although we cannot use an HR disaster waiting to happen. I have no immediate idea what to do with grappling hook ribbons."

"'HR'?"

"Ah. I don't typically disturb the peace. 'My ghosts' go as they will, however, though I won't ask them to spy."

Her companion doesn't look particularly surprised by Isabella's pronouncement. But she droops a little.

"Can the ribbons operate autonomously without you there, and/or follow sophisticated protocols of behavior without your conscious intervention?" wonders Isabella. "Maybe they could sort the mail or something - what do you normally do with them? You must have had a reason to invest the development time and mana."

"What kind is it?" asks Adarin, archly.

"Little things, little - health issues. Um. Colds, coughing fits - I know how to do a lot to help with... breathing... In particular. It takes me a while because I need breaks because of my mana, but I can do some."

"Maybe you could operate a first aid station in the portal hub or something. We should probably have one; it's not overwhelmingly accident-prone but it gets more crowded all the time and it might take a minute for an ambulance to show up..."

She nods. "Maybe? I don't know how much I could help, but I'll try. If there's a lot of people, though - I don't think my magic would be very useful. I'd need training for - big things. I don't know what to do with large injuries."

"I think so," she says, nuzzling him. "Maybe later we can tell them about it, but not right now. We don't trust them."

"Okay," agrees the mage. "I'm not sure how useful I'll be? But I can always try. Just um - please nothing... Amoral or... I don't want to hurt anyone."

"Believe me, I'm not going to encourage you to hurt anyone," says Isabella dryly. "I rarely require it and when I do I prefer that my agents be slightly more convinced of their competence at it. What do you already know about having daemons, now that you do?"

"That we are their souls, personified and sentient," says the Siamese. "A point of weakness."

"And that we shouldn't ever let other people touch them."

"You also can't get too far away from your daemons. Ours can, but it's an unpleasant procedure, though we have found that teleporting will get it over with fast if you want it. You," she points at the one with the bird, "could pass for a witch, like me, because yours is a flying bird. You," she points at the one with the cat, "can't do that while yours is anywhere in evidence, but could if he was invariably off on errands when you tried to present yourself that way."

"What are the benefits to presenting myself as a witch?"

"I see. It's probably not worth the trouble, but that also depends on the time frame. How long are you expecting to need to get into a position to safely drop the pretenses?"

"Possibly less than another year, probably fewer than three. If something let it slip right now I imagine we could deal, but it would be irritating and we'd prefer controlled press release to accidental leak."

She snorts. "Less than three years? That's simple, I was expecting to wait for a few decades, at least. Even if it took you five I can stay hidden without any issue. Not worth the trouble of pretending to be something I am not for such a short period of time."

"Where are you planning to hide? Loosely speaking in terms of parameters, I don't expect you to have an address picked out."

"Some place reasonably far away from any who would disturb me. I don't speak the language, but it's easy enough to just avoid people for a few years and get by with aid of the ghosts and my own skill."

"And what exactly are the ghosts going to do during this period?"

"Whatever they want to? Most will remain with me, but a few will be curious and explore."

"Nobody but you lot can see them. Are they good about staying out of private residences and not eavesdropping on personal conversations?"

"I doubt doing so will interest any of them," she shrugs. "They gravitated to me because I return conversation. Not many people talk to ghosts, but they can spy on whomever they like. In a way, it has been cleansed from their system."

"...Okay. If they create problems the fact that we're the only people who consider 'ghosts' a possible class of problem-causing means I will consider it my business, but I suppose I have no overwhelming reason to be more suspicious of your ghosts than I am of anybody else."

"Certainly. I will handle it, if problems are caused."

"If you don't," says Adarin, "then we will."

"I would expect nothing less."

"How do you feel about passing for a witch to casual inspection and being generally available to make yourself useful around our projects as first aid or anything better we come up with?" asks Isabella of the one with the bird. "Passing implies a wardrobe change but not necessarily much else if you don't want to talk to people a lot."

"I'm... Not sure where I'll go or what I'll do, now that I'm here. Those work, as well as anything else. I'm fine with passing for a witch, and being available to be - useful to projects."

"Okay. We can put you in a hotel near a portal location for the time being, maybe outfit one of the bits of the hub building as a live-in office for you after that, I don't think I want a houseguest."

She remembers what she and her companion interrupted, and looks suitably embarrassed. "No, I expect you won't. Thank you, that's very kind."

"Mm-hm. We are currently in the city of Chicago, for reference." English. "Adarin, how do you feel about language-ing her, I can just write her one of those how-to-hotel phrasebooks if you have misgivings...?"

"Thank you."

Her companion does not comment on if she's being excluded or not.

"Okay. Even being able to pick up English, you're probably in for a bit of culture shock, we could maybe leave you a mirror. What are your names?"

"Seraphina. Seraphina Odaliath," says the mage with the little bird daemon.

"Xiara," says the other, apparently not caring to expand on it more than that.

"Okay. And I'm Isabella Amariah but I suspect you knew that. Do you have enough mana to teleport, or do you want to stay in the hotel with Seraphina long enough to recover to the point where you can?" Isabella asks Xiara. "All the portals open to the hub or to major metropolitan areas, not exactly campgrounds for you to hole up in and wait."

"I do not have enough to teleport, no. I was planning on just - picking a direction and walking with my allies scouting out potential places to 'hole up and wait.'"

"I don't recommend doing that in an Earth city. You might be fine, but you might wander somewhere you aren't supposed to be because you can't read the signs or recognize what conventions of buildings here are likely to mean and if you get picked up by the cops you can't speak the language."

"I was going to avoid the cities."

"We're in a city. A city with nearly three million people in it and surrounded by suburbs where it doesn't border water. It will take you several days to get to be not-in-a-city unless by 'walk' you in fact meant 'boat' or 'swim'. The portals don't lead to anywhere substantially less inhabited except for the portal hub. So unless Adarin wants to volunteer to give you a ride - I'm not putting you on my cloudpine for the hours it would take to drop you off in rural Wisconsin - you will be spending the next while in a city."

"Translation spells are one thing, but teleportation spells are a bit bigger. Sorry, no. I need the mana."

Xiara seems honestly surprised for the first time since she's arrived. Her cat flicks his tail, back and forth, agitated. "... Your cities are that large? Then I shall take the lodgings. Perhaps the translation spell would also be wise."

"This is a large city, but not the largest in the country," says Isabella. "This is a very thoroughly inhabited and developed country in a very thoroughly inhabited and developed world. So I guess I'm putting more mages up in a hotel."

"Apparently so."

"... This is a clever spell. I am impressed," says Xiara in slow, accented English.

"Thank you."

"It's the cleverest of spells," says Isabella. Sappily. "All right, let's see where I can book a hotel for the night..." She pulls out her phone.

Adarin is so pleased by this praise! He grins, delighted with Isabella's sappiness.

"You two are very cute together," says Seraphina, smiling.

"Thank you," says Isabella. "There's a Doubletree a ways north of here. But I don't think I can fit you all on my cloudpine at once and trying to transport you by bus sounds like a sitcom waiting to happen. Let's just walk into town and see if we pass a hotel." Isabella hauls herself to her feet.

Up Adarin goes, as well. "Let's aim for a nice one, I kind of don't want to see what sort of trouble they would get into at an unsavory one."

"I have been in many unsavory places before. Is there something that would make this any different from those?"

"The fact that I'll be annoyed with you if you use magic to get out of an unsavory situation," says Isabella archly. "The fact that you probably wouldn't recognize a likely possible deadly weapon if you saw one. The fact that you aren't familiar with local customs and laws. I do not understand why mages keep thinking they can drop into American metropolises and be anything less than hilariously unprepared."

"Well, to be fair, there's absolutely no frame of reference to compare them with. Out largest cities before the invasion don't compare to what you have here."

"... They don't?"

"They really, really don't. This plane is amazing."

Seraphina stares.

"Don't walk in the streets unless you see somebody else who knows what the hell they're doing going right there, right then," says Isabella, "or you are likely to be arrested and/or hit by one of the cars."

"I was not going to walk in front of the large, fast moving, metal magical constructs. I am not an idiot."

"Even if you don't see a car coming, I don't think I'd recommend jaywalking," says Isabella. "You don't know the traffic laws, you don't know how fast they corner or their stopping distance. Okay, there's a Sheraton, we can put you in the Sheraton." She leads everybody to the Sheraton.

Seraphina seems to have lost her voice and is just going to meekly follow. This is such a big city, with such - scary things.

"Mm." She eyes a pedestrian crossing the road at a crosswalk, and notes the procedure there, as she follows Isabella. "The small paths across the road, only, I expect."

The person behind the desk doesn't comment on the period clothing. He takes Isabella's shiny black credit card, and looks sort of worried when she gives him her phone number too to call "if there are any problems; they're from very far away and might not understand how this works".

Seraphina looks between Isabella and Adarin, confused. When they're heading to the elevator, she asks, "... Why aren't you two married yet?"

"Um," says Adarin. That's about all he can manage.

"Why would we need to be?" Isabella pushes the elevator call button and an elevator reveals itself to them and she ushers everybody in.

"Because you very obviously love each other?" says Seraphina, confused. "And if you were married it would be harder for anyone to - challenge, or do anything about."

Adarin is now blushing and looking embarrassed!

"I really don't see how it would help. We wouldn't be sending engraved wedding announcements to those people." Isabella pats Adarin's arm and presses the number 5 on the wall and the elevator starts going up.

"No, of course not, but it's - harder for anyone to weasel their way into thinking that they have a chance to end your relationship. If he is your boyfriend, he can break up with you and that's it, if he is your husband, there's - it's harder to do, harder to walk away from. They would recognize that."

"They're unlikely to try and learn about the country's divorce rate. Or about how a witch acts with her - um, lover. But marriage is a thing they can judge by their rules, and act accordingly. It fits with their perception of the world and people... Like sticking to that, rather than letting it be changed."

Isabella demonstrates the use of the key card. "Well, maybe. Or maybe it would convince them that I need to be assassinated, not just dissuaded."

"...Well, that would work great if at least some fraction of mages didn't know me to be immortal, wouldn't it?"

"You're what?"

Xiara laughs, softly. "Well. That changes things, a bit."

"... You should not advertise that. Not right now, not when the relationship is comparatively new and they need to settle into accepting that killing you is not the best solution. Who did you tell?"

"The pair who visited us a few months back. I've forgotten their names."

"That'd be the Liandrils. Okay, they probably told their family and some cousins, but I don't think they would mention it to everyone. I certainly didn't know. They'd want to keep some cards in reserve and waste their rival's chances for action by not giving them all the facts. They'd try the wait you out approach and waste their time. I mean, it's going to get out eventually no matter what you do, but the longer you two are together and obviously not breaking up the better off you will be."

"Um," says Adarin, finding his voice again in this incredibly awkward topic. "On - which part?"

"Is she talking nonsense, is there some mitigating factor she doesn't know about - sweetie, we do not have to get married if you don't want even if it would in fact send ideal signals to horrible people, I'm just curious if it would in fact do that."

"Well, we don't have to get married soon even if we do want to," shrugs Isabella. "Please tell me how to make this less awkward for you, I was trying 'deliberate casualness' but it does not appear to have helped."

"... Um. I will go be - not here, while you talk," says Seraphina, nervously - and then she flees.

(Xiara has already lost interest in the conversation and is messing with the bedside lamp while absently talking to ghosts.)

"Um. Well, do you want to get married? I'd thought it wasn't very important to witches?"

"It's not. It's also hardly unheard of. My parents are married."

"That doesn't answer the first question. If you don't, I'll understand..."

"Okay. In terms of concrete actions, where does this leave us?"

He laughs, a little, hugging her. "If I knew that one I would have presented it with a victorious flourish. As it is - I'm not sure. On one hand, getting married right now might help with your personal safety. On the other - it would probably bother me to get married because of them and not because of us."

"It's not like it's hard to figure out that witches are immortal, so I'm not actually sure how the balance on my personal safety works out."

"True," he agrees. "Then I suppose we can just - focus on if we want to, or not. And just not let the bastards factor into our relationship any more than necessary."

"Thank you," says Seraphina. "Um. How will we pay for restaurants? Will they just - know to charge you, like the hotel did, or...?"

Adarin, meanwhile - retrieves his bird, apologetically extracting her from Path if it's required, and then starts quietly talking to her. About things.

"Okay. That will be fine, we'll just stick with room service, I think. Or - at least I will, I'm not picky. Thank you for this."

"Thank you for your possible future services," says Isabella, collecting her abandoned owl onto her shoulder. "You should name your daemons."

Seraphina nods. "... Is there a sort of - theme to naming them, or do we just - pick whatever?"

"They're usually longish and shortenable," says Isabella. "Mine's Pathalan, Adarin's is Vernaia, my parents have Castarilan and Kesathi, Vartilosax is fine. I can pick something if you want something conventional, but there aren't as many conventions about daemon names as there are for people."

"All right. Any other questions about the arcane mysteries of the Sheraton?"

"What is the purpose of the box?" asks Xiara, pointing at the television.

"It's a television. It displays what can be approximated as recorded theater and news."

Head tilt. "How does it work? Magic?"

"Nothing in this room except for a few things on my and Adarin's persons, and anything you brought with you, is magic."

"Should I care?" inquires Isabella.

"That is entirely up to you," shrugs Xiara.

"Well, don't try to take it apart, you don't know anything about it and if you break it the hotel will charge me. Do either of you want to know how to operate it?"

"Sure. It looks interesting."

Isabella locates the remote and shows Seraphina the on button and the channel index and how to change between the channels. Sports, news, weather, medicore soap opera.

"Oooo," she says, playing with the remote and looking at the screen. "... And this isn't magic? That's - strange, but I'll believe you."

Isabella will probably not care, but Xiara over there will continue to not believe that this is not magic.

"It's not magic, and neither is the phone for room service, or the cars. Other questions?"

"Um, no, thank you, though." Little smile.

"Okay. Mirror me if you need something, try to avoid the hotel people needing to call me, I'll let you know when I have a place for you to park in my hub building, and you," she waves at Xiara, "can teleport away to a nice remote location whenever you have the mana - do make sure it's remote and not secretly on a cruise line or a nature trail or an oil tycoon's hit list, mirror me to check if you're not sure."

Seraphina nods. "I'll try to find a way to pay you back."

"Very well," says Xiara. "I feel as if I should have you check regardless, since I do not know what any of those are."

"Maybe I'll just pick you someplace myself - how much cold can you tolerate?"

"A fair amount. I will refuse if you station me in an arctic wasteland, however."

"And how much of an architectural footprint are you going to leave if seen from the air?"

"I will build underground."

Neither mage stops her.

There is Adarin, cross-legged by the door, conversing quietly with Vernaia. About - stuff. Apparently.

"Sweetie, let's portal home."

"Sure," he agrees, and up he goes, kagu in hand. Kiss? Kiss!

Kiss! Departure from Sheraton. Return to Wyoming.

"They're really not very good at it, are they. Well, it's not midnight yet. Still time to do any other anniversary things you had in mind."

"Well, I will be amenable to anything on the menu when you've made a selection, my dear."

Path is entirely amenable, just like his witch!

"Yes." (Preen.)

Vern giggles, nuzzling Path. "I figured. We were talking about if we wanted to marry you. We've decided that the answer is yes, but Adarin will want to - get everything in order before he actually proposes."

"Everything everything?" asks Path wryly.

"Everything everything meaning planning out the wedding, too? No, he'd want Isabella involved in that, but... Finding a ring, making sure her father will not make angry faces at him over the dinner table for wanting to marry her, that sort of thing."

"I was more wondering if he also wants to wait for stable multibillionaire status and setting up the colony and so on."

"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."

"We would want all purpose immortality first. That or sex selection, which we might want anyway."

(Nuzzle.) "If all purpose immortality isn't possible we would try to find a way to have only girls. For witch immortality."

"Exactly. But the alethiometer seems to say we can do it. I hope we can. For you, for everybody."

"You're so great," sighs Vernaia. Preen.

"Yes we are. And you too. We love you so," sighs Path. Snuggle.

"We love you, too." Snuggle, snuggle. "Thus, why we want to marry you."

"That is the best reason." Preeeeeeen.

Vern giggles. "We think so, too." Wingsnuggles! All of the wingsnuggles!

So many wingsnuggles! The activities of their people would be incomplete without.

"Happy anniversary. If we get married we should do it on this day."

Vernaia giggles. "Sure," she agrees. "That clears up the talking of 'When will the wedding be,' at least."

"Mm-hm."

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."

"Why Charlie and not Ranata, then?" wonders Path.

"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."

"That makes sense. Should Isabella be asking Zeviana about marrying you?"

"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."

"Then we will probably not bother."

".. 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."

"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."

"... 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.

"We can do the candles thing. She's not attached to the white dress or the bouquet."

"Isabella looks lovely in black, anyway."

"Yes. He did a lovely job on her armor silks, she loves them." (Preeeeen.)

(Snuggle! Snuggle, snuggle.) "We're glad! Adarin was trying to keep to the color scheme. Because you gave us a color scheme so we'll stick to it."

"But the design is all his. She likes wearing something he made for her."

"Awwww!" says Vern, and then there is preening because she is so pleased with him and Isabella. "He likes making her happy, and keeping her safe. Like the tattoos she gave us, except with clothes. Stylish clothes."

"And more comfortable than the tattoos. Though we think they look fetching."

"Thanks," says Vern, nuzzling. "Adarin doesn't forget that he's protected, but he does forget occasionally that it's in the form of tattoos and sometimes he is surprised that he has them when he's out of the shower or something. We like them, though. They're useful."

Path giggles at the mental image of Adarin being surprised at his own tattoos. "I wonder how long it will take him to get used to them."

Vern giggles, too. "We're not sure. He's used to them when he remembers them, but of course sometimes he forgets."

"And they're not somewhere he'd spot without a mirror, either."

"Exactly. It's why he forgets about them and is surprised when a mirror is present and sees something black on his back. Once he thought there was something on him, a bug, maybe. It was funny."

"Pfffff. None of them is even bug-shaped."

Vern giggles. "I know! It was absolutely hilarious, he said, 'Vern, is something on my back?' and I was so confused until he started describing it."

Path giggles and preens her.

Isabella does her best to hold his attention so their birds can chat without more than the usual and pleasant forms of distraction.

Cuddles are always the best.