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“You’re sure about this?” Amity asked, one thin eyebrow raised.
“Babe, I have never been more sure of anything in my life.” Luz nodded, chin set, voice resolute.
“Okay, then.” Amity adjusted the headband covering her ears and followed her fiancee into the pastor’s office.
***
“No, I have no problem performing a non-traditional ceremony,” Pastor Reynolds smiled warmly, gesturing expansively with her hands. “Ours is a welcoming creed - if you and your fiancee would be interested in joining our congregation?”
The two young women giggled nervously, blushed, and then, like they were sharing an inside joke, laughed. “This is actually for some friends of ours,” the darker-skinned woman explained. “They’re from out of town. Out of country! You wouldn’t have heard of it don’t worry,” she raced forward, continuing to her next point. “So, uh, if they act a little…out of the ordinary, just, uh, cut them some slack?”
Reynolds sighed. “Believe me, you have no idea what sort of behavior I’ve seen at weddings. Somehow a day that is supposed to be about love and happiness turns into an excuse for hatred and spite.” She smiled again. “But isn’t that the human condition?”
The young woman with dyed-pink hair blinked, as if confused, before nodding sagely. Hm, Reynolds thought, that doesn’t line up with her otherwise intelligent appearance. She dismissed the thought and pressed on. “I will want to meet with your friends at least once before the ceremony,” she insisted, voice the measured mix of polite and firm that people called her pastor voice. “Though if they’re half as well suited as you two seem to be,” another round of blushing triggered, “we shouldn’t have any problems.”
***
“We are going to have so many problems,” Luz moaned as soon as they were back in her car. “How are we going to get them through a marriage counseling session? Why did I vow not to marry before getting Eda and Raine back together? Also, seriously, it’s been five years, you guys.”
“We’ll think of something,” Amity assured her. “We always do.”
***
Eda was Not Sure About this whole ‘friendship evaluation’ thing but Luz promised her the human pastor was way less scary than the Titan’s hierophants (which wasn’t saying much, but still). And, she thought, looking over at Raine, at least the company would be good. Awkward, but good.
***
“So,” Reynolds began. “When did you ask for her hand?”
Eda snorted. “They didn’t ask, they just pulled. Though to be fair,” she looked fondly over at a heavily blushing Raine (was this a thing with these people, Reynolds wondered?) “It was what needed to happen. It got me out of… well, being in a really bad way. They’ve always been there for me, ever since we were teenagers.”
“You remember back then?” Raine asked with a fond smile. “I should have known it was going to be us against the world, even then.”
“I never forgot you, Raine; I just needed to…work out some things on my own, and you were working on your own career, and, well… here we are.”
“The best of friends,” Raine agreed.
Why did they both seem so disappointed by that? Reynolds wondered, when they seemed so happy with and well-suited to each other?
***
“Really, kid, for the last time, you don’t need to throw me a party,” Eda insisted, fiddling with one of the buttons on her tuxedo jacket with her prosthetic hand. “Seriously, what even is the big deal?”
“You are! This is your…special day! So just enjoy it, okay?” Aw heck, Eda thought. How was she supposed to say no to Luz? Besides, didn’t she deserve a nice party? After everything with the curse, and Belos, and the Collector? And then putting the Boiling Isles back together from the (admittedly glorious) chaos?
With that resolution in mind, Eda strode out through the curtain that separated her from her adoring fans…
Or her parents, who seemed far more prepared for this than she was, and took up flanking positions, arms locked around hers. “Mom? Dad? Friendship evaluator Reynolds?” Her jaw dropped and, Titan be merciful, did not literally fall off of her head. “RAINE?” Across the pavilion, slowly processing (to their song) from the opposite wing was Raine Whispers in a formal robe, long and flowing, vermillion and saffron, looking as stunning as she had ever seen them.
Well, she thought, at least this human ceremony had something to recommend it.
***
Raine moved forward as if their legs were bewitched (not an unfamiliar feeling in the Bard Coven, or what was left of it). There was more to this than whatever lies Luz had spun them; she would have made such a promising bard, they thought, not for the first time. Staring at Eda was the only thing that kept them at all composed; being in front of a crowd of eager, smiling people was dreadful enough. Knowing that the audience almost certainly had a better idea of the true meaning of this human ritual than they did only made things far worse; they had had nightmares like this since their first recital, and the familiar gut-twisting feeling like a terror python coiling around their insides returned. Closer to Eda, they reminded themself. Just keep going.
Panic kept them from focusing on most of Reynolds' kind words (was she even a real friendship evaluator, they wondered?) until nearly the end, when Eda’s sudden gasp for air, her sobbing ‘I do’ brought them back to the moment.
“And do you, Raine Whispers, take Edalyn Clawthorne to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
Raine blinked, and their eyes briefly lost focus to catch where flecks of water clung to the insides of their glasses. Tears, they realized, to match the happy, hopeful ones welling in Eda’s eyes. Everything they had been through together, they thought, and still she wanted to marry them? Everything they had been through together, they thought, and still they wanted more with her. “I do,” they answered, and leaned forward to kiss their bride.