Chương 570: Day Five Hundred And Sixty-Eight

Dear Diary, So I'm kinda torn. On the one hand, I've got this leftover idea in my head that weddings should each be unique and special and perfect, and if they're not, it's somehow a horrible thing that bodes ill for the marriage. I mean, even back in the day that couldn't be all that true, though. Seriously, think about it from the perspective of somebody who does weddings for a living. There's gotta be people like that, right? Say they do a wedding a day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty five days a year.

That's almost four hundred weddings a year. You can't tell me that those don't sort of blend together, with the really unique ones maybe standing out, but even there they've probably got things in common. White dresses, black tuxes, or maybe white tuxes depending on where you're from. Bridesmaids. Best man. Nervous soon to be spouses. Even the wacky shit like people running away from the wedding has to happen multiple times a year for folks like that.

So how can any of them be really unique, or special, and don't even get me started on something in the real world being perfect. I'm trying to sort out Marie's wedding. Our wedding, I know. Marie and Saffron and I. But Saffron and I are already married. What with Marie living with us, from a certain perspective it's almost like she is too, but technically she's not until we have that ceremony. From what Saffron said, and I kinda agree with her, Marie gets to be the one in the frilly white wedding dress.

Which, as she's noted, is technically Saffron's dress, even if she hasn't worn it yet. Y'know, the dress from the picture Raven drew when she heard we'd gotten married. The dress Bonnie wore to her wedding. Which means that the dress we plan on putting her into is, like, double used already. Not the physical dress itself. Marie trying to fit into a dress sized for Bonnie would wind up with her lady bits hanging out the bottom.

Marie's like two and a half feet taller than Bonnie, and while a lot of her is leg, she's got plenty of torso in there as well. Saffron and I are gonna be wearing my tux from Raven's picture, but again Larry wore it first. Shit, I might be all buff, and Saffron is absolutely the curviest squish to ever make a girl kisser get urges to get grabby, but my man Larry has the kind of suave to pull off a tux, so I can't see how we're gonna outdo him at that. Then there's the venue.

Obviously folks are thinking Temple of Love, and that was my first thought too, but now that I think about it getting married there kinda might wind up putting the focus on me rather than Marie, and that's definitely a day I want the focus on her. Temple of Wisdom was where Bonnie and Larry got hitched, so I don't want to go there.

Dionysus has a spot in the Temple of Kings now, but I'm worried that if we do that, the spotlight might wander to him, or Saffron might get a bug up her ass and conquer the Temple as Imperator or something. Storms is a sports field, and I don't really think I want to make my Murder Mittens impregnating a spectator sport. Which kinda might nix the Temple of Love as well. We've both got some bad memories from the Temple of the Moon, even if I'm sure Diana would love to play host.

I guess I could snag space in the Temple of the Sun. I'm a Sun Goddess, after all. But first of all I'm not sure if I'm allowed to have spots in two Temples, and we're not gonna talk about how Sun would make three, not two. Second, me claiming a place there would give it the same problem as the Temple of Love. Third and most important that shit is hella gaudy. I don't need to get married in a place with gold toilet seats.

Only place left is the Temple of Justice, and while I could claim a spot there under my Domain of Justified Homicide and maybe Vengeance, same issue as Love, Sun, and maybe Wisdom. Plus I just can't escape the thought that we'd be getting married in a courtroom by a Justice, which is like how all elopements go, and this isn't an elopement. Maybe we could have the ceremony at the Academy.

It's got some big spaces, and the Practice Yard is kinda plain, but we could decorate it, and I will personally end any weather god who dumps bad weather on our wedding day. Shit, maybe I ought to find out who handles the weather around here and visit them. So that'll be a visit to the Temple of Storms at some point in the near future. But the Academy is sounding better and better as a venue.

Like, yeah, Saffron and I both made our mark on the place one way or another, but let's face it, the Phileo City Heroic Academy is Marie's Academy. She's been there making it happen since day fuckin' one. I mean, yeah, Saffron and I got married there too, down in the Infirmary with only Angel and Bill and Grandma and Siobhan as witnesses. No dress, no tux, hell we almost wound up wandering around skyclad, which might have set off Siobhan's Concubine Mode a year early.

It was rushed and passionate and eager and holy fuckballs if I could reach back and alter anything about our wedding I absolutely would not, because in that moment, with imperfection piled upon imperfection, it was beautiful and happy and wonderful. Not to mention pretty fuckin' unique. Special, absolutely, if I had to start erasing memories that would be one of those in the 'do not touch this or I break shit' category. I'm realizing right here and now that it was, in fact, perfect.

So maybe it's not about the most original of dresses, or most appropriate venue, or most anything of anything that makes a wedding unique and special and perfect. Maybe it's... it's the people, and I'm mostly thinking of the people getting married, which in this case will be Saffron and Marie and me. Y'know, I still want to get things as nice as I can for her, and I'm still gonna put my all into every little detail, but I think figuring that out is gonna take a lot of the anxiety out of it for me.

So our tuxes and dress and the Academy Practice Yard and Siobhan officiating. Yeah. Just in case the Fates or Norns or Murphy are listening, I will remind them that as of right now, they and I are copacetic. At peace. As in I am not currently hunting them with the intent to shove their quadruple amputee bodies into my maw. Which could and probably would change if anything interrupted Marie's wedding.

Just to be a little more clear than I might have been regarding earlier incidents that left me aggravated to the point I did things I might, conceivably, regret. The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Due diligence done. So yesterday went pretty fuckin' smooth, and at the end of the day I asked Larry and Karen if they wanted to come by for dinner, but both of them politely declined, citing work.

Since Karen pretty much worked for me and my wife, I figured it would be a total selfish dick move to make her work harder under the guise of being 'nice', so I just offered them an open invitation to come spend the night, or day, or however long they needed to decompress in an environment where nobody was gonna come to them with crises while they lounged in the Bath. I also pointed out to Larry that my girls were absolutely gaga over his son, and wanted him to visit as often as possible.

He laughed and said, "Bonnie liked the Bath as well. So you'll probably see us visiting on a regular basis. I'll be sure to let Marie know in advance." Now that his head is out of his ass, he seems to get who's actually the person getting shit done on normal days. Slept well; Karen led my ladies in playing dodgeball, yeeting themselves at each other and knocking themselves into my Maw. Tasty and entertaining, dinner and a show!

Slept late, because when I'm not leading ride alongs or taking the kids on a tour of the Black Dragon, Mondays are kinda my rest day after two days of working. Which sounds pretty baller. Work two days, rest one. maybe work a day, rest one. Cut class, or maybe go to class, rest again. Four days on, three days off, and that's on a week where I actually do the shit I'm supposed to. Of course, that doesn't happen on weeks where shit goes down, so I guess this is my 'recovery time'.

Even if I didn't wind up nearly killing myself last Season. Though I still shudder thinking about that fuckin' machine in the Workshop. Hopped over to the Academy and followed Marie around today. Didn't Co-Locate, because of the whole 'tryna build up my reserves' thing. Instead I put on the Maid's uniform and did Maid things. Funny, even with obviously being the Boss Bitch of the Academy, Marie spent an enormous amount of her time doing actual Maid shit. Cleaning. Cooking. Laundry. Mending.

I may only be useful as an extra set of hands and grunt labor, but I tried to pitch in where and when I could. Around mid-day, I asked, "hey, Marie, am I really helpful when I come along with you like this? You can be honest, if I'm more of a bother I could stop." She'd tilted her head in thought when I asked the question, but the moment I offered to bugger off, she immediately said, "No."

"No I'm not helpful?" She shot me a look and lay a hand on my shoulder, claws reaching nearly to the middle of my back, her thumb resting on my sternum.

"Stay." I smiled up at her.

"Okay. Feel free to, like, teach me shit if it'd make it better for you." She got a little shifty eyed, and I guessed, "or is me being an absolutely useless waste of a Maid's uniform part of the fun?" She blepped, giggled, then said, "maybe." I sighed, then smiled up at her.

"I'm here to spend time with you, really, so whatever makes it best for you I'm game for. I really would like to think I'm helping a little though." She pulled me into a hug, purring, then said, "Enough." As we worked our way along the corridor, checking rooms to make sure they weren't horrifyingly dirty, I asked, "so, how's your wedding gown coming along?" She got really shifty eyed at that, so I asked, "have you started it yet?"

"Yes."

"Is it ready?" She sighed.

"No."

"Is there anything I can do to help?" She gave it a moment's thought, then said, "No."

"Can I see it?"

"No!" I blinked at the absolute horror in her voice.

"Oh, the thing about not seeing the bride in her wedding dress until it's done?" She nodded.

"So, uh, are you making our tuxes?"

"Yes."

"Are they done?" She shrugged.

"No."

"Can I see them before the wedding? Wait, do they follow the same rules?"

"No."

"Okay, so can I?" She rolled her eyes at me.

"Fitting." That made sense, and I thought about that as we pulled crusty sheets and clothes out of a particularly nasty room. I had no idea whose room any of them were. I guess I could find out, but so long as I didn't know, it didn't feel like so much of an invasion of privacy. Something like that anyhow. But in the crusty room I noticed the oddest thing - the only thing on the altar was a broken shackle.

"Huh. Wonder whose altar that is?" Marie snorted.

"What? Whose is it?" In answer she looked me straight in the eye, reached one hand out, and stroked a claw gently against the shackle. I swear to fuckin' god, I felt her claw stroking something deeper inside me than she'd ever managed to get her claws before, and that is in fact saying a lot. You forgot the intimate connection between the altar in your old Academy cell and my cave? Yeah, okay, but, that was way deeper than my cave. You have a... never mind. I giggled at him. Thanks Dad. You're the best. I know.

By the time I got my mental shit back together enough to talk coherently again, we'd moved on to another room.

"What the fuck is a broken shackle doing as an offering on an altar to me? Why would someone think that? Like, I'm not particularly opposed, but... dafuq?" Marie smiled down at me, ruffled my hair, and with a single word explained it.

"Thrall."