36.5 Surprises Are Rare

General Summary

Day 543

After three days of getting to know one another we return to the Weaver's Village and are greeted by Liliales, who is out playing with the younger children and 'keeping them out of the way'. He is weaving energetic illusions of dragons and beasts that fly through the air and dazzle the kids.   On our return he sends me to find Bran and whisks Qing Chen away to pester him with still more questions.   I find Bran sitting helplessly in the town square watching the village decorate itself around him. Apparently the groom is not allowed to help in preparing the festivities. I lean against him and just absorb his presence as he spins out his tangled thoughts for me. He had thought that their wedding would be later, perhaps in Dreamfall or Drognar. But Vaneilli wove fate against him and blinded his senses so that it would be a surprise when he arrived here and now he has been surprised, something that rarely happens. When I first found her on this side she was such a strong seer but with no ability to participate in the weaving; now she has become an active spinner and I wonder how much of that is from the influence of the Weaver's people around her. The people here have been taught elvish wedding traditions and will be prepared for an elvish ceremony, especially because these are often private and include only the close family of the couple.   With marriage finally upon them Bran is struggling more and more to think of a life where they will constantly have to be apart. Despite his extended lifespan it is hard to think of a year as a short time. Elves grow up accustomed to the idea of our lifespan and things proceed accordingly. Even when I am apart from my loved ones for years I know that all the grains of sand in an hourglass end up in the same place. For Bran, such a long-stretching future has changed the nature of questions that he needs to ask himself - where are they going to make a home? Where will their children grow up? Where will they go to school?   I love seeing him encounter these questions. For all his wisdom and human maturity it is hard not to think of him as a youth with hardly four decades of life lived. But here he is getting married and thinking about making a family...here he is having handled Eir by himself and continuing to cast his own shadow. In Eir he and Yneir worked together to nudge the place back onto a slow, better path. He guided Yneir in being more thoughtful about tugging at people's fate and how their future might change the futures of others and of an entire race or people.   As the two of them arrived to the Weaver's Village and reconvened with Vaneilli (and told her the truth about why Yneir saved her and what she thought would happen). Vaneilli feels very strongly that it wasn't right of Yneir to not tell her about the trade she was making with their fate. In the future Yneir ought to actually consult her and Bran and they can all make the decisions together.   I had thought I'd next head towards Ilac but instead I want to send this little trio of fatespinners on my behalf. I want Bran to meet Sean Baker and potentially guide him, and handle the so-called Gentleman for me. In part I am just very anxious to get to the coast and to Magdalena, particularly because of Trillium. At the mention of her Bran nods and tells me that it seems Trillium is running away from one thing but a different thing is chasing her towards destruction and pain.  

She is stretching her hand towards something infinite and free.

  And Qing Chen, he says, feels deep the way I do. The slumbering thing within him is his own destiny, unawoken and waiting for him to seize it. I already know that I want to shape his destiny into something that will help both his people, mine, and the Kindred reach an understanding or alliance. But I am not the only one interested in this and Bran points to some violent, red-horned entity who also wants him as well as something with a presence as deep and cold as the bottom of the sea. Both are overwhelmingly powerful and somewhat unfathomable. I wonder about the tribes Qing Chen described to me, if these entities are progenitors of his heritage and maybe if all demons are like this or there is something exceptional about him. Regardless, all three of us are working manually. There is not a fatespinner among us.  

He is sheltered by a wing, soft and feathered.

  Which makes me more inclined to be friendly towards the idea of zephyr.  

Day 544

On our final day we have the wedding we've been waiting for. Bran and Vaneilli take their oaths to one another and in traditional elvish fashion we all swear oaths to support them as they grow together.   It is such a change from the last wedding I officiated, so distinctly elvish.