The thought keeps arriving like a wave I can't quite get in front of. It washes over me, recedes, and washes over me again, and each time it lands I feel a little more of the reality of it settle into my chest. Not nerves. Not doubt. Just the sheer, ridiculous weight of the fact that I dispersed myself across time, got reassembled by the stubbornness of a man who refused to let me stay lost, survived a walking Cathedral made from a version of that man's despair, and now I'm going to marry him in my dead grandmother's backyard in Arkansas while a beetle officiates.
My life is insane.
I wouldn't trade it for anything.
The preparations are a group effort, which means they are utter chaos.
Bryx has appointed himself head of decorations, a title nobody gave him and nobody can take away because he started hanging garlands before anyone was awake. He's strung flowering vines between the fence posts and the elm tree, creating archways that glow faintly with residual Bloom magic, and he's arranged chairs in rows on either side of a root-woven aisle that Thalia grew this morning, a smooth, pale path that runs from the porch steps to the base of the elm.
"It needs more flowers," Bryx says, standing back to assess his work with the critical eye of someone who has opinions about event design and the complete lack of credentials to support them.
"There are already more flowers than guests," Mora says beside him.
"There can never be too many flowers at a wedding. That's a universal law. Kevin, back me up."
Kevin buzzes enthusiastically, his fuzzy body draped in a garland of white roses that Bryx made for him. He looks like the world's most earnest, most heavily pollinated ring bearer.
"Kevin is wearing a flower crown," Mora observes.
"Kevin is the flower boy. Every wedding needs a flower boy. He's been practicing his processional buzz all morning."
"He buzzed into the screen door twice."
"Practice makes perfect."
Sarnyx is in charge of security, because of course she is. She's positioned herself at the garden gate with her thorns retracted and her arms folded, surveying each arrival with the focused attention of someone who has never attended a social event without running a threat assessment first.
"Sarnyx," I say, passing her on my way inside. "It's a wedding. In a backyard. In Arkansas."
"All events require a security perimeter."
"From what?"
"Unknowns."
"The biggest unknown in this neighborhood is whether Mr. Henderson's cat is going to get into the garden again."
"Then I will handle Mr. Henderson's cat." She says this with the same tone she uses for tactical briefings, and I know she means it.
Vashael has taken over the kitchen. She arrived an hour ago with Nimor and immediately began preparing something she calls "traditional fae wedding nectar," which involves flowers I've never seen, a mortar and pestle the size of a mixing bowl, and a concentration so intense that Leo backed out of the kitchen slowly and hasn't returned.
"Is it alcoholic?" I ask, peering into the bowl.
"It is celebratory," Vashael says, which is not an answer.
"It smells like it could strip paint," Sarah says from behind her.
"It will be transcendent," Vashael corrects. "And yes, mildly alcoholic. Do not give any to the gnome."
Raskel, who is in the garden replanting a flower bed he deemed insufficiently arranged, hears this and shoutssomething through the window that is anatomically specific and physically impossible.
Eltrien has been in the garden since sunrise, running diagnostics on the Elm Gate. He wants to make sure the passage between realms remains stable for the guests who will need to return to Wynmire after the ceremony. He also wants to make sure Raskel has done nothing to the tree's root system, which is a valid concern given that Raskel has been "improving" the garden's drainage for the past week with a vigor that borders on aggressive.
Thalia arrived through the Elm Gate this morning. She stepped through the shimmer between worlds into her grandmother's backyard for the first time, and she stood there for a full minute, not moving, looking at the porch and the wind chimes and the house all as it had been described to her for years.
She didn't cry. But she touched the ceramic frog with one finger, gently, and said, "Smaller than I imagined."
She's wearing a beautiful violet gown that turns the heads of everyone present. She flashes a brilliant smile at me, then wraps me in a hug. "Let's watch my parents get married!" she shouts to the crowd. Everyone cheers.
