The thing what I really can't decide is if anything's changed because it seems like it's both they done and they didn't. The night after the wedding, I kept thinkin' as nothing were really different. I mean, she's been mine and I been hers for months now. But as familiar as it was, there was some sense as something were changed, and I couldn't say what.
Was it on account I'd moved out of the house I been livin' in for years, ever since that winter when I were first in Bree-land and it got too cold to camp out in the fields of Andrath? That certainly felt like a big change. Most of the furnishings didn't even get moved. It's a whole new home. Big, and with room for our children.
Or is it that? That we can now seriously work on havin' littles? I can't even tell ya why I want them so much, only I feel like I always done. And she does too, and lots of 'em. There's already two cribs, which I reckon is gettin' a little eager, on account it's not like we'll wake up one day and need one, there'll be months and months of warning, and then prob'ly again for the second one (neither of us got twins in our family, so far as we know). But just seein' them cribs makes me excited to think soon we'll have our first wee one comin' along. Lumina ain't very fond of mead, I think, but she's goin' along with the old custom of the honey-moon, where we have mead every day for one moon, to assure she gets with child within that month. I don't think there's anythin' to't other'n an old story, but you never know, sometimes there's more wisdom in the old stories than we know, and anyhow it can't hurt, right? Easy for me to say; I like mead.
I figured when the town clerk feller said the words as made it all official it might feel differenter than it done, though. Mostly I felt relieved that nothin'd gone wrong, other'n Gregwald bein' late and missin' near all, and Mister Theo havin' took ill so's he couldn't come neither. But we'd had the ceremony and it all went as it ought. No one thought my tunic looked bad, or if'n they done they didn't say. Lumina was bright and beautiful as the sunniest of days, and her gown and jewelry as rich as the fattest mechant, and ever'one said so. The guests all seemed to enjoy themselves, and the old sayin' how the best place to fall in love is at someone else's weddin' seemed to have some truth in't; I'm fair sure I saw Finchley get a sweet kiss from, or give a sweet kiss to, Hawke, and for a while I wondered if Miss Taite might swoon from the flutteries in her voice every time the feller as brought her, called Tarvarthal, looked at her. (I made sure to find a time to suggest to him that things wouldn't go well for him if'n he hurt her. I hope I didn't overstep. Particularly seein' as, if it come to that, odds are he could give me a drubbing in anything short of a fistfight.) And there were talk of other weddings already in planning, and not just Miss Gustine's. Though I don't know whose! Were also pleased to see folk liked the food, even the red curry which more folk tried than I expected, and a few people had almost as much as I done! When it were all done and we left I felt sure as ever'one there had had a merry time, and that's just what we hoped for. And that were like a weight off my shoulders. Afore that day, I kept goin' over in my head that ever'thing that had to be done had been, that we wouldn't arrive to find somethin' were missed and the whole thing would go for a tumble. But we had it all right and the sun even shined. The only thing for to be sad about it was them as were far away and couldn’t be there. My ma and pa. Leoffweard, who could eat all his teasin' words to see it, and all the other brothers and sisters. Miss Adri, and Miss Brynleigh, and a few others. If only we could go down the Mark and do it all again.
But for all that it were a most merry day where ever'thing went as it should, when it were done and we went home, I kept figurin' to feel more different'n I did. I suppose that just means the promises we already made one another afore that day were the real ones. This were just tellin' ever'one else about it. Maybe it'll feel more differenter the day she tells me that our first child is on the way. I wonder if it'll be a boy or a girl?
