by Andrea Höst
My workload at the moment has been ramped up, because KOTIS knows that I won't be doing any visualisations or projections at all if I can help it, if I get pregnant. Since they're extremely interested to know if I have little baby touchstones, they're quite happy for me to get married and have kids, but they're trying to cram heaps of visualisation projects in beforehand. Not taking me anywhere near any of the powerstones, or doing things they consider really risky, but they're keen to reproduce the teleportation platforms and the process of creating aether, and though they think they're beginning to understand, they'd love to have some extremely confusing points cleared up. Unfortunately they haven't found any convenient books in the Kalasa library explaining any of this, and have been working on the office I visualised once before, and other rooms like that.
Going for a fitting for my wedding dress tomorrow, and Kaoren and the kids' outfits. I had to ask Kaoren whether his sights would drive him insane if he didn't get to see what my wedding dress looked like beforehand, and he thinks it will be okay, especially if I tell him about it generally. After the fitting we're going to talk the kids through what we've decided on for the ceremony, and explain how it's going to be more than just a wedding, and talk over issues like surnames. Sen is tremendously excited to see the dresses. So am I.
Chapter 15
Another February
February 28
Preparations
Just under a month to go now. I'd feel stressed about setting up a party for what will be my largest guest list so far, but now that Kaoren's parents are settled into their new home at Liriath, almost all the wedding preparations have been taken out of my hands. It's not too bad – if I'm very definite about the things I do want, Teor does everything to ensure that I get that. But I had to make very clear that I particularly want the kids' clothes the way I'd already chosen, and bits of the ceremony to go a particular way, and especially the 'family-making ceremony' where we formalise the adoption of the kids. But overall, though she's frustrated me a couple of times, I'm pretty glad Teor's here and so effortlessly looking after marquees in case it rains and catering and transport and all that kind of stuff. She happily makes all the decisions, and some time later mentions what's going on, and reorganises if there's anything I want to change, but usually there isn't. She's only added a few non-relatives I don't know to the guest list.
Kaoren not only has grandparents, but also great-grandparents still living, though not all of them are able to make the trip, and also a reasonable swodge of other relatives, so it's lucky we put quite a few rooms in the guest/guard house.
I'm very happy with my dress and the girls' dresses, and highly curious about what Kaoren and Rye look like in their matching formal robes (Kaoren decided that we may as well both have a surprise on the day). The girls' dresses were the defining theme – I had a long talk with Chiane (my dress designer) about the colours which would best suit Ys and yet also look good on Lira and Sen, and Chiane basically designed a dress for Ys which really suited her, and then we worked from there, although of course that's not how it gets explained to anyone else. The colours we ended up with were moss green, a sage and a near-white green. The girls' dresses are these deceptively simple knee-length sleeveless sheathes of the sage with side-panels of the moss green and this longer transparent material over the top which tends to swirl and flirt about their knees and has embroidery in the moss green and sage of leaves and flowers kind of caught in the act of drifting down and gathering in little curling piles about the hem. Sen's version has no overlay and is mostly white and sage with some ribbony bits, while Kaoren and Rye's robes will be longer, with sleeves and without the overlay, and with a more formal and stylised set of leaves around the hems and cuffs.
My dress is off-white with a very exactly tailored bodice with a high neck with tiny little buttons all down the back (something I've always thought the coolest look for a wedding dress) but no sleeves, so my shoulders are exposed. The skirt starts low down on the hips and is straight up and down at the front, just touching my toes, while stretching out to a tiny little train at the back. It looks very simple and classic, and is only minimally embroidered (more falling leaves and flowers done in the same colour as the dress, and mainly on the train). I decided to go with a veil, not one of those poufy mosquito-net looking ones, but instead a sort I'd seen in a lot of old-fashioned photos which is basically a single piece of fine, transparent material. It's the same ivory off-white, with embroidered falling leaves and petals just visible, and since it was a totally non-Taren sort of thing to wear, it took a lot of discussion back and forth with Chiane to get something I liked and which would stay on my head. She ended up commissioning a jeweller to make me a circlet of enamel flowers and leaves. It's basically a silvery wire curled around three or four times in a circle, with clever little flowers in white and pale green leaves. I liked the rough design of that enough to get matching little slides for the girls, and also earrings for me. The veil fastens over it, falling to my butt at the back, and to my waist in the front, and just wide enough to rest across the top of my shoulders at the side.
The interface allows for complete body modelling and I'd been scanned at the first consultation, so I'd been able to spend ages looking at a virtual image of me wearing a virtual image of the dress, but I was terribly worried that I would look completely silly when I put the thing on in real life. Fortunately, I had two very harsh critics with me, so when Chiane brought them in to check how we looked as a group, and there was this moment of quiet with no hint of suppressed scorn or pity, I knew I'd achieved something of the effect I wanted. It makes me look really tall and grown up, which is probably a silly way to think of it, but it really made me feel like The Bride. [Not the one with the sword out to kill Bill.]
Ys recovered enough to ask if I'd be able to get about without tripping over, but then rather shyly joined Sen and Lira in gingerly touching the edge of the veil, which is incredibly sheer and soft. I could tell Ys had deeply impressed Sen with the need to not leap on me when I was wearing my dress – and to be careful of her own – and Sen was so funny, moving about like everything was made of spun sugar and making these adorable little peeps and sighs of happiness. She absolutely adores the sash and ribbons on her own dress as well, and kept patting and stroking them. We stood in a group to make sure the dresses worked well together and so Chiane's assistants could make sure Ys and Lira's hems were even, and the girls put their matching hair slides in, and lots of little tucks and adjustments were made and I completely enjoyed watching Ys taking sidelong glances at herself in the mirror. She'd been so resistant and long-suffering at the first consultation, enduring and hating the requirement that she be dressed up, and plainly expecting the worst. But the colour really suits her, and the cut and the overlay gives her a suggestion of elegance and also takes tall and skinny and turns it into long-limbed and leggy, thanks to the skirt of the under layer ending well above the knees, while the overlay drops down below. It's not frilly or flouncy or overtly trying to be sexy, is just girlish enough, and really does suit her and I'm so pleased.
Lira looked amazing, as I expected, and was very pleased about it. She also relaunched the discussion of getting her ears pierced, once she saw my matching earrings, and I said she could get them pierced when she was thirteen, and thought that it was awfully early for me to have turned into my Mum. After we'd been carefully de-dressed, we went to a hair stylist that Chiane had recommended for us and tried out various styles for us to wear. My hair, sadly, hasn't grown nearly long enough for some kind of gorgeous up-do with trailing tendrils – but then it probably never would have managed something spectacular anyway, and eventually I decided it would probably be best to have it trimmed shorter again. I did toy with the idea of extensions, but decided against it in the end. The flower slides and a bit of judicious shaping did wonders for Ys' hairstyle, and of course Sen and Lira's gorgeous manes were perfect for everything. Mara and Zee joined us for this part, and toyed with different styles too, a
nd since we'd used a closed flyer to go to the spaceport and then a solo carriage on the subway and then back entrances into the stores, we managed the whole trip without having half Pandora trying to catch a glimpse of us. Kaoren and Rye went later the same day, and came back well satisfied. In the afternoon we walked through The Wedding Garden Rye, Lianz and Maze have been constructing and did a kind of rehearsal to work out the getting there and where to sit and stand parts.
The Wedding Garden was necessary because there simply wasn't room at the house for the number of people we want to invite, and we don't want to thin out the trees around the house anyway. So we picked an area on the south side of the island - the guesthouse is on the north, and Siame's studio in between the house and the Garden, and now that the stone path stretches all the way there the island seems much smaller. Over Winter Maze did most of the 'big work' – cleared a lot of the trees out of a big flat patch below the hill with only a small window to the lake, and seeded a long ornamental whitestone pond – a very straight, flat affair shaped a bit like one end of a thermometer, with a kind of bridge/pagoda thing to sit above the round pool at the end for the wedding ceremony. Instead of leaving it as whitestone, though, he did this very clever thing of pressing all these slices of blueish-black stone into the sides of the pond after it had formed, and paving a border around the edge the same way. That part took him ages, since it's a very long pond, but he says he enjoys it and the effect was really spectacular – it's about knee-deep the entire way (frozen solid most of Winter) and reflects the sky beautifully.
Since then, Rye (with Maze and Lianz's help) has been slowly encouraging it into being a shady garden a bit like First Park, except with more ornamental flowering bushes and garden beds. It's clearest around the pagoda, paved with squares of stone with the cracks all filled by a tiny flowering ground cover that reminds me a little of Australian Native Violet. Poor Rye's been stressing incredibly over not being able to make the plants grow any quicker, or keep up with the weeds, and we've been trying to reassure him that we really just need a relatively private large space, but over the next few weeks we'll all pitch in to help him with the workload. Before Kaoren's parents moved to Muina, I was happy with Kaoren and Maze and Rye looking after the venue issues, but made the mistake of saying when showing it to Teor that it would look way cool at night with Chinese lanterns in the trees and candles floating in the pool and we'd have to have a night party there one day. Teor had me explain what I meant, and next time I turned around my wedding had been moved to the late afternoon so that the reception would be in the evening, and Teor was designing different sorts of lanterns as her wedding present to us. The perils of an artistic family. It will look way cool, though.
It also occurred to us that there was a lack of bathroom facilities, and we tossed up the equivalent of portapotties for a while, then eventually designed and grew a rather weird little building, which is a combination of ground floor bathroom and half a dozen toilets, and on top of that a lounge, kitchen and a bedroom in a little stack. It reminds me of a lighthouse, except we tucked it back among the trees behind the round bridge with a very shaded path to it. The view is all ferns and bushes out the windows, with just a glimpse of the lake from the bedroom. We're calling it another guest house for the moment, and having it there will make getting ready on the day a bit easier, and maybe one of the kids will want to use it eventually, and just have a lot of extra toilets. [Sen adores it, of course, and treats it like a particularly elaborate cubbyhouse.]
I'm being very focused and exercisey on my training days, primarily so I can look good in my dress, and otherwise I've been feeling a touch overworked, reading a lot of Taren novels, and pressing slowly onward with doing Taren school lessons, just so I can avoid my kids graduating before me.
The other major event of the month was my second letter home.
This was a complicated letter to write, since I needed to get it approved not only by KOTIS Command, but by the governments of a couple of planets. In its way, it was a first step in interplanetary relations between Earth and Muina. KOTIS Command would prefer this happened via the deep-space gate rather than the natural gate, but I suspect also thinks it would be convenient to have a handful more Earth people as a sample group – mainly about whether all Earth people have security access to Muina. There are a lot of potential consequences to writing a letter which explains precisely when and where a gate to another planet would open.
It's pretty rough when your letter home to Mum requires a Tri-Council sanction.
I tucked an image of us at the dress fitting in which was entirely unsanctioned and unapproved, but also unobjectionable, and the gate opened right when we expected it to – it seems to shift about ten minutes and four metres each year, which takes us to the beginning of March next year and thankfully I've already been able to confirm that the letter got through to Mum.
Chapter 16
Another March
March 10
Katen
Maze and Alay's baby arrived yesterday, and they called her Katen just as Sen wanted, and she is very tiny and perfect and shows absolutely no signs of ill effects from umbilical cords. We went on a visit this morning and I'm maybe looking forward a little more to adding to our child collection, though I expect I'll be sick of all the crying and pooping soon enough. Sen was very much in danger of absconding to spend the day with the baby, and I suspect that inviting Alay over for a long visit will be the only way to keep Sen's baby longings in check.
After much discussion Kaoren and I decided that it would work out best for us to do all our child-raising relatively close together, and so I've had my contraception cancelled. I can just imagine some of the awkward and no doubt embarrassingly public conversations I'll be having in the future if I don't get pregnant in the first couple of months of trying – Sen is adamant that I have to provide "all" her little baby brothers and sisters without further delay.
Can't say I'm looking forward to periods.
It's been a month of mixed ups and downs, with Katen being the biggest 'up'. The biggest down was Eeli's funeral (or remembrance ceremony). Her parents had accepted the judgment of the medics, and asked for the life support to be switched off. Taarel brought her ashes out and scattered them on Lenecki (the island where she's taken her land grant). Taarel is for the moment remaining as Senior Captain on Tare, but her family is going to move to Lenecki, and eventually Taarel will probably be an islander too.
The Muinans believed – and Tarens and Kolarens sort of believe – that your spirit returns to the world's heart when you die, and so dead people are not floating about as individuals, but are 'transfigured' so that it's like the planet itself briefly remembers being Eeli. During the remembrance ceremony, one of the things we did was find a quiet place and 'talk to Muina' which would in its way mean talking to Eeli.
Whether or not that's at all true – and on Muina who knows? – I liked the idea of talking to Eeli, and sat myself under a shady tree and told the wind about the way Inisar looked at Taarel, and how I couldn't tell what she thinks about him in return, and how she's very inconveniently spending most of her time on Tare. And I told her all about what my wedding will be like, and then I cried rather a lot. I couldn't tell if the wind cared.
I have invited countless wedding guests. Of the squads, mainly those who are primarily assigned to me (First, Second, Third, Fourth, Eighth, Twelfth, and Squad One). All of them with 'and guests' so they can bring along any family or friends that they want, which more than doubled the numbers. And Kaoren's family, and Isten Notra and her family, and Inisar, and a few of the medics and other technicians who I've grown a little closer to. And I invited Tsa Lents and his wife and Nenna and her sister, and was glad when they accepted. Tsur Selkie is actually going to officiate at the ceremony, which I find hugely amusing, but Kaoren's rather close to him – all that Sight Sight training I guess. Tsur Selkie has two kids who are Kalrani, which I didn't know at all. I'm curious to see if they're his own little Mini-Me's
.
He's been mostly on Tare since the gates re-opened, and I gather that – just as he was the main architect of KOTIS' method of training Setari – he's the one behind the announcements just made about the future of the program.
They're not cancelling the Setari program, but they are changing it, easing back on it in some ways, so that it's more like it was when the senior squads first started: a day school, or weekly boarding. They're going to expand it in other ways, though, bringing it into line with Pandora's talent school to train strong psychics more generally.
The idea's been very well received, for the most part. It's still going to be a disciplined edging on harsh childhood for those in the Setari channel, especially because KOTIS wants to explore Nuran methods of focusing the bond with the Ena, but they won't be so cut off from home.
Ys' thirteenth birthday coming up (I'm giving her a diary bound in gorgeous tooled leather).
Chapter 17
Another April
April 3
All Official
Cassandra Eloise Ruuel Devlin. And Kaoren Devlin Ruuel. Not to mention Ys, Liranadestar and Sentarestel Ruuel Devlin, and Rye Devlin Ruuel. I'm fairly sure that this is a naming tradition used on Earth, but I can't remember which country, or if we've followed quite the same rules. It was the solution which we liked most, though I did find all the possible name combinations we came up with very funny. Ruulin or Devel. Too silly.
The week before the ceremony was very busy and hectic, with us doing a lot of work on the Wedding Garden, and Kaoren's parents, brother and grandparents arriving, and also Nenna and her family – all of whom were to be guests on Arcadia. I was very relieved that things weren't as awkward with the Lents as they could have been – Nenna's enthusiasm (and her sister's shrieking over bugs) smoothed over a lot, and Sen thought Nenna great fun.