Chapter Five Hundred and Twelve - Cleaning Up the Remainder

We woke up bright and early the next morning, and while it was nice to be back in our rooms--or at least, I enjoyed waking up in my own bed on my own cabin aboard the Beaver Cleaver even if I did have Desiree sleeping over with her feet by my ears and her tails in my face--but there wasn't much time to linger.

The winter solstice was nineteen days away. That was the day of Booksie's wedding, and also apparently a big day of celebration across a lot of local cultures.

Nineteen days sounded like a lot. And it probably would have been a lot ... for a regular wedding. But this wedding was anything but regular.

Regular weddings did not involve people powerful enough to flatten a city, after all.

... It was strange to think that we were so close to mid-winter. It wasn't cold at all. Did we live on the equator?

I wasn't sure, but that would be a question to tease Amaryllis about later. For now we had a whole day ahead of us.

After a quick breakfast, we split up, this time grabbing some of the Beaver's crew to help because this was very much an all-hands-on-deck kind of situation.

The day then proceeded to move ahead.

It was weird because it both felt like the day was crawling and like it was moving super fast. I think because everything we did was fun in its own way, which made time fly past. But at the same time, everything was new, and new experiences always felt like they made things move slowly.

My tasks for the day were to scout out the big plaza we were going to use as a wedding venue. Amaryllis was going to secure some decorations and my job for the morning was to figure out where they'd all go in the first place.

I'd never decorated things very much before, but I had seen some nice places in the past and I figured it couldn't be all that complicated, right?

The weather decided to prove that it, at least, could be complicated. The skies opened up to a freezing cold downpour that had my ears flopping down around my neck. The local grenoil didn't seem to mind it much. If anything the rain was an excuse to get outside and take a walk. The non-grenoil (except for me; I didn't mind getting a bit wet) got their umbrellas out.

So, we weren't going to put anything up with the rain, but that didn't mean we couldn't give the plaza a proper scrubbing!

I started at one end and slowly walked around it in shrinking circles, only pausing when I had to let traffic by. The guards gave me looks, but I was just splashing Cleaning magic around and the results were nicer to look at.

Port Royal wasn't a dirty city, but it did have a lot of foot traffic and the coal-burning stacks at the far end of the city did turn the air a little smoggy. My deep clean whisked away dirt and grime and left the bare stones of the paving blocks looking all shiny and new. The rain helped too, giving them a sleek sheen.

Then it was the roads, the bollards on the sides, and even some of the local statuary. There were a few small fountains on the sides of the space, as well as some statues of what looked like important people. Those had turned green with verdigris, but a quick splash of Cleaning magic had them all shiny and golden looking as if they had just been cast for the first time.

I would probably clean everything again the morning of the wedding, but by dealing with all the worst stains now, that would go pretty quick.

The plaza was a decently large space. It was lined on all sides by a mix of shops and what looked like important government buildings and offices. Lots of nice stonework with little carvings here and there, and since the area was well-patrolled by the city-guard, there wasn't much in the way of trash on the walking spaces and graffiti on the walls.

The space was some two hundred paces wide but another hundred and fifty-ish long, more or less. A big not-quite-square. The smaller fountains on the sides angled inwards towards a big one at the rear.

That one had several important looking grenoil standing with hand in hand next to a carving of a mountain made from a single massive boulder. Atop that, with her wings curving inwards, was a large brass dragon that had a suspiciously familiar look to her. Rhawrexdee's mom? It had to be!

The grenoil statutes were spitting out little spritzes of water and there were some smaller animals around doing the same. It probably sounded nice and peaceful when the sky wasn't pouring gallons onto my head.

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I hit the fountain with some Cleaning magic too, and that improved the water flow a smidge. Then, since I was starting to run out of mana, I started on the gardens.

They weren't quite gardens, more like boxy planters and areas where the stepping stones rose up a smidge and left some room for grass, a few bushes and maybe a few hardy flowering plants.

Someone was taking care of these, because the grass had been trimmed recently, but there were still a few weeds that I picked out and tossed, then I gave the flowers a bit of sprucing up and trimmed a few broken branches out of the bushes.

It was dirty, knee-muddying work, but I got some grateful nods from passersby and I was happy with the results. Besides, it was nothing some Cleaning couldn't take care of.

I left the plaza around noon, just as the rain started to let up. It was now spic-and-span and so clean it looked as if it had been constructed just that morning.

After meeting up with my friends at Booksie's shop where we had sandwiches and figured out who had done what, Amaryllis--who was now armed with a clipboard and who had never been scarier--sent me and Caprica to find someone to officiate the wedding and to poke at the city government to make sure that no matter what, the wedding would absolutely be legal.

That turned out to be pretty fun. Finding an officiant meant running around the entire city. Caprica wanted to do things the official way, but I just started asking married grenoil on the street about who tied the knot for them.

By mid-afternoon we had a list of potentials, and then it was just a question of tracking them down and finding one who was free.

The best option turned out to be a gentlemanly older grenoil who worked in a small church just a couple of blocks away from the plaza. He came highly regarded, and insisted that we sit down and have tea while he asked questions about Booksie and Rhawrexdee. He said that to make the moment as special as possible, it was best if he knew a little about them so that he could tailor the speech he'd be giving to each of them.

He agreed to take care of the event. His fees were very reasonable according to Caprica. Though he did want to meet Booksie first to ask her some more questions.

Next was the legal matter, and that's the part of the day that felt longest. First we had to go up to the Sylphfree embassy near the top of the city, then we had to meet with a small team of grenoil and sylph solicitors.

'Solicitor' turned out to be a fancy word for 'lawyer,' and they really lived up to that kind of reputation. There were some interns carrying books so thick they could serve as ballast and fancy folk wearing robes and wigs.

Caprica laid out the problem we had--that Deepmarsh law didn't explicitly make marriage between a bun and a dragon legal--and then they were off searching through their massive tomes and arguing definitions.

After nearly two full hours of listening to them go back and forth, I was dragged along as half the group marched back down to City Hall. Interns drafted letters and long legal forms while I tried to keep up with the march.

Once we arrived, the solicitors girdled themselves with the law and stomped into the place as if they were ready for war.

They were met by the stalwart defence of the city bureaucrats, but they hadn't had time to prepare for the surprise assault, and so quickly fell.

Even so, it took the rest of the day for the solicitors to completely overrun the bureaucratic defences. It was so boring that I nearly fell asleep on my feet, and I wasn't even tired.

The solicitors had had time to study and prepare their case, so even when the city's own arrived, they didn't have good ground to stand on, and a quick accord was reached between the two parties. There was apparently a large loophole in the law that basically said that dragons could do as they pleased as long as they weren't burning the country down.

It ended with handshakes all around and a bill that Caprica discreetly folded and put away.

I was mostly just happy that it had ended because the sun was already down and I was real hungry.

It was time for another big meal with my friends, and then we'd be onto another day of preparation before the big day.

It felt like way too little time.

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