Tala and Rane were both blushing—if only mildly—hours after that part of the conversation with Master Nadro finished.

Tala knew it was silly to be so affected. Physical intimacy was not only a part of marriage, it was required for the actual marriage—the soulbond—to occur.

-And, you know, you’re—-

Not. One. More. Word.

-...Fine. Spoilsport.- Still, Alat projected an air of good natured teasing.

As should have been no surprise to anyone, it had been a tricky subject to approach, even between two adults who knew full well that it would be a part of their lives and relationship sooner rather than later. The wedding was only months away at this point, after all.

Regardless, they had hammered out some of the particulars without actually getting explicit, and Tala was left feeling grateful that they’d discussed it, even if she still felt overwhelmingly uncertain about the subject.

After physical intimacy and such interactions, they’d discussed their social expectations as a couple and eventually as a larger family. That had been rather easy as both enjoyed being around people but not too much.

They both preferred quiet time doing their own thing to noisy gatherings, and both would love that time to be done side by side.

Which led Master Nadro to explain a pithy way of remembering the three important facets of a marital relationship.

Face-to-face time—time talking, communicating, and staying on the same page.

Side-by-side time—time spent doing things together or at least near one another.

Finally, belly-to-belly time—that had already been discussed, and even the oblique reminder of it caused Tala to color once again, even if less than before.

They had moved on to discuss how much they wanted to be involved in their extended families’ lives—with Tala’s siblings: frequently but not constantly, with Rane’s family: just as often as they happened to cross paths.

They had already discussed taking breaks from work and advancement, but Master Nadro had wanted them to specifically discuss the idea of dedicated time off and what they would ideally look like to each party.

That had been unsurprisingly easy to discuss as they both wanted to spend their larger chunks of free time exploring Zeme and seeing what the world had to offer.

Finally, they had come to the ‘roles’ portion of the discussion.

They were both providers—Tala a bit more so these days—and they didn’t really want that to change.

They also both wanted to be involved in the raising up, teaching, and disciplining of any potential children. They had both seen families where one parent was the sole disciplinarian, and they knew exactly how well that worked: Not at all.

Beyond that, they were both fighters and protectors by nature, making their perfect marriage one that was rather egalitarian across the board.

Master Nadro seemed genuinely surprised that they seemed to want to split everything evenly. He explained that while the particulars usually differed from couple to couple, each person would usually take on certain tasks more fully in that relationship. He didn’t try to change their minds, but he did advise them to not be surprised if one or the other took the lead in certain parts of their lives going forward.

All that passed after the topic, and though Tala definitely participated—and she even had perfect memory of each exchange—she felt like she was barely paying attention due to lingering, returning, and newly spawning thoughts.

They were pleasant—even exciting—thoughts, but it was still disruptive to say the least.

If Rane’s occasional glances and re-reddening features were any indication, he was having a similar experience.

Knowing that he was in a similar mindset did make the situation better, even if it made the thoughts more frequent. She realized that she’d been hoping he felt similarly to her, and now that she knew he did…

She found herself focusing on Rane in her threefold sight more than usual.

Alat cleared her throat in a good-natured, teasing manner. -You know, Master Nadro did advise keeping some space before the wedding. You know, to make sure you make it to the wedding?-

Tala cleared her throat. Right.

Rane did the same—seemingly having received a similar reminder from Enar—before scratching the back of his head and standing in a rush.

They were still sitting in the garden, Master Nadro having departed quite a bit ago.

Rane cleared his throat again, looking down at where she sat. “I think… I think I should go…”

Tala didn’t really want him to go, but that was likely a good indication that he was right. She stood as well. “Alright.”

She leaned in, going up on her tip-toes as he bent down so that they could share a slightly longer than usual kiss. “I’ll see you soon.”

His eyes were burning with an interesting light as they pulled apart, but not as far as they had been. “Boot me please. Close to the Gredial estate.”

“Done.”

And with that, Rane was gone, and Tala was left feeling a bit… miffed?

She sighed.

Alat sent Tala the feeling of a warm, friendly embrace -Wow… Are you going to be okay there, Tala?-

…How are you doing with your work in the sparring ring?

-Great! Master Grediv finally consented to let me go through the notes from the War Games artifacts, and I was able to incorporate some of the ideas… Are you sure we can’t buy a set for Kit to absorb? That would make this so much easier.-

No, Alat. Even with our funds, that’s out of our reach. Maybe someone will give us one as a wedding present?

Alat laughed. -Yeah, maybe. It will be fun to see what people bring.-

* * *

Tala exhaled a shout as she punched through the hard-packed-dirt construct that Alat was controlling against her.

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That didn’t kill it, of course, and that wasn’t even because it wasn’t alive in the first place.

No, Alat was controlling it as if it were a genuine earth construct, meaning that Tala had to sufficiently obliterate it all in one go, or otherwise disrupt the magics of its animation.

Since Tala couldn’t disrupt magics that didn’t exist, the dirt-man had become the equivalent of an animate punching bag… that fought back.

That was perfect for her purposes. At the moment, she wanted to be overtly physical, so she was practicing purely unarmed combat specifically against hyper-resilient and regenerating opponents.

It was turning out to be a fun, distracting challenge. Even if it was annoying to be without her threefold sight, and to not have any of her aspect mirrors at her disposal.

It’s fine. Back to basics.

Even as she was trying to pull back her fist—out of the being’s chest—the dirt closed around her forearm, temporarily binding her despite the mundane nature of the material involved.

It couldn’t hold her for long, but it was still enough of a hitch in her movement that the being was able to bring up both fists and slam them into Tala’s unarmored face.

As to why she was unarmored? Well, metal armor against a dirt-man wouldn’t really be very sporting.

Her arm was ripped out of the chest as she was thrown back by the force of the combined hit that also filled her eyes and mouth with grit.

Since the dirt-man wasn’t biological, it didn’t suffer from normal physical constraints—magic being able to fill in power as necessary—such as it being more difficult to pull off a powerful blow with both hands at once.

No, each of these hits had been full powered, and they had landed concurrently.

That was why Tala slid all the way to the edge of the sparring ring, spluttering and spitting in an attempt to clear her mouth of gunk.

She could have just willed the dirt away as she was within Kit, but that would also have been cheating. The point was to train for fighting in Zeme, where she didn’t have such minute control of her environment.

Therefore, she rolled over, crawled forward to grab the edge of the waterway that encircled the sparring circle and shot her head down into the water…

That was what she was attempting to do anyway.

Alat’s proxy grabbed Tala’s ankle at the last instant and jerked backward, moving Tala just enough to put her fully over the stone of the ring.

That meant that Tala slammed her own face into the rock… hard.

She broke her own nose with a squelching crunch.

Tala squealed in agony even as she spun and struck out at the dirt creature.

She just wanted the dirt gone. But it was clinging to her skin, mouth, and eyes far too effectively to be removed with any sort of efficiency.

Her skin.

Her enhanced skin.

Skin enhanced with magics that were the exact inverse of the endingberry dissolution magics.

Why not? I’ve inverted those magics before to get such results?

In a flicker of instinct, she inverted the outermost layer of her defensive magics for a bare instant, only doing so to those around her face.

There was a wave of incredible pain, as if she’d had the most glorious beard ever known to man and had it ripped out to the last hair all at once.

She barely contained another squeal at the unexpected pain—which really should have been expected—even as she felt her magics realign her nose and heal the break and tissue damage.

Her gambit had worked. She could see through her eyes again.

All it had cost her was the outer layers of her skin…

The dusted remains of her flesh fell around her in a fine powder, but she ignored them.

The dirt being had actually stopped in place, seemingly stunned by her actions.

-Did… did you just dissolve part of your own face to get rid of the dirt?-

Tala shrugged. I had to see didn’t I?

-...Sometimes I don’t understand how we are the same person. I don’t know that I could ever choose that much pain.- Alat’s voice was contemplative, not condemning. In fact, it had decided notes of awe and respect within.

Tala gave a wry smile. “Well, I didn’t exactly deeply consider how much it would actually hurt before I did it.”

-Right, right. Fleshy body. You make decisions without thinking them all the way through.- Alat teased.

“That’s hurtful, Alat.” Tala’s tone took on a note of faux offense.

Alat was practically laughing as she replied. -No, melting off part of your own face for want of some water is hurtful.-

“Well, you denied my access to the water, so…” Without warning, Tala lunged in, renewing her attack.

The banter was done for the moment, and it was time to renew the fight.

All in all, this had been a great way to get her mind off of Rane… if only she could stop thinking of it like that, thus undoing the wonderful progress she had made.

* * *

Tala’s time was filled with planning, preparations, arrangements, and so, so many other things. As a result, the weeks flew by and the day before the wedding arrived in a rush.

Blessedly, even though they had ended up sending out nearly five hundred invitations only about a hundred people would be in attendance.

They had sent a polite, essentially expected invitation to Furgal, for example, and he had done the classy, kind thing. He’d declined with grace, citing an acceptable excuse.

All told, they hadn’t really expected most to come for one reason or other. If they were being honest, that was one reason they’d kept Kit anchored in Alefast, Waning, for the wedding.

Smaller was better in both Tala and Rane’s opinion, and in the end, it was their wedding.

Even so, Tala had gotten special permission to bring her siblings who were at the Academy to her sanctum for the wedding and celebration. They were even going to be arriving later that day, just like most guests.

Caravans to Alefast, Waning, had been accompanied by rather more Mages than usual, as some of their friends and acquaintances had arrived over the past few days, and Mistress Petra had been cooking up a storm to keep Tala’s appetite sated as she ran herself to exhaustion trying to be sociable with all the people who had come so far for her wedding.

I still say we should have just eloped. Tala groused to Alat.

-That has always been an option, but at this point it would just be rude.- Alat had a motherly cast to her words, ones of comfort and gentle guidance.

…I know…

Rane came into the side room in the Alefast Archon compound in which Tala had been hiding. He flopped down on a chair, put his head against the wall and groaned. “Can’t we just elope?”

Tala snorted a laugh. “We definitely could have, but it would be a bit rude at this point.”

He groaned. “I know… you’re right, but this is exhausting. If it weren’t for the end result, this would not be worth it.”

Tala leaned in for a quick kiss. “It will be over soon, then it will just be us.”

He gave her a kiss in turn before smiling her way, their gazes locking. “Like I said, worth it.”

Tala felt heat building in her cheeks along with a thrumming in her chest as she continued to stare into his eyes.

You know… we could—

A sharp rap sounded on the door before it was thrown open, and Lyn stepped inside, looking between them with fire in her eyes. “No! None of this. Rane, go somewhere else. We are not preempting the wedding.”

Counter to her expectation, Tala felt herself reddened further. This time it was decidedly with embarrassment.

Rane cleared his throat, standing in a rush and leaving the room. “Right! Of course. I’ll… yeah.”

And he was gone.

Lyn glared at Tala. “I’ve put too much work into coordinating all of this for you two to render the whole thing superfluous.”

“I thought it was my wedding,” Tala groused, though she wasn’t really that upset.

“It is, but it involves others, and therefore, you owe them the respect of fulfilling your obligation and actually getting married tomorrow.”

Tala sighed. “...That is the plan.”

“Of course it is. Now, come on. Let’s get you some time to level out. After the ceremony there’ll be two to three days of celebration, and I don’t want you going into that burnt out.”

“Yes, Mistress Lyn.”

Lyn gave Tala a level look. “Don’t sass me, girl. You may be more advanced than me, but I’m still older.”

There was a twinkle in the woman’s eye, and Tala stepped forward to embrace her. “I know, Lyn. Thank you.”

Lyn hugged her in return. “Yes, yes. I am happy to help. Now come on. We’ve still got so much time and so little to do.”

Tala blinked, pulling back and frowning at the woman. “What?”

Lyn gave a mischievous smile. “Just making sure you’re actually listening. Let’s be off!”

And so they were.