It was amazing how much having Dom around changed my outlook on everything. I know I’m supposed to be this strong independent woman, but Dom made me better, stronger, and just happier. I grew up in an era when women were weak for needing a man. I’d tried to live up to that ideal of my generation, but by age fifty, I’d realized it could be full of crap sometimes. The right partner at your side was invaluable.
I took him to my now favorite bakery where the woman behind the counter sliced us both up a piece of cake for breakfast. The woman was different, but our deal remained, so our breakfast was free. I sold several more baking soda potions, and I taught her the recipe for snickerdoodles. Not only was it slanting the owner of the shop’s favor for me, but it also helped to put some money back in my pocket. College tuition was a wallet buster, even with the silly financial aid that they’d never collect on.
Dom caught me up on his adventures and we sat and laughed over how he’d slit the throats of each and every member of the Siff Underground. One might think that doing so would make it hard to take over, but the game doesn’t work that way. When Dom killed one, another spawned, but of the respawned ones, most of them were turned to his side. I’d been shocked when I’d done it the first time, but Dom took it as his due, which I found funny. Whatever had spawned that idea for the system, I really liked it and would use it here in the Capital as well.
“I was going to summon Terra,” Dom explained, empty plates strewn over our little table. Even his sweet tooth had been satiated by two slices of coconut cake, three cinnamon rolls, and half a baguette. “Only I was tired and forgot to focus on her. The spell took longer, and just as I was starting to realize that something was different, this crow shows up.”
“Interloper,” Terra muttered, but I could tell that some part of her was softening toward the bird. Spite had taken to flushing out several mice for Terra, who had morphed back into a scrappy alley cat. Since chasing mice was her very favorite game, and Spite gave Terra first choice of body parts, I didn’t feel like I really needed to interfere in their bonding.
“I like the name,” I said to Dom even as I sent loving support to Terra.
“Turns out my familiar works a little different than yours,” Dom shrugged, picking at the crumbs of coconut. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the toasted coconut he liked so much was actually a product of tree bark instead of actual coconut, not that he’d like it less. The bark had a slight cinnamon after kick. I loved the ingredient but could only buy it here in the Capital where it was shipped in from some neighboring island tribes. I’d yet to pick up a supply of the stuff because it was only sold down near the docks. Dom picking at the crumbs reminded me that I needed to pick some up. “I leveled the spell up with you and Terra, so I can see the different levels of it, and Spite is only the beginning. At level twenty, I can summon another crow so that eventually I’ll have several. Since my Summon Familiar spell is over sixty, I can summon two more right now. I just didn’t want to do it until I got the hang of Spite.”
“That sounds fun,” I nodded at him, my mind half on his familiar spell and half on what I wanted to cook with the coconut ingredient. I was listening, but I was also planning. I knew how much Dom loved coconut, and I was so happy that I wanted to cook everything I knew that would make him as happy as he made me. So, sue me for being in love. At least I wasn’t ashamed of it anymore, just a little defensive.
“I’m going to name the second one Malice and the third one Aetos,” Dom went on, finally catching my full attention.
“Not Huginn and Muninn?” I asked.
“Too trite,” Dom scoffed. “Besides, I was never into the Viking mythology as much as the Greek ones.”
“Spite and Malice I get,” I said. “Why Aetos?”
“The first two are a promise and I decided on them for the trickery aspect,” Dom drawled, obviously feeling proud of himself for pulling me fully into the conversation. “The third is the promise fulfilled.”
“Aetos, Aetos,” I wracked my brain, but it was slow. “Why does that sound familiar?”
“Zeus’s eagle,” Dom answered, and I appreciated that he just explained things instead of dropping into some condescending mansplaining. I would get more than enough of condescension from the college. “Aetos was the one sent to eat out the organs of Prometheus, when Prometheus was arrogant enough to steal fire from the sun.”
“Prometheus was sentenced to being strapped to a rock and having his organs ripped out every day,” I recalled the mythos now. “Aetos was the one to do it?”
Intelligence +1
“I thought it was fitting,” he gave me a malice-filled grin. “Aetos is the punishment for what is perceived as the ultimate arrogance.”
I pressed my lips together as a thought occurred to me. “I think you need to summon your pretties soon.”
“I will,” he assured me. “Not here, though. I want a little privacy.”
“Until you summon all three of them you only have an attempted murder,” I joked, and he gave me a playful backhand that I easily ducked. We laughed together.
Comedy +1
Exp +10 (2,590/788,209)
“First things first,” Dom got more serious, as we left the bakery. “We need to find a justice of the peace.”
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“That might be harder than you want it to be,” I looked at my booted feet as we ambled along the now-busy, cobbled street.
“Why?” and Dom’s tone turned deadly, not toward me but I felt it none-the-less.
“The church is in charge of weddings, and we aren’t in good graces with their god,” I explained, putting the word god in air quotes.
Dom’s eyes got flat, and Spite fluttered up to settle on his shoulder. He was not amused.
“The good news is that we can have a civil version of it called Jumping the Broom,” I tried to soften the blow.
“I know what that was in our world, but what is it here?” he growled low enough for only me to hear.
“It’s basically the same, but it’s only good for a year and a day,” I told him, leading us down streets that would take us closer to the docks. “If we don’t have a church wedding by the end of that time, it’s dissolved.”
“I won’t have them tearing you away again.” His knuckles popped. I watched a few people shuffle out of his way rather than go with the flow of foot traffic.
“Only the king can bypass the church wedding and we don’t need his attention any more than we want Fizzie’s,” I tried to soothe him, keeping to Fizzbarren’s nickname so as not to summon his direct attention. Here in the Capital, the church’s presence was thick in the mana of the world. I took one of Dom’s hands in mine, hoping my affection could calm his anger. I knew he’d been angry at our separation, but I hadn’t realized how angry he was until now.
“And this broom thing?” Dom resorted to his shortcut language.
“That’s one of the reasons to head to the docks,” I patted his tense arm and picked up our pace. “A captain of any of those ships will be willing to do a broom jumping ceremony.”
“I guess it’s enough,” Dom let me pull him, his ire still buried in his heart while his lips twisted into a half-smile. “But as soon as possible, I want the real thing.”
We hit the pier markets and I loosened Dom up by dragging him from one stall to another. I must have spent a dozen gems on exotic ingredients and another four or five on the supplies for the ceremony. We didn’t need special clothing, but we did have to buy a special broom. Captains of ships were used to the broom ceremony because it was the only way foreigners were recognized as married in this kingdom, and it wasn’t necessarily safe without the lawful marital protection, as Dom and I had discovered. We did buy some flower crowns and a pair of stone rings that would hold the ceremonial runes. It was cheaper to buy a simple runestone, but the rings made both of us feel better.
The harbor master directed us to a smallish ship near the end of one of the piers where over fifteen ships were parked in neat little lines. We nearly ran, leaping over rope tethers, Dom letting himself be dragged along by my enthusiasm. He was just as excited, but he wasn’t as willing as I was to let it be seen that he was as eager as I. I was just hoping that my enthusiasm would help out with his anger at a system that fought us at every turn.
Dexterity +1
“Broom incoming,” came a call from one of the sailors on the ship.
I held the decorated broom up over our heads in response. I nearly danced up the gangplank, allowing myself our little window of joy. Dom’s smile turned real when a classical pirate captain emerged from a wooden door.
Dexterity +1
“Come aboard young lovers-to-be!” the captain hollered to us, his long dreadlocks making me chuckle. Catcalls rang out from amidst the sails and even from below decks, and I blushed at some of the suggestions. I couldn’t help it. I felt young and in love and it was a magnificent stage for it.
I’d dreamed of a wedding on the pirate ship at the Treasure Island Casino, but we weren’t rich enough for it, so we’d settled for Elvis in a chapel on the Strip. Our reception had been in our living room with platters of meats and cheese, and a cake that I’d sorted out and decorated myself in the days before the ceremony. Our honeymoon had been a staycation that included a time share lecture that we’d been smart enough to say no to. I’d learned early in my life to live on a budget that was always just a little too tight for dream fulfillment.
For one moment, I forgot how mad I was at Fizzbarren and his lazy world and let myself enjoy spending a relative fortune on a dream come true. I let the moment take me over. Terra was our broom-bearer, which was the ceremony’s version of a flower girl, and I only felt a little pang that Kat wasn’t here to do it instead. Terra floated along perched on the broom instead of carrying it by levitating both her and the broom down the length of the ship’s deck, where over ten pirates stood around heckling us.
The flower-speckled broom was placed at our feet and the rings were tied into the bristles. The boisterous captain said words I didn’t hear because my eyes and attention were glued to Dom’s softened eyes. We missed our cue to make the leap and got a bit of ribbing about being ready for the deed or not, but we just smiled and gripped each other’s hands tightly as we jumped that broom like it was a jump rope. Terra nearly tripped us as she levitated it just a tiny bit at the last minute, but we just laughed it off.
Dexterity +1
It was bittersweet without the rest of our little family of Cliff and Kat, but I pushed that to the back of my heart so I could enjoy this part of it. If Dom and I had to do this every year for the rest of our lives, it was worth every gem that left my hands. The captain only took a single largish gem as his fee. Between that and the two kegs of ale we’d had delivered to the ship were all the crew needed to be enthusiastic stand-ins for our real friends and family.
Sparks flew from the end of the handle and from each bristle on the broom, just as it was spelled to do. We’d bought one with extra drama and it was like the Fourth of July in the middle of the day. It spun like a floating whirl of sparklers over our heads and set off whistles loud enough to be heard all the way to the pier stalls. As it burned and dissolved, only the rings tumbled down to the deck at our feet. None of it was actually made of fire, but it sparkled like it. I couldn’t help but think that Kat would have loved it, and my eyes misted over. Cliff wasn’t there as our best man and Dom’s crow just wasn’t the same.
“Next time, they’ll be here,” Dom whispered to me as he slipped the now-runed ring on my finger.
“I’d do this every year of our lives,” I blinked back the negativity and slipped his ring on his finger.
“Me too, love,” he told me right before he kissed me. We hadn’t even waited for the captain to tell us we could.
The crew broke open the barrels of ale and I brought out a feast’s worth of food from my inventory, thinking I’d need a day or two of cooking to replenish my supply. Oh, well. That was another thing I did when I was stressed. Cook. I cook when stressed and eat when depressed. I’m not saying I was mentally healthy for all my knowledge of psychology that college hadn’t put in my head, but at least I was aware of my foibles.
We spent an hour celebrating with the crew, but we sneaked away from the celebration long before the pirates were done with the second keg of ale. When I say keg, I wasn’t talking about the tiny kegs you got for a little party. These were double-sized barrels that were more than half as tall as I was and twice as wide as my hips had ever been in my old world. While the pirates were ready to party, Dom and I had things to do. We were ready to celebrate in a different way.
Alcohol Tolerance +1
Exp +10 (2,600/788,209)