The Pedder farm was a sprawling green place, and the smell of hogs floated in the air. It wasn’t as bad as Hannah had expected, being sweet and musky, though there was an undercurrent of grassy smell that wasn’t quite pleasant. The pigs were far away though, traveling as a herd, their snuffling and grunting a distant cacophony, and there were a number of fences separating them and their stable from the rest of the farm. Hannah would have liked to be in among the pigs, just for a bit, and wondered whether there might be time for that later on.

Most of the work was being done in the open air, at long tables that had been set out for that purpose. There were already nearly a dozen people at work, most of them related to either the Pedder side or the Sharpe side.

The wedding had started as a large affair and only grown in size as the weeks went on. The Pedders were relatively well off, at least for Pucklechurch, and the first of their boys were getting married, so it was ‘only natural’ that there be a celebration so large that it would blot out the sun. Bethany had pretty clearly been swept up in things, and Hannah was there, an outsider, mostly because it was clear the girl needed help. The whole thing had, naturally, been taken over by a variety of family members, but in this case it seemed like a good thing, since there would otherwise have been far too much for the girl to handle all on her own.

“Five hundred people,” said Bethany. She seemed vaguely stunned. “That’s half the population of Pucklechurch.”

“Seems like that’s going to annoy the half that wasn’t invited,” said Mizuki, which Hannah felt wasn’t particularly helpful.

“It’s not going to be half the town,” said Bethany. “We have people coming in from all over. The Angry Plum will be full, the Fig and Gristle will be full, both our houses will be full, all the vacancies at the temple will be full, and then we’re also bringing in a hotel for the week.”

“An entad hotel?” asked Mizuki, brightening considerably. “How much would it cost for me to stay there?”

“It’s going to be packed,” said Bethany. She grimaced. “Sorry.”

“Bah, no worries,” said Mizuki. “I’ll cozy up with some of your cousins or something and get them to give me a tour.”

“I’m happy you’re here,” said Bethany. She wrapped Mizuki in a hug. “Thank you.”

“You’d do the same for me,” said Mizuki.

“Is that … a possibility?” asked Bethany. “You and Alfric? Or Vertex?”

“No,” said Mizuki, waving that away. “I’m not dating all of Vertex. Or Alfric, for that matter.” This was said with what Hannah considered to be a bit of forced humor, as though Mizuki found the idea of partnering with Alfric funny. “But this day is about you, not me, let’s not get off track.”

“No, this day, right now, isn’t about me at all,” said Bethany. “It’s about putting in work. Do you think you can make a centerpiece?”

“I have never been more sure of anything in my life,” said Mizuki.

“Good,” said Bethany. She moved across the open space. “Then I’m going to put the two of you over here with my aunt Pia, and she’ll be in charge of you.”

“Oh, okay,” said Mizuki. She sat down at the table they’d been put at, and Hannah joined her.

“The one in the middle is the model we’re working from,” said the older woman, who was focused on her task. The ‘model’ was a glass vase with a variety of natural materials in it, including smooth stones from one of the Proten Lakes at the bottom, moss, and then some driftwood sticks that come up out of it. When Mizuki looked closely, she could see that there were pine cones and dried leaves as well. “If you’re thinking that they’re ugly, that’s because we’re not clipping the flowers for them until the night before. Today is just to get the bulk of the work out of the way.”

“So we’re to be stuffin’ things in a jar then, ay?” asked Hannah. “I s’pose I don’t mind doin’ that.”

“Does this really need three people?” asked Mizuki. She looked over to where the bride-to-be was talking with other people.

“Six to a table,” said Pia. “Five hundred guests. It’s madness, but that means eighty-three centerpieces, plus a few more for safety.”

Mizuki was watching the woman while Hannah was grabbing one of the vases and looking at the materials, which had been stacked up close by. They were going to run out of stones, Hannah guessed. The pile of sticks was enormous though.

“Where do you even get eighty-some vases?” asked Mizuki. She reluctantly took one and then began packing it.

“Shops,” replied Pia. “In this case, all made by entads. Eighty centerpieces, eighty tables, eighty tablecloths, two hundred and forty plates — because each person needs three plates, one for salad, one for dinner, one for dessert, though those will be temporary — and the list keeps going on.”

“That sounds outrageously expensive,” said Mizuki. “I mean, I knew the Pedders had money, but for all these people, that’s, um.”

“They’re entads,” said Pia with a dismissive wave of her hand. She’d completed another centerpiece while they talked. “All it takes is a rental agreement, though the vases are ours to keep. It is expensive, mind you, but not as much as you’d think. But then, Pa Pedder is footing the bill, and he dotes on his grandsons.”

Hannah looked at her arrangement and decided that it was satisfactory. The wedding was going to be a big production, but at least that was going to be in the church, which was set up to accommodate a very large number of people. The reception was going to be something else entirely, since all those people would need to eat, and once they were done eating, they would want to dance and drink. Five hundred was, simply put, too many people, but the Pedders were apparently intent on figuring out a way to make everything work. There were just about a billion things to think about, in Hannah’s estimation, and she was somewhat grateful that she had only a single task in front of her.

“By that accent, are you from Cairbre?” asked Pia as they continued the work.

“Ay,” said Hannah. “Though I spent a fair bit of my time in Plenarch, at the seminary there, and haven’t seen the hills in quite some time.”

“My first husband was from Cairbre,” said Pia. “I’ve visited twice.”

“Did he propose in the usual Cairbre way?” asked Hannah.

“That he did,” Pia replied, nodding. “We were in a group with friends, young as could be, and we were making each other laugh, and just like that there was a twinkle in his eyes. He asked me to marry him as we were saying our goodbyes. That was thirty-some years ago.”

“What happened to him?” asked Mizuki.

“He went sailing one day and never came back,” she said. It was with the soft, sad way that older people said things sometimes when they were thinking back to horrible things that had only mostly faded. She wasn’t that old, in her fifties, perhaps, but she carried her age more than most.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked,” said Mizuki. She did seem to feel some regret, which Hannah found unusual. Mizuki was the sort of person who would apologize and then try to move on as quickly as possible, hoping that the slight or impropriety was forgotten.

“No, no, you’re right to, I brought it up,” said Pia with a sigh. “And it might have been I’d have been able to tell you a less sad story, like the one about my second husband, who I caught in bed with one of our local clerics.” She let out a little laugh. “Now that I didn’t find funny at the time, but looking back, I can see some of the humor. But it had been a bumpy road, and he hadn’t been the love of my life.”

“I don’t think I’d ever find that funny,” said Mizuki. She made a face. “Not that I haven’t had my own romantic troubles.”

“And how old are you, dear?” asked Pia with a little laugh. When Mizuki didn’t immediately answer, she asked, “Fifteen?”

“Twenty-two, thank you very much,” said Mizuki. She stuck out her tongue, which didn’t do much for proving her maturity.

“Oh, so you’re a part of their cohort then, Jo and Beth?” asked Pia.

“I went to school with them,” said Mizuki with a shrug. “I was close friends with all the Pedder boys for a while.”

“Wait,” said Pia. “Are you … Mizuki?”

Mizuki gave Pia a wide-eyed stare, and Pia cackled. “I’ve heard about you, and your little ‘misadventure’ with the boys. You weren’t kidding when you said you’d had your own romantic troubles.”

Hannah coughed into her fist. “That was some time ago, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, I don’t mean to embarrass you,” said Pia. “It’s all water under the bridge, Nance said that you were a sweet girl who was only perhaps a bit indecisive about boys.”

“Nance said that?” asked Mizuki. She looked down. “Aw.”

Hannah’s understanding of the families of Pucklechurch wasn’t complete, but she was fairly sure that Nance was the mother of the three boys, who were all close in age. It was somewhat of a surprise that she’d think fondly of Mizuki, but Hannah looked around the farm, and thought about that for a moment. Before their falling out, Mizuki had likely spent a lot of time here, especially after her family had left for Kiromo. It was natural that for a time, this would be like a second family to her, especially if the mother took a liking to Mizuki.

“You’re doing fine work,” said Pia, nodding in Mizuki’s direction.

“And this?” asked Hannah, pushing her most recent creation forward.

“Too symmetrical,” said Pia. “But it’ll do.”

“I don’t think we had a proper introduction, though I don’t blame Bethany with all she had goin’ on,” said Hannah. “This is Mizuki Yono,” she almost added a quip about ‘fabled heartbreaker’ but decided that was probably too soft a spot to be poking, “And I’m Hannah Carthaigh. I happen to be a cleric of Garos.”

“Ah, well, in that case I’d suppose that Beth put you here for a reason,” said Pia. “Though I do worry that they’ll look too different from each other.”

“The flowers will be the stars of the show,” said Hannah. “But say, what’s going to happen to all these vases when the wedding is over? Does all this get dumped out?”

“They’ll be gifts to take home,” said Pia. “That’s the plan, anyway. The hope is that people will have a vase to remember the event by, though I should imagine that they won’t have trouble remembering something so incredibly oversized.”

“I think it’ll be nice,” said Mizuki. “This is going to eclipse basically every other festival or party we have in Pucklechurch. I don’t know how they’ll top it for the Podd and Link.”

“They likely won’t,” said Pia. “I think now that it’s in full swing, everyone is realizing what a massive undertaking this is going to be, and there’s some regret hanging in the air. They’re going through with it, bless them, but I think the experience will be enough for one lifetime. If this becomes a tradition, I’m not sure they’ll get so much help.” More people had filtered in as they worked. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go into the house for some private business.”

She got up from the table and went to the house, and as she moved, Hannah thought again that she was just a woman who carried herself in an old way, rather than an old woman.

“It’s weird to be here,” said Mizuki, looking around. “I’d forgotten the smell of hogs.”

“Do you think they feel the same?” asked Hannah. “That it’s odd for you to be here?”

“The hogs?” Mizuki asked. She laughed. “No, I know what you mean. I don’t know,” said Mizuki. “Maybe. Bethany thinks that we should put it all in the past, which I get, but it’s hard to do, because … I don’t know. At the time it felt like they all just decided that it was my fault.”

“And what did happen, if we’ve sixty more of these to go and time to spare?” asked Hannah.

“It’s not that interesting,” said Mizuki. “There was a gang of us, me, the Pedder boys, and Neil — Horner?” Hannah shook her head. “Well, you’ll probably meet him. Anyway, it was all nice fun until we started flirting, and then things got serious, and the boys were fighting each other, and trying to force me into making a choice one way or another, and there were issues of what I’d now call disclosure.”

“When you say ‘we’ were flirting,” said Hannah.

“Oh,” said Mizuki. “Um, I was just flirting, a lot, with, I guess, all of them. Though it was a two way street, really. I used to be very flirty.”

“Ah,” said Hannah. “And now you’re … you would say not flirty?”

“Well,” said Mizuki. She pursed her lips and adjusted the angle of a piece of wood. “It’s different.”

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

“Oh, ay,” said Hannah. Alfric might have been younger than Mizuki by a good margin, possibly even when accounting for his undone days, but he was more mature than the Pedder boys had ever been, and there was no risk of hurt feelings from competing interests, at least so far as Hannah could see. There was Kell, perhaps, who was a ‘good friend’ to Mizuki, but Mizuki had shown next to no interest in the poor boy, except as a friend, and when Hannah had seen the two of them together, there was nothing like flirting from Mizuki. That was rare for her.

“Alfric said he would stop by,” said Mizuki, unprompted. “Mostly to see how we’re doing.”

“His disclosure this morning seemed brief, didn’t it?” asked Hannah.

“I guess,” said Mizuki. “Sometimes it’s a formality. I know he doesn’t like it.”

“He talks about it a lot, for someone who doesn’t like it,” said Hannah.

“It’s serious to him,” said Mizuki. “I think he thinks that without it, we would turn on him or something. Which is ridiculous.”

“How’s it going?” asked Bethany, who had stopped by from doing her rounds.

“We’ll need other work before too long,” said Hannah, though they weren’t even halfway through. “Our fearless leader has left us, I’m afraid.” She gestured vaguely at Pia’s seat.

“I’ll go into the house and check,” said Bethany. “With all these people together under one roof, there’s been a lot of catching up and chattering.” She sighed. “And lots of gossip that needs to go around.”

“‘Oh, that Mizuki’,” said Mizuki.

“I think so far as the boys go, it’s all water under the bridge,” said Bethany. She bit her lip. “The problem, I think, is that it was years ago now, and, well, at the time, aunts, uncles, and cousins heard about it, and they have long memories. So to the extent that anyone knew about you, it was just about that one thing, and then they never heard the, ‘oh yeah, we kind of understand that it was mostly one of those dumb things that happens’ part later.”

Mizuki pushed her vase forward. “You know, maybe I should go.”

“Stay,” said Bethany. Her voice was firm. “You’re basically my best friend right now.”

“Alright,” said Mizuki. “I wasn’t actually going to go, I know you need as many hands as you can get.”

“You’re the best,” said Bethany. She gave Mizuki a squeeze and then moved over to Hannah. “Also, I was talking to Lemmel the other day, and was wondering whether you could take his place at the ceremony?”

Hannah raised an eyebrow. “He’s the town’s cleric, not me,” she said. “If there’s been some disagreement —”

“Oh, no, no,” said Bethany. “Nothing like that. It’s just that a family friend is a cleric of Bixoztl, and the cleric of Kesbin is also a man, so we’d be unbalanced on genders, and traditionally, if you’re going to have six clerics — well, you know.”

“Lemmel put you up to this, did he?” asked Hannah.

“Sorry,” said Bethany, wincing. “And I know it’s last minute, but you won’t have to do much, and —”

“I’d be honored to help strengthen the marital bond,” said Hannah. “Shouldn’t take me much to get ready, and I’ll be there, so long as you let me know when and where I need to be.”

“Thank you so much,” said Bethany. “I think it’ll be lovely.”

Once Bethany had floated off, Mizuki gave Hannah an inquisitive look. “I’m surprised you agreed to that.”

“Oh, she’s not a friend, but she’s close enough, and this is how you make friends,” said Hannah. “And I know that Lemmel has his own reasons, aside from wanting the clerics flanking the bride and groom to match up.”

“He wants you back?” asked Mizuki.

“I think he knows I’m not comin’ back,” said Hannah. “But he wants me to be a part of the religion, always has been. It was a point of contention, back when we were colleagues — and I was a bit his apprentice, though not in title.”

“And you’re not a part of the religion?” asked Mizuki.

“Just my usual disagreements,” said Hannah. “And I’m sure that Lemmel and I have had a conversation on the fact that marriage isn’t a part of the holy texts, none of them.”

“Wait,” said Mizuki. “It’s not?”

“Oh, there’s all sorts of things in the Garam Ashar, and large sections devoted to other people and how we relate to them, though in the usual cryptic way of a holy book,” said Hannah. “There is not, however, a mention of marriage, and it wasn’t always a cleric who performed marriage in the old days, and certainly a marriage didn’t have the modern form, where there are clerics of all six gods to give blessings and lend strength. There’s a disconnect, the kind I’m not fond of, built up cruft. Lemmel knows that, of course.”

“But he wants you to … convert?” asked Mizuki.

“I don’t know what, exactly, he hopes,” said Hannah. “But at a guess, he thinks it would be better for me to have some reckoning with the church on such matters.”

“He’s right though, right?” asked Mizuki.

“That there’s a reckoning to be had, or that I need one?” asked Hannah.

“I don’t know,” shrugged Mizuki. She got up from her seat and gathered up more moss, which she placed in a pile on the table. “I mean, you were in the church when I met you — met you for dungeoneering, not the other time —”

“When you threw a fireball in the church?” asked Hannah.

“I think when we first met, you talked about the church stuff a lot,” said Mizuki. “It bothered you, I could tell. And the thing is, it still bothers you?”

“It does, a bit,” said Hannah. “I’m in tune with Garos. I care about the way we relate to him. And some of that relation is just made up human stuff. But I will do my part in the wedding.”

“Well, I guess that’s good,” said Mizuki with a frown. “You mostly just sit there?”

“You’ve been to a wedding, right?” asked Hannah.

“I have,” said Mizuki. “But a lot of our cohort got married young, or I wasn’t invited, and it’s been awhile.”

“It is mostly just standin’ there — not sittin’ — with one cleric in particular chosen as their speaker, though I will have to say some ceremonial words, just a sentence from the Garam Ashar,” said Hannah. “‘May your relationship be equitable.’”

“Huh,” said Mizuki. “But it’s not about marriage, that line?”

“Well,” said Hannah. She was somewhat surprised that Mizuki was asking. Usually theology wasn’t something that got brought up all that much, and Hannah knew her own enthusiasm for the subject wasn’t shared by the others, not at the same level. “The idea is that relationships should be equitable, all of them, whether it’s your wife, your customers, your children, anything.”

“Children though?” asked Mizuki. “I mean, I don’t have kids, but … does that work out?”

“There are debates about what ‘equitable’ means in different contexts,” said Hannah. She found herself enjoying the conversation. It felt like seminary again, though Mizuki didn’t have the foundational knowledge necessary for a truly in-depth talk on equitability. “I’ve heard people, mostly in books, say that it’s impossible to ethically raise a child.”

Mizuki laughed. “That’s crazy.”

“A bit, yes,” said Hannah. “Some people on the academic side of things get too much in their own heads, too consumed with the books they’re readin’ and writin’, and the common people see it as a waste of time and money, though we’re in the time of permanent plenty. The argument is that control of a child is unethical, because we shouldn’t control others, but not controllin’ a child is also unethical, because without control that child won’t grow up to be a functional adult.” She shrugged. “It’s interestin’, but not pragmatic.”

“Seems like Alfric would hate it,” said Mizuki.

Hannah nodded, and privately noted that it hadn’t taken long for the conversation to move from having children to what Alfric thought. “For someone who seems to be a good friend, I don’t see Bethany come by the house too often.”

“Oh, I’m not sure we’re that kind of friends,” said Mizuki. “We always talk when I go to the general store, or on temple days, or when we see each other around, but I don’t know, I think we’re friends because the girls she was closest with either joined the mommy club or moved away. And I know that in a year or so she’s pretty likely to join the mommy club too, so … you know.”

“I don’t, really,” said Hannah. “We didn’t have a mommy club in the seminary, if I understand you right. It’s a group of, ah, mommies?”

“Yeah,” said Mizuki. She sighed. “They have kids, and then they’re wrapped up in their kids, and then once the kids are a little older they only want to hang out with other people who have kids, so their kids can play together. It’s probably the same for the boys who become dads, but I don’t know about that, I don’t really have male friends anymore.” She looked up at the clouds. “You know, I have friends from school who have three-year-olds? Which is crazy to me. I’ve got a friend — a former friend, I guess, because we don’t talk — who’s got four kids already. I dated her boyfriend for a bit, before they got together. That could have been me.”

“And you think that’ll be Bethany’s fate?” asked Hannah.

“I don’t know,” said Mizuki. “Probably. I’m not sure she wants kids, and some people don’t, I guess, but if she’s not making a horrible mistake, which she might be, then yeah, it’s kind of that stage of our life when you should think about starting a family.”

“And you’re the same age,” said Hannah.

“I — yeah,” said Mizuki. She finished up with her vase, and moved on to another. “Part of it is that I don’t have any family here, no mother or father to help me out in the early years, not much extended family, things that, if I were to have children, I would want.”

“And no partner,” said Hannah.

Mizuki looked at her. “That too. And we’re doing the dungeoneering thing for who knows how long, so it might be as much as a decade before I settle down, I guess. But then I’d be having children in my thirties, and they’d be grown up when I was in my fifties, and — it’s way too far off, really. I’ll be a wizard by then, probably.” She plunked a few stones into a vase with more force than was necessary.

“Nothin’ to say that you couldn’t be a dungeoneer and have children,” said Hannah. “Alfric’s parents seemed to do alright. As a dungeoneer, unless you’re goin’ hard, it’s one or two dungeons a week, and that means you’re out of the house for less time than most other professions. If I were a proper cleric, I’d have to have someone watch the kid, and through the first year or two, probably just have them with me all the time. But if you’re worried about the child, then it seems almost like delvin’ dungeons is the best position to be in, at least from where I’m sittin’.”

“And are you, ah?” asked Mizuki.

“No,” said Hannah. “No, no, this is the time in my life I’ve decided will be for freedom and irresponsibility, at least for another year or two. And if we make stupid amounts of money in that time, all the better.”

“You think you’ll be out of the dungeons in a year?” asked Mizuki. She leaned forward. “I mean, that’s —”

“I didn’t say that,” said Hannah. “But if I’m still doin’ dungeons with you lot in a year, then I’ll consider my wild days to be over, and start thinkin’ about the rest of my life, which is on hold for now.”

“With Marsh?” asked Mizuki.

“If we’re still together in a year, then I’ll think about what a future would look like,” said Hannah. She blushed easily when it came to that subject. From what she was feeling now, there was a good chance she’d be with Marsh in another year. “Though as I’ve said, I think there’s a balance to be had, and there’s no reason that you have to give up your entire life for a child, just … a bit of it. Most, maybe, which is what gives me pause. And I should point out I’m in the same boat as you, without havin’ much in the way of support.”

“I guess we all are, aside from Alfric,” said Mizuki. She finished another vase and pushed it forward. “Do you think Pia is ever coming back?”

“Nah,” said Hannah. “She probably saw that we were handlin’ it just fine.”

Mizuki stood up from her chair. “I think there’s some magic going on over there, I’m going to check it out.”

Hannah sighed. “We were handlin’ it.” But she got up from her seat all the same, and went to follow Mizuki, because the vases could, in fact, wait.

The ‘magic’ in question was being done by a short woman in a leather vest, who was tapping a small wand against a plate, which caused another plate to appear on top of it. She kept doing this, tap, tap, tap, and the stacks of plates kept appearing, which were each carted off when the stack was ten high.

“This is crazy,” said Mizuki.

“It’s an entad,” said Hannah. “It’s not that crazy.”

“How’s it work?” asked Mizuki. She had sidled up to the woman who was tapping the wand.

“You tap, it makes,” said the woman. She was in her thirties, or thereabouts, if Hannah’s eye for age was any good, with a bit of Chelxic ancestry. Her dark hair and braided pigtails were a bit unusual, and something about her aesthetic made Hannah think that this might be a follower of Garos. “Do you want to give my arm a rest?”

“I do!” Mizuki exclaimed. She took the wand with gusto, and began tapping on the plate, quickly making a stack so high that they had to stop and separate it into two stacks so it could be taken away and put in a pile with the others.

“You travel around doin’ this?” asked Hannah.

“Oh yes,” the woman nodded. “For five years now, mostly large events like this. The wand only works on food items, and makes the replicas for about a week before they turn to sand, so I go to whoever will hire me and help make everything they need for whatever event it is.” She shrugged. “It’s a living.”

“This is great,” said Mizuki, who was still tapping plates.

“Well, I’ll take that back,” said the woman, sliding forward to grab the wand from Mizuki. “You’re not keeping a good count.”

“A count?” asked Mizuki. She stayed close to the woman.

“Five hundred plates,” said the woman. “Plus an extra twenty or so, in case there’s breakage. Then all that again for salad plates and dessert plates.”

“But you can make as many as you want, right?” asked Mizuki.

“Yes, and that would take more time,” the woman replied. “Which I don’t want to spend here, if I can help it. I’ve got another appointment later today that I don’t want to miss.” She was tapping away at a steady beat, with the plates being taken away when they were stacked. It was the motion borne of practice, the almost unthinking way that an artisan could do things they’d done thousands of times before.

“Should we be helping with this?” Mizuki asked one of the women moving plates into what was presumably a better spot for them.

“We’ve got it, you’re fine,” the girl — who bore a resemblance to Bethany — replied.

“So,” said Mizuki, turning toward the woman who was tapping plates. “The entad isn’t bound, couldn’t you just sell it?”

“Sell it?” she asked. She let out a little laugh. “I bought it.”

“So this is just what you do?” asked Mizuki.

“Why?” the woman asked. “Seems like not such a great life, from your expression? I get to travel, I have lots of free time, I get to meet nosy girls who inquire about my business, all sorts of things.”

“Nosy?” asked Mizuki, placing a hand on her chest. “Me? Nosy? Me? I plan to keep getting more aghast at the mere suggestion until you agree that it’s preposterous.”

“Clearly I’m mistaken,” the woman laughed. There was a twinkle in her eye as she looked at Mizuki.

“No, you were more or less right,” said Hannah. “She can’t help herself. But we’ve got to get back to makin’ centerpieces, else we’ll be here all day.”

They returned to their stations, and managed to keep up a good pace of it, especially after Pia had finally returned. She made her excuses, but Hannah understood how it was. For something like this, there was a sense that while the work did need to get done, it didn’t need to get done in too much of a hurry, and all the labor was unpaid anyhow.

There was an enormous amount of work that needed to be done, given the absurd scale of the wedding. It wasn’t long after the centerpieces were finally done (sans flowers) that the whole group was called together to go ‘walk the field’ and see whether there was anything left out, to direct the Pedder boys to pick up muck where it was found, to stomp down mounds and fill in divots, and generally get one of the spare fields ready for hosting. The wedding would take place at the church, but the reception was where the bulk of the work needed to be done, and they had volunteered themselves for it.

Hannah found herself enjoying the work though, and it was good to spend time with Mizuki, as much as the girl seemed a bit directionless.