Part of the pre-wedding preparation had been to sweep the area using Combat Sight, and relocate a couple of snakes, and Keer and Maze had been having a lot of fun finding and arranging big stones into natural seating areas, and shaping stone benches to cover enough seating for the wedding. Most of the benches they donated to other people once they were done, but before then the lot of them arranged in two rows did make it feel rather like an enormous cathedral. The ceremony was different from Lohn and Mara’s – not so strictly traditional. None of the bathing and painting the bride and groom, or the thing with the blindfolds. Still had the cake-making thing, except both the bride and the groom’s family made one (gi-normous flat brown cakes) with incredibly intricate patterns on top made of a kind of dusted sugar which were apparently luck-wishes – wealth, joy, fame, family, all that kind of thing – and there’s a great deal of interest in which pattern you get on your piece of cake when it’s shared out. Alay wore a gorgeous filmy dress in shades of violet and gold instead of the more traditional robe (somewhat Grecian with a kind of laced bodice) and simply looked fantastic. Completely radiant. Maze was so at peace, and didn’t seem able to take his eyes off her the entire time.
The after-wedding party was fun – Maze’s mother is a musician, and played nice music with a couple of friends, and there was some light-hearted dancing – Zee and Nils did an aerial slow dance and then everyone who could manage to get themselves in the air followed suit and that was pretty awesome to watch. Kaoren and I didn’t dance because Sen had been playing with Ketzaren’s hair – she loves trying to do everyone’s hair – and Deal had run up and pushed her over and she’d jammed her elbow. Deal used to get on quite well with Sen, but as he’s grown attached to his new parents, he’s become very jealous of them. And Sen’s tendency to treat all the Senior Setari as adored favourites, clambering all over them, makes him particularly upset.
Sen was mainly just shocked to start with, but then found that her arm really hurt when she moved it and burst into tears. And Ys zoomed down from the top patio – literally: she levitated – and snatched her up and I (a little too far away to have done any snatching) fully expected her to turn a total basilisk glare on Deal, but instead she just said sternly: "They’re not going to stop wanting you, no matter what anyone else does. Stop being so afraid," and lifted herself and Sen over to me and Kaoren.
We did some hugging and found a numbing salve to put on Sen’s elbow, and then we had an interesting talk with Ys about the fact that her levitation talent isn’t strong enough for her to lift herself, let alone herself and Sen. Seems Ys worked out how to expand her connection to the Ena shortly after touching me when I had my senses fully extended, but decided not to mention it in case we expected her to spend more time training her talents – or trying to train other people to expand their connections – which would cut down on her reading time. She’d tried teaching Rye, and since he hadn’t managed it, had kept quiet about it. "Rye is too interested in bits and pieces of what’s nearby," she said, shrugging. "It stops him from looking at it all at once."
This was a very interesting development from the Setari’s point of view, because Ys is the only person without a strong Sight talent who has managed to make the expansion, and she can also obviously do it very quickly, which is what the Taren and Kolaren Setari who have achieved it have been working on. We held off on interrogating her too much during the party, but she got to have a long conversation with Kaoren, Tsur Selkie and Maze a few days later. I was actually more interested in what she’d said to Deal and told her quietly, after Ketz had brought Deal to apologise, and Kaoren had taken Sen off to fly up to the very tops of the trees, that she had reminded me of Isten Notra. This is a huge compliment to Ys, so of course she didn’t believe me, but I explained that while she’d said it a lot more bluntly than Isten Notra might have, it was the same sort of clear-sighted response. Then I threw her further off-balance by telling her how much I envied her for being able to levitate.
Maze and Alay’s house wasn’t quite ready in time for the wedding, but they’ll be moving in soon. It’s on the top of one of the small hills on Siriath, and Maze has endless plans for a kind of rock garden and lawn and all sorts of trees and things made of stone. I showed him some pictures of Mount Tomah, back near Sydney, and he was very pleased and inspired by that, and has stolen some idea from it for The Wedding Garden as well.
It feels strange not working while the inquiry is on. I was used to the routine of it all. I still get physical training, and the kids get to train with me now, instead of at the school, but it’s a different kind of routine, and I feel very shut in at times. Fortunately it’s warming up, and the drifts are melting, and the early flowers should be poking through soon. I’ve been burying myself in subtitling the last few days. Ages back now I projected a TV and DVD-player and a bunch of DVDs and did my best to make them last a long while, and the technicians have been trying to untangle the DVD coding ever since. We could make the machines run easily enough, but what we wanted was, instead of me spending hours projecting Earth documentaries really slowly, that I just project a DVD and we copy the data off it and then voila! And that meant not just being able to get to the data on the DVD (apparently not too hard – Tarens went through a similar technology stage) but translating the DVD coding. That’s taken an age, but they finally did it. I projected and copied Blue Planet and The Life of Mammals and that sort of thing to start with, and then a whole bunch of DVDs for my own entertainment – so nice to watch some of my favourite movies again. I’m slowly going to subtitle these for the kids' benefit, but aren’t really planning to turn myself into a film industry, so I’m setting them so they can’t be spread about.
I’ve been working on Spirited Away first, running it in Japanese, with English subtitles, and adding Taren subtitles underneath that. I chose it partly because Ys is still pushing through on learning English (but very annoyed at how illogical it is) and also because the lead character is called Sen. Sen will love it when I’m done, no matter how little she understands.
I’ve also realised I can project DVDs of movies I haven’t even seen, which will be pretty cool.
Twelfth is finally going to be posted here soon. It’s been so long. Zan and I write occasionally, and she seems okay, but I want to see her to be sure.
12 - November
November 20
Kiddie-palooza
Siame and Rye’s birthday this month. Siame went home to Tare briefly for hers (proving a point, I think, though Kaoren didn’t try and stop her).
Rye’s twelfth birthday was a few days ago (in Earth-time it will be a little later each year, which is very confusing to me), and we had our first party on Arcadia since everything got really snowy. Arcadia’s been nicely de-snowed and everything’s all over with flowers or buds on trees and it’s very nice in the middle of the day, though still nippy at night. Rye wanted a swimming party, much like his first one, except with all his new friends involved, and I’d decided to make it a relatively large party. Lots of kids, First, Second and Fourth – and Third and Twelfth who have finally been rostered here (some of them have moved their families here, but unlike the senior squads they can’t choose a permanent Muina assignment just yet).