anniversary

[dark_light]

Time passes. Canada is cooperative about portals and now there's one each in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, on a second floor of the hub with customs agents Isabella is tolerating for the time being as long as they're well-behaved. Japan and Australia and the UK all follow suit at roughly the same time, so then there are portals in their big cities, too, a couple new ones per week. Other nations are slated to trickle in as they handle their red tape to deal with sudden new national borders that don't have the built-in delay of airplanes. Some of the parking garages are being replaced with custom-built installations. Isabella pays off her loan, renegotiates for the continued use of her shiny credit card, and has reason to be grateful for her retained law firm, which is kept busy by frivolous lawsuits by airline companies. She's not appreciably cutting into their traffic yet - sure, the price point is dropping, but they're still competitive. They can just smell their own demise coming from a mile away.

Five witches besides Isabella ward the colony site. Robots guard the site of the portal, obligingly letting colonists through during scheduled trips and reporting to Isabella by mirror if anybody else shows up. Other robots help the colonists with setting up their farms and houses in the warded area. It'll hold a city, no problem, although another transfer of silks and bags to pay for warding a second site is going to be called for before they get literally everyone across, since in addition to city they need farmland, and since they can't build vertically as effectively as fully industrialized Earthlings or the deceased aliens.

One day:

"It's been exactly a year now since you crashed my picnic. Let's go to a fancy restaurant and celebrate."

Comments

[prodigal_miser]

"Very much so. I like our relationship, let's not let alphabetizing come between us."

[dark_light]

"I like our relationship too."

(Under the table, Path is snuggling up to Vern like he's not a witch's daemon and she's a space heater and they are in Alaska.)

[prodigal_miser]

Hand-kiss, because there is a table in the way and he can't kiss her properly.

(Vern is snuggling Path right back, nestled comfortably and making soft cooing noises.)

[dark_light]

"So now that we have finished our desserts we could go look for floating candle holders."

[prodigal_miser]

"Yeah," agrees Adarin, grinning. "And a suitable body of water."

[dark_light]

"River, ocean, or lake?"

[prodigal_miser]

"River or lake. Lake's the tradition, though - ocean isn't calm enough."

[dark_light]

"There's ponds in Central Park, or we could portal to Chicago and put 'em in Lake Michigan." She heads out of the restaurant and starts peering around for likely places to buy floating votive candle holders.

[prodigal_miser]

"Either would work, though a little puddle would be kind of disappointing." He follows after, helping with the search.

[dark_light]

"Lake Michigan it is, then, it's huge."

Eventually they locate a department store, and an employee shows them the candle holder selection. Some of them float.

"You're the expert, love."

[prodigal_miser]

He smiles at her, kisses her cheek, and then goes to picking them out. He manages to find a set that's sort of close to the right shape with frosted glass designs on them, and picks up two.

"Not quite as multicolored as the ones I'm used to, and they're shaped kind of strangely, but it should do," he informs Isabella.

[dark_light]

"Could recolor them," she points out, meandering to the register to show her shiny black credit card. "Isn't that fairly simple?"

[prodigal_miser]

"True. That works," says Adarin with a smile. "What colors would we like?"

[dark_light]

"There's not specific traditional ones?" she inquires. She pays and the cashier bags their candles and out they go to head back to the Manhattan portal.

[prodigal_miser]

"There are, usually reds, blues, and greens, golds if these were wedding candles. I just think our relationship has varied enough from tradition that we shouldn't feel required to fit with it." On the way to the Manhattan portal, he will hold her hand. Because that seems like the thing to do.

[dark_light]

"And we are not getting married today." Handholding! "How about the imperial color scheme, then, or is black too somber?"

[prodigal_miser]

"I would be extremely surprised if we were getting married today and I wasn't aware of it. Black shouldn't be too somber if used correctly, I think."

[dark_light]

"Black and ice-blue and forest green, then."

[prodigal_miser]

"Sure," agrees Adarin. He starts composing ideas for how they will look in his head. "It's rather convenient that you picked a color scheme so early, now we can properly stick to it in everything."

Adarin's actually taken to fitting with said color scheme. He doesn't do it all the time, but often enough for Isabella to notice, certainly.

[dark_light]

"Yes, there will be relatively few historical anomalies. No bright red palaces or canary yellow flags making the imperial museums clash with themselves."

Portal from Manhattan! Portal to Chicago! Flying to Lake Michigan, whee!

[prodigal_miser]

He snorts with laughter. "Museums everywhere will thank us."

Portals! Such convenient things! On the flight there, Adarin's composed what the glass will be changed to, and does that. The frosted glass designs stay, but they are changed to black, to fit the color scheme. The glass behind it gets faint colored swirls of ice-blue and forest green. Both candle-holders have the same designs on them, but one has the blue as the main color with dark green designs, and the other has the opposite.

He presents them when they land and are not in danger of being dropped and breaking!

[dark_light]

Isabella thinks they are adorable.

"What do we do, do we just put them in the lake and watch them float off, or is there more ritual and fanfare?"

[prodigal_miser]

"Basically, that. At weddings there's a whole thing to them, the wedding itself ends with them being sent off and they are traditionally directly involved in it. Just casually and there's nothing required."

[dark_light]

"Okay." Isabella kisses him, then kneels by the edge of the lake, her candleholder cupped in her hand, and murmurs a verse to light it up.

[prodigal_miser]

Kiss! Adarin joins her, and decides for the sake of theatrics to light it with magic. Into the water it goes, to be released at the same time as Isabella's.