If the marriage had been any more martial it would have been a war. The architect, the woman known as Vendor hovered at the rear of the proceedings, her success tugging her fatigued face into a subtly satisfied saturnine smirk as she observed her cleverly orchestrated hybrid of sincerity and jocularity play out like the brainchild of a fervid trinity of Wagner, Tolkien & Von Clausewitz. The real beauty of it was that the visual opulence and business actually distracted from a ceremony that was purposefully built to be straight forward enough as not to require the dress rehearsals that were impossible given the tighter than tight schedule ; and that wouldn’t have been possible without the whirlwind deals with Time LARP, Cake Space-Walk Caterers, and the unsolicited borrowings from Shakespeare in the Void. She’d been a very busy dame.
Brynhildr Wandblume, escorted up the aisle by a father Wotan trying desperately not to look tickled by his role and thus comporting himself in a grandly godish fashion, reflected on the event as her marital metals reflected the event that it was so much cooler than the mundane marital method that would have gone down if her wedding hadn’t been co-opted by the Patrol. Certainly her volks wouldn’t be nearly as in to it as they were in their roles as Germanic gods. As the pair’s promenade proceeded beneath a gently swaying canopy of heraldic guidons, the slow build majesty of Fugue State’s rendition of Das Rhinegold’s Prelude swelled electric guitar and ondes Martenot throughout the hall.
Before the sword stabbed Yggdrasil stood the Weld ethereal in flowing white Galadriels--cutout cleverly inserted--and down and to the side, cyan Siegfried, his tartan Highland clan...well his parents, anyway ; and his best, deeply hooded & cloaked, mystery-man.
At the tree alter, at the final dying thrum of the martenot, the Weld commenced to prove that she was an exceptional love weld with an impromptu service incorporating a neat synthesis of all the patchwork paramilitary pomp.
“Marriage isn’t a scrap, a fracas, a battle. It is a war. A holy war. A crusade. A glorious struggle to preserve, to survive, to hold fast to the one truth that has brought you to this hallowed moment : that singly your lives were incomplete, partial, cursory, weak ; but together you will be fulfilled, total, thorough, unassailable.” The weld flung her arms outwards to embrace the assembled. “And that not only applies to the lives of Ramona & Donald but also to those of the Wandblume & Van Loan tribes. For a wedding is more than the binding of couples : it is the uniting of tribes : It is the inking of treaties : It is the forging of alliances : it is the fortifying of families. marriage is the true weaponized potential of love!” She considered the main participants with an ethereal gaze worthy of Cate Blanchett.
“ Are you, Ramona Wandblume prepared for general bliss alongside your martial counterpart?”
“Ja, ich bin!”
Are you, Donald Van Loan prepared to be Ramona’s ever faithful biumvir?”
“Etiam!”
Assuming that both replies meant ‘yes!’, the Weld continued : “Then by the power of the Love of the Cosmos, I hereby weld your two lives, your two pneumas, your two selves into the greater whole of the beautiful mutuality of matrimony! Seal the pact with the traditional osculations!”
It was quite the kiss.
***
Ramona’s baby sister, all adorable six years of her packed into the cutest Rhine maiden outfit ever thrown together in six hours, strew flower petals along with an almost equally adorable nix Pitchy as the newly welds paraded under the saber arcade of a Prussian hussar honor guard to the tune of Fugue State’s stately Metal rendition of the Wagner’s Treulich geführt.
***
The reception was a mad mishmash of Oktoberfest & Robbie Burns Day. Schnitzel & haggis fed the guests ; schnapps & single malts watered them ; alpine horns, bag pipes and Fugue State entertained them. None of it would have been possible without the considerable resources--human resources that Vendor had at her disposal. Her operatives, with the exception of Starling and Lecter--she’d been busy enough with the Doe, and he’d been busy enough keeping her out of too much trouble ; and now they were actual wedding guests--were the waiters, bartenders, disc spinners, and caterers.
The only significant role outside of Vendor’s control was the best man. He he had emerged unbidden exactly at the moment, six hours ago, that Vendor had realized that all of her attempts to secure best men had come to naught. It was very odd, but then the Fen normality baseline was insane in the Dane membrane. So she ran the stranger, who never once removed his deeply hooded hood, through the best man test ; he passed with the sort of knowledge that only a lifelong friend or family member could possess ; and Vendor hired him for the key role. And as she watched him perform, she was damn glad that she had...even though she still had no idea who he was.
Strider, the name Vendor had granted him, was, indeed, the best man. He commenced the revelries with a fantastically astute and pithy periodic tabulation of the groom that was as hilarious as it was touching. The maid of honour, an eleventh hour whisked-away Teachers’ college friend of Ramona’s, turned in a competent performance but even A. Lincoln & O. Wilde would have found the best mystery man a hard act to follow.
Then he was seemingly everywhere ensuring the fulfillment of his duty as the couple’s champion until at exactly the time that consensus had been reached regarding his de-hooding, he was nowhere to be found. He had vanished ; completely, concisely and compendiously.
Van Loan, busily agitating the dual antennae zones of Black Betty, his prized theremin, in concert with Fugue State’s speed waltz variant of the Blue Danube, was oblivious to the exit of his baffling benefactor.
The two fathers who had been deep in boisterous agreements regarding the virtues of pils over pale ales, hockey over football and hand tools over power tools leant as a unit in the direction of the newlyweds sitting across from them at the table of honour to direct the final potentially parentally perplexing problem : each queried his particular offspring with almost exactly the same terse question.
“Blue?”
“Grün?”
Within Ramona’s purse and Donald’s pocket the simplest gag imaginable had been prepared exactly for this inescapable moment. With a dramatic flourish, both he and his wife uncovered streaks of pink skin tone underneath the obviously blue & green makeups with pocket hankies. With this final bit of clarification clarified, the obviously totally relieved patriarchs returned to the process of extending the new forged family knowledge base.
Donald whispered in Ramona’s ear, “I learned that trick from Jack Nicholson!”
She looked a trifle confused but it didn’t mess with her relief of having cleared--for now--the onerous task of attempting to explain ‘Wavium mutation to family that had already borne more than a few familial shocks.
***
That ‘night’, in the midst of Converse Cowpoke , Ramona figured it out : “The Joker! You learnt it from...” She couldn’t quite finish the thought for the activity.
A trifle breathlessly, Van Loan, below and mostly horizontal, giddily replied, “Ja, Herr Witzbold!”
The chemistry was superb.
Brynhildr Wandblume, escorted up the aisle by a father Wotan trying desperately not to look tickled by his role and thus comporting himself in a grandly godish fashion, reflected on the event as her marital metals reflected the event that it was so much cooler than the mundane marital method that would have gone down if her wedding hadn’t been co-opted by the Patrol. Certainly her volks wouldn’t be nearly as in to it as they were in their roles as Germanic gods. As the pair’s promenade proceeded beneath a gently swaying canopy of heraldic guidons, the slow build majesty of Fugue State’s rendition of Das Rhinegold’s Prelude swelled electric guitar and ondes Martenot throughout the hall.
Before the sword stabbed Yggdrasil stood the Weld ethereal in flowing white Galadriels--cutout cleverly inserted--and down and to the side, cyan Siegfried, his tartan Highland clan...well his parents, anyway ; and his best, deeply hooded & cloaked, mystery-man.
At the tree alter, at the final dying thrum of the martenot, the Weld commenced to prove that she was an exceptional love weld with an impromptu service incorporating a neat synthesis of all the patchwork paramilitary pomp.
“Marriage isn’t a scrap, a fracas, a battle. It is a war. A holy war. A crusade. A glorious struggle to preserve, to survive, to hold fast to the one truth that has brought you to this hallowed moment : that singly your lives were incomplete, partial, cursory, weak ; but together you will be fulfilled, total, thorough, unassailable.” The weld flung her arms outwards to embrace the assembled. “And that not only applies to the lives of Ramona & Donald but also to those of the Wandblume & Van Loan tribes. For a wedding is more than the binding of couples : it is the uniting of tribes : It is the inking of treaties : It is the forging of alliances : it is the fortifying of families. marriage is the true weaponized potential of love!” She considered the main participants with an ethereal gaze worthy of Cate Blanchett.
“ Are you, Ramona Wandblume prepared for general bliss alongside your martial counterpart?”
“Ja, ich bin!”
Are you, Donald Van Loan prepared to be Ramona’s ever faithful biumvir?”
“Etiam!”
Assuming that both replies meant ‘yes!’, the Weld continued : “Then by the power of the Love of the Cosmos, I hereby weld your two lives, your two pneumas, your two selves into the greater whole of the beautiful mutuality of matrimony! Seal the pact with the traditional osculations!”
It was quite the kiss.
***
Ramona’s baby sister, all adorable six years of her packed into the cutest Rhine maiden outfit ever thrown together in six hours, strew flower petals along with an almost equally adorable nix Pitchy as the newly welds paraded under the saber arcade of a Prussian hussar honor guard to the tune of Fugue State’s stately Metal rendition of the Wagner’s Treulich geführt.
***
The reception was a mad mishmash of Oktoberfest & Robbie Burns Day. Schnitzel & haggis fed the guests ; schnapps & single malts watered them ; alpine horns, bag pipes and Fugue State entertained them. None of it would have been possible without the considerable resources--human resources that Vendor had at her disposal. Her operatives, with the exception of Starling and Lecter--she’d been busy enough with the Doe, and he’d been busy enough keeping her out of too much trouble ; and now they were actual wedding guests--were the waiters, bartenders, disc spinners, and caterers.
The only significant role outside of Vendor’s control was the best man. He he had emerged unbidden exactly at the moment, six hours ago, that Vendor had realized that all of her attempts to secure best men had come to naught. It was very odd, but then the Fen normality baseline was insane in the Dane membrane. So she ran the stranger, who never once removed his deeply hooded hood, through the best man test ; he passed with the sort of knowledge that only a lifelong friend or family member could possess ; and Vendor hired him for the key role. And as she watched him perform, she was damn glad that she had...even though she still had no idea who he was.
Strider, the name Vendor had granted him, was, indeed, the best man. He commenced the revelries with a fantastically astute and pithy periodic tabulation of the groom that was as hilarious as it was touching. The maid of honour, an eleventh hour whisked-away Teachers’ college friend of Ramona’s, turned in a competent performance but even A. Lincoln & O. Wilde would have found the best mystery man a hard act to follow.
Then he was seemingly everywhere ensuring the fulfillment of his duty as the couple’s champion until at exactly the time that consensus had been reached regarding his de-hooding, he was nowhere to be found. He had vanished ; completely, concisely and compendiously.
Van Loan, busily agitating the dual antennae zones of Black Betty, his prized theremin, in concert with Fugue State’s speed waltz variant of the Blue Danube, was oblivious to the exit of his baffling benefactor.
The two fathers who had been deep in boisterous agreements regarding the virtues of pils over pale ales, hockey over football and hand tools over power tools leant as a unit in the direction of the newlyweds sitting across from them at the table of honour to direct the final potentially parentally perplexing problem : each queried his particular offspring with almost exactly the same terse question.
“Blue?”
“Grün?”
Within Ramona’s purse and Donald’s pocket the simplest gag imaginable had been prepared exactly for this inescapable moment. With a dramatic flourish, both he and his wife uncovered streaks of pink skin tone underneath the obviously blue & green makeups with pocket hankies. With this final bit of clarification clarified, the obviously totally relieved patriarchs returned to the process of extending the new forged family knowledge base.
Donald whispered in Ramona’s ear, “I learned that trick from Jack Nicholson!”
She looked a trifle confused but it didn’t mess with her relief of having cleared--for now--the onerous task of attempting to explain ‘Wavium mutation to family that had already borne more than a few familial shocks.
***
That ‘night’, in the midst of Converse Cowpoke , Ramona figured it out : “The Joker! You learnt it from...” She couldn’t quite finish the thought for the activity.
A trifle breathlessly, Van Loan, below and mostly horizontal, giddily replied, “Ja, Herr Witzbold!”
The chemistry was superb.
