Eventually, after having rested and settled in, I’d found myself feeling more positive about the trip, even as short as it was. The pretty, hand-pressed paper full of flower petals and little bits ofcolored paper would catch my eye from where it had hung on my freezer for the last few months, slowly becoming something fun and familiar to look forward to amongst the annoyances of learning a new and unfamiliar place. It was only recently, within the last few weeks even, that I began to look at the invitation with a hint of dread again, although for an entirely different reason. Sure, getting to see my friends and grab a bite at my favorite cafe and sleep in my own bed and drop in on my parents would be lovely, no doubt.And yet…
I couldn’t help the way my mind constantly drifted back to my thoughtful, funny, shy, excitable, handsome, adorable upstairs neighbor. This would be the first weekend in months that we weren’t going to be attending yoga together on Saturday morning or having tea on Friday night. He’d reacted to the news that I would be away for a few days by loading me down with a bag of his precious apples and some fuzz berry pastries for the trip home. “You might get hungry,” he’d insisted as he folded them into my hands before I left for the train, as if I couldn’t purchase food myself on that very same train. “But you can’t buytheseon your train,“ he said with a grumpy buzz when I voiced the amused thought, his antennae twitching as he fussed over me. “What if you waste away to nothing while you’re gone? That’s not going to happen on my watch,” he said with a put-upon air.
I’d rolled my eyes with a smile, explaining that my plump derriere wouldn’t allow me to waste away in a matter of a few days, even in the extremely unlikely situation of being unable to find food.
“Well, I wouldn’t allow it,” he’d said haughtily, as if such a thing were even a legitimate concern, and I’d chuckled at him, wishing not for the first time thathe’dbeen the plus-one I’d invited to the wedding. I consoled myself that I had a hard time picturing him in the concrete and glass confines of thecity. Even our parks were neat and tidy, perfectly manicured gardens without a hint of the wildness that the forest races often preferred. Alistair had his orchard rows, but even they seemed somehow different from the exacting order that elves practiced in our cities.
But I had already secured a longtime friend from my girl’s school days as my plus-one, long before I’d actually become friends with Alistair. Merri was another elvish girl I’d grown up with, from a similar working-class family as my own. She also knew Stella, the bride, from college and had recently moved back to New Caelora herself with her husband and son. I figured it would be a good way to introduce her around and help her make some new friends, and I couldn’t wait to see her again. It went without saying that Iso appreciatedher acting as a buffer for me at the wedding, in case our other college friends weren’t able to attend. I didn’t normally mind small talk as long as it had some kind of purpose—like discussing what kind of plants a person liked as I helped them figure out what to purchase at the nursery, or talking about preferred train routes with one of my old neighbors who traveled to the same parts of the city as me—but the aimless, time-killing chatter with complete strangers at something like a wedding was utterly dreadful. Knowing I had an old friend to come with me made me more comfortable.
As busy as we’d both been, me with the move and my friend, Stella, with planning her wedding, I hadn’t been able to chat with her and find out who from our college friend group was attending. At least this way, by bringing along someone who would already know our friend group, I would be able to concentrate on them and be present with them in a way I hadn’t been able to in years. At least, that’s what I told myself.
When I stepped off the train in New Caelora that evening, I was greeted by the familiar scent of cleansing rain that so often showered the city, cooking food, and waste bins in desperateneed of being emptied in the hustle and hubbub of the busy station. Dodging the many passersby both inside the station and on the sidewalk out front was a dance I’d known all my life, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever taken notice of just howmanypeople there were before. After hours of traveling, all I wanted was to get home and crawl into bed, so I flagged down a passing cab and gladly paid the higher fare for one of the speedy wyvern-drawn carriages. The elvish driver never spoke to me, just a tilt of his head to acknowledge he was listening as I relayed my address and a nod of thanks when I paid him before getting out. It was lovely.
However, when I finally arrived at my downtown condo and began opening windows to freshen the musty air that had accumulated in my unused home, I discovered that the aforementioned cleansing rain that was so ubiquitous in my city had been coming in through a split in one of the window casings in my living room—and evidently had been for some time. Dripping water had saturated the wall below the window, the hardwood floor around it, and several pieces of furniture nearby. I was in the middle of frantically trying to sop up the puddles of water as I waited for the building super to arrive when Merri, my plus-one, sent me a spectral messenger. I answered immediately, pushing some of my magic into the little pebbles we referred to as calling stones, assuming Merri wanted to compare notes on what I was wearing tomorrow or double check the time I was picking her up, and I didn’t want to put her off and then forget to respond while dealing with the mess in front of me.
“Oh, Lilith, I amso sorry, but I’m going to have to cancel for tomorrow,” her voice said as the lines of rainbow-colored spirit danced and flickered in the space in front of me. Spectrals had been carrying our messages for us since time immemorial, feeding off the magic we pushed into our little chips of stone forthem as payment for their services, but that wasn’t what I was paying attention to just now. “Little Bartleby has been teething lately, and he’s got a tiny bit of a fever just now, so I’ll need to stay home with him tomorrow,” she explained, referring to her one year-old-son with a woe-be-gone sigh.
I was stunned, not knowing how to respond. Far be it from me to know how to deal with a teething toddler, but Merri had a husband, who also happened to be her child’s father, and she had planned for him to watch their baby during the wedding anyway. “I’m… sorry to hear that,” I told her, my statement coming out sounding like a question. I didn’t want to be presumptuous, but… “Is it not possible for your husband to stay with—”
“No, sorry,” she cut me off, her mind already clearly made up. “Chadwick just isn’t as good with him as I am,” she said, referring to her husband. “And a baby really just needs his mommy, you know? You understand.”
A lump formed in my throat. “Sure,” I lied.
“I’d love to get together after the wedding though,” she inserted hastily. “Maybe the day after, if you’re still here?”
“I’ll be here,” I said numbly, not understanding how she could know her baby would be well enough to be without her the day after tomorrow if he wasn’t well enough for tomorrow. I’d planned to stay through Monday so I could stop in to see my uncle at the shop and visit my parents, but I could rearrange my plans on Sunday if I needed to make sure there was time for her too. None of my other friends had been able to meet up this weekend, so I’d kept my trip short. Just long enough to attend the wedding and see my family.
“Great! Talk soon,” she said before the spectral winked out, leaving me in my empty, stuffy apartment with a dripping window and no date to the wedding tomorrow.
“This is utterly distasteful.”
The elvish man next to me hadn’t shut up about how much he hated the wedding since he’d taken his seat at my table after the ceremony. He was a dark elf, with gorgeous, flowing silver hair and an impeccably tailored suit. The permanent expression on his face looked like he’d just caught a whiff of old cat piss. His wife sighed from her seat beside him.
“No,Darla,” he whispered aggressively, as if she’d actually spoken. “It is.You know his parents have to be completely disgusted. It’s bad enough he’s marrying a—” His eyes cut to the side, taking in the other couple seated with us at the table, and correcting the word he was going to say. “—anon-elf. But the least he could have done was provide them a dignified wedding. Something they wouldn’t have to be ashamed of.” He’d been about to say, “marrying agoblin,” because my friend Stella, the bride, was just that—she was a cheerful little goblin with big doe eyes, impossibly cute freckles, and a wide, impish smile who’d lived on my floor in college. She’d met a seemingly nice elvish man who worked in finance with her after she graduated, and now they were getting married in a small garden wedding in the city. This asshole was talking aboutmy friend!
His vitriol surprised me. Though New Caelora was one of the oldest Elvish cities, and certainly more homogenous than many other cities within our realm, it still had tons of diversity. Mixed race couples had been a non-issue for generations, and our generations were very long lived. I’d been somewhat shielded from the prejudices of the upper classes due to having grown up in a middle-class family, but I’d still not expected someone from our generation to feel the way he did, let alone be bold enough tosay such a thingout loud,at the very couple’s wedding, in front of their other goblin wedding guests.
“Excuseme—” I started to respond, outrage growing in my chest, but the goblin man across from us, who had clearly picked up the subtext of what Mr. Prissypants was putting down, forcefully interrupted me with a sneering, sarcastic, “Right, right. I was just saying the same thing to my wife too, you know? A traditionalgoblincelebration, right here in the middle of the city. I bet we could get a bonfire five stories tall going right here in this park.” The goblin’s wife swatted half-heartedly at his arm, rolling her eyes but ultimately choosing to focus on the buffet line, trying to see when it would be our table’s turn to join the fray.
I cracked a smile at the smaller man’s sarcasm. Where elves were known for our overly ritualistic, hours long wedding ceremonies that were often shows of wealth and stature, goblins traditionally hosted a raucous, roaring bonfire set deep in the woods. From the way Stella described it, everyone the couple and their extended families had ever known would be invited and the fire would be kept going for days as they roasted pigs and chestnuts and drank themselves silly. It sounded like a blast, and I kind of wished she’d opted for a traditional goblin wedding. At least people like this elvish asshole would have self-selected out of attending, but I understood why they’d opted for something tamer.
“I think it’s incredibly charming that Stella and Ryne decided to do their own thing for their wedding,” I told the asshole-elf sitting to my left, trying to deescalate the interaction when he sneered at the goblin man in return. The goblin man was more than a head shorter than the elf, but he was surprisingly muscular for a goblin, and I was already having visions of the smaller man with dark red skin and low-set, pointed ears climbing onto a chair to launch himself at the elf.
It had been a cute little wedding ceremony, followed by the guests gathering for a catered lunch at round white-clothed tables in a stepped down part of the garden nearby. A white cloth tent provided shade where the towering park trees were sparse, and birdsong and a string quartet provided background music. More and more of the younger generations were opting for these small, elegant, modern weddings they saw pictured in magazines or tabloids, and Stella and Ryne had chosen to go that route rather than hold to one family’s traditional ceremonies and leave the other out. At least this way, both families were equally left out. And it was true that both sets of parents were probably not the happiest with their own people’s traditions being eschewed, but to assume they wereashamed? That was a reach. And to criticize their marriage to one another while sitting at their wedding? Beyond the pale.
“It shows a complete lack of regard for their elders and everything they worked for,” he continued, gazing around the decorated space and pointedly not making eye contact with the goblin man who was watching him with narrowed eyes. If any goblin could have kicked Mr. Prissypants’ ass, I’d bet money on this one.
“I don’t agree,” I responded. “Tradition is something you can be guided by if that’s something you want, but if those traditions no longer work for you, then they become an unasked-for burden rather than a gift. I think there’s beauty in creating something unique with your new family.” Why did we have to assign some kind of moral value tothe way things had always been?
“Or perhaps they just come off looking like tacky, self-centered children,” he retorted dryly, and the goblin man scoffed at him in return.
“Felis, you’re embarrassing me,” his wife whispered, finally giving a real name to the jerk as she seemed to shrink in on herself while looking down at her napkin wrapped silverware.
“This wedding is what’s embarrassing.”
The goblin decided he’d had enough, lifting his arm and jabbing a meaty finger at the table in front of him. “Why are you even h—”
“Look, Arek! It’s food time!” The goblin’s wife was up out of her chair in a heartbeat, tugging on his elbow. With a last irritated scowl for the very rude Felis, he clamped his lips together and allowed himself to be dragged toward the buffet line.
