[Acacea]

A collection of entries and memories from inside a frozen instant now behind her.

Apreal of 1395

It sure took us long enough to work ourselves up to just crossing the now-open doorway... of course we have good reason to worry about doors and the insides of towers and so on, but this time we were just chirped at by a doorman that must have been appointed by Ilsare herself, or something. At least I brought drinks, though it's more for familiarity than actual thirst--I feel like I can live forever on a bottle, really!

Serin (the greeter!) was delighted to see us even though we weren't on the extensive guestlist, and we likely could have just said "Hey! Here to see the wedding!" since it is tomorrow (except years and years ago, how does that work?) and that is what everyone is so busy about, but Reventage said that some of us were performers, and the rest carried the luggage, which aggravated a lot of people to no end, and rather confused Serin since he pointed out that she must have a LOT of luggage. Or maybe all of the carriers were just awfully flimsy, needing two people per pair of underwear? No idea!

He showed some of us to the guest quarters while telling the rest that someone would lead them to the servants', or something... Poor Serin was pretty easily agitated, he kind of reminded me of a bird that kept flittering around from place to place without really knowing what in the hells he was going there for... Happens to me all the time! So many neat things around to look at; drives me to distraction, it does! Like... Oh. Serin. Right.

Rolf caught up and Serin near had a heart attack telling him to SHOO, but when the Misty handed her a rose from their fabulous indoor garden, his tune changed entirely and he started talking about having two weddings instead of just one...it was hilarious, especially because Rolf had no idea what he was going on about when Serin grabbed his hand and shook it a billion times to congratulate him. I was already liking this tower at that point, even if it was some kind of little time bubble. I was pretty determined to enjoy myself and never mind that any minute it might snap out of its happy-place and leave us all shaking hands with zombies or something.

We were all a little silly during most of this--we knew where we were, what was going on, and that we really weren't any kind of prisoners, but we were so used to being blown up whenever we opened a door that we did a lot of the sneaking around when we were frankly quite free to wander for the most part!

I went and picked the lock on the door to the servants' quarters instead of just telling Lana that I needed all of them, we had all these silly transparent lies and excuses for being in places that we likely could have asked guided tours with refreshments to, stuff like that! They probably thought we were horribly strange distant cousins or something.

Everyone in the place was in a good mood, delighted at the upcoming wedding between Emily and Narsil. Music, dancing, smiling. Everyone except our luggage carriers, of course! Haaa... Ahh I need a moment. Haaaaaaa.

Oh man...their uniforms smelled so bad... they were adorable, sure, but the stench! Their quarters smelled worse than Moraken's storeroom; I was really thinking twice about asking Lana to let me have one of them for awhile, just because I didn't want the delicate aroma of giant feces and rotten eggs following me around the place!

Well...some were more unhappy with the situation than others, I guess... I gather a change of clothes can put wasps in the knickers of the sensitive types. Or maybe they just don't have very adaptable wardrobes. Anyway, I grabbed Bil from the servants quarters and took him to the main hall (he was grumbling about chafing and allergies the WHOLE time), where the musicians were preparing the symphony for the wedding.

I am not sure if they were simply the best musicians I have ever heard, or just playing on magical instruments, or both, but the music itself was fantastic. The symphony, was, you know... the songs that Alantha and I sing, it seemed... it became rather painfully familiar in the middle of it, but then it continued on, to an ending we'd never heard, that brought the whole thing together in a sort of singular statement of sound and-never-you-mind-the-alliteration. It's almost like I can feel it growing and changing inside of me, becoming complete when I didn't know that it was not.

Katrien took off near the end of the recital... she has seemed a little strange the whole time; I think that she is still sad about leaving her daughter in someone else's care with a fever or something. In any case, she left the music hall looking like someone had just told her that there was no such thing as pie, so when the musicians put down their instruments and said, "Great, your turn!" they were looking at me and Rev. Of course!

Some serious improvisation was in order, but they allowed us to use their instruments, at least... I borrowed a fiddle that was -very- finely fashioned of yew, and was watched like an over protective father watching his daughter's favored consort or something. We had a grand improvised harp-fiddle duet going there for awhile, and Katliness rejoined us sometime during the middle with her flute.

It sure went well enough though, what with all the applause and squealing and all that at the end! By them I mean! In appreciation! So at least our minor charade was kept up to standard with a fantastic performance of our own!

Of course, while the women were having a rather lovely music recital, the boys were running around trying to figure out what in the Pit we are doing here and what's going on, and other less interesting things like that.

Alright... so it has a little relevancy. Definitely not up to sorting through the rambling yet, though! Maybe after someone finally makes Athus change out of his silly outfit before he goes batty and strangles Lana for having put him in it.

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