Davor and I both spoke Amellan, and I'd been learning the First Fire's dialect of orcish right alongside Davor Jr. for the last year or so, but it was only recently that we'd really started learning to speak the same language.
After our rendezvous with Ausk, Davor and I got to talking seriously about what we really wanted. What our goals were.
We both wanted to grow our family: I wanted at least two more children, and he wanted "a whole gaggle". We also both wanted to make our relationship permanent. That's when my sweet man got on his knee, Amellan style, and proposed to me. I didn't hesitate for even a second.
In the First Fire hold, wedding ceremonies were simple, but joyous events. Davor and I had attended two together already, the most recent being for Forbin and Magub, the two men who lived in the tent next to ours.
I wanted to bring some of my own culture to the ceremony, and Davor was, as always, willing to oblige my neediness.
The end result was a mashup of three diverse wedding ceremonies: those of the orcs of the First Fire clan, traditions of the elves of Yamen En'sol, where my father was from, and from my homeland of Amella. Just figuring out the logistics of that was the work of weeks or months.
We eventually agreed on the most important core aspects of each tradition. In orcish style, on the evening before the wedding, we exchanged something that each of us had made with our partner in mind. I briefly considered handing my husband-to-be Davor Jr., since I had "made" our son. Davor had, of course, helped in the making of Davor Junior, so while it was a funny idea, handing our child to his father and calling it a gift wouldn't have been appropriate. We both had a sense of humour, but this was something I wanted to take seriously.
Ultimately, I settled on making something simple yet symbolic. I leaned a bit into the elven wedding tradition of the bride and groom bringing branches from trees they'd each chosen to symbolise the union. I got young, supple branches from a fig tree, a tree that bears fruit year-round and symbolises fertility and abundance. I wove those twigs into a pair of braided armguards for Davor.
"They won't protect you from a knife or sword," I told him during our private exchange of gifts, "but they are a tough material from a hardy plant. If you treat them well, they'll be with you for the rest of your life. Let our love be like the fig tree, growing in spite of any adversities and yielding fruits in every season, even the cold and hard winters."
I was glad that orc tradition called for privacy during the marital gift exchange, so no one was around to see both Davor and I start crying when he slid the bracers on over his wrist.
My beautiful man, in turn, led me from the clan's hold, out to a small clearing in the woods. He let me look around and wonder at what exactly the gift was, before finally pointing out the newly planted saplings that made a ring in the soft forest floor.
"They're apple trees," he told me, "or they will be. I know you miss the luxuries of your homeland, and the apples we buy up North are often bruised and ugly after a week of travel. So, now we have our own orchard, my love. I will tend these trees for my whole life, and in the years to come you will have all the sweet fruit you could dream of. In a dozen orcish generations, this orchard could grow to be a small forest of its own, so you need never run out of food."
It was a beautiful gesture, and something that must have taken him months of quiet work to set up. It was also a quiet nod to the fact that I would likely outlive my husband by centuries. I cried again at the beauty and thoughtfulness of it, and we kissed slowly and tenderly beside one of our saplings until we were both out of breath.
The little tree was too small to provide any shade yet, so we laid together in the sun and exchanged promises as we looked upon our gifts we had made.
The next day was the wedding proper, with the date having been picked out by the elder shaman himself. We spent the night before sleeping in separate houses, per Amellan tradition. Davor stayed in our shared home with Junior, and Krugga put me up for the night in a spare room in the House of Spirits. I missed Davor all night, missed his warmth and his touch... which was probably the point of this tradition.
In the morning, the shamans prepared us for the ceremony. First Fire was fortunate enough to have two trained shamans, since Krugga had learned enough to lead the faith on her own and the head shaman hadn't retired yet. Two shamans meant that Davor and I could be prepared separately, instead of one having to wait for the shaman to finish with the other. It also meant that while the elder male orc dealt with Davor, it was Krugga who worked with me. I was doubly thankful for that, since being "prepared" apparently involved stripping naked and being anointed with oils and standing over ceremonial incense. I definitely preferred having a woman do that part with me instead of the old man.
Under Krugga's guidance, I burned something that would symbolise my past, single life. I chose a shirt that I had worn for much of my travels over the year before I came to the First Fire, symbolising an end to my days of wandering. Krugga inspected the markings on my stomach, which she had helped put there a month ago, then helped me get into my wedding dress. She even helped me style my hair.
"This is why it's nice to have a female shaman," I told her.
"The elder could do your hair just as well as I could," Krugga chided me.
"Sure, but I would never have had the courage to ask him."
Finally, as the sun was near setting, Davor and I stood before most of the entire hold and came together. We stood before a basin of water, in which a wide clay bowl of burning incense floated. This was a nod to another elven tradition, where all six elements needed to be present to create a balanced marriage: the burning sticks of incense represented the elements of wood and fire, the smoke rising from the flame represented air, the clay bowl represented earth, the basin of water was obviously water, and us standing together represented spirit.
"Six elements, brought together in harmony," the old shaman intoned in orcish, "just as this man and woman are to be joined in harmony."
I had asked for the shaman to include that line, both to appeal to the creator spirit many elves believed in, and also to explain to the onlookers why there was a bucket with a bowl floating in it. I had been practising my orcish, so I understood most of what the shaman said in his invocation. True to orcish style, the speech was short and passionate.
As a final piece of Amellan wedding tradition, Davor and I exchanged rings. Each ring was tied to a long, white string, so that as we slid the ring onto our partner's finger we also tied ourselves (literally and metaphorically) together.
I'd heard that once upon a time, the white string was to be worn through the entire reception, even as the couple ate and drank and danced. But no one did that anymore, since it made going to the bathroom a deeply bizarre experience, so Davor and I were tied together for only an hour.
Then came a universal wedding tradition, one observed in almost every culture worldwide: feasting and drinking.
