“Wait, what? Married?” Arthur yelled for a split second before he managed to get his voice back under control. “Does anyone else know?”


    “No. We were coming here to find Itela, and see if she could get us some reasonably dignified space.” Eito motioned out over the most historical of the surviving sites of Demon World antiquity. “Which you seem to have covered.”


    “I guess, yeah. It’s so sudden, though. What brought this on?”


    Jumie looked at Arthur, smiling ear to ear. “Eito tells me you did, actually. Some sort of offworlder speech about how everything was more simple than he thought. Was he lying?”


    “Not technically, no, but it wasn’t very important.”


    “Oh, I disagree.” Jumie squeezed herself in so close to Eito that Arthur thought they might actually merge. “I think it was very important indeed. If you ever need something danced at, or absolutely destroyed, call on me. I will be there.”


    “Thanks?” Arthur said. “Hopefully I won’t need the second.”


    “The first is the more useful of the two anyway,” Eito said as he looked around. “Really, though? None of this is for our wedding? Because it seems pretty perfect. There’s a lot of space. It’s pretty. It’s solemn…”


    “Or it would be if everyone stopped drinking. What’s this for?” Jumie asked. “It must be celebrating something.”


    “Oh, right. So I told them no. On the whole moving away from home to the capital to make emergency supplies thing. I’ll still end up making a lot of tea to send around the world, but just what I can make from Coldbrook,” Arthur said.


    “That’s great!” Eito said. “I honestly didn’t know if you had it in you. I told them it was bad for your development, but I wasn’t sure they heard. Besides Pomm, I mean. Pomm listens.”


    “I got that impression.”


    “Oh, that’s too bad, though. Not that you get to have a party, but because it’s right now. I guess we should push ours back?” Jumie’s eyes dropped downwards as she mentally worked through her schedule. “Tomorrow, maybe? We could have fun, and then figure something out tomorrow.”


    “Absolutely not. No,” Arthur said.


    “Do you have plans for tomorrow too?” Eito arched his eyebrows. “Because I’d like to marry this woman sometime, at least. I’m not getting any younger, as you so eloquently pointed out.”


    “No, I mean, it’s not happening tomorrow because we are doing it tonight. Lily! Philbin!” Arthur yelled. “I have an organization problem I need help with.”


    “Arthur, no.” Jumie let go of Eito as she watched Philbin and Lily trot over. “It’s your night.”


    “She’s right, boy. Neither of us wants to just waltz in and ruin your party like that,” Etio said.


    “And that’s where you are wrong. One sec.” Arthur turned to Phil and Lily and pulled them into a close huddle. “Eito and Jumie are getting married.”


    “Eeek!” Lily squeaked, quietly. “When?”


    “Now. Tonight.”


    “Aww. Good.” Lily looked up at the two much older people with a huge smile on her face. “Good job, you two.”


    “Thanks, but I’m not sure we are actually going to do it tonight,” Jumie said, uncertainly.


    “Don’t be silly. Of course, you are.” Lily hand waved the objection and went back to the planning huddle. “So what do you need?”


    “Lily, I need you to go with Philbin and buy… flowers, I guess? Decorations. I’m still not all that up on joining ceremonies. Phil, are you any good at them?” Arthur asked.


    “I’m okay. It’s not my specialty.”


    “That’s more than enough. Go get supplies. And whatever food we need that we don’t have.”


    “Got it. Lily is coming along too?”


    “Yes. For ideas, if she has them, and to help you get done faster. And… shoot. Jumie, you have friends, right? And family?” Arthur asked.


    “I like to think I do,” Jumie said, slightly affronted. “At least they say they are.”


    “I mean in the capital, that we can get to,” Arthur clarified.


    “Oh, yes, of course. Lots of colleagues, and more than a few relatives. Why?”


    “Because I need Lily to figure out how to reach them all. Quickly. And to get all the stuff we need back here and set up in a reasonable time.”This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    “Oh, that’s not a problem,” Lily said. “I can handle that. Give me a few minutes.”


    Lily wandered off to the guests, pulling aside a few people for a quick huddle of their own. While she did, Arthur felt Eito side up to him.


    “You don’t have to do this, you know. You are perfectly fine having your own party.” Eito coughed softly. “We are both adults. We can wait if it means not ruining your day.”


    “You aren’t ruining anything. I can’t think of a thing I want at this party more than you guys getting married. It doesn’t ruin anything. It makes it perfect.”


    Eito hesitated, then nodded. “Fine, then. Jumie, he’s got us. We can’t fight with that.”


    “Is he too old to adopt?” Jumie asked. “I sort of like him.”


    “I do too. But yes, probably a bit too old. You don’t see a lot of former mayors getting adopted, these days.”


    “Did you ever?” Arthur asked. “See that exact thing, I mean.”


    “Funny story about that, actually. Once, when I was doing my first trainings, I ran into…”


    Eito’s story was cut off as a gigantic red monster clomped into range with a wagon behind him, terrible and huge in its poorly-put-together weirdness. As it drew near, Lily stood up from the wagon.


    “I figured out that if we use Karbo, we can get this done much quicker. Philbin agreed to it,” Lily yelled.


    “Does he know what he agreed to, exactly?” Arthur winced in sympathy for the man. “Have you… ridden with Karbo, before?”


    “No, can’t say I have. He’s pretty fast, I take it?”


    Arthur thought about warning him. He really did.


    “Yes. He’s very quick. Have fun!”


    Karbo asked some pointed questions about how prone to motion sickness Philbin had found himself in the past as they moved to the door.


    “You really should have warned him, you know. Not that it would have done any good,” Eito commented.


    “I guess everyone has to go through it eventually.” Arthur shrugged. “And he might get an achievement out of it.”


    “Yes, he just might. Although… Jumie, did they happen to mention how they are contacting your relatives? If they did, I think I missed it.”


    “No, they didn’t. Do you think I should catch them and check?”


    As it turned out, she didn’t need to. In a voice loud enough to cut through even the thickest, most enchanted stone, a crier helping an offworlder with a project got to work.


    “Capital city! With permission from the ruling council, I’m issuing a citywide announcement at the behest of Arthur Teamaster, of Coldbrook. And it’s good news! Eito Trainer and Jumie Freedancer cordially invite anyone who knows them to the Demon Council meeting chambers, the big one, for their joining ceremony.”


    The crier coughed a bit, clearing her voice, then came back to the task with a little more tremoring in her tone. Apparently, this much of an announcement took a bit out of her.


    “As much as we’d like to invite everyone, only people who actually know them should come for the ceremony itself. That said, if you want to set up a truly enormous party outside of the building that everyone can attend, there’s nothing we’d do to stop you.”


    “Oh, well, I guess that covers it.” Arthur shrunk a bit in embarrassment. “Doesn’t it?”


    “Yup,” Jumie deadpanned. “I think it just about does.”


    —


    An hour later, the room was transformed. Lily had incorporated as much Arthur-brand Earth-wedding elements as she could while still keeping the ceremony identifiable to Jumie as a Demon World event. There was a carpet laid down, even if it was circular. There were flowers, arches, and other pretty things, carried into place either by Karbo or Pomm. And on every edge of the room, there was food.


    Jumie herself had been carted off to parts unknown as soon as Ella, Itela, and the other women present knew what was happening. Apparently they wanted to prepare her for the event, and Arthur had no doubt the already-pretty lioness demon was going to come out looking entirely different once they were done with her. In the meantime, Milo, Minos, and Arthur were trying to make sure Eito was prepared as well.


    “This woman,” Milo said, “is much better than you.”


    “Agreed.” Eito smiled.


    “Not that you are all that bad, but we are all frankly confused how you pulled this off.” Minos nodded sagely and continued the trend. “It’s confusing.”


    “I don’t disagree,” Eito said, as if it was the kind of common knowledge anyone might learn just walking down the street. Arthur winced in sympathy, glad that this seemed to be less offensive and more normal to everyone involved than it seemed to be to him. “I’m pretty sure I beat out hundreds of people for this chance. Maybe thousands. It’s astounding.”


    Milo clapped his hands together. “Yes. And because of that, we have no idea what advice to give you here. If we understood how you had done it in the first place, we could probably do more. But…”


    “Milo is right. You’ve given us an impossible task here. There’s just no advice to give,” Minos said.


    Eito sighed. “I appreciate you trying, anyway.”


    Karbo sauntered up in that moment, saw the concern on everyone’s face, and let his own grin dropped as he became serious.


    “Is there a problem?” Karbo glanced around the room. “Missing bride? I thought that might happen. I can go look for her.”


    “No, it’s just…” Eito shook his head. “Arthur, you explain.”


    “Milo and Minos think that Jumie is too good for Eito.” Arthur carefully distanced himself from the messaging as much as he could without being obvious, just to be safe.


    “Well, yeah,” Karbo said. “Everyone knows that. That’s you and your weller, too.”


    “Oh, yeah, for sure.” Arthur suddenly realized why the talk wasn’t an insult. It was just true. “Anyway, that makes it hard to give him advice. Since nobody understands how it worked out in the first place.”


    “Oh, that’s easy. I’m surprised you guys didn’t figure this out,” Karbo boomed.


    Everyone present looked at him doubtfully, but Karbo’s confidence was ironclad. He really seemed to believe he knew the answer here.


    “Don’t keep us in suspense, then. What’s the advice?”


    “It’s easy.” Karbo balled up his enormous fists. “Sometimes, in fights, you don’t know what you are doing that’s working on the monster or beast. Right? You change stuff up the whole time, and suddenly, you stumble on some combination of things that works. Only you don’t know what part of it is doing the thing. Maybe it’s the punches, or the kicks, or the tempo, or something else. But you can’t tell just from the fight.”


    “Okay?” Arthur said. “Assuming that’s true, and you are the expert there, what’s that got to do with it?”


    “You just don’t change anything.” Karbo swept his hand out in a side-to-side motion in front of him, pausing suddenly when he reached the center point of his chest. “You found the thing that works, right? You don’t need to know what it is. Knowing what it is isn’t the point. You just need to win the fight. So you don’t change anything, you win, and everything’s okay.”


    Eito turned towards his friend, stunned. “That’s actually really good. How did you come up with that?”


    “I had to fight a giant lake once. It was alive, or possessed, or something.” Karbo nodded like this was a normal thing that happened all the time. “When you fight a lake, you learn a lot of things.”


    “I guess so. Good job, Karbo.” Minos clapped Karbo on the back. “That’s settled then. Eito, don’t change anything. Keep being who you are. That should work.”