The wedding - part 1

The days leading up the wedding left me feeling like one of the dolls they had given me just after "the decision" was made, to try and make me feel more "girlish." I had never been terribly interested in them, but the female cousins and other female relatives of my age that they called at that time to be my new playmates and to get me used to playing with the little girls instead of the little boys had promptly introduced me to the "joys" of playing dress up. Stripping the little cloth body of her clothing and dressing her again in some other stuffy-looking frilly little dress. Then putting them all together and pretending they were at tea, or some other event like that. It had bored me to tears, but at that point I was terrified of what the Council would do to me if I didn't act like all the other little girls, so I kept my mouth shut and played along.

The days, and weeks, really, before the wedding were just like that. It was an endless parade of dresses and other pieces of clothing that I had to try on. And endless parade of tailors to make adjustments, to try to figure out to hide my "lacking" chest and make me look beautiful for the big even. And endless parade of women, trying to figure out the best way to deal with my seemingly endless supply of hair that would make it look perfectly groomed, yet still show off my considerable Gift, as was only proper for a pureblood bride during her wedding. And endless parade of jewels, some gifts from Ferryk and his relatives, some handed down through the Family, some newly bought to complement me perfectly. ...And constant practicing, constant rehearsing of what I had to do, when, and to whom in order to not screw up the established ceremony for the joining of a royal family with one of the Seven Families.

The one blessing that I had was that the Family side of the agreement had control over all of my preparations, so I could exercise my right to Privacy whenever I so needed, and thus could avoid having my body seen by anyone. The humans had no such guarantee. Had they been in charge, they could have ordered the servants to strip me right then and there, and any complaints I had would be seen as hindering the preparations, nothing more. But my sisters and mother, who were in charge of my preparations, were aware of my fondness for my Privacy, if not my reasons for it, and thus I was able to dictate that the bottom layers of my clothing be set as early as possible, and come from my current clothing, so that I could easily avoid having to strip completely almost all of the time. That way, I managed to avoid having anyone realize the reality of my situation even through the endless parade of clothing.

I still hated it, and I think everyone around me realized it. I had never been fond of dressing up, something that I'm sure Mother and all of my sisters remembered quite vividly during that time. I was already in a bad mood from the wedding in general, not to mention the fact that Moros and I had not talked since we got in the fight after he found out and I still had no idea why he was so angry. The preparations, and the people who came with them, only served to worsen my mood.

As the day of the ceremony came closer and closer, and guests started to arrive from all over, my mood grew even worse, even though the major preparations involving me were all coming to an end. My dress was ready, and the finishing touches were being added. They had decided what jewels they wanted me to wear, how they wanted my hair done. I had gone over the rituals so many times I could recite every word I had to say and every move I had to make in my sleep. All that was left was the cleansing, which would happen the day before the ceremony itself, and then the day.

It was the people who bothered me. As the bride, and member of one of the Seven Families, I didn't have to present myself to all of the guests as they arrived and receive their blessings like Ferryk and the king, and even Father and Theran, did. But as the daughter of one of the Seven Families, I did have to show my face to every single one of the high ranked purebloods who showed up, especially the Council elders and their Families. I had briefly met most of them before when they occasionally came to the Carles Family residence on business and the entire Family ended up getting introduced, but this time I was the center of attention. I was the surprisingly strongly-Gifted daughter of the Carles Family who had become an Instructor and had then "snagged" the price with the near legendary Gift who she was teaching. Yes, I was quite interesting to most of them, and that bothered me more than anything else.

Words cannot describe the relief I felt come the day before the wedding, when I had to enter into the cleansing, and thus was able to shut myself off from all of the other people in the palace.

The cleansing is a ritual involved in all pureblood weddings, and certain other ceremonies as well, with Gifted participants, so the majority of pureblood weddings, really. Legend has it, the cleansing serves to clean one's soul from the taint that gets accumulated on it by opening oneself up to the world when using one's Gift. A person without the Gift would not accumulate this taint on his soul, but even so, the need for the cleansing was seen as a symbol of status, not a thing to be ashamed of.

To be completely accurate, the cleansing should occur in a natural pool of some sort, even when in the dead of the winter. To that effect, all of the main residences of the Seven Families have hot springs near them, though many have been formed over centuries of Gift use on the land surrounding them. Hot springs, so that the cleansing can be accomplished comfortably even in the winter. And, unsurprisingly enough, most of the natural hot springs in the area surrounding the city of Myr'a have been seized by the Council to rent out to purebloods needing a cleansing for a wedding, or some other ceremony in which the cleansing is required.

One of the concessions Father had made during the wedding negotiations was in regards to the need to have the ceremony somewhere near to a natural pool, or rather, two natural pools, where we could do a proper cleansing. Though Ferryk was not pureblood, Father had insisted that since he had a Gift, and a rather powerful one indeed, he had to undergo the cleansing as well, thus the need for two pools. The concession had been that we would use the baths in the palace instead of natural pools, and that the ceremony itself would be held in the palace. Because of that, Ferryk would undergo a cleansing as well, even though he was not pureblood.

The reality of the cleansing, as it was told to me by each of my sisters in turn, and later on Mother as well, is that it is not much more than a ritualized bath. There are certain things I had to do while in the bath, certain oils I had to rub into my skin... but otherwise, it was just a bath with a few special conditions, followed by a period of solitude to reflect on whatever I felt I needed to think about. And, most importantly, it was done completely alone, except for occasional guidance from a pureblood priest or priestess who had long since pledged his or her very soul to the gods.

I was not allowed to use my bath in my rooms. Actually, Father had a specialist scour the palace to find the baths that he thought would be most appropriate for the two of us. What the man came up with was I would fit in best in the bath in Ferryk's rooms, followed by my session of solitude in Ferryk's bedroom, and that he would do best in the king's private bath and then the king's sitting room. It was a somewhat unbalancing situation for both of us when we heard that news, but surprisingly enough, absolutely no one argued with the arrangement. So, that was where we went.

Apparently one of the most important requirements for the cleansing was that the person undergoing the cleansing not have ever been to the location where it happened before. That was part of the reason behind the specialist's choices, though I suspect there were other reasons as well. As such, that day was the first time I ever set foot in Ferryk's rooms, and I received quite a shock when I did.

I had been given all of my instructions and reminded of them just before it was to start. Then I was ordered to strip down to as little clothing as I would feel comfortable walking around the palace in, which was the same robe that I usually used to hide my body from Ferryk when he tried to break into my room, and then head for Ferryk's rooms. A young pureblood priestess, specially brought out of her usual post just for this occasion, met me at the entrance to Ferryk's rooms. She was silent, which I knew was part of her vows as a priestess, and I had long since been ordered to silence as well.

She opened the door to the rooms, indicating that I should follow her inward. Silently, the two of us moved through his rooms at a pace that I found almost uncomfortably quick. We stopped just before the door that separated his bedroom from his bath, and the priestess gestured for me to stop. She moved her hand over my chest quickly, and I felt the brief tingle of a spell of some sort, though none that I recognized. Then, she shoved me into the bath and shut the door behind me. The first step of the cleansing had begun.

This was the part that shocked me. For a few moments, I could do nothing but stand and stare, having momentarily forgotten everything I had been told to do during the cleansing. Ferryk's bath... was huge. The room was most likely bigger than the full dining hall, possibly the same size or a little smaller. The bath itself covered almost all of the far two-thirds of the room, and the entire room was filled with columns. For a moment, I could think of nothing but the fact that Ferryk really was a prince, to have such luxury in his private rooms, and to wonder what the king's bath must be like, if this was Ferryk's

The shock didn't last for long, though, and I started to go through the motions that had been drilled into my head. There were two large towels sitting just to the side of the entrance. I picked one up and wrapped it loosely around my body, my clothing still on. I then opened up my robe under the towel and wriggled out of it, the towel safely hiding the rest of my body from view. Once the robe was off, I tightened the towel around my body and folded up the robe, placing it where the towel had been before. My instructions had only been to disrobe and wrap the towel around my body, but the habits of so many years of hiding my body from any and all had prevailed, and I had taken those measures in the bath of the cleansing as well.

Now clad only in a towel, I stepped toward the bath. Once I reached the edge, I stepped into the water, towel still wrapped around my body. The near end of the bath was shallow, and the bottom sloped down gradually, so I proceeded into the water until it was up almost to my neck, when I saw the small bottle placed on the small ledge near the wall of the bath. That was my stopping point, and my signal to unwrap the towel from my body and duck my head under to get myself completely wet.

Towel in hand, I made my way over to the wall where the bottle sat waiting for me. I folded the towel up and placed it next to the bottle, and then took the bottle in hand. Inside was a ritual oil, smelling of spices. I poured some of the oil into my hands and started to rub it into my hair. I had to cover every bit of my considerable amount of hair, and I had been told that this part of the ritual was specifically meant to show pureblood women the occasional difficulties of living without servants, a lesson I could have done without, but that I had no choice of avoiding.

Once my hair was completely coated, I ducked down under the water again, rinsing most of the oil off but leaving my hair feeling surprisingly clean and smelling of spices. I then took the towel back in my hands and worked my way toward the shallow end of the bath again. There was another bottle placed at the edge not too far up, and that was my next destination.

Just as I was reaching the next bottle, I heard a noise that I shouldn't have been able to hear. A momentary splash, and a few more water noises, all from behind me, like someone else was in the bath with me. That was not supposed to happen, so the first thing I did was wrap the wet towel around my body and then whirl around as quickly as I could.

I just barely managed to catch a glimpse of a person hiding behind the nearest pillar rising up from the water. I growled deep in my throat, in frustration, and then set forth to catch the person. True, I was supposed to be in solitude for my cleansing, but I figured I couldn't get in that much trouble when it was the other person who had broken my solitude in the first place.

Angrily, I made another decision to break one of the rules of the cleansing. I decided that, rather than catch the person with my body, I would use my Gift. I was supposed to be avoiding all use of the Gift for the next full day, but the presence of someone where there should not have been anyone and the fear that they might have seen something before I put the towel back on that they shouldn't have seen were enough to push me to do something I would most likely later regret. So, without another thought, I twisted pure force into a rope and dragged the person out from behind the pillar.

The face that greeted me... was Ferryk's. He was completely naked. Embarrassed, I averted my eyes before noticing that the water mostly covered up his lower parts. True, I had the same parts myself, but there was something very much different about seeing someone else's.

"What in the name of the gods are you doing here!?" I growled when he smiled at me.

"Cleansing myself?"

"...Must you insist on making a mockery of a serious ritual?" I asked, sighing wearily. I realized almost immediately what his aim was - to see me naked. "We are not married yet, and if you continue to trample on that which is sacred for my people, you may just end up finding yourself not getting married tomorrow after all."

"They told me to be true to myself," he said. "So that was what I was doing. My deepest desire at the moment is to see how beautiful you look as you cleanse yourself and prepare yourself for the ceremony that will bind us together. So I was true to that desire, and here I am. What's wrong with that?"

"Everything!" I yelled. "You missed the point of the cleansing completely. The point is to be true to yourself in your thoughts, to open yourself up to things you might never have considered. Not to try and fulfill the wishes of the things that lie between your legs! How in the world are you supposed to be washing away the taint on your soul when you're too bleeding in rut to control yourself for a day!?"

He frowned at me, and I could swear his lower lip stuck out in a pout. That was the last straw for me, and I snapped, losing my temper. I took the rope of force that was still wrapped around him, and dragged him bodily to the door. Without pausing to think about what would happen when the priestess outside noticed that I was using my Gift, I threw the door open and pushed Ferryk through it, slamming the door shut behind him with a boom that echoed through the entire room. And, all of this I did without leaving my spot near the second bottle.

Still quite angry, I decided that whatever they decided to do when the priestess escorted Ferryk out of his rooms, wet and naked, I would find out eventually. They might decide to call the wedding off, though I doubted that would be quite enough of an offense to warrant that. They might just escort him back to the king's rooms and make him continue with his own cleansing. Whatever the result, the only thing I needed to think about was continuing with my own cleansing, and hoping that my actions just a little earlier hadn't screwed things up too much.

And with that, I continued with the cleansing, rubbing my body down with oil from the second bottle, soaking, and eventually exiting the bath to dry myself with the second towel and clothe myself once more in my discarded robe. I then exited the bath and was led by the priestess to sit on Ferryk's bed and just think. I spent the rest of the day like that, sitting on Ferryk's bed, surrounded by his own unique scent and the smell of the oils I had used during the cleansing, and thinking about everything... and nothing.