“When I was single I had biscuit an' pie

Now that I am married an' it's root hog or die

Lord, I wish I was a single girl again

Lord, I wish I was a single girl again” Barbra Allen sang as Sarya played and Orenda wondered how safe it was to make that kind of noise.

The horses, Mr & Mrs Clops had been staked in the clearing where they now all sat, surrounded again by trees, basking in the glow of the fire they had lit. Barbra Allen had poured some sort of orange powder into a bowl, and was mashing it up with her hands as she sang, and Orenda preyed that whatever it was it turned out to be better than the pemmican, which she would not have classified as food even by the most generous definition. Anilla was enraptured by the music, listening attentively, and she kept bringing up her hands as if to clap, but as the tempo was rather slow, meant to relax and not engage, she found that she could not, or that it wouldn’t be warranted, and decided against it each time.

Bella held herself tightly and stared up at the night sky. She was obsessed with the sky, watching the moons pass overhead, and Orenda’s heart broke for her.

“When I was single, the work I can choose

Now, I am married an' my toes are stickin' thru

Lord, I wish I was a single girl again

Lord, I wish I was a single girl again” Barbra Allen sang as she patted out little cakes and laid them upon a small tin dish.

Orenda thought this was a strange song for them to play together, as she was nearly certain that neither of them were single, from the way they interacted. But she thought of Toli and how he spoke of marriage as a confining, terrible thing, and wondered if that was the case for all Urillians. Orenda had never given much thought to marriage, but now she wondered if Bella and Gareth were married. She remembered that Gareth had introduced Draco as ‘Impy’s husband’ and she thought that was, perhaps, the only married couple she knew. No one who had spoken of her parents had ever spoken of a marriage.

That would have reflected poorly on her, had that been known back at the academy. Proper people didn’t have children without being married. It was difficult to bear children, and part of the point of a marriage was to create an environment where you would have ample time to try. Orenda wondered what it would have been like, had Tolith married Shelly. They would have wanted an heir. Would it have been as distant and stuck up as Shelly? Would it have been as adventurous and optimistic as Toli? Orenda wasn’t sure if children took personality traits from their parents. If Sokomaur was her mother, all Orenda really knew about her was that she liked to play pranks on people, and that she was unable to hurt a child. The latter should be a basic aspect of sentience, but apparently was not, and Orenda had never been much of a jokester. She wondered if she took after her mother at all. Her father seemed to have been stubborn and foolish, and she did not consider herself to be either of those things- but she was marching toward the unknown to stare death in the face with a scholar’s body and a broken staff. So she couldn’t, in good conscious, deny those traits outright.

“When I was single, it was silk an' satin

Now, I am married an' it's calico and cotton

Lord, I wish I was a single girl again

Lord, I wish I was a single girl again “ Barbry sang, and sat the little tin with the patty-cakes stuck to it up towards the fire to cook.

“What a depressing song,” Gareth said as he and Falsie emerged from the woods and plopped down by the fire.

“Coast is clear as far as we can see,” Falsie added.

“It’s only depressin’ ifin you find yerself in that situation,” Sarya said. “I reckon plenty of folks find that married life suites them.”

“What about you?” Anilla asked, “We don’t really have marriage where I’m from, not like you guys do. We don’t really pair bond for life. Are you married?”

“No,” Barbry Allen said, “That ain’t… nobody can’t get married like that. Humans can’t get married, not to other humans but sure not to elves. Human marriages ain’t recognized.”

“In the eyes of the law,” Sarya said, “In the eyes of Thesis it’s a different story. If ya love is strong enough ya don’t need no lord or lady or queen or empress or even priest to agree with ya. Ya know what yer about.”

“I couldn’t get married even if it were legal,” Gareth said, “No one would have me.”

Bella laughed and finally looked away from the sky to sit next to him.

“I don’t like the idea,” Orenda said, “Not as it was presented to me. Being chained to another person for all eternity.”

“Not everyone is meant for it,” Falsie agreed, “People say that stuff, stuff like, ‘Well you just haven’t met the right person’ or ‘It’ll happen eventually’. But it doesn’t have to. There’s too much pressure, all the time, too much of people just not minding their damn business. Not everyone wants to find their other half, because not everyone is half of something. Some people are whole on their own.”

“He’s never dated,” Gareth said, “He’s stubborn.”

“I don’t think I should have to,” Falsie said, “I don’t know why people think that’s something you have to do. It should be an opt-in situation, not an opt-out situation.”

“Then don’t,” Gareth said, “I’m not saying you have to, I was telling Orenda that you didn’t. Perhaps that’s true. Perhaps some people just aren’t romantic, and others are excessively so. Together you and Xac would make one average person.”

“I think it’s dangerous, too,” Anilla said, “Or like… the entire concept is just kind of weird to me? I had never heard about it before, and when I learned what the whole thing was it does sound kind of strange? But I suppose all rituals sound strange if you have to explain them to someone. But as I understand it, you gather everyone you know and throw a big party, with a huge cake, a feast, and a beautiful dress- then you proclaim to god and everyone you know, even the children, that you’re going to stay in love with this person forever? No one can know that. And if you break that vow the other person gets half of everything you own? And everyone in the room knows that you’re going to have sex that night, and I feel like that’s a little uncomfortable, given how taboo that topic is for Urillians.”

“That’s about right,” Gareth said.

“Yeah, got it in one,” Barbra Allen said and began to pry the patty cakes from the tin to pass around the group.

“Ugh,” Gareth made a face, “First pemmican and now Johnny Cakes. Oh Urillian mainland how I have not missed your cuisine in the slightest.”

He pulled his mask up enough to take a bite, and Sarya must have caught a glimpse of the scar where it split his cheek, because she asked softly and with genuine concern, “What happened to your face?”

Gareth lowered the mask and chewed slowly as a hush fell over the group.

He finally swallowed and spoke.

“I once had a very bad day,” he said as if he were choosing each word carefully, “a very bad day. It would be the worst day of my life, if not for the one good thing that came out of it. Young lady, I want you to imagine that you had a bad day, a day that was inconceivably horrible- and whatever you are imagining, it will not be as bad as the day I had. Now imagine that day left you physically scarred so badly that every time you saw yourself, you had to think about that terrible day. And imagine every single time you met any new person, the first thing they did, the very first thing they did, almost as if it were some sort of instinctual urge- was to ask you to tell them all about the terrible day. Every. Single. Person. ‘What happened to your face?’ ‘What happened to your face?’ Day in and day out. There would come a time when it drove you mad. There comes a point when you decide that you don’t owe anyone a story, when you decide that they don’t get to know what happened to your face.”

He pulled up the mask enough to get to his mouth, took another bite, slid it down and continued.

“There comes a point where you would rather hear the question, ‘Why won’t you show your face?’ Because at least that’s different from, ‘What happened to your face?’ And do you know what the real kicker is? You know why people do it. You know what it feels like to feel entitled to that story. You know what it feels like to hear yourself ask, ‘What happened to your face?’ even though you know how badly it hurts- because in that moment at least it’s someone else’s pain, and if they saw you, they would know that there was something about you, about both of you that…”

He pulled up the mask a little, stuck the last piece of the cake into his mouth and lowered it.

“Nothing happened to my face,” he said, “This is what it looks like. This is what I look like. I have no face.”

“Oh,” she said, “I thought you got in a fight or somethin- or maybe you was hidin from the law.”

“I am hiding from the law,” Gareth said.

“Seems like that’d be a quicker explanation then,” She said. “Here, I’ll sing you a song. What do you want to hear?”

“I don’t think that’s wise,” Gareth argued. “Someone could hear it. We have to be aware of that, of what our presence means. We have to be silent and invisible.”

“I’ll sing you a lullaby then,” She said, “And you can drift off to your grumpy old sleep.” She pulled the bow across the strings and began to sing a song that had to be meant for children.

“Little baby bunting,

Daddy’s gone a hunting,

Gone to get a rabbit skin,

To wrap a baby bunting in.”