[The alarm went off, it was 6 AM. Jason was ready to get to work around the farm. He had 39 starting actions]

[Tess’s Almanac: 65th day of Fall! 26 days until the Fall Festival. Big storm today, folks! Seriously, stay inside if at all possible!]

Jason shivered, as was his wont for that fall, as he climbed out of bed. A distant boom rumbled across the ground, and he walked up to the window and gazed out at a darkening horizon. Clouds already covered much of the sky, and were moving rapidly even as he watched. A cold wind rippled across the prairie, making what little grass remained wave furiously. He shuddered, then changed quickly and made his way downstairs.

He passed the kitchen by, then made his way quickly out into the yard. The wind was freezing, and a bit of cold mist was already coming down. It stung his face, and he heard Lady nickering in fear inside the stable. He ran quickly to comfort her, and poured her some oats in her small trough inside the stall. He wasn’t about to let her outside in whatever was coming, that was for sure. As he finished, he turned toward his field, where the smoking torches had nearly ran dry. The storm was nearly there, arriving in less than an hour certainly, and he tried to measure how many Juun bugs were around. At a glance, there certainly didn’t seem to be many flying through the air, which made him quite tempted to just skip the spray treatment for the day.

“Jason!” Tess’s voice rang out, and he turned as she came riding up into the drive. She swung off Angus as she came up, and handed him the reigns. “You’ll want to get inside, and quickly. This storm is supposed to be nasty. I’ve gotten a few letters from towns where it’s already hit, and we need to get in.”

Jason inclined his head. He quickly stabled Angus with Lady, closed up the stable tightly, and jogged after Tess up and into the house. They closed the door behind them, even as the wind began to pick up even more. The old house seemed to groan under the impact, and Jason shuddered.

“Well, want some breakfast?” He asked. “I haven’t eaten yet, and-”

His voice was drowned out by a thunderous crash, and he winced. Running to a window, he saw rain coming down in sheets. Grass was flattened to the ground, and he groaned as he saw his sorghum, at least what was left, being turned into a green carpet that covered the eighty-acre field.

“Oh, come on.” He scowled at the storm. “That yield was going to be half-decent! At least I think it was going to be. It was on track to… Oh, nevermind.”

He scowled and marched into the kitchen, where he ordered up a plate of pancakes topped with bacon and sausage. Tess eyed the dish warily as she sat down, but she ultimately said nothing, and simply ate a simple meal of spinach and eggs. When they both finished, Jason sighed and stared out the window.

“Well… Thanks for coming to warn me.” He sighed. “I probably would have been out in that when it hit.”

“That’s kinda what I figured.” Tess flashed a small smile. “It blew up out of nowhere, which is why I haven’t been warning about it. There’s some speculation that a volcanic eruption up in the northern mountains may have triggered it, but I don’t know enough about that sort of thing to really comment one way or another.”

Jason just shrugged, then flashed another small smile at her. “Well, what do you think we should do today?”

“I was hoping we could discuss a few more wedding plans?” Tess posited. “Just a few. I’ve been getting together a few more specifics, and I think we can finally start moving forward on some things.”

“Sounds wonderful to me!” Jason grinned as they finished eating. “Let’s use my office upstairs. It’s been awhile since I really gave it any good use, and I’d like to start incorporating it a bit more.”

“You just want to turn it into your man-cave once we get married.” Tess raised an eyebrow.

“A study, not a man-cave.” Jason corrected. “But yes!”

“As long as I can turn the basement into a miniature dungeon for the kids, I’m totally okay with that.” Tess smiled as they made their way up the stairs.

The old farmhouse was large, and consisted of far more rooms than Jason had really been able to make use of on his own. One of those rooms that had barely seen more than a glance since he moved in was the small office-library. As Jason cracked open the door, dust came billowing out, and he coughed loudly.

The room was small, with every single wall covered in lines of bookshelves. All the books, or at least all of them that Jason had really spent any time looking over, were quite horrid, and consisted of things like monster care, meeting conditions to bring more monsters to your land, and other such things. He rather wanted to clear all the books out as soon as he could, but as with most of the rest of the housework, it had fallen to the wayside. He quickly walked around the desk and sat down in the old chair, while Tess sat down just across from him. She began to spread papers across the wooden surface, and Jason flashed a small smile. It felt nice to be sitting in his own office, in his own house, with a woman who would soon be his wife. As he looked down at the papers, though, his smile faded. “Some things” seemed to have a very different meaning for the two of them.

“What is all of this?” Jason frowned as he looked from page to page.

“Wedding plans.” Tess looked up at him as if he had sprouted a few extra limbs. “What does it look like?”

“There are detailed maps of the town, monster spawn rates in the area…” Jason flicked through the papers. “And… Something called wedding colors?”

“Yes!” Tess grinned. “Alright, let’s start with the most important part, since you already brought it up. What do you think our colors should be?”

Jason blinked a few times. “Is there a certain number of them I’m supposed to be guessing?”

Tess scowled at him. “Have you never been to a wedding before?”

“Let’s just say that it’s been awhile, and I’m a guy.” Jason shrugged. “I was more concerned with the cake than with the ceremony.”

“That’s fair.” Tess sighed. “This is going to take a lot of work. Alright. Weddings have colors. Typically two, and everyone does their best to coordinate the decorations accordingly. I was thinking blood-red and corn-gold.”

“I’m no expert, but even I know that those colors clash horribly with each other.” Jason shook his head.

“Alright… Slime-green and sorghum-red.”

Jason only raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“Dragon-blue and… Wheat-yellow?”

“We don’t have to have things that match our various professions.” Jason shook his head, then frowned. “That said, I do kinda like yellow and blue.”

“Then we’ll lock it in!” Tess grinned, grabbed a sheet of paper, and started scribbling on it. “And… That affects the flowers and arrangements. We’ll want sunflowers, of course, and… Daisies are yellow, right? And daffodils. We’ll want some sprigs of wheat, but you can grow all of that out here on your farm. For the blue, I’m thinking lilies, maybe some orchids, and…”

Jason lost focus for a few moments as she spoke about all the different flowers. One of the pieces of paper was a long list of assorted flowers and their colors, as well as where they could be found. He largely agreed to most of what she wanted to do, though he did nix an expedition to a cave in the northern wastes to fight a dragon and obtain a rare flower that it dropped. When they had chosen the flowers, Tess launched into questions about the arrangements of the flowers, how many flowers per table, in each bouquet, and other such things. That took the better part of half an hour, and when she she finished, she wiped her brow.

“Whew! You know, if someone made a career out of supply and arranging flowers for weddings, they could make a fortune.”

Jason snorted. “Come on. That’s such a specific venue, no one would be able to make a full living off of it.”

“I’d pay them.” Tess answered, then turned to the next matter of business. “Alright. Next, we need to figure out food. Are we wanting a full buffet in conjunction with the Spring Festival, or do we want to provide snacks earlier in the day to hold people over? That also ties into whether we want an early-morning wedding, or a later wedding.”

“What about a mid-day wedding?” Jason asked. “Set up in the morning, wedding right after lunch, and then the reception and the festival pretty much just go together.”

“Perfect!” Tess grinned. “Alright, that answers a lot of my questions… I mean, I’ll have more, but I’m going to have to go back to the drawing board with some of this… Ooh! One more question. Where are we going to have the wedding? We could either do it out in the town square, but then we might have to worry about the weather, or we could do it in the old General Store. Paulina still owns it, and she told me that we could convert it into a wedding chapel for the day. She’s just been using it as a warehouse, you know, and we could probably make it beautiful, but what do you think?”

“Inside.” Jason answered, then shrugged and nodded at the door. “I do not want to get married in a storm if one happens to blow up. Tornados and weddings do not mix.”

“That’s fair. And… That answers a few more questions for me…” Tess continued to scribble on the paper just about as fast as he pen could move. Jason watched her, a smile growing across his face. How lovely she was. He couldn’t imagine anyone else sitting across him, making plans for their wedding. It was strange, as he never would have pictured himself with anyone like Tess before meeting her, but now that they had met, he just couldn’t imagine life without her.

She didn’t speak again for several minutes as she made her notes, and Jason started fidgeting with the desk drawers. Suddenly, a thought struck him, and he pulled open the bottom drawer, where a handful of wills had been stored. He slowly picked them up, flipping through the different names, and sighing deeply as he tried to ponder the mystery of it all.

The year before, when he had been going through the room with Tess, he had discovered a large pile of wills that had been left in the desk by his uncle. To his immense surprise, each one of them was identical to the one that had informed him that he was the owner of the farm, with one distinct exception. Every single one of them had a different name, listing different members of his family. There was well over a dozen, listing both of his parents, an assortment of his aunts and uncles, and several of his siblings. About the only people in his family who weren’t mentioned were his eldest siblings, along with a handful of his really crazy aunts and uncles. He slowly laid them out on the desk and whistled softly, trying to take it all in.

“You haven’t destroyed those yet?” Tess looked up at him.

“Why would I?” Jason asked.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Tess shrugged. “Because when your family gets into town, if they happen to find them, there could be problems. Legal problems. You could wind up losing the farm. I mean, if that happens, we’ll make it work out together, but I’d rather not start out our marriage as homeless bums.”

“That’s fair.” Jason sighed, then shrugged and put the wills away once again. “Tell you what. Let me take them to Hank, and if he gives me the go-ahead, I’ll destroy them. Does that work?”

Tess just rolled her eyes. “You’ve been planning on taking those wills to Hank for the last six months. You’re never going to get around to it.”

“Yes I will!” Jason protested. “I’ve just been busy. The farm hasn’t exactly been running as smooth as silk, if you haven’t noticed.”

“That’s fair enough.” Tess sighed and shrugged. “Alright, but it makes me nervous. All those documents have been signed and notarized. Each and every name on those wills has a legal right to this farm.”

“No.” Jason pointed at the wording. “Each of these documents leaves everything to the named individual. By the very definition of the word, all the land and equipment would go to exactly one person. The fight would be over who exactly got it.”

“If I had to make a guess, based on similar cases I’ve heard about with warriors willing their fortunes to multiple relatives, the courts would probably just divide it all up between everyone named.” Tess tapped the documents. “Now, since a lot of this can’t be physically divided up, it would wind up working out that you stayed as the landlord, and then paid a portion of the profits to everyone involved.”

“That sounds terrible.” Jason muttered. “I think I’d just sell the farm at that point and start over.”

“I think I’d join you in that decision.” Tess chuckled, then nodded at the desk. “Do you mind if I look at those?”

“Be my guest.” Jason pulled them back out and passed them across the table. “If you have any insites, I’d love to hear them.”

Tess looked over the wills, thumbing between them for a long while, then shrugged and handed them back.

“I’ve got nothing. They’re all written on Hank’s legal paper, they all look like legal documents. Makes no sense.”

“Agreed.” Jason sighed deeply, then shrugged. “Well, in any event, they’re less important than our wedding.”

“Indeed!” Tess squealed, then passed something else across the desk to him. “Alright, so if we’re having the wedding in the warehouse, we’re going to need to get seating set up. Should we have chairs or pews? Chairs will be less expensive, but pews look classier.”

“If we’re going to do this, it’s all or nothing, right?” Jason raised an eyebrow.

Tess looked up at him with soft eyes, and sighed deeply.

“Have I said that I love you?”

“Many times, but I could stand to hear it again.”

At that, Tess laughed and looked down at the papers. “Uh, huh. Alright, let’s get these details hammered out. What I’m thinking is…”

Outside the house, rain continued to hammer down, but inside, within that small office, all was right in the world. Jason sighed deeply, drinking it all in. He was safe. He was at home.

He was at peace.