[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: 91st day of Fall! It’s the day of the Fall Festival. The weather is fresh and cool, but no wind, and the sun should be shining brightly today! Come out early to help set up for the festival, and make sure you’re in the mood for pumpkin pies!]

Jason rolled out of his bed, warmer than perhaps any other morning of that fall. His long johns were still keeping him quite warm, and the air temperature was surprisingly less than frigid. He quickly dressed in a town tunic, then bolted down the stairs. He only paused for a quick breakfast in the kitchen before putting on his boots and bolting out through the front door. He had Lady fed and watered within just a few moments, then mounted up and rode off toward Summer Shandy.

The reason for his haste was twofold. First, he was simply excited to see Tess. He hadn’t seen her in person since he had talked to Daniel almost a week earlier, and wanted to see if she had spoken to her bother about her parents. Secondly, Tess had asked him to come in early to discuss wedding plans with Constable Hank, and he was eager to get that meeting over and done with. He didn’t mind Constable Hank in the slightest, but meeting with him wasn’t always the most pleasant thing in the world.

When he rode up into the town square, Tess was already waiting for him. She wore light armor instead of her standard combat gear, and grinned at him as he came riding up to Hank’s office. As he dismounted, she caught hold of him and gave him a kiss, and he couldn’t keep a smile from his face.

“Morning!” She beamed at him. “It’s been… Awhile.”

“I know.” He grimaced. “In fairness, that hasn’t been my fault.”

“I know, I know. On the bright side, I almost have all the paperwork and meetings squared away for the Guild, which means that my schedule should be opening up quite a great deal here within the next few weeks.” Tess started walking toward Hank’s office. “Now let’s get this out of the way, because that will square away quite a lot of other things.”

Jason nodded, and a few moments, later, they walked into Constable Hank’s building. It was a jail/office, with several cells built into the walls just behind his desk. Nearly all the cells were filled with cobwebs, as the last person that they had really held for any length of time had been Tess herself. Constable Hank wasn’t exactly the type of person to do a great deal of arresting, even if there was due cause for it.

Hank himself sat behind his desk, looking down at some paperwork. He looked up and smiled broadly, and Tess and Jason sat down across him from him.

“Welcome, you two lovebirds!” Hank clapped his hands. “You know, if you ask me, I really ought to be getting a bit of credit for this here marriage. I was the one who first sent Jason over to Tess’s Guild Hall, if you’ll both remember.”

“Yeah, and I nearly chopped his head off for it.” Tess growled softly at him. “You knew better.”

Constable Hank just shrugged. “Well, let’s just be glad we made it here, eh? Now, Tess, you filled out all the paperwork I asked you to do, so let’s just run through it all. I’ve looked over it a bit, but I do have a few questions.”

Tess nodded, and winced slightly. Constable Hank started running his finger down the paperwork. “You have the application for the marriage license filed, so that’s good. You have permission to use the venue, good. You have… You seem to have everything in order, except for the fact that you don’t have me listed as the officiant.”

“Ahh… Hank?” Tess coughed slightly. “Do you remember the last time you officiated a wedding?”

Hank’s face went slightly blank. “That would have been the Olerson’s wedding?”

“Yes.” Tess nodded slowly. “That was five years ago, Hank. There have been dozens of other marriages since then, and every single one of them has gone to another town because they remember that whole debacle.”

“What debacle?” Hank slammed his hand down onto the desk. “I did a great job!”

“The fact that you think so is a big part of the problem.” Tess sighed. “You… Ahh… Helped yourself to a bit of the refreshment before the wedding started, and could hardly speak a single line that wasn’t slurred beyond recognition. You tried to take the rings for yourself, you tried to kiss the bride, and I don’t even want to talk about the exit. Those are just the things I can remember offhandedly. Not to mention all the jokes you kept cracking. Not appropriate, Hank, and you’ll be doing that whether you’re sober or not.”

Hank scowled. “Won’t you give me another chance.”

“I only plan on getting married once in my life, and I don’t really want to risk my perfect day on the roll of a dice.” Tess snapped.

Hank sighed and kicked at the ground. “I… I suppose… I mean…”

Jason felt a bit of a twinge in his heart, and he glanced at Tess. “Isn’t there any way we could allow it?”

Tess’s face turned red, and not with embarrassment. “Jason, I thought we talked about this.”

“What if we take his Constable badge, put it on an anvil, and have your brother hold a hammer above it?” Jason suggested. “If he slips up during the ceremony, Daniel smashes it into slivers.”

Hank’s face turned rather white. “You wouldn’t dare. That badge… Do you know how much they cost to buy from the Constable’s Guild?”

“A whole lot more than usual, given that I doubt you’ve filed any of their paperwork for the last ten years of your life.” Tess nodded slowly, a gleam coming into her eye. “Alright, Hank, that’s your deal. You can officiate, but Daniel gets to smash your badge if mess up.”

“And he’s got a strong arm.” Jason nodded. “I don’t know if you’ve heard the story, but he harvested my entire eighty acres in a single swing of his scythe.”

“Trust me, everyone has heard that story.” Hank muttered, then shrugged and nodded. “Oh, alright. You’ve got yourself a deal.”

“Wonderful.” Tess flashed a smile. “Now, I think that concludes everything. If you can get all of the proper paperwork filed, we can-”

“Actually, I have one other thing.” Jason spoke up. He reached into his inventory and pulled out the stack of wills. He had grabbed them from his desk several days earlier, when the meeting had first been placed on the books. “I was hoping you could tell me a bit about these.”

Hank took the stack of wills and started thumbing through them. As he did so, his face turned even whiter than at the mention of smashing his badge.

“Ah! He… Ahh… Hmm.” Hank muttered a few times under his breath. “These were… Ahh… Supposed to have been destroyed.”

“Indeed?” Jason raised his eyebrows. “You think you can explain them, then?”

Hank stared at them for a moment, then rose and started for the door. “You know what? We have a lot of work to get done, and I really think it would be prudent to-”

Tess drew her sword and threw it at the door. The blade flashed through the curve of the elegant door handle and pinned the structure shut. Hank froze, and Jason rose.

“Hank, I’m not trying to pin you to the wall or anything. I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on. There’s so much about my uncle that I don’t understand, and…” He shrugged. “I just want to get to the bottom of everything.”

Hank sighed, then slowly turned and started walking back to his desk. “That’s Constable Hank to you.” He muttered, then dropped into his chair. He picked up the wills and started thumbing through them, then shrugged. “How much did you know about your uncle?”

“Almost nothing.” Jason shook his head. “Everyone said he was crazy, and then all of a sudden, I find out that he’s dead and left everything to me. I’ve heard that he was married, but his wife left at some point before he died, but that’s it.”

Hank nodded slowly. “He was unusual, that’s for sure. Kept to himself. I’ve been in Summer Shandy for fifteen years now, and he had been an established member of the community since before my time. No one knew when he’d gotten there, only that they couldn’t wait for him to leave.” Hank drummed his fingers on the desk. “I’d serve him eviction notices from time to time. He paid his taxes and all, but the place was such an eyesore that he really needed to have been cleared out. He just ignored me, though, and I wasn’t about to go marching into that filthy place to pry him out.”

“Hank, you’re stalling.” Tess prodded him.

“Oh, you be quiet.” Hank snapped, then sighed. “Anyway, after his wife left him, he started to get real sickly. Started to look more like he was dying than he already had. He put together all these wills, said that they were everyone whose names he could remember. He told me…”

Hank started to shift a bit in his seat, and he again looked longingly at the door. Tess started to rise from her seat, and he gulped.

“He told me to notarize them all, and then to do research on who I thought was the most capable from among his relatives to handle the farm. Once I was done, I would send the rest back to him. I assumed that he would just destroy them, but it doesn’t look like that was the case.”

Jason felt a momentary flash of pride. “You mean… Out of all my relatives, I was the one you deemed most worthy to handle his farm?”

Hank’s already-guilty face became even more pained, and Tess scowled.

“The will with his name was on the top of the pile, wasn’t it?”

“I am a very busy man.” Hank scowled. “I don’t have time to run up to Illumitir on the whims of madmen! I picked Jason’s name, sent the other wills back to him, and a month later, he was dead. End of the story.”

Jason’s pride deflated. His name had been on the top of the pile? That had been how he got the farm? He sank back into his chair and sighed deeply, and Hank seemed to smile in pity at him.

“I know that comes as a bit of a shock to hear, but-”

“Hank?” Tess slowly rose. “Allow me to reiterate our threat. If you officiate at our wedding, and make even the smallest mistake, I will have Daniel smash your desk along with your badge.”

Hank gulped again, then nodded. “Jason, my boy? Since the truth is out now and all, would you mind just destroying those other wills? In the strictest read of the law, I’m technically not supposed to notarize multiple wills for the same person without destroying the old ones first, and… I mean…” He laughed painfully. “That just wouldn’t look good.”

Jason didn’t say a word, but rose and walked to the door. Tess did the same, pulled the sword out from the door handle, and a moment later, they were out in the fresh fall air once more.

The moment the door came shut, both of them broke into grins. Seeing Hank uncomfortable was always a bit of a pleasure, as he took a rather inordinate amount of it when seeing others uncomfortable. Still, though, Jason had to admit that he was a bit thrown off by the revelation about the wills. Up until that point, he had always assumed that someone had seen something in him. Now, to find out that it was just sheer chance that had brought him to Summer Shandy… In a lot of ways, it hurt. It shouldn’t have hurt, but it did.

The rest of that night went by in what seemed like a blur. Tables were set out, a proper feast was piled high across them, and everyone came into town to dance the night away. Jason did his best to keep his mind focused on the party and having fun with Tess, but he just couldn’t quite commit to it. As the sun set, the band played, and pumpkin carving contests began, he sat back next to the Guild Hall and just watched it all.

“You okay?” Tess whispered, sliding up to him. “You just look off.”

“I know.” Jason sighed and gestured at everything. “It’s just… I don’t know. To think that I nearly missed all of this… To think that a simple shuffle of papers could have resulted in me staying back in Illumitir, trying to carve out a living among those crowded streets, where everyone just views everyone else as a chance for profit… I don’t know.”

“Well, you’re here now.” Tess whispered. “Let’s not dwell on the what-ifs. Let’s focus on the now. Come dance with me.”

Jason blinked a tear out of his eye, then nodded. He knew it was silly to be sad about the fact that he almost missed something, and yet, there it was. In so many ways, that simple fact made it feel as though his life as it stood was hanging by a thread, as if he could loose it all with the snip of a pair of sheers.

As he and Tess whirled about the cobblestones, he sighed deeply, and allowed himself to become lost in the music. He was home, and he wasn’t going anywhere. In the end, that was the important part. He just had to convince himself of that fact.