Archive-Name: estenar-trip-13.log
	
	_Lady Bright... Lady Bright... Lady Bright..._
	Kevlan paced feverishly on the Sharr house's front porch, unable
to sit or stand still. Twilight was falling across the farmstead, but
to Singers' eyes, it was still as clear as day -- only softer, with the lines
of vehicles and trees gentled and blurred by the setting of Andurin.
The sky overhead was beginning to deepen into the kind of fathomless, 
cloudless blue that Kevlan could remember seeing on only the finest of summer 
nights; one or two stars were already visible, glittering faintly against the 
palette of hues the sunset splashed across the horizon.
	Sunset hues -- as well as innumerable others -- seemed splashed all
across the Sharr land, with the number of gaily clad figures that swarmed
in merry waves around the house. Children, young men and women, and older
folk all alike sported finery of every imaginable color, enough to make
Kevlan ruefully pleased he hadn't forgotten his protective lenses. The
men were just as brightly garbed as the women, though in some cases -- like
Kevlan's brother Danyel, whose silken green tunic, dark grey velvet breeches, 
and pale grey suede boots seemed tailored to look as naturally a part of
him as his long dark hair -- the most eye-catching individuals were the
ones who went for understatement. But just about everyone had chosen
light and airy styles appropriate for a breezy, warm summer night; everywhere
Kevlan looked, he saw more figures that looked like mobile flowers against
the deepening night.
	Real flowers, too, were everywhere. Most of the guests had already
occupied themselves in stringing fragant garlands and wreaths over each
other and every tree with sufficiently low branches, and the air was rich
with floral scents. Kevlan couldn't help but be reminded of his and
Bernadette's mishap in the forest, but these, at least, were prosaic
flowers, meant to entertain rather than overwhelm the senses. A lot of the 
guests, too, were happily stringing up lanterns in the trees, tiny lanterns 
that from a distance gave off the impression of fireflies -- or stars -- 
glowing out from the leaves. And there was music, too, random flurries of
notes or voices occasionally wafting up from various points off in the
distance.
	Kevlan could pick out individual voices, and most of the individual
scents of flowers and of cooking dishes from the kitchen. Relievedly, no
one was in the front of the house -- everything was happening around back --
so Kevlan could pace in relative peace. The trouble with Singer hearing,
though, was that he could almost hear his own pulse hammering nervously
in his chest. Nervous thoughts chased themselves around and around in
his head: was this all going to go well? That it _was_ happening he found
to be a profound relief, though a small nervous part of him kept agitatedly
worrying that somehow Bernadette would mysteriously disappear right before
he spoke the words that would provide the answer to the pledging they'd
made to one another, months and months at this point, the answer he'd been
fretting for every second since then... at least when he wasn't scared
silly that Berni wasn't going to leave him again....
	_She ain't goin' nowhere,_ he reminded himself firmly. _We're
gittin' wedded, right here, right now..._
	And as if aware of his son's need for a confirmation, Orynn Sharr
appeared at the front door, a smile lighting his rugged features as he
found his youngest son.
	"C'mon, boy," his father rumbled. "It's time."

	Music: a single flute, silvery and pure of tone, its first few
notes coinciding with the first emerging stars of the evening.
	The gathered guests, settled now in a loose ring around a small
rise, stopped their chatter and subsided into a watchful, anticipatory
hush. Eyes turned up towards the tiny slope, where a rocky jut had been
decorated with the inevitable flowers, and where a pair of the small
lanterns hung on trees to either side; most of the light, though, came from
Lareen. The small, green-gold moon had begun to creep up over the eastern
horizon, as the last threads of sunlight vanished in the west.
	Bernadette stood waiting to one side, clad at last in her wedding 
finery, and feeling strangely light and airy in the frothy gown; it felt as if 
the slightest breeze would stir it off her. She was proud of the gown -- she
knew it suited her, and it also seemed to meet with the approval of Kevlan's
family and the guests, with its white-silver sheen that Fanna had dubbed
"starlight color". Quite fitting for a new bride, all the Sharrs save Kevlan
had told her, and Bernadette fervently hoped so. At least, she thought 
anxiously, it went with the flowers that Fanna had insisted she wear in her 
hair -- the same flowers that'd given her and Kevlan such bedevilment in the 
woods. Unsurprisingly, Fanna had dubbed these starblossoms. Whether this was
their actual name or something the child had dreamed up -- or whether the
two were not, after all, the same thing -- was something Bernadette hadn't
yet had the chance to figure out.
	But Orynn Sharr beside her seemed to approve, at least. He was clad
in the same clothes _he_ had worn some thirty years ago when he'd wedded
his wife, a white undertunic of simple cut but good linen, and a snug-fitting
vest of a rich mahogany that very likely once set off the shade of his hair,
before it had started greying. He smiled gruffly down at her, with a sort of 
fatherly pride that tugged at Bernadette's heart. Her own father wouldn't look 
at her like that...
	_Stop that_, she ordered herself firmly. _It's time for your wedding,
and you're not going to disappoint everyone by looking unhappy!_
	To give herself confidence, she glanced across the gathering to
where Kevlan was just now arriving, Aunt Shilda as the eldest female in
the family at his side. And the sight of Kevlan stopped her cold, in wonder.
	_He_ was clad from head to toe in black: a short black jacket
that flattered his shoulders and the lines of his torso, a shimmering black
shirt underneath, rich black breeches, black suede boots. Or was it all
black? The light playing across his garb gave her Singer's eyes glints of
silver-grey, of blue, almost as if a black crystal had somehow been crafted
into cloth form, and wrapped around her beloved's frame. The tailoring was
impeccable -- Tamber, she thought giddily, had to have picked that outfit
out for him. And perhaps it was also due to Tamber that Kevlan was not
fidgeting uncomfortably in his strangely elegant garb, but rather, earnestly
and levelly waiting in his place?
	"Dear Lady," she breathed softly, reverently, not really aware
that she did so. Beside her, Orynn grinned, following her gaze, but saying 
nothing, only nudging her attention up to the small rise of rocks.
	Little Fanna, seeming to shimmer somewhat more than usual -- at least
to Bernadette's eye -- clambered very carefully up onto the small rise,
beaming at the gathering. It wasn't very long before she was joined by a
dark-haired young woman, and upon seeing her, Bernadette stared.
	It was the same young woman she'd bumped into up on the moonbase
on Lareen.
	_Kevlan _told_ me somebody like Fanna would be able to help us
with the ceremony -- I didn't realize he meant it would be her!_
	Tallah, she remembered a beat after. That was the name Kevlan had
given, Tallah Evenvale. An odd-sounding name, but then, it was an odd-looking
woman it labelled.
	Now, the star-shimmered woman, glinting perhaps in sympathy to the
little girl beside her, and perhaps simply because of the occasion, smiled
gently at the assembly. She was clad in leaf-green and silver-grey garb:
a simple tunic, soft slacks, boots; silver twine of some sort threaded through 
her dark hair. Fanna was dressed like her, but in a tiny gown of a shade
of green like a brand-new spring leaf, and a much more delicate shade of
grey, like the fur of a newborn kitten. All eyes turned to the young woman
as she began to speak, in a voice that carried the Estenari accent but
was somehow clearer than what Bernadette had grown used to, and which carried
almost as well as a Singer's:
	"Welcome, friends, good people of Farann! We gather under the stars
tonight to celebrate the union of Kevlan Sharr -- one of our own -- and
Bernadette Marshall, whom he met across the stars, and brought home across
the stars to us.