Matching Day: Part 2

The struggle for honesty, and the grace to accept..

Based on a post by SmallTownPrincess, in 2 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Connected.

"So,
tell me about your family, Mason," Livia said, tracing the lines of his
palm with one finger. How long had they been out there? Although it
felt like she'd been with Mason for only a few minutes, at most, she was
deathly afraid that dawn would break soon, and they would have to part
ways, sneaking back into their respective beds.

"Oh,
they're nothing special," he said with a shrug. "My father's done
pretty well for us with inter-community trade, and my mother's a
self-proclaimed busybody. I have two little sisters who must hate me,
for all the grief they cause me, and a cat that only eats because I ask
him to every day."

Livia
sympathized with the cat; she would follow Mason to the ends of the
earth, if he asked her to and really meant it. She wouldn't tell him
that, though. He still believed that the answer to all their problems
was to run off into the wilderness and never look back.

"They
must love you a lot, to plan a big wedding for you - and build you a
house! My father expected my match to do that with his own two hands."

"Nah,
they mostly just like being a spectacle in town, and a big wedding's
the best way to ensure that everyone's talking about you. As for the
house, I'd rather build it myself, honestly. I feel like a child with
them paving the way for me like this."

"I'll bet Salvia's bragging to everyone who'll listen about her fairy-tale wedding and big stone house - at eighteen!"

Mason shrugged, looking stormy. "She keeps asking me when we can have our first baby boy. A baby? I'm not ready for a baby. I could go another decade before I would even think about having kids. I'll be nineteen when we get married, for gods' sake."

"Nineteen?"

"I barely missed the cutoff for the last age group, so I think I'm probably the oldest in ours."

A
chill wind snuck down Livia's collar, and she shuddered, enjoying
Mason's immediate response of wrapping his arms around her and pulling
her back up against his chest. She could get used to being held that
way. She lay her head back against his shoulder, and he sighed happily.

"Mason?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you still intend to marry her?"

He
shook his head, tousling her hair where his chin rested on it. "That
big house will be ours - yours and mine - or they can give it to one of
my sisters, for all I care. All I want is you."

The
chuckling scream of an owl broke the silence of the night, foreboding
as the lustrous moon lay silver-lined shadows over the pair. "What are
we going to do, Mason?"

"What do you mean?"

"What are you we going to do? I mean, you're supposed to get married in a month, to Salvia,
and I'm supposed to spend the rest of my life unhappy and alone. People
are going to notice if either of those things don't happen."

"We
could tell them that I prefer you to Salvia, " Mason said doubtfully,
and Livia didn't even bother to reply. That was clearly not an option.
"Or we could run, like I said originally."

"There's nowhere to run," Livia murmured.

"Then, I suppose, this is our only option."

"What is?"

"This. Meetings, like this."

"What, you mean you want to keep meeting me in secret like this?"

"Sure, why not?"

"Won't
someone in Salvia's house notice that you sneak out every night?" Mason
was living with Salvia's family until his own house was built in
Micrague, but, to Salvia's dismay, he was not taking advantage of
sleeping just down the hall from her.

"Probably
not, and even if they do, I told them the very first day I went home
with her that sometimes I preferred to sleep outside, under the stars."
He chuckled. "They probably think I'm quite odd, but it really is nice,
sometimes, to just lay out here and look up at them."

Livia
snuggled closer to him and followed his eyes up to the dancing points
of light in the rich blue-violet night. "But then, what happens next
month, when your family send word for you to come home with her?"

"Hmm,
the guys from Micrague probably