D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

— Kat —

After Asteodia was reassured with more affection from Nixilei things calmed down a bit and everyone except Kat started to eat a little bit… in silence. Kat and Lily both decided that the new couple had enough time to calm down, so it was time to meddle some more. “So are you both thinking of getting together more seriously? Where do you two see this going?” asked Kat.

Nixilei winced and answered first, “We weren’t really planning on having that discussion until after the tournament was over, less pressure then,”

“Bah, that’s the coward’s way out,” said Lily entirely aware of the hypocrisy and choosing to ignore it as unimportant. Of course, the glare from Nixilei let her know that the spy was perfectly aware of that little fact. Not that the fae could do anything about it right now. “You can discuss this now, or later in the afternoon,”

“In fairness, we didn’t want to make things serious and chance the tournament coming between us,” said Asteodia.

Kat shrugged and retorted, “Yeah but Asteodia, you can’t participate in any more of the tournament because you’ve been active two days in a row. So it’s not like you’ll be up against Nixilei specifically, and if that’s really an issue Nixilei can bribe Green to take her spot in one of the final events, with… I don’t know allowing her to plan your marriage,”

Nixilei coughed as she inhaled the piece of food in her hand. Kat had waited for Nixilei to pick something before answering and Nixilei was clearly unprepared for it. Asteodia thumped the fae heavily on the back a few times before the piece of food was dislodged. Asteodia glaring at Kat the whole time. Kat, seeing that in the pair hadn’t actually grabbed any drinks, slid her own glass of water to them. Nixilei downed it quickly while Asteodia continued to glare and said, “You did that on purpose,”

“Indeed. I didn’t think I’d time it that well, but Nixilei does need to be ready for that sort of thing. I feel like I’m being relatively light on when it comes to the teasing but Green will not be. I can’t say how things are going to be with your friends Asteodia, but I’m sure Nixilei will start to get at least some shit for it, so she needs to be ready,” said Kat firmly.

Kat then managed to catch a floating cup out of the corner of her eye. It was a full glass of water on top of a floating piece of metal. Kat grabbed it and sent a thumbs up to Romilda and then a wave gesturing for her to come over. Romilda sent a thumbs up back and a shake of her head before raising herself back up to be hidden behind the doorframe. Kat shrugged at this and turned back to the pair, waiting for an answer.

When it was clear both of them would prefer to be angry Kat asked, “You know, is Green even interested in planning a marriage? Her and Gareth are getting married eventually but now I think about it, I’ve heard nothing about the marriage itself, is she even doing any planning?”

Nixilei shrugged and said, “Well… I know Green’s parents are doing most of the planning alongside Gareth’s. I’m not too sure about Gareth’s parents, but I know Green’s mother really wanted to do the planning. Her own wedding was… legendarily awkward,”

“Really? What happened?” asked Kat.

“Well, Blue and Grey, Green’s parents…” started Nixilei.

Only for Kat to jump in with, “Wait Green’s mother is also called Blue?”

“No Green’s FATHER is called Blue,” said Nixilei.

“Well that’s not going to be confusing at all,” grumbled Kat. “I know a lot of fae have colour based names, but I always knew they were going to run out of colours quickly. How does everyone deal with that?”

Nixilei shrugged and said, “Nicknames usually… but it comes up a lot less often then you think. Anyway, do you want to hear about this wedding fiasco or not?”

“Oooh, I’m pretty sure you do,” said Asteodia. “Now that you’ve mentioned the names I think even I’ve heard of this story,” Asteodia had not in fact heard of this story, but she had heard a similar one, and besides, this was mostly to entice Kat and Lily with something so that they’d stop with the teasing for at least a little bit.

Lily and Kat shrugged as an answer and Nixilei got started, there acceptance was enough for her. “Right, so Blue and Grey had both been together for a while and they’d been engaged for nearly as long as they’d been together, but the wedding kept getting put off for one reason or another, so Grey decided she was going to plan things and get it out of the way, that her parents had dawdled on the plans enough, and she’d wanted to plan the thing anyway so she wasn’t too put out about it.

“Now the problem, was that Grey’s parents were in fact planning the wedding… slowly. They were taking their sweet time, but they hadn’t let Grey know that they’d been planning anything at all, things just kept getting pushed back, and to Grey, it seemed like they hadn’t started at all.

“Now I’m not sure how common wedding planners are in your world, but here? They’re quite rare and tend to service a large area… so of course Grey went to the same one as her parents. This individual… who I don’t remember the name of but let’s call them Red because I think they had red hair, but I can’t remember, and it’s not important.

“Anyway, at first, according to Grey anyway, at first Red didn’t realising she was planning the same wedding twice and had them in two separate files… but at some point Red realised it was actually the same wedding. So instead of doing the sane thing and telling both parties about each other… Red just… merged the folders.

lightsnοvεl.cοm “Then things got into a big series of back and forth between Grey, and her parents because while her parents didn’t think anything strange was going on, slowly as they were working on it, Grey was keeping track and noticed that occasionally things would be changed without her permission, so she confronted Red about it, and she said it was one of the servants who’d requested the changes…”

Nixilei paused for a moment thinking of how best to explain it. “Right so… that was technically true in all of the most unhelpful ways. A servant had changed it… but they’d changed it ON ORDERS so it’s not like they were actually at fault here. Grey thought it was just a mistake the first two times, she’d made a lot of rapid changes…

“But soon the day was approaching, Grey put in her last minute changes and then asked Red to get everything ready… the very next day Grey’s parents started to more seriously plan things, and make a mess of the work. Red should’ve told Grey… but she just… didn’t. So anyway, around a month later the wedding happens…

“And it’s an awful mix of both intended weddings. The stuff Grey wanted, and the things her parents wanted. See, that’s one more thing. Red was supposed to send invitations to everyone… and Red ‘accidentally’ forgot to send the letters off to Grey’s parents, so they were surprised by the sudden wedding and Grey was not pleased to see her wedding looked like a mashup of three of four wedding plans. The whole day was a mess, nobody was happy at the end and well… Grey wants to do it right this time,”

Kat and Lily frowned at the end. “That’s… well that seems more like Red’s mistake, or rather, intentional disregard for professional ethics but it’s not all that amusing just spelt out,”

Nixilei shrugged and said, “Well there are more specifics but I wasn’t actually there, and I can only sort of remember the comedic high moments. I think the cake made around the punch bowl for some reason, the bridesmaid’s dresses were all in the wrong style, but the groomsmen were ‘correct’ which clashed massively, then there’s the fact that the parents of the bride were surprised by the very sudden, from there perspective, ceremony,”

“Well that’s something,” said Lily. “What happened to Red?”

“They made a run for it. They were… perhaps not old, but they’d been in the business for quite a while. So they took payment for the whole wedding… and then booked it. I can’t say if they turned up somewhere else because they weren’t on the edge of death or anything when they fled… but it just wasn’t important enough for a big deal to be made of it. If they went after Red they’d need to admit she swindled them, and that the wedding didn’t go as plans, AND that Grey had gone behind their backs and… it was a whole mess so they tried to track Red down secretly, never succeeded,” explained Nixilei.

“Titania did love it though, she thought it was good fun,” Nixilei added a few moments later, almost as an afterthought.