Chapter 137: Festival of Moms

Note: Second chapter of the day!

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Arthur would always remember the next day as the festival of moms.

When the first wagon pulled up to the gates, it had a woman he hadn’t seen before. But, judging by hugs alone, she had to be Kout’s mother. Throughout the day, more and more mothers began to filter in, until there was a crowd of them and Arthur was forced to pull all his stampers, laborers, and general workforce together to make temporary housing.

Right when Arthur began to wonder where all the mothers were coming from, he found his answer. Over the last week, the old-world side of frontier infrastructure solved a number of major obstacles and made the journey to Coldbrook passable for not only high-level transporters but also anyone with relevant skills. Not all of the transporters could get all the way to the town, but enough of them could get close enough that the floodgates had now opened. Which meant Coldbrook now saw a torrent of moms who had, for the last several months, not been able to physically check on their children for the first times in their lives.

There were dozens of them, all complaining that their offspring had lost weight while also standing in shock and awe of had been built.

“I’m surprised Ella isn’t here yet,” Arthur said. “I would have thought she would have been first.”

“It’s not like this is a coordinated assault, Arthur,” Lily said. “She didn’t know the other mom’s timing. But I think there’s another wagon coming in. I bet you that’s her.”

It was. Without waiting for the wagon to stop, Ella sprang out, charging across the brick road from the gate, arms stretched out for a hug. Milo spread his in return, then looked annoyed as Ella charged straight past him to Lily, scooped her off the ground, and began covering her little face in kisses.

“Stop!” Lily said. “You have an entire son! Over there! Let me go!”

“He’ll be fine. And he’s not nearly so cute.” Without dropping Lily, Ella reached into her pack and snagged a large cloth bag. “Besides, I brought you candy. This is the price you have to pay.”

Lily snatched the bag and submitted to another round of love before Ella finally let her drop and found Milo.

“You did that on purpose to bug me,” Milo said. “Don’t think I don’t know.”

“Oh, I know you do. But I can’t let your head get too big.” Ella hugged her son warmly and kissed his forehead. “I’ve missed you, little boy. And you, Arthur. More than you know.”

“We’ve missed you too,” Milo said, as Arthur nodded. “It’s not quite the same without you around. Or your cooking.”

“Well, I brought ingredients and spices. I assume you have meat around here?” Ella asked.

“We do.”

“Then show me the town you built, and then guide me to an oven. I’ll get started.”

“Can I come along too?” Minos said, finally catching up with his wife. “I also exist, you know.”

“Dad!” Milo sprang forward and hugged his father. “I didn’t know you’d be coming.”

“Oh, of course I was. I almost did before, just by myself. Your mother wouldn’t let me without her. She said it wasn’t fair,” Minos said.

“Sounds like her,” Arthur said.

“You should have seen what she did to Karbo when she found out he had seen you all before her. And he had seen you guys twice!” Minos said. “The poor guy is traumatized. But your mother is right. Show us your town.”

Arthur spent a fun moment trying to imagine what Ella could have possibly done to Karbo, then committed himself to giving his surrogate parents a tour of the town. There was a lot to show them. Not that long ago, they were living out of huts and eating around a campfire. Now, they had dozens of buildings, some containing real shops and crafters, and others filled with permanent members of their new society.

They had water, they had food, they had industry, and soon they’d have powered rail. They had paths connecting everything together, and even some roads leading to places they hadn’t built up yet. They were already planning for the future of their town.

“I love it,” Ella said. “It might be the prettiest town I’ve ever seen. I’m glad. I’ve seen new settlements that are all utility, no style. You did better than that.”

“That’s Rhodia,” Milo said. “She’s made a mountain of bricks, and I’m pretty sure she went to extra efforts to make sure the color of them went well with Slapstone. And she mostly designed the way the roads would look.”

“That girl is a genius.” Ella glowed. “When are you going to marry her?”

Milo, to his eternal credit, managed to keep a straight face. “Mom, you’ve been asking me that for the past two years. We’re taking it slow.”

“Too slow,” Ella said, wisely. “She’s going to get away from you, son. Mark my words. Somebody is going to come along and scoop that woman up out from under you, and you will have nobody to blame but yourself.”

Milo let his parents get out in front of them before winking at Arthur and Lily and moving along towards the beach. Eventually, they’d loop back to the plaza. And then, Arthur knew, the real fun would begin.

—

Ella, like everyone else on this planet, ate an unexpectedly large amount of food. In a world where everyone was on the move almost all the time, she stayed statistical-outlier busy, moving around almost every waking minute.

When they made their way to the plaza, she ordered a cooking sandwich from one of the dedicated cooks and access to a full kitchen. When the cook realized who he was serving, he was more than happy to trade his own help and kitchen for pointers on how he could have made the sandwich better.

After a few bites of the sandwich and a few comments to the cook, Ella got to work with the fire and a set of knives she had apparently lugged all the way from the city. She went the roasted-meat-and-salad route, and in the virtual blink of an eye had a spread of food that would have impressed most kings.

Milo scooped up Rhodia at some point, and Spiky and Leena joined them as soon as they heard Ella-food was an option. Itela wasn’t going to miss out, of course, and eventually, they lassoed in Karra, Kout, Lith, and Skal as well.

“Do you have any idea who that man is?” Ella asked. “Any idea at all?”

“No?” Arthur said. “I mean, I do, he’s Skal, he’s pretty nice, lives down by the beach, catches fish…”

“Catches fish, he says. The moonlight angler catches fish, he says. Arthur, he catches fish in the same way The Bear promotes peace. He’s… you know what? Never mind. If he wants to be Skal, some random old man who lives by the beach, he gets to be Skal. Forget it,” Ella said.

Arthur promptly decided to forget Skal’s incredible fishing skills. Skal had moved here for a reason, and rarely butted his head into anything. When other people were tapping into the town’s shared material and labor resources to build what they needed, he was happy enough to have a little shack to live in and open water to fish. If he was a great hero of fishing, somehow, he had obviously chosen to downplay that and just be a normal, likeable old guy. Even when Talca was talking about the fishery, Skal had mostly just been going along with the transporter. If he wanted to just lay low, Arthur owed the old man that much.

“I’m not sure which one of you is more frustrating.” Ella dished out salad onto five now-empty plates while ranting. “This man who goes out into the wilderness for months at a time without so much as a letter…”

“There aren’t exactly mailmen out there, Ella.” Minos snuck in his objection between bites of salad.

“An excuse I’ve heard a million times,” Ella countered. “Or this boy, who gets into more scrapes with system destiny in a year than most people get in a lifetime, learns nothing from it, and still manages to almost die every week or so.”

“I’m a victim of circumstance,” Arthur said. “There are a lot of dangerous holes out there to fall into.”

“Or this one.” Ella pointed at Milo. She was unstoppable now. Most of her frustration was for show, of course. She was a mother and wife who worried over her people. “Or this one, who has managed to find a girl who is much too good for him, and still hasn’t made a single move towards pinning her down permanently.”

“Wait, you haven’t told her?” Rhodia said, looking at Milo with confusion. “After all these months?”

“Told me what?” Ella flung a slab of meat in front of Minos, who had once again emptied his plate. “He doesn’t tell me anything, Rhodia.”

“That we broke up,” Rhodia said. “Months ago. Milo, I can’t believe you.”

Milo was more than up for the act. “I didn’t know how to break it to her.”

“What?” Ella’s knife and cutting fork were frozen in her panicked hands. Some people around her were laughing enough that they should have given it away, but it was something completely lost on her tunnel-vision on the only two faces that mattered to her. “Milo, tell me. What did Rhodia just say?”

“You should have still told her, Milo.” There was anger on Rhodia’s face. She could have won an Oscar. “It’s all awkward now. She shouldn’t have had to find out about this. Did you even tell her that you switched classes?”

“You… he… did…” Ella sat down, took a deep breath, and then looked around the table to take in the amused expression on Arthur’s, Mizu’s, and Lily’s faces. When she opened her beak again, her voice was both quieter and a half-octave higher than Arthur was used to. “Explain what’s going on. Milo. Right now.”

“I think we should stop messing around, seriously,” Rhodia said. “Tell her.”

“Mom, dad, I’m glad you are here for this.” Milo stood up on his seat and took a deep breath before yelling at the plaza and town in general. “Everyone, I’m pleased to announce I have betrothed myself to Rhodia. I’m even more pleased to say she’s accepted.”

Ella took a deep breath, looked down at her carving knife, and seemed to debate whether she should stab her son in the leg. Finally, she opted to put it down and make a beeline around the table to hug Rhodia instead.

“At least as long as my parents give their blessing, that is!” Milo yelled.

“I do! Minos, give your blessing, quickly, before Rhodia gets smart and changes her mind. I swear you’re lucky I’m too relieved to hit you, Milo.” Ella reached up and lifted Milo entirely off his feet to the ground, then hugged him and Rhodia at once. “I’m so happy.”

“We thought you might be. And sorry for messing with you,” Milo said.

“No, I probably deserve it. I’ve been saying you two should get married since before you were actually involved.” Ella squeezed them even tighter. “I never imagined you’d get this far without messing it up, son.”

“When is this all happening?” Minos asked. “Not that we couldn’t come back out, but sooner is better than later in these things.”

“Can we do it right now?” Ella asked. “I could make food, and…”

“Not that soon.” Rhodia laughed. “I have my own parents. They won’t be here for another three or four days.”

“Is that enough time?” Arthur said, puzzled. “To get a wedding going, I mean.”

Everyone at the table looked at him in an odd way all of a sudden, with an intensity that almost made him glance down to make sure he was still wearing clothes.

“What? It just seems like a lot to coordinate,” Arthur said.

“That word,” Lily said. “Say it again.”

“Coordinate,” Arthur said.

“No, you…” Lily put her hand to her forehead. “The weird one. You said it would take some time to get something going. What was it?”

“A wedding?” Arthur said uncertainly.

Everyone winced at once.

“Arthur, what do you think that word means?” Itela said. “Because it’s coming out of your mouth like… It’s hard to explain. Like a storm of sounds that are supposed to mean something, but don’t.”

“Oh.” Arthur blinked. “The system translation can’t handle it, I guess? The thing you want to do when Rhodia’s parents get here. The good end to the betrothal.”

“The joining ceremony? That’s what you were trying to say?” Milo asked. “When you said whatever you did, it sounded like someone welding pieces of metal together.”

“No it didn’t.” Lily laughed. “It sounded like a bunch of people working on a job together at once.”

“Did it?” Itela looked perplexed. “Because to me, it sounded like if you put an entire church service into a box, then shook it. Arthur, I think whatever word you are trying to use probably means something a bit different in your world than it means here. And the system is trying and failing to translate the weight of that. What are joining ceremonies like on your world?”

Arthur gave as brief of a rundown as he could, then realized how many things actually went into a wedding of the kind he was thinking of. There was cake, dancing, hiring a DJ unless you went with a band, tapping glasses with spoons, and several other things in the reception alone. The ceremony had a bunch of things he didn’t expect to exactly translate over to demon culture too. Rings, for one, were not a thing related to marriage here. Which ruled out ring bearers. He did his best to explain the ceremony for a minute or so, before giving up and doing a simplification.

“It’s a lot of things,” Arthur said. “Centuries and centuries of layered traditions.”

“Well, that at least explains why the system made it sound like the world’s biggest pottery wheel turning out vases that were all different shapes,” Rhodia said. “It sounded really complex.”

“What do you do here? Normally?” Arthur asked. “For a ceremony, I mean.”

“Well, it’s not much. How much do you need?” Ella said. “You take them out to the square, declare them married so everyone knows, and then you go eat.”

“And drink,” Minos said. “That’s a very important part. Speaking of which…”

“Not much here yet, dad,” Milo answered. “We don’t have a brewer and most of us are young enough that we haven’t gotten into the drinking habit yet. You didn’t bring any of your own?”

“I didn’t.”

“Not a problem,” Itela said. “I actually have some spells for that, provided you can get me some kind of sugar-rich water.”

“Really? That’s something.”

“It’s something expensive, majicka-wise. I’d never use them in a big city, but here there’s just not a high enough probability of anybody getting hurt during a joining ceremony. Especially since, if my ears don’t deceive me, we’re about to get a bit more protection.”

Arthur listened for what Itela’s higher-level perception was hearing, and caught it a second later in the form of a faint screaming. When the source crashed to the ground just outside the plaza, it left a good-sized crater in the ground and still-indignant howling from Karbo’s passenger.

“Look what I found!” Karbo said. “He was just out there, all alone!”

“I was not all alone, you…. I was in a wagon! You scared the poor driver to death!” Eito yelled.

“Well, you looked lonely.” Karbo reached out and brushed Eito off. “And now you’re here so much faster than you would have been otherwise. You saved time!”

“Saving time does not matter if riding with you takes entire years off my life, Karbo.” Eito tried and failed to sweep Karbo’s brushing arms away. “Hello, everyone. I’m here to yell at Arthur, I suppose? Ah, there you are.”

“Hi, Eito.” Arthur waved. “Are you wanting to do that right now?”

“Later.” Eito dismissed the idea with a wave. “For now, it looks like Ella has been cooking.”

“I have! And Milo is engaged.” Ella hand once again wrapped her arms around her future daughter-in-law. “To this one. Who is making a terrible mistake, but we aren’t going to correct her.”

“Mom, I’m really not all that bad,” Milo said. “Everyone says so now. I’ve even helped with the water supply.”

“He has. He’s been important in the town,” Mizu said.

“Yes. See? I’m very deserving.”

“Yes, you are.” Rhodia patted Milo on the arm. “I’d tell Ella if you weren’t.”