Trek For Survival

"These clothes are fantastic, Juniper! How in the world did you get so good?" asked Carla to the seamstress.

Carla had become very close friends with the halfling over the past couple of hours, and the two had been talking almost nonstop. Gia was glad her mother had found a friend, and hoped she found another just as good when they reached their final destination.

"I learned to sew from my mother, when I was a wee thing," said Juniper with a smile, finishing a last st.i.tch on Mikey"s pants. "When I met Tucker, it was as if our threads were entwined. We were wed so fast, I"m not sure my dad could take it. I was moved out in the blink of an eye and helping Tucker make clothes the very day after my wedding."

"Did you make your own wedding dress?" asked Carla, sneaking a glance at Gia, but Gia caught it.

"I did. It took me a whole week! It was a beautiful thing, but totally unpractical for this day and age. The thing would fall apart in minutes if anyone tried to wear it here in this heat!"

The two women laughed and Gia ran her hands over the soft fabric. Juniper had promised it would last a good year of hard travel, so they should be able to get to their destination without needing new clothes again. It was really cheering to know that they were so close to the end of all this traveling.

"Why do you ask about wedding dresses? I thought your daughter was already married to her man?" asked Juniper, having also caught the sneaky look from her mom.

"Technically, I am married," said Gia, coming over to the table and sitting down. "There was an orphan girl in the elven forest who was going to be killed for some magical rite if someone didn"t claim her as their own. In order to claim her, Vonn and I had to be married, so we claimed we were."

"Ah, I see. With you being on the road and traveling so much, there was no way to claim it wasn"t true, but you"ve had no ceremony or anything. Poor dear. Half of a girl"s dream lives in the special day she gets to celebrate being tied to her partner. Maybe Bob could do something? I hear he"s thrown some pretty interesting parties before," said Juniper.

"I don"t know," said Carla with a frown. "We were going to wait until we hit the human lands, so the ceremony could be held in our new home."

"See, the problem with that, is that all of the people you are going to be living around, will know they weren"t married all this time, and will look down on her for being near a man while not married. You should have the wedding here, at Bob"s. I"ll make you a stunning gown, and we"ll throw a party you"ll never forget!"

Gia looked over at her mother, to see how she felt on the idea. Gia hadn"t considered the reactions of the people they might run into, if they waited to have the wedding there.

"That is an interesting point you bring up," Carla said, chewing on her lip. "I would hate to have the people think poorly of us, knowing that we"re going to be trying to live among them. We"ll already be kind of outsiders, and that wouldn"t bode too well as an introduction, I suppose."

"We would need to talk to dad and Vonn when they get back from the kitchens," said Gia. "This isn"t something we can just decide on our own."

"Oh, you know that if we decide this, they will go along with it," said Carla, waving her hand at her as if the idea of them protesting was silly. "The thing that bothers me the most is if you get with child the night after. We still have a month of travel to go."

Gia"s face immediately turned bright red. The night after the wedding hadn"t even occurred to her.

Juniper saw her face and started laughing. "It"s clear to me that they haven"t consummated the marriage, even if they claim it to have happened."

"No, we"ve been concerned with her losing the child, or not being able to keep up once she gets pregnant," said Carla, since Gia couldn"t seem to make her words come out of her chest.

"Dear, stop flapping your mouth like that," laughed Juniper, her face starting to darken from laughing so hard.

Once they were all able to calm themselves down, and talk again, Juniper said, "I still say you should go ahead with the wedding here. Even if the poor girl becomes with child, a month of travel shouldn"t inconvenience her too much. I would doubt she would even be showing in that amount of time."

Gia placed her hand on her very flat stomach and looked up at her mom who was eyeing her.

"Do you know how much Bob charges for a wedding? It"s not going to be cheap for all of the food and drinks. Will there even be enough room for everyone who wants to come?" asked Carla.

"I"m sure Bob can work something out," chuckled Juniper, holding up the pants and nodding. "Go fetch that boy of yours so he can try on these pants. I can"t believe I had them too long! Bu the hem should be able to unroll easily enough as he grows so they don"t become too short."

"Great," said Carla, moving to the door.

They had left Mikey sleeping in the next room over. All of the excitement after the flood rushed through the town had exhausted him and he had crashed.

"We knew a Bob back in our human city, before we had to leave," murmured Gia, while her mother was gone.

"Really? I"ve had a lot of people tell me that Bob has multiple bars all over the place," said Juniper. "You should ask him about it. I bet he would tell you the truth if he knew anything about it."

"Maybe," said Gia thoughtfully. "It would take some pretty impressive magic to have so many bars open at the same time. Why, I bet he"s some kind of G.o.d!"

"That"s hilarious!" cried Juniper, starting to laugh again.

"But it makes so much sense!" insisted Gia, jumping up in excitement. "Before we left, he had given mom a medicine to help heal her legs, and now you couldn"t ever tell she couldn"t walk well before. And when we ran into him at the dwarven city, he told us the Bob we knew in the city was his brother, that they used the same name because it was easy to remember!"

"Well, Bob is pretty easy to remember," admitted the halfling woman, still not convinced, but Gia was adamant that it had to be true.

"The bathtubs are even the same!" she claimed, pacing around the room. "The magic that filled and emptied them was the same as the ones in the dwarven city!"

"But, dear, this Bob can"t be the same as the one halfway across the world. This Bob is a halfling, not a human!" said Juniper shaking her head.

"If he was a G.o.d, he could make himself look anyway he wanted," decided Gia, pounding her fist into her other hand.

Chuckling and shaking her head at the girl"s ideas, Juniper said, "Then if you think he"s a G.o.d, you should try praying to him. That"s how they get stronger, you know, from the prayers of their followers. Though I"m not sure you want to get involved in all of that G.o.d stuff."

"No other G.o.d has watched over us as he has," said Gia fiercely.

Carla came back into the room, with a sleepy Mikey on her heels. Rubbing his eyes, he took the pair of pants and started putting them on.

"See, those fit so much better now!" cheered Carla, clapping her hands.

"They feel really comfy, too," said Mikey with a yawn. "When"s breakfast?"

"Silly, it"s almost time for supper," laughed Carla.

"Mom, I need to talk to you about Bob," said Gia intently.

Stepping back at the look on her daughter"s face, Carla glanced at Juniper, but the halfling was too amused to say anything.

Before Gia could open her mouth to tell her mother and brother about Bob being a G.o.d, Vonn and Tom returned, carrying trays of food for everyone.

"We grabbed some for you and your husband, too," said Tom to Juniper. "It"s the least we could do for these wonderful clothes you made us!"

"That"s wonderful!" exclaimed Juniper, gazing at the mounds of food before them. "But before we get too far into whether or not the innkeeper is a G.o.d, I want to talk to you all about getting Gia and Vonn properly married."

"Wait, what?" asked Vonn.