Chapter: 486 – Planning, Preparations, Arrangements

Tala and Rane were both blushing—if only mildly—hours after that part of the conversation with Master Nadro finished.

Tala knew it was silly to be so affected. Physical intimacy was not only a part of marriage, it was required for the actual marriage—the soulbond—to occur.

-And, you know, you’re—-

Not. One. More. Word.

-…Fine. Spoilsport.- Still, Alat projected an air of good natured teasing.

As should have been no surprise to anyone, it had been a tricky subject to approach, even between two adults who knew full well that it would be a part of their lives and relationship sooner rather than later. The wedding was only months away at this point, after all.

Regardless, they had hammered out some of the particulars without actually getting explicit, and Tala was left feeling grateful that they’d discussed it, even if she still felt overwhelmingly uncertain about the subject.

After physical intimacy and such interactions, they’d discussed their social expectations as a couple and eventually as a larger family. That had been rather easy as both enjoyed being around people but not too much.

They both preferred quiet time doing their own thing to noisy gatherings, and both would love that time to be done side by side.

Which led Master Nadro to explain a pithy way of remembering the three important facets of a marital relationship.

Face-to-face time—time talking, communicating, and staying on the same page.

Side-by-side time—time spent doing things together or at least near one another.

Finally, belly-to-belly time—that had already been discussed, and even the oblique reminder of it caused Tala to color once again, even if less than before.

They had moved on to discuss how much they wanted to be involved in their extended families’ lives—with Tala’s siblings: frequently but not constantly, with Rane’s family: just as often as they happened to cross paths.

They had already discussed taking breaks from work and advancement, but Master Nadro had wanted them to specifically discuss the idea of dedicated time off and what that would ideally look like to each party.

That had been unsurprisingly easy to discuss as they both wanted to spend their larger chunks of free time exploring Zeme and seeing what the world had to offer.

Finally, they had come to the ‘roles’ portion of the discussion.

They were both providers—Tala a bit more so these days—and they didn’t really want that to change.

They also both wanted to be involved in the raising up, teaching, and disciplining of any potential children. They had both seen families where one parent was the sole disciplinarian, and they knew exactly how well that worked: Not at all.

Beyond that, they were both fighters and protectors by nature, making their perfect marriage one that was rather egalitarian across the board.

Master Nadro seemed genuinely surprised that they seemed to want to split everything evenly. He explained that while the particulars usually differed from couple to couple, each person would usually take on certain tasks more fully in that relationship. He didn’t try to change their minds, but he did advise them to not be surprised if one or the other took the lead in certain parts of their lives going forward.

All that passed after the topic, and though Tala definitely participated—and she even had perfect memory of each exchange—she felt like she was barely paying attention due to lingering, returning, and newly spawning thoughts.

They were pleasant—even exciting—thoughts, but it was still disruptive to say the least.

If Rane’s occasional glances and re-reddening features were any indication, he was having a similar experience.

Knowing that he was in a similar mindset did make the situation better, even if it made the thoughts more frequent. She realized that she’d been hoping he felt similarly to her, and now that she knew he did…

She found herself focusing on Rane in her threefold sight more than usual.

Alat cleared her throat in a good-natured, teasing manner. -You know, Master Nadro did advise keeping some space before the wedding. You know, to make sure you make it to the wedding?-

Tala cleared her throat. Right.

Rane did the same—seemingly having received a similar reminder from Enar—before scratching the back of his head and standing in a rush.

They were still sitting in the garden, Master Nadro having departed quite a bit ago.

Rane cleared his throat again, looking down at where she sat. “I think… I think I should go…”

Tala didn’t really want him to go, but that was likely a good indication that he was right. She stood as well. “Alright.”

She leaned in, going up on her tip-toes as he bent down so that they could share a slightly longer than usual kiss. “I’ll see you soon.”

His eyes were burning with an interesting light as they pulled apart, but not as far as they had been. “Boot me please. Close to the Gredial estate.”

“Done.”

And with that, Rane was gone, and Tala was left feeling a bit… miffed?

She sighed.

Alat sent Tala the feeling of a warm, friendly embrace -Wow… Are you going to be okay there, Tala?-

…How are you doing with your work in the sparring ring?

-Great! Master Grediv finally consented to let me go through the notes from the War Games artifacts, and I was able to incorporate some of the ideas… Are you sure we can’t buy a set for Kit to absorb? That would make this so much easier.-

No, Alat. Even with our funds, that’s out of our reach. Maybe someone will give us one as a wedding present?

Alat laughed. -Yeah, maybe. It will be fun to see what people bring.-

* * *

Tala exhaled a shout as she punched through the hard-packed-dirt construct that Alat was controlling against her.

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That didn’t kill it, of course, and that wasn’t even because it wasn’t alive in the first place.

No, Alat was controlling it as if it were a genuine earth construct, meaning that Tala had to sufficiently obliterate it all in one go, or otherwise disrupt the magics of its animation.

Since Tala couldn’t disrupt magics that didn’t exist, the dirt-man had become the equivalent of an animate punching bag… that fought back.

That was perfect for her purposes. At the moment, she wanted to be overtly physical, so she was practicing purely unarmed combat specifically against hyper-resilient and regenerating opponents.

It was turning out to be a fun, distracting challenge. Even if it was annoying to be without her threefold sight, and to not have any of her aspect mirrors at her disposal.

It’s fine. Back to basics.

Even as she was trying to pull back her fist—out of the being’s chest—the dirt closed around her forearm, temporarily binding her despite the mundane nature of the material involved.

It couldn’t hold her for long, but it was still enough of a hitch in her movement that the being was able to bring up both fists and slam them into Tala’s unarmored face.

As to why she was unarmored? Well, metal armor against a dirt-man wouldn’t really be very sporting.

Her arm was ripped out of the chest as she was thrown back by the force of the combined hit that also filled her eyes and mouth with grit.

Since the dirt-man wasn’t biological, it didn’t suffer from normal physical constraints—magic being able to fill in power as necessary—such as it being more difficult to pull off a powerful blow with both hands at once.

No, each of these hits had been full powered, and they had landed concurrently.

That was why Tala slid all the way to the edge of the sparring ring, spluttering and spitting in an attempt to clear her mouth of gunk.

She could have just willed the dirt away as she was within Kit, but that would also have been cheating. The point was to train for fighting in Zeme, where she didn’t have such minute control of her environment.

Therefore, she rolled over, crawled forward to grab the edge of the waterway that encircled the sparring circle and shot her head down into the water…

That was what she was attempting to do anyway.