Chapter Ninety Five

The days following Mira's death had been hard on both Elenie and Coryn.  Elenie struggled to adjust to being the adult of the house and Coryn found himself having to grow up rather sooner than he'd expected but he loved his big sister and did his best not to add to her burdens.

Ieaun helped as much as he could after a while he and Elenie began to make plans for their wedding; Elenie threw herself into the plans as a way of counteracting the fact that she missed her gran.

It would be a winter wedding and as such they knew they couldn't really hold it at home, so they booked the function room at the local pub and spent days preparing all the decorations and so on.

As they waited upstairs in the function room for their guests to arrive, Ieaun suggested taking a photo on his phone as a memento of their special day.

Eventually most of the guests assembled and took their seats to watch the brief ceremony.  Ieaun's mother Rhiannon was overcome with emotion as she watched her little boy getting wed. 

As the two of them exchanged rings and vows the guests all cheered (or cried tears of happiness), and Elenie spared a moment from her joy to wish that Mira had lived long enough to see it. 

Once the ceremony was complete, it was time to cut the cake, something which appeared to please some of the guests more than the wedding itself! 

All the guests had a wonderful time, and as the party wound down to a close, Elenie and Ieaun shared a long slow dance. 

Whilst Coryn spent some time flirting with Nicola Riverhaven (on whom he had a substantial crush...)  

Once everyone else had left, Elenie and Ieaun took some photos together in the booth downstairs in the bar 

Before celebrating their wedding in traditional fashion (albeit not in the traditional location!) 

Oddly enough, Elenie insisted on destroying the last set of photos from the booth... 

Following the wedding they settled into a routine.  Elenie and Ieaun had discussed the matter and agreed that they would put off returning to university until Coryn had had his birthday and grown up properly; while he was old enough to be left alone as a teen, neither of them felt it was fair on him to do so. 

Whilst Elenie tended the plants in the greenhouse and worked on making various different elixirs (as well as learning new recipes), Ieaun spent time working on his magic.  He had inherited his parents' gifts of the sight, but his visions were still badly unfocussed and he was only able to get brief glimpses and images which told him nothing at all.   

They did though take time out to visit the winter festival, the snow had fallen thickly by this time and everywhere looked picture perfect. 

Once they had had their photograph taken, they went indoors to warm up with some hot cocoa. 

Before heading outside to have a go on the skating rink. 

Coryn meanwhile had arranged to meet Nicola at the festival after school.  He surprised her by presenting her with a bunch of flowers as they met up.  

Before asking shyly if she'd agree to go to the school dance with him.  It was expected to be a spectacular affair as the teachers had been working on a pocket realm where it would be held. 

Fortunately for Coryn's peace of mind and happiness, Nicola readily agreed and the two of them settled down (in the deep snow!) to watch the stars for a while.

Alas, soon enough both had to head home, but before they did so, Coryn asked Nicola if she'd date him officially and she agreed. 

Coryn's birthday was fast approaching now, and Elenie decided to pay a visit to Talfryn and Evie to discuss what little she and Ieaun had been able to find out during their first year at uni.  Evie was out at the time but Talfryn was home looking after their toddler, Seren and he proudly introduced Elenie to his little girl (Elenie's second cousin once removed) before they got down to important discussions. 

"There was quite a bit about abductions by the fae in the folklore section of the university library, but it all seemed to have been written by sims who didn't really believe it had happened.  We kept finding repetitions of the same or similar stories, but it was hard to tell whether they were different occurrences of a fae doing the same thing or different re-tellings of the same story.  There must be more information than this!  Is there no collection of histories written by magical folk?  Ieaun says that there are organised groups of magic users, but he doesn't know any more than that they exist."

For a moment Talfryn's temper flashed; "Are you suggesting Evie lied about there being a collection of histories and legends of the fae there?"

Elenie felt a brief flash of fire in her heart at that, but choked it down; "No!  Not at all, but we couldn't find anything of use in the university library.  Could that collection be held somewhere else?"

"Hmm, I don't actually know much about it, Evie's over visiting her sister Tansy at the moment, I'll ask her when she gets back, it could be that the collection has been moved since she was last there."