Notes: I probably fucked up Hervé's accent. Forgive me.

It was a lovely day. The sun was shining, the light filtering through the branches in a way that made them shatter into slanted yellow patterns on the lawn, and Julie smiled to see the resulting blue of the sky overhead. From under the cover of the large oak she sat beneath, the colour was rich and it stretched out over the sound of thwacking tennis balls, the darting yellow briefly rising above the nets in imitation of the sun above. All courtesy of the tennis courts nearby, courts that for once, she was not on.

Hervé followed her line of vision and smiled.

'Ah, Juulee,' he sighed. 'Zuch a workaholic! Come, relax, you deserve zis!'

And, with an elegant flourish of his wrist, he brushed a strawberry against her lips. Julie giggled but obligingly opened her mouth for him to pop the sweet thing inside.

And then her phone rang.

Hervé sighed. 'Mon dieu!'

She shushed him, pressing her finger to hip lips - the one wearing the ring he had given her, and picked up her phone.

'Hello?'

'Julie! Hi!'

She sighed to see the brief flash of anger cross over Hervé's face and the way he clenched his fist into the grass, but he stayed stonily silent, for which she was grateful.

'Now's probably not a good time, Ben...'

'What? C'mon Julie, you can take a break from hitting tennis balls for a few minutes, surely? '

Hervé snorted and turned away.

Julie cringed. Hervé was never entirely comfortable with her weird sort-of friendship with Ben, but unlike other boyfriends she could think of, he had never demanded that she cease contact with him. Perhaps it was a stroke of decency inside, or else he had too much respect for the decisions she made than to try and take them away from her. Either way, she had always been grateful that he hadn't pressed the point. Of course it had helped a lot when she told him, years back, that Ben was dating a male alien now...but he was still a little miffed when he heard Ben speak to her so familiarly all the time.

'There's isn't anything there!' she had reassured him again and again.

At which he had looked at her, point-blank, and said rather stoutly, 'no, nozhing, only historiee.'

Which...she couldn't exactly argue against. And it was probably the reason she couldn't bring herself to hang up the phone on Ben right now. It wasn't romantic love, she was sure of that, just a certain fondness for how he had wrapped adventure and thrill into her life for a short time, just enough for her to get a tiny taste of it. Enough for her to take Ship out with her now on certain days of the week and patrol the city she was in, just to make sure no one needed a little extra muscle, even if it were for something as mundane as moving cardboard boxes from a removal van.

She pressed the phone more firmly to her ear.

'This better be important,' she said in a clipped voice, 'because I swear, if this turns into a two hour rundown of what exactly happened on the Sumo Slammer episode last night...'

'What?!' Ben asked excitedly, 'you mean you actually caught that? Yeah, it was awesome, even if I missed the last ten minutes-'

She sighed, long and gustily, in a breath devoid of any sympathy. 'I'm hanging up now,' she informed Ben dryly, but before she could pull her ear away entirely, his voice came racing down the line in jerky, sporadic bursts of sound.

'No, no, no, don't do that!'

At this point Hervé had perked up, suitably interested (and probably secretly delighted, Julie reflected wryly) to hear the panic spreading through Ben's tone, chopping his next sentence into short, shrill chunks.

'I'm, I'm getting married!'

The last word definitely came our as a squeak, but Julie felt her brow clear at its utterance before a smile drifted to her lips. 'You are? Ben, that's wonderful! Oh, I'm so happy for you!'

Ben laughed, loud and bright. 'Wow, you know, word-for-word, that was exactly what Gwen said! You sure you two aren't psychic twins or something?'

Hervé meanwhile, had visibly perked up. 'Tell Ben I will send him a bouquet of ze finest roses, if he does nothing to drive this 'Rook' off before ze priest makes zem utter zeir vows.'

'Huh?' said Ben. 'What was that? I heard 'someone' taking, but I wasn't quite sure who it was.' Annoyance was dripping down through his tone now, so Julie hastily tried to assail the situation before it could pull a resulting glare from Hervé's face.

'That's just Hervé's way of wishing you well,' she said brightly, 'Right, dear?'

Hervé grumbled and looked away.

'Yeah, right, sure, whatever,' said Ben, the grouchiness still seeping through his tone. But the next second his voice brightened again, becoming a lot more cheerful. 'Anyway, I just rang to see if you wanted to come up to the wedding!'

Jeez, Julie thought. It was like he had already decided that she was definitely going to come. Still, it might be interesting.

'Only if Hervé can come too,' she said decisively.

'Urgh, fine. But if he's going to be bringing any flowers, make him give them to Rook. Tell him it's customary or something. Rook eats that kind of stuff right up.'

Julie blinked. 'Ben,' she said slowly. 'Rook might be an alien but he's been on Earth for what? Seven years now? I'm pretty sure he'll have picked up the fact that flowers usually play a big part in weddings ceremonies.' Then she paused, not bothering to listen to Ben's resulting grumble about how it was 'hard to tell these days' about 'what exactly' Rook had managed to pick up on about 'normal Earth things.'

'I swear he gets a kick out of it. 'Oh no, it's so funny to watch Ben try to be culturally sensitive or understanding and explain stuff I've already looked up in a book!''

'Hmm,' said Julie non-commitedly. 'Yes, I'm sure that's terribly frustrating. But Ben, where exactly is this wedding taking place? It's not in space is it? And does it actually have anything to do with an Earth wedding? I mean, Rook does have his own culture, right? His own traditions?'

Ben went quiet for a moment. 'Yeah,' he said softly, 'he does. And okay, yeah, it's not actually happening on Earth. I actually want to remember getting married without a horde of reporters and cameramen in the background. And well, maybe a few might follow us in space, but a lot of them don't have the clearance. Besides, I've already promised Jimmy Jones all the main coverage rights, so long as he spreads false information to all the major media circuits beforehand. They can turn up in the rainforest for all I care, so long as they don't end up trampling through Rook's family's fields and-'

'His home planet,' Julie breathed. 'You're getting married on his home world.' She felt something catch in her throat at that. And it wasn't sadness or bitterness, just a soft kind of awe at Ben, for trying to place someone else's culture above his own urge for whatever he saw as 'normal.' For a guy who could freely flicker his shape into multiple alien species, Ben was a real stickler in the mud for certain aspects of American normality. Like fast food.

'I really 'ope your buffet bar has somezhing more than the Mr Smoothie option,' Hervé mumbled, like he was reading her thoughts.

'Well, there might be a drinks dispenser like one of those Hush Puppy machine things,' Ben said doubtfully. 'But a lot of the food there will be traditional Amber Ogia stuff – that's the name of the crop Revonnahganders use to make everything out of. And I do mean everything. Though Gwen has promised to smuggle chocolate cake in because she thinks it's little unfair to have nothing 'made on Earth' there.' He stops to laugh briefly. 'At least everything will be more or less vegetarian! Cousin Lucy's decided to become one, so that's one less thing we'll have to worry about.'

'I've no idea who that is,' Julie said bluntly, 'but either way it sounds interesting. A part of me's always wanted to see what an alien wedding is like. Well, one of them anyway.'

'Mmm,' murmured Ben, now sounding uncharacteristically cautious. 'Well, don't expect it be like anything out of 'Lord of the Rings.' We've had to amend the ceremony a bit. There's supposed to be this part where the couple walk through these 'Halls of Knowledge' to symbolise, you know, journeying through life together and I don't know, learning about each other's quirks and stuff? Only you can't actually enter the building until you've lost your bi'nthak and become a true adult. Which I can't do, because I'm not a Revonnahgander and never had a tail to lose in the first place, sooo unless we want to give the Elders a heart attack, that's out.'

Julie blinked. 'Tail?' she asked slowly. 'Bi'nthak? Ben, you do realise I'm not a Revonnahgander expert like you are, right?'

'Sorry.' He actually had the grace to sound a little bit embarrassed about that. 'Look, all you need to know is that we're revising some stuff and winging the rest of it, so it's not too different from anything you've seen on Earth. Just don't be disappointed, I guess.'

'Ben.' Julie made her voice as soft as possible. 'You're getting married. How could I be disappointed by that?'

The answering laugh he gave her was just as soft. 'Yeah. Thanks Julie. You're always nice to talk to, you know that, right? You're got the most common sense out of anybody I know. It's kinda refreshing to hear.'

Julie smiled. 'I have more common sense than Rook?'

'Definitely.' She blinked at how quick the reply was, how serious it sounded. 'The guy's marrying me. How much common sense do you think someone like that could possibly have when making that kind of decision?'

Julie shared a look with Hervé . 'When's this wedding happening?'

'August,' Ben said cheerily. 'Look I'll email you some more details, okay? Like where to go to get the right sort of space travel discounts and who to trust when booking a flight. It's not an overnight thing or anything; we'll be on Revonnah for two hours, tops.'

Julie thought Ben was severely underestimating just how much the guests might want to party, or even to look and explore the surface of an alien world, but she kept her mouth shut. 'Okay then,' she said, 'I guess I'll see you there?'

'You'd better,' Ben said cheerfully. 'Bye!' Then he hung up.

Julie stared at Hervé . 'Well,' she said. 'I guess we're going to see my ex get married to his alien boyfriend then.'

Hervé looked very worried. 'What should I pack?' he asked earnestly. 'Will zere be alien rain?'

Julie smiled fondly, and then leaned over to kiss him, the smell of strawberries still locked under her tongue. 'Don't worry,' she told him. 'We'll pack at least two umbrellas.'

Three months later, Julie stepped down daintily from the Space Bus, all of her perched within the wispy contours of a sundress. And then she breathed. For Revonnah was spread out before her like a desert, lit by the husky tone of a purple sky as the onset of evening started to dapple the ground, the shadows spreading away, up into the cliffs that replaced the sand-dunes of her imagination. Each of these was chopped into terraces, reminding her rather wistfully of an internet artist's depiction of the lost hanging gardens of Babylon she had seen last month. The only real difference was that these terraces hosted much less greenery.

She turned to see Hervé stumble down with an over-packed rucksack.

'You do remember that we're only meant to be here for a few hours, right?' she asked, feeling amused despite herself.

He made it to the bottom of the stairs, eyes wide and panting.

'But Juulee! We are on an entirely new world! There could be anyzing here! We must be prepared!'

'Don't worry,' she told him playfully, 'I made sure to pack the umbrellas.'

She turned round before she had the chance to see him scowl at her and started to walk forward. They had landed in a main square of some kind, cubic-style monuments stretching away to climb up the inside of the valley walls they had been designed to be cradled by. They reminded Julie of straightened rib bones, the harsh segregations wedged into the blocks they were comprised of putting her in mind of the runes she saw inscribed on the buildings within fantasy films like the Disney Atlantis one. She made a careful note to herself not to mention any of this to Rook or his family; who knew how they would respond to being compared to a city buried under the waves with only a giant floating blue crystal to act as both lantern and sun.

Already she could see others of Rook's species staring at her, children clutching at mother's skirts and pointing. All of them, she noticed, had canines protruding from the mouth in a way the adults did not. Weird. And also a little disturbing...in a cute kinda way.

'Ah! You are here!'

Julie turned round to see one of the Revonnahganders walking towards them with a friendly smile in place, ducking past all the resulting stares with the sort of weaving grace that made her feel automatically jealous. She was also, Julie could admit she was relieved to see, old enough not to have a single fang curve past her lip in imitation of a vampire.

'Greetings! My name is Blonko Shim and I am the younger sibling of my soon-to-be-married brother.' She giggled a little giddily at this announcement as if it were a well-concealed secret, before pausing to glance round and look embarrassed at the series of mutters this announcement provoked. 'Please do not mind the nay-Sayers. Some of my people are...rather traditionally-minded.'

Julie narrowed her eyes. 'How traditionally minded?'

Shim looked even more awkward, her fingers reaching up to give a tug on the white braid that hung over her shoulder. 'My brother is the first Revonnahgander to have ever betrothed himself to an outsider. It has never been done before.'

Julie sighed, taking a minute to close her eyes and breathe in deeply. Trust Ben to have his wedding on a planet that presumably wanted to play no part in it!

Hervé nudged her. 'Juulee?'

She smiled and shook herself. 'Lead the way!' she told Shim, taking the time to dip a small curtsy towards her and let the folds of her dress billow up beneath her hands. The gesture might not mean anything to anyone on this world, but it was still fun to hear one child start twittering up to his mother about the 'live jellyfish' she was wearing. Guess that meant some ecosystems between planets were more similar than she thought. That, or Revonnahganders were more up to date with Earth life-forms than some people in America were.

Shim, for her part, simply stared at Julie some more before she laughed again, twirled on her heel, and led them towards an outcropping of steep rocks.

'This way!' she called out cheerily and proceeded, without even needing to take a running start, to scale five-foot tall boulders with a single leap.

Hervé moaned, but Julie simply brought her fingers to her mouth and whistled. And as though she'd pushed a button, Ship instantly uncoiled from it's position in Hervé's rucksack and crept out from under the canvas fastenings like an oily spill of liquid. It stopped to preen, to turn its head round as though to take in the new atmosphere it found itself in, before Julie stretched out her arm and it leapt up gladly, instantly encasing her in the usual battle armour.

'May I?' Julie asked, bending down to offer up her arms to Hervé. She couldn't deny that it made her feel a little powerful, like some chivalrous knight offering a gesture of support to his lady love. But instead of being offended, Hervé simply gave a wry smirk.

'Ah, of course, ma chèrie. Whisk me off my feet.'

And so with both arms, Julie did just that. And half a second later, with just a single bound, she had caught up to Shim, who chose to stare up at her with a classic 'ooooh' face in place.

'I guess humans really are bad at jumping. Ben had trouble with this same route when he went with me and Blonko to collect cables from the market. But then he got really angry and made a face like this.' She furrowed her face into an angry frown, choosing to bare her fangs just enough for Julie to see that yes, puberty had done nothing to remove the sharpness of those canines – it had just rearranged the shape of Shim's jaw-line so that she could hide them inside the line of her mouth better.

'Well,' said Julie diplomatically, 'if I didn't have a fancy battle-suit to help me up here, I might have made an angry face too.'

Shim laughed. 'Yes, but he didn't get really angry until Blonko snapped at him and told him he would carry him if his legs could not handle the strain. And then Ben turned into a giant locust, kicked dust into his face and said 'ready, steady, never!' and beat both of us there.'

Hervé stared at the giggling Revonnahagander. 'Are you sure zhis wedding will still take place!?'

Shim cocked her head to one side. 'Why not? It was not a serious fight. Neither insulted the honour of the other, nor that of their parents. There was not even any biting.'

Hervé slouched down further in Julie's arms, now firmly cradling his backpack to his chest. 'Julee!' he hissed. 'Coming here, I fear, was a mistake!'

Julie stared at him for a minute. 'We have just spent six hours in an over-large tin can, flying through the stars to get here. We are not backing out now. Besides.' she continued blithely. 'There'll be cake, remember?'

At this, Hervé brightened considerably. And with that sorted, they continued on their way without further incident.

The wedding was to take place on a plateau filled with tables of food and lanterns, strange orange orbs that glowed without the buzz of electricity or the whine of a generator. And yet Julie could clearly see light yellow wires running into the stem of each one, artistically wound over rocks and through creeper vines to create swirling patterns that would not have been out of place at a gallery of Celtic art. It was a little like walking into a miniature stonehenge, one alight with glowing pumpkin heads.

Julie took a few steps and was forced to blink as, up-close, she could see some of the lanterns lacked the artificial casing of glass or crystal; no, their outsides bulged with the jelly-like consistency of fruit, the wire threaded inside as though to double up inside as the filament of a light-bulb.

Julie sighed, placed Hervé down on the ground and waited for Ship to unravel itself from her limbs. And no sooner had she done so, then Ben came running up to her, suddenly appearing from out of the throng of lights like some weird sprite.

'Hey! You made it!'

Her lips twitched. 'Wouldn't miss it for the world.'

Ben grinned at her, eyebrow arched at the joke. 'Which one?'

Hervé snorted, clearly unamused – but either way, it was enough to draw Julie's attention away.

'Ben,' she said urgently, 'you never told me there was a dress code.'

Ben tilted his head to the side. 'That's because there isn't one. Rook agreed that it was a little unfair to demand Earth visitors to dress up in Revonnahgander garb.'

Julie cocked an eyebrow. 'So why are you wearing yellow? Because I've never seen you wear anything that isn't green. Or black or brown or blue.'

Ben made a face and glanced down. 'Yeah, I know, I know, this doesn't really bring out the colour of my eyes, does it?'

That, thought Julie, was putting it lightly. He was wrapped in some kind of toga-slash-kimono, the length barely dragging over the ground, although the lining was dusted with a light brown border as though to cover for this design flaw. Perhaps the maker had realised the likelihood of the trailing surface smearing against the ground. Either way, the only real decorative element about the gown was the simple leaf-like pattern stitched into the sleeves, winding up to the collar in a series of careful loops that resembled the serpentine coils of the Eastern-styled dragons that scattered Earth mythology. But the majority of the material, free from swirls, stitches and disguised dirt, shone with a pale yellow, the kind you could only view in the fields during late spring, or else on the trees during autumn before the leaves had a chance to crinkle down into a rotting brown. And though it didn't look bad on Ben or clash against his skin tone or anything equally ghastly, it still looked a little too weak on him. Or maybe she was just simply used to seeing him in darker colours.

It was then that a new voice pressed itself out into the air, and Julie watched on, feeling unsettled by the way Rook seemed to whip himself out of nowhere, his arms crawling round Ben's waist as though to block out the light from his ribs.

'You must not forget that Revonnahgander eyes take up a different spectrum of colour than your own. And our clothes, of which you are wearing, highlight this particularly well.'

Ben wriggled with a snort. 'This was your idea,' he grumbled. 'You have no right to pull the 'discrepancies in our species' card now, especially when what you're wearing doesn't match your eyes at all.'

Very true. Rook's toga, kimono, whatever, had all the same design features as Ben's. Only it dipped down into a much heavier shade of brown, tanned in the same shade found in the old dust-crusted leather of horse saddles.

'I am the older one,' Rook explained, catching Julie's eyes. 'That means I am obligated to wear colours that are much closer in hue to the earth we walk on, since I have traveled over it a few seasons longer.'

'Well on this particular earth, yeah, you definitely outrank me by a fair number of years,' Ben said, rolling his shoulders in an attempt to ease himself out of Rook's grip. 'But I'm still allowed to complain. That brown would totally look better on me.'

Hervé rolled his eyes. 'Is it not bad luck to see the bride before the wedding?' he muttered to no one.

But Rook and Ben simply stared back at him, identical blank looks on their face.

'I don't know if you've noticed,' Ben said snidely, 'but no one here exactly fits the definition of a blushing bride.'

'Well,' Rook muttered bashfully. 'We might be able to fulfill half of that description. Only, if I end being the one blushing, you would hardly be able to tell because of my fur.'

'Yeah,' Ben muttered, 'I know. Unfair.'

But instead of replying, Rook simply bent to hide his smile inside his partner's hair. Unsuccessfully, as it turned out, for Rook had a big mouth, one that stretched to curl past the mussed coils of Ben's hair like a fast-growing weed.

'Okay,' Julie remarked. 'So now that you've successfully managed to make both me and Hervé uncomfortable, where's that chocolate cake Gwen promised?'

Rook lifted his head up with a frown.

'Cho-co-late cake,' he pronounced slowly, as though he'd never heard the syllables before. And then he removed his smile from Ben's hair, a smile that was now rapidly disappearing and unfurling into a grimace. 'Ben?' he asked, voice dangerously soft. 'I am aware that wedding cakes are white and multi-tiered. Not brown and filled with that flavour you made my brother get addicted to.'

And then, to add insult to injury, his arms dropped from Ben's sides. And Ben, for all his previous wiggling, looked sorry to see them go.

'It was one bar. One chocolate bar,' he said stubbornly. '...Okay, maybe two. And it wasn't me who taught him how to use the Xtranet to order stuff.'

Rook threw his hands up in the air. 'Neither did I! He is a very smart boy-'

'Great! So it was no one's fault that your Dad had to deal with six crates of Easter eggs, so-'

'That is not – no, this is not about the past-'

'It is if you bring the past into it,' muttered Ben.

Rook threw him a glare. 'It is about our wedding,' he emphasised heavily. 'And the fact that you thought it was a good idea to ignore Earth tradition and bring a cake my brother will probably ingest at least half of and spend the rest of the wedding throwing up!'

Ben narrowed his eyes and tightened his hands into fists. 'The cake wasn't my idea, man,' he said between gritted teeth. 'Gwen brought it because she thought it would be a fun cultural exchange and because Cousin Lucy is a picky eater. Have you seen her hungry? I have. It's not a pleasant sight. And I'm not having her starve at. Our. Wed. Ding.' He threw out these last two words with three harsh bites of sound.

He and Rook glared at each other for a minute and, ignoring Hervé frantically tugging on her arm, Julie stepped forward. 'Has anyone actually seen this cake yet?' she asked.

Rook and Ben looked at her, anger still present on their faces and Julie sighed before she met their stares evenly.

'Jury's still out until we find it, right?' she said stoutly. 'So why don't we do just that?'

They found Gwen arguing with Lucy over a large box they had set down on one of the orange soaked tables nearby. Really, you could lose a tiger amongst the food being set up; the platters were stacked high with pies, each crust cracking open to reveal an amber puree inside and all the other dishes bore hints of the same colour. She was beginning to see what Ben had meant in his phone call months ago, when he had stated that Revonnahganders made 'everything' out of Amber Ogia.

The scent drifting out of the large crinkled box however, was definitely different, smelling less like stewed fruit and carrying more of a dried sweetness in its wake, familiar to the whiff of scent you experienced when you first opened up a biscuit tin.

'Urgh, I don't believe you,' Gwen was saying irritably, fists clenched. 'How could you drop it?'

'I'm sorry, I'm sorry!' Lucy chattered anxiously, 'it's just, when I get excited, I tend to get all loose and slippery...'

She grinned and looking strangely abashed, raised her arms, before letting the skin of her hands peel back to reveal glistening trails of slime which dipped and wove against the pressure of the air instead of remaining solid. And yet nothing, Julie quickly noticed, was being allowed to drip down onto her dress. Her very yellow dress.

Julie glanced at Gwen because, yup, she was also wearing a yellow dress. Then she turned to fix her eyes on Ben.

'No colour scheme, huh?'

He shrugged. 'Sorry! Gwen cares about fitting in and Lucy just knows about this stuff because she's an alien Plumber-'

'Reconnaissance specialist actually!' Lucy piped up with a wide grin, before waving frantically at Julie and causing everyone to take a hasty step back as mud went splattering from her undulating fingers. 'Hi Ben's ex! Wow, this must be pretty weird for you, huh?' But awesome too! I don't know many people who would turn up to their ex's wedding!' She gave a snorting laugh.

Gwen grimaced and turned to Julie, fixing an overly pleasant smile on her face. 'Ignore her. She's not being deliberately malicious. She just doesn't understand how to have a normal conversation with normal people.'

Lucy abruptly stopped laughing.

'She's annoying,' continued Gwen, 'but harmless.'

Lucy narrowed her eyes. And then, very deliberately, flicked a few droplets of mud towards Gwen's shoes.

There was silence. And then Gwen let out a long, shocked gasp.

'Whatever,' said Lucy, her eyes carefully sharp. 'It's not like you don't have a magic spell all lined up in your mouth, waiting to brush aside my oh-so-terrible dirt.'

Gwen glared. And then pink sprang out to surround her fists with glowing discs of energy.

'Oh no,' Ben interrupted, stepping between them, arms outstretched. 'Not on my wedding day. Go host a rumble arena on your own weddings. Not mine.'

Looking ashamed, Gwen lowered her fists, the pink abruptly blinking out of existence. 'Sorry Ben.'

Even Lucy looked a bit sheepish.

'Now,' said Ben, eying the crinkled box with a wary trepidation, 'something tells me I'm going to find a very smashed-up cake in there, isn't that right?'

Glumly, both Gwen and Lucy nodded.

Ben sighed. 'Of course I will.' He stepped forward and carefully removed the lid. Then...'aww,' he said, sounding a little touched.

Julie peered over his shoulder. The cake had been chocolate alright. Quite a large one too. But now it was a crumbling mess, icing sloshing out to escape the boundary of the top layer and collide with the butter-cream filling that spilt out through the loose foundation of sponge above. But that was not what had caught Ben's attention. For at the top of the pile, crooked onto its side, were two little figurines, their thin features chiselled out of chocolate, in many ways identical to those little hollow bunnies and chicks you always found in stores around Easter, though of course most of the engraved details here had been lost, covered over in crumbs. But somehow, beneath all those speckled flecks of brown, their smiles still shone through.

A case of art imitating life? thought Julie, feeling touched as Ben looked down and then hoisted the chocolate depictions of him and Rook up into the air, his fingers carefully wrapped round their legs. His smile wasn't as big as the one carved onto the face of his doppelganger, but then again, the tenderness in his human eyes offered up a completion to the emotion that the stillness in those smaller, chocolate-coated pupils couldn't possibly hope to emulate.

'I, err, used a spell, obviously,' Gwen told him, sounding uncharacteristically shy. 'I don't have one of those fancy chocolate moulds just hanging around my kitchen. Especially not one with your face on it.'

Ben just smiled at her, his expression openly soft, not flinching away from the moment, even as Rook's hand clamped down on his shoulder. Then abruptly, he spun round, smile bursting into a grin.

'Sooo?' Ben drawled mischievously, eyes twinkling as he jabbed the head of chocolate Ben against Rook's mouth. 'Wanna eat me?'

There was a collective groan.

'Urgh, I really hope that wasn't an entredere,' grumbled Kevin, coming up behind them and dressed up, Julie noticed, in a rather nice, form-fitting tuxedo. 'Hey, Jules,' he offered nonchalantly.

There was a sharp snap of chocolate breaking against fangs, and everyone glanced round to see that the majority of Chocolate Ben had promptly vanished into Rook's mouth as though it were a black hole, tiny chips of the depicted cargo pants falling away from the force of the bite. And Ben, the real one, was left blushing slightly as Rook' head dipped down, his tongue roughly scouting out the rest of the melting legs from Ben's fingers. Julie watched, fascinated, as it curled, scooping up the remnants in the same way cats sieved out mouthfuls of water from their bowls, before it flicked back inside Rook's mouth, to leave the human skin in its wake glistening with saliva. It was still a little revolting though.

Rook's eyes were now firmly fixed on Ben's and there was a slight hardness in them, not anger, but something deeper than a mere challenge.

But Ben just laughed, though there was now an audible edge to it. 'Alright, alright, you've got a big mouth, I got it, you can swallow me down with a single gulp.'

'No,' Rook practically purred. 'It is merely the small things I like to gulp down. I much prefer to take my time with the...larger tasks.' And then, almost languorously, he ran his tongue down against Ben's fingers again.

Kevin made a wrenching sound and firmly turned away, Gwen in tow. 'I swear they've gotten worse as they've gotten older,' he grumbled. 'Where's Mr Unbearably Polite gone, the one who used to shyly duck away when I made furry jokes?'

'He is getting married,' Rook answered, his eyes still firmly on Ben's face, 'to someone who is not as averse to fur as your so-called jokes would seem to indicate that you are.'

Gwen laughed slightly as Kevin led her away and Julie shook her head, deciding to turn her attention to the buffet. It was just as well really, because Ben was wearing that familiar smirk, the one that meant trouble, before it suddenly gave way without warning to allow his mouth to open and bite off the head of Chocolate Rook with one decisive swipe of his teeth. And Rook, the real one, was watching a bit too eagerly.

'Aw,' cooed Lucy, 'they're so cute. I wish I had a camera..'

She eyed Hervé thoughtfully.

'No.' Julie told her promptly, and before Hervé could grasp his precious camera any tighter into his chest, she had firmly tugged him away to the next table.

Julie was really surprised that nothing bad had happened, like an alien convict escaping from jail to wreck havoc on the guests. Hell, she even half-expected Vilgax to come and crash the wedding. But nothing happened. No gigantic mutated frogs or sudden earthquakes. Not even the irritating buzz of someone's phone keying them into some major disaster happening on the other side of the galaxy. Maybe Jimmy Jones had lived up to his words and managed to keep the news on the down-low. They certainly weren't being bombarded by flash photography.

'Urgh,' said a gray-haired woman to her side, 'this is all quite...mind-numbing. They don't even have any strobe lighting.'

'Hush Verdona,' Max told her, gently patting her on the wrist. 'You whinging about it is hardly going to turn it into the exciting dance party you envisioned it as.'

Verdona slouched against a nearby rock, earning the irate stare of a white-bearded Revonnahgander.

'Outsiders resting their weak backs against our stones,' he muttered crossly. 'Do their spines lack the proper bone density to carry them upright?'

Verdona didn't straighten or even turn to glare. Instead she smirked and the next second, her human skin slouched to the floor, leaving behind a glistening purple woman, her form hopelessly nubile as her hair streamed behind her in white waves.

Hervé looked at the crumpled heap of her human skin in disgust before shrugging and promptly taking a picture. The Revonnahgander meanwhile, looked very much as though he'd very much not like one. In fact he was very pointedly looking away from any part of Verdona, especially the parts of her that were glowing brightly enough to overwhelm the nearby glow of the orange lanterns.

'Aw,' said Verdona, 'being a creature made of pure energy, I do not possess a single bone in my body. How improper of me.' She winked slyly at the Revonnahgander who was now glancing at his wife nervously.

But Braella shook her head. 'Sometimes, Da,' she advised her husband, 'it is simply wiser to let your words stay in your head, where they will not provoke unwanted reactions.'

'Oh, how boring!' snapped Verdona and in a whirl of bright light, was suddenly transmogrified into her human skin again. She promptly leant back, made a great show of shoving herself against the rock and sighed long and hard.

Rook Da grimly stared off into the distance as though he was being sorely tested, wincing a little each time Verdona let out a soft moan and curved her back as though her spine couldn't help but give way to the stone beneath.

And Max just shrugged at Julie. 'What they don't tell you, is that sometimes adults are just as bad as kids,' he said grimly. 'Unfortunately, unlike kids, you can't simply ground them or put them in a time-out.'

Verdona blew a raspberry at him.

But before anyone could respond, there was a quick zip of sound and a streak of orange light pierced the sky.

'Could I have your attention please!'

Everyone turned to see a purple-haired Revonnahgander standing at the edge of the plateau, the stars rising up behind her to catch on the ends of her hair - they lined her scalp, rising up as though to surpass the halos of orange light the lanterns pulsed out, and yet it was like they were running away from them, escaping the pale and weak imitation of sunlight mortal hands had set up below. It was, Julie could admit, a little magical.

Rook Shar sighed and hoisted her blaster back into the lining of her belt, her dress shifting to accommodate the extra weight.

'Thank you. Now as you all should be aware, we did come here today to see my brother get married. And well, I think we should get started. And with permission from the Magistrata, I have been given authorisation to conduct the ceremony-'

'Because the so-called Elders suck and refuse to do it,' muttered Kevin.

Julie threw Rook Da a quick glance, even as Gwen jammed her elbow into her partner's side with a hissed 'Kevin!' But to both their surprise, the Revonnahgander simply gave a wry grin and sharply inclined his head as though he privately agreed with the sentiment. Plus, Julie rationalised, it probably didn't hurt his pride to see his daughter perform a task that these esteemed Elders were meant to take on.

Rook Shar coughed into her fist quietly. 'Despite the generous offers of others to serve in my place, no matter what qualifications they boast of having' – here she narrowed her eyes at Argit who was shuffling uncomfortably, - 'my brother and Ben have decided that I am the best choice.' She paused. 'Apologies to the Earthlings gathered,' she said more gently, 'but we will be using some amended practises from Revonnah. We do not mean to make light of your traditions or cast them aside, but they do not seem to hold any significant emotional value to Ben the way we might do to you.' She gave a wry smirk. 'Also I believe he said that if he and my brother promised to 'honour and obey each other', they would never be able to take another mission together. Take that as you will.'

There was a low groan from the front of the crowd. 'Shaaar, you didn't have to tell them that!'

'And now, without any further interruptions,' she carried on smoothly, 'I will ask the two who have decided to watch over each other's shape for as long as they manage to retain their own, to come forth and present their intentions, outside, to the air, and allow all those who may watch them to see their resolve.'

Rook and Ben stepped out to Shar's side, allowing the stars around her to also glisten and sparkle between their forms, while the lanterns cut bright shimmers of amber-gold around the clothes that swirled in front of them.

'No matter how many skies we pass under, no matter how many suns or stars we allow to reveal light over our deeds,' Shar said, taking hold of her brother's wrist, 'this moment will stay in the minds who witness it now. Take this which sustains us' – she placed a large orange fruit which looked a bit like a gleaming aubergine inside her brother's open palm – 'and place within our memories a promise to sustain your love.'

Rook's fingers wrapped round the fruit as though it were a precious thing before he lifted it to his lips and took a small, very pointed nip that barely unveiled the juices inside. He took his mouth away and then the fruit was traveling down, away from the small smear of orange it had left against his chin to press against Ben's. And Ben's hand came up to cusp around his own, to form an additional barrier round that same fruit as he wedged his teeth inside the opening Rook had made for him.

'I will tend the fields with you,' Rook said softly, 'tilt the soil and cover your footsteps with my own, so long as your shadow stays within sight of my eyes. Let the light from the heavens fall, let it pierce the doubts you carry and allow you to accept what I give.'

Ben swallowed, the juice now freely spilling down his chin.

Wow, thought Julie. Revonnahgander weddings were messy.

'I don't believe in heaven,' Ben answered stoutly, 'or at least, I don't believe it has any place in our marriage. I won't let fate or God or anything else dictate what I should or shouldn't feel.'

Rook Da was frowning slightly, so Julie guessed that what Ben was saying wasn't exactly traditional. That, and the use of contractions gave it all away. Perhaps this was what he meant by 'winging it' all those months ago.

'So I can't let it take away my doubts or pierce them or however you want to dress it up as. I'm gonna let your voice do that, your words, not the ones in some traditional vow.' Ben paused. 'No matter how pretty it might sound. And I'll do the same for you.' His smile turned a little sly. 'Or I'll write you a letter.'

Rook shook his head with a sigh. But he was looking oddly touched all the same.

'I believe that constitutes as acceptance,' he said dryly. 'Because I do love you, Ben, even if you make everything so very strange and awkward.'

'And I love you,' Ben teased, 'even when you leave fur all over the bed and pretend not to notice me get itchy because of it.'

'OKAY,' said Shar loudly, 'acceptance has been reached, decided on, set alight by the stars overhead. Are all those present agreed?' She spread her arms out to indicate the crowd.

With a shock, Julie realised there was no traditional 'I do.' Just an unanimous cheer of approval to be wrought from the audience.

'Then it is settled,' Shar said with satisfaction after the noise had bustled down to more manageable levels and Max had wrestled away a champagne bottle from Verdona's clutches. Julie had no idea what magic had caused that to spring up out of nowhere but she was officially jealous. 'You may take your first steps together, over into the ones the earth has carved out for you.'

'Urgh,' said Ben, as Rook snatched the fruit from his grasp and stuffed it down his throat. 'I can't believe I agreed to this part. I don't see why not walking through your 'Halls of Knowledge' means I have to throw myself off a cliff. Unless you're going for the whole 'leap of faith' thing.'

'It is a cliff comprised of ledges and layers,' said Rook in a tone that he probably thought was comforting, but came out slightly patronising instead. 'And I will be with you all the way. As I should.' But he hooked his arm rather tightly round Ben's own all the same.

They stepped out to the very edge of the plateau together, Ben peering over with no small amount of trepidation. Then he swung his head round to glare at Rook.

'Carry me and I'll kill you!' he hissed.

'I promised to cover your footsteps with my own, if I recall correctly,' replied Rook firmly. 'But that does not necessitate carrying you; it simply means that I will have to keep a steady grip on your arm and prevent you from receiving a concussion on any of the rocks below. And please try not to transform. Otherwise this ceremony will be seen as void and we shall have to repeat it.'

Ben sighed. But he relaxed all the same as Rook's hand swung down even further, crawling to cover part of his forearm and press firm creases into the sleeve of his silky toga thing. Funnily enough, Julie noticed, those fingers could no longer close all the way round the circumference of the limb quite as easily as they had six years back. Ben had either been hitting the gym or the Omnitrix had been squirting growth hormone into his human DNA. Or possibly steroids. She wouldn't have put it past Azmuth.

'Ooooh,' sighed Lucy wistfully. 'That looks like such fun.'

'There's nothing stopping you from turning it into a mud-slide afterwards,' Kevin told her with a wry smirk. A smirk that stopped and tried to edge itself sideways into a painful smile as Rook Da turned his head sharply.

'Are you really trying to desecrate a landscape that has remained unchanged for hundreds of years?'

'Oh what, like the lanterns and food have always been here?'

'Kevin!'

'No wonder the place looks so dreary,' Verdona muttered, nursing what looked to be a cocktail stick between her lips like a cigar. She spun it idly through her teeth, sucking off a cherry that had been skewered through the bottom as she did so. 'Maybe I should leave my skin on the floor again.'

Gwen turned wide, disbelieving eyes on her. 'Grandma! Don't be so gauche! You're not Sunny and we both know that you don't actually need to do that! This isn't Halloween, this is Ben's wedding!'

'...and mine.' Came a soft mutter that somehow, despite the glares and biting retorts, seemed to carry through air and straight into Julie's ears. She turned away from the spectacle of Gwen shoving her elbow into Kevin's gut to see that Rook and Ben had yet to leave the shelf of rock they were on and possessed twin looks of glum 'I should have expected this' expressions. Rook, in particular was now looking rather antsy, his shoulder still bent at an angle so that he could cover as much of Ben's arm as he wanted, while his eyes swept down and gave the backs of Ben's knees considering glances. Julie felt amusement rise up inside at the thought that clearly a wedding day squabble was enough to 'necessitate' the idea of scooping Ben up and carting him down the cliff-face.

It was at this point though that the landscape all of them were arguing over shook, a piece of the plateau casually lifting itself up and shaking itself out like a wet dog, before it splintered and fell into a million pieces. Argit let out a slight scream as the crash and shake of motion caused a loud rumble to reverberate under their feet, though thankfully given the lack of microphones that would have decorated an Earth wedding, it rendered nobody deaf.

'Benjamin Tennyson!'

A giant ant-like thing scuttered out from the gap, its furry mandibles clacking together menacingly even if the ends trailed off into tuffs of wispy fur much like whiskers. Dr Animo, to nobody's surprise, was perched on top of the thin waist-like structure of the thorax, his knees buckled into the grey fur as he spread his arms out, almost as though he was a trainer at sea-world.

Ben raised a finger. 'Actually it's now...well, okay, I guess it's not a hundred percent official just yet, but strictly speaking, I'm not just Ben Tennyson anymore, I'm-'

'SILENCE!' boomed Animo, as a few smaller rat-like ants joined the first, their legs clicking and clanking over the rock-face like hobbled sets of bone, distorted and set wrong within their sockets. They looked ghastly, like a mammal's legs had been broken and reset deliberately into segmented pieces to copy that of an insect's. And their eyes, beady and small, resembled the oily gleam of a rodent's while lank, worm-like tails hung over the bulbs of their ends.

The Revonnahganders, Julie noted, looked furious.

'They are loathsome beasts and undisputed troublemakers,' thundered Rook Da, his eyes now very slender slits of yellow within his face. 'But still, they deserve more respect than the atrocity you have forced them to become!'

'Yes,' echoed his eldest daughter, her fists clenched tightly as though she dearly wished to punch something. 'When I have killed a Muroid, it is because it is a necessity. But I have always made it quick and the only desecration they have suffered is me skinning them for their fur. What you have done...is unspeakable!'

Animo looked at them blankly for a few seconds as though they were speaking a different language before he turned back to Ben. 'Benjamin Kirby Whatever-your-last-name-is, I have traveled a stupidly long distance to-'

But whatever he had been planning to do was never discovered. Because it was at that point that a pink haze descended over all the splinters and chipped segments of rock that now littered the ground, and then those remnants, quick as a flash, gathered together, pasting themselves into knobbly boulders with legs, with pink light running through the cracks that should have divided them like leylines. With a hoarse growl, the rough approximation of Charmcaster's monsters leapt on Dr Animo and his beasts and wrestled them to the ground, the sheer surprise of their appearance leaving their victims no time to respond.

There was a muttered 'manicula' and then the rock monsters sunk into a crouch like obedient dogs, their limbs melting into the ground as their bodies flowed forwards to take up the characteristic arch that often held an old-fashioned stone bridge together. In no time at all, Dr Animo and his mutated cronies found themselves weighed down under these makeshift manacles, each one decorated with curves of pink.

'Nooooo!'

But everyone ignored his shout, turning as one, to stare at Charmcaster, who had apparently been there the whole time. She stared back.

'What?' she asked. 'I just came for the cake.'

Charmcaster wasn't lying.

'You invited Charmcaster to my wedding?' Ben hissed at Gwen while the guest in question stared rather mournfully at the crushed cake that littered the inside of the box Lucy had cheerfully handed to her.

'It does seem rather unwise Gwendolyn, given her behaviour in the past,' Rook remarked, eyeing Charmcaster rather uneasily as she brightened for a moment and then whispered with rather maniacal glee, 'crustulam remformanda est!' She proceeded to giggle as the crumbs jumped to attention like toy soldiers, clambering over each other, as icing quickly slid up over the crumbling jostle until, six seconds later, a new three-tiered cake was formed.

Gwen blinked. 'Wow, it looks better than before.'

Charmcaster rolled her eyes. 'Of course it does, magic always trumps actual effort.' Then she pulled a fork from her sleeve and with a little too much force, started hacking out a slice for herself from the newly formed top layer, like she was trying to topple a sandcastle.

Perhaps seeing this and fearing the inevitable, Ben rushed forwards, untangling his arm from Rook's in order to grip the sagging ends of the straining box. 'Whoa,' he said with a grimace, 'Steady there.'

Charmcaster gave a happy hum in appreciation but her refusal to give an actual 'thank you' left Ben looking a little more irritable.

'Look, I just...Charmcaster hasn't tried to kill anyone for years, okay?' Gwen said softly, wilting slightly against the cross-armed stance Rook was displaying to her.

'Mmmmph,' mumbled Charmcaster, waving her fork over her shoulder without so much as a backwards glance. 'Thaaaat you know of!'

Gwen looked slightly ill. 'I'm the worst.' She looked at Kevin a little anxiously. 'Am I the worst?'

He shrugged. 'Nah. Just those old Tennyson genes giving you trouble. Ben can't be the only one out of the two of you that gets affected all the time.'

Rook Da sighed as his youngest son sidled past him and eagerly scooped up a handful of cake, looking not in the least concerned when Charmcaster frowned and rapped the back of his knuckles sharply with her fork.

'Are you two actually going to complete the ceremony or not?' he asked Ben and Rook tiredly. 'Because I can think of a few elders who will practically be 'jumping for joy' when they discover that you have not officially 'tied the knot.''

Ben promptly delivered the box into Rook Ben's eager hands. 'Wow,' he whispered, 'am I going crazy or did your Dad just use two Earth expressions?'

'You are not going crazy,' Rook informed him, gripping hold of the human's forearm with a fervour that send a slight yelp up into the air from Ben's mouth. 'But if we do not get married soon, and sent off to a honeymoon without any more mutated Muroids to accost us, I fear I might.'

'Don't jinx it!' Ben wailed as Rook promptly marched him over to the ledge, now slightly torn and tattered by Dr Animo's handiwork.

You know,' Verdona said thoughtfully, tapping a wry finger against her chin. 'I could probably re-fix this dull plateau of yours so that it looks as it did before...' she gave Rook Da a sly wink.

Julie sighed and watched as Hervé, tongue overlapping his mouth in concentration, knelt down and managed to snap a perfectly timed picture as Ben and Rook's feet left the ground.

'I zhall call eit za 'leap of faith'' he informed her smugly.

Julie didn't know why, but she felt the need to keep a copy of Hervé's self-proclaimed 'leap of faith' in a photo album. It ended up nestled somewhere in-between two tennis tournaments she had taken part in and performed a strange but colourful contrast against the prim green and white lines of the tennis court framing her every shot. The sky was dipped in purple, not blue, the yellow-white flare of stars and lanterns' colliding mid-glow to set the edges of Rook's fur and Ben's skin into a bright orange fire, like burnished metal. And it was true, the two of them looked rather stupid, caught mid-leap, their backs forming cookie-cutter silhouettes that seemed out of place alongside the clash of light...but well, Julie was fond of it all the same.

She closed the album with a sigh. She wasn't sure how Animo had found out about the wedding or why he had turned up, though of course, Ben had rolled his eyes and dryly informed her that it hadn't really been much of a surprise and that he was just glad it hadn't been someone like Vilgax. Either way, it seemed that Jimmy Jones had managed to keep most of his promise intact as there was hardly any photos released of the actual wedding and those that had had come straight from Jimmy's coverage and been tactfully posed, in such a way that it was hard for the public to get a close-up of Rook's pointed teeth or see Ben as anything other than happy. Of course multiple copies of that which had been released now flooded the net, but Ben's friends and family had kept whatever social media they had on lock-down, refraining from posting anything that could be hacked or leaked.

Still, Julie thought, it couldn't help to keep at least one copy of Ben and Rook being dorkish to herself. And since Ben had ended up with no broken bones, she felt not the slightest twinge of guilt at all.

Notes: Please forgive my bad Latin and French. Have not studied for years.

Also, I mentioned an aubergine in this a description up there, somewhere and in case someone doesn't understand what that is, and yes I have met people in my country who don't, I think they're called eggplants in other parts of the world?

I honestly wanted to write Kai in this somewhere, make her have a brief chat with Julie along the lines of 'oh, you got a space-pet? Yeah, I got this cool sword. What is it with having adventures with Ben and getting awesome mementos, right?' But then, not only couldn't I find room in her to stuff her in here, it rang a bit false regarding Rook's silently-kept issues over her in the maybe-prequel to this. I mean, I've seen people in real life throw huge tantrums over their significant other inviting an old friend they had strong feelings for or had a crush on at one time. And while I don't think Rook's the type to do that, I do think he's the sort to tell Ben to do what he 'thinks is right', but be so unintentionally stiff about it that Ben's just like fuuuuuck...