...or how Tiana's mother took to suddenly finding her daughter married.

Four days.

It had been four torturous days since Tiana had marched out the door positively glowing over her pastry boxes ("just this last late night Mama, and that'll be that!"). Eudora had kissed her cheek, adjusted the veil on the headpiece ("I wish youd'a let me do something nice with your hair for a change"), given her a hug fit to crush and sent her on her way.

The La Bouff masquerade had ended, the city was mad with Mardi Gras preparations, and missing person's reports, particularly for young, female, "colored" people, as the good officer had stressed, were generally disregarded. Young female 'colored' people were likely off gallivanting with friends, and worried mothers of said young, female, 'colored' people were advised to wait until Ash Wednesday at the least to make such reports.

Anyone who'd met Tiana twice in their life would have laughed in their faces at the mere thought of her gallivanting, alone or with friends.

In fact, so many neighbors had done just that when she'd knocked on their doors asking for news on her daughter that a small search party had gone as far into the bayou as the swampy lands allowed, friends had asked for her at work, but the absolute last person to see her in person were Georgia and the boys, serving flapjacks at Duke's (the last to see her alive, said a poisonous little voice in her head). She'd called in sick at Cal's (a first for her), and had not showed at all.

She had thought about involving Charlotte. Eli La Bouff had never been anything but kind to both her and Tia, perfectly tolerant of their friendship, and she knew a plea for help would have Charlotte marching into the police station and demanding, with all her trademark exuberance, that search parties, men, dogs, horses, boats be dispatched immediately to find Tia, even with the nasty business involving the royal impersonator going on. But a picture, a description would have to be provided, and when they took once glance at Eudora, it'd be back to square one. Daddy La Bouff had sway, Charlotte had more spirit than a barrel of moonshine, but even they wouldn't be able to stir up the police over one lost –

There was a knock on the door, and Eudora had stopped asking who after day one.

"Mama."

"Oh Tiana-" And no more was said for a while as Tiana let herself be checked over twice, like she was five again and she'd lost herself in the crowd down Bourbon Street for a little too long.

"Tiana…where-what're you wearin'?" Because other than still having all the necessary limbs, Tiana was definitely not wearing the High Middle Ages gown she'd seen her in last. The voluminous dress she wore now was pale yellow and green silk (smooth, light, genuine silk that looked like it could be Mulberry), stayed up without any sort of hoop, glowed despite not having a single sequin in it, and had stitches so small and precise, Eudora could've sworn they weren't there at all.

"Oh Mama, I don't even know where I'd begin explainin', but I'm so sorry I just vanished, but just lemme explain…" Eudora thought she heard the clearing of a throat and her daughter's entire demeanor changed. "Right. Sorry." She held out a hand to someone who was tucked just behind her doorjamb, and a handsome young man wearing a striking jacket with buttons like braided vines stepped into the dim light of the cottage.

"Um." He looked at her so awkwardly, it should've been funny. "'Ello. I am…Naveen. Hi."

"Naveen? As in Prince Naveen of Maldonia, Charlotte's ex-fiance? You were all over the papers." The papers actually said that a man by the name of Lawrence Malvolio, Royal Valet, had been impersonating the prince, who was presumed missing (possibly kidnapped for ransom). But people had puzzled over the why's and how's of a short, fat old man impersonating a young man of 21 perfectly enough to fool the entire La Bouff household. The why's and how's of his fooling Charlotte caused…significantly less debate. Poor Charlotte! The girl wasn't as dense as all her cooing and screeching would suggest, but flash her a tiara and she didn't have the good sense God gave a goose.

"Um. Yes! About that." The prince looked around, as if somewhere amidst their cluttered foyer-living room he'd find the words he was desperately needing.

Tiana laughed. "Told ya it'd be all over the papers." Naveen admitted her gentle barb and gave her a very particular smile, laying his fingers lightly on her exposed shoulder. And while Eudora had only seen the boy once before, on the front page of the papers, the winsome smile he'd given the camera lacked the…substance that the smile he directed at her daughter had now. Which was nothing to say of the smile Tiana was giving him in return. She hadn't seen her glow like that since before James left for the frontline.

And while Eudora had slept poorly and fitfully, she wasn't the best seamstress in the Crescent City for giggles. The matching colors, the delicate veil attached to the tiara, the cape. Why, if she hadn't known better…

Naveen was pulling up the chair in front of the window for her. "I must insist you take a seat for the…story. You will get tired, standing and listening and…please?" If she didn't know better, she'd have thought they expected her to faint.

Ten minutes of hemming and hawing, one shouted phrase and one near swoon later, Tiana was kneeling on the floor next to her chair and Naveen (her son-in-law, sakes alive!) had dashed into the kitchen-sewing room for a glass of whiskey.

"I knew it. We should have started at the beginning and worked our way through!" He heard him say amidst the tinkling of glasses.

"I don't think there was an easy way." Tiana looked suitably ashamed as she fanned her with one of the older issues of Women's International Cookery that had been lingering on her sewing machine. "Oh Mama, I'm so sorry-"

"Married? Really Tiana, married? I know I've been naggin' you about grandkids, but three days?" Short courtships weren't exactly strange around their neck of the woods, but that usually happened when you'd been the neighbor or the childhood playmate or even the nasty pigtail-puller of your fiancé. And three days was scandalous, even then. A pair of forest green boots entered her line of vision as Naveen returned with the drink.

"Kindly drink, some acqua vitae will do you good." His accent was strange and lilting, making his i's longer and his words enunciated. A charmer's tones. "We were sort of not expecting to live very long, madame…signora…" Naveen's feet wove nervously.

She would have insisted on Mrs. Thompson, but the boy was related to her now, wasn't he? "Eudora is just fine, darlin'."

"Lovely name, Eudora." Oh yes, a charmer's tones for sure. "You see, the average swamp frog lives very little. In the wild, we were to have what? Four years? The prince of Caserta had a pet frog that lived seven, though-"

"We even asked Mama Odie if she could give us a hand, but she said messin' with the natural order of things is what landed us in trouble in the first place."

"And Mama Odie is…?"

"The voodoo priestess. The good one. The bad one was the Shadow Man, and he's…not gonna bother us no more."

"Mama Odie was the one who married you?" If she could destroy evil shadow creatures, she wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth, but if they'd been married by the grace of some heathen magical idol bent on turning them into something worse than frogs...

"Yes, though I think all she said was 'by the power vested in me'. Did she not say just that? Tiana?"

"Yeah. She also pronounced us 'frog and wife', so maybe it wasn't exactly legally bindin'?"

"No ma bichette, I am sure it was binding, otherwise would not have turned human after we-" Eudora's head snapped up. "After the vows." Naveen smiled guiltily. When it didn't melt her shrewd frown, he sighed, turned to the footstool beside the bookshelf and collapsed into it, his face in his hands. "…we are making a tremendous mess of this, are we not Eudora?"

"You can say that again'."