July 7th 2021

Chapter 188
Our Space For Morning

There were any number of disadvantages about waking up in a tent in the woods you were sharing with both your family and your friends. Oh, there were plenty of advantages, too, but those weren't nearly as noticeable while they were happening as the disadvantages. For instance, there were just so many more people around that you didn't want to wake up accidentally, and so staying quiet became that much more of a challenge, especially as some of those people were small children who might not have so much of a handle on their volume.

Maya had always been an early riser, but when there was something big happening on a day, it would generally be a miracle if she slept even half of the time she'd been aiming for. When she woke up on the first of their two camping mornings, she could tell, just by lying there and listening, just catching the level of darkness outside their tent, that it had to be somewhere about four in the morning. It was one of her weird little talents, as Lucas would call it. She was never wrong.

Everyone else was asleep, as far as she could tell. She could only really guess from looking at the sleeping bag holding the three Babineaux. If she looked to Lucas – as she slept on her side facing him for once – she could only see him in deep sleep. And then there was Marianne, whose precious blond head was pressed somewhere about her heart while her hand was gripped to her shirt. Her breathing was perfectly even as she slept soundly, and Maya permitted herself to carefully brush her fingers through her daughter's hair and to lean to kiss the top of her head. She was such a gentle little soul, and sometimes it overwhelmed her, how much she could love her.

"What time is it?" Lucas very quietly asked, hardly a whisper. Maya pulled her attention back from Marianne and looked to find her husband's eyes fluttering against his waking.

"So early it's almost late, go back to sleep," Maya replied at the same volume, passing her grazing hand to his hair now.

"You first," he challenged.

"I think we both know that's not going to happen," she pointed out.

"Then I'm not either," he raised his hand, showing his ring.

"Knew that, too," Maya squinted at him. "Come on, let's go out there so we don't wake them."

Very carefully and just a bit clumsily from being barely awake and in a tent, they managed to get out of their sleeping bag and out of the tent, with the still sleeping Marianne in her mother's arms. They ended up seated at the logs around the extinguished campfire. Maya looked to the very early morning sky. It wasn't so different from the sky outside their house, but still there was something about seeing it from here that changed everything.

"Do you know what you're going to say?" Maya turned to look at Lucas, who was yawning and scrubbing at his face with both hands to wake himself up. He ended up with his head perched in his palm, looking at her like he hadn't heard a word she'd said but he knew she'd spoken to him. "Morgan and Paul, the wedding? Do you need to write something?" Without a word, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, unlocked the screen and soon handed it over. Maya held it away from Marianne, didn't want the light to wake her. "When did you…"

"Last night, before we turned in. Is it okay? I don't even remember…"

"No, it's great," she smiled. It was still wild to think how her friend, colleague, and bandmate would be getting married today, right here, in the middle of their camping trip, that she and Paul had planned for this to be so, and that her husband would be the one marrying them. At the same time, she was so touched to think that both of them would want it to be like this, that they would feel that this was just the way they wanted to start their married life, after being perpetually engaged for over a year already.

Barely ten minutes after they'd emerged from their tent, they spotted Dylan poking his head out of his tent and then helping Riley step out. The two of them spotted their friends on their log and paused.

"Bathroom," Riley explained before they could get it in their heads that the baby might have been making an early appearance.

"Can you get Nicky?" Dylan asked, and Lucas went at once to collect the sleeping boy before bringing him back to sit next to Maya and Marianne.

Before his parents would return and end up joining the early risers, they would have been joined by Sophie, Chiara, and a barely awake and very relaxed Giulia in her Mommy's arms.

"So, no one's sleeping in, huh?" Nadine's voice alerted the others to her also having risen. She was coming now, Zay at her back with Mia.

By the time an hour had gone by, since Maya and Lucas had left their tent with their baby girl, they were all once again around the circle of logs and a single comfy seat. The last to have come were actually the bride and groom, who had first awakened to find their tent buddies were gone and then started to hear the low hum of many voices from nearby. They were at first surprised and then almost apologetic, as they were left to understand they were in part the reason why all of them had woken up so early.

"You know, you have an opportunity here," Jenna stated quietly, as she watched Rosa help to get the fire started. "At least… I don't know if you had any ideas in particular, but it's almost sunrise, and the sky when that will come, with all the colors… It'd be kind of beautiful, wouldn't it? For the wedding…" Morgan and Paul looked to each other, then to the sky, still waiting on the sun, then to each other once again. They liked that idea.

"And, and breakfast is the perfect meal, and that's what you want for your wedding feast," Zay declared. Nadine chuckled. "Yes, I said feast," he nodded at her, and she held up a hand in 'surrender.'

"Would be appropriate, seeing as how you two met at Ma Maggie's," Maya chimed in, smiling at her friends where they sat.

"Sunrise is just over an hour away," Asher reminded them.

Everyone looked to everyone, the decision happening as collectively as it ever could. They could make it happen. Nadine and Jenna pulled Morgan back into her tent, while Ray and Rosa saw to Paul over in the Houston tent, once his things had been passed along. Meanwhile, the little kids were settled in comfortably near Riley, who would watch over them from her seat, and everyone else worked as quickly and efficiently as they could in order to get the campsite as wedding ready as it would be on such short notice and with what few supplies they had. When they'd achieved that, they all had to go and get changed. They weren't going to be so close to their mark, they'd have time to breathe, and double check that everything was as it should be. The kids would all wake one by one and thankfully be in a good mood, every last one.

"How's it looking up there?" Lucas turned to Maya as she stood in place, guitar at her back and eyes to the sky.

"Need to get everyone in position now," she told him.

Morgan and Paul had planned for this, and it went down to their clothes, too. Paul's suit was much more laid back, summery, just like Morgan's dress would be, but to look at them as they emerged in turn from the tents, they just looked like two people who were about to get married, which was what they were. Maya had her guitar in front of her now, and she sang lightly as the couple made their way up the improvised aisle, taking them in a circle around the fire and past their gathered friends until they came to stand before Lucas, who would be their officiant as agreed.

They would be pronounced husband and wife under a colorful August sky, while many people out in the city and beyond still slept. And in no time the breakfast wedding feast would be pulled together for the whole of their group to enjoy. The name of the game for today would become Morgan and Paul's Choice. Whatever the newlyweds wanted to do today, they would do. It turned out to be much the same as what they'd done the day before, and really what they would probably have done anyway, but with the addition of a lot more music and plenty of dancing all through the day. The rest of the group would not shy away from finding a cup and something to strike it with, the better to 'demand' that the new husband and wife share a kiss, whenever the fancy was upon them. Of course, after a while, the kids started to imitate this, which had them all laughing as they backed them up. At one point, Morgan and Paul were probably compelled to kiss about two dozen times in the span of ten minutes.

"So, are you going to be Mrs. Molina when school starts?" Maya asked Morgan as she pulled her into a dance with a grin. "Or is it still Stewart? Or both?"

"I'm not sure when it'll all be official, but in class, Molina, yes," Morgan confirmed, with a smile on her which Maya understood at once. The realization of her wedding would just keep hitting her over those first days and weeks. She could already see her in class that first day, 'reintroducing' herself to her sophomores, juniors, and seniors, who would have known her as Miss Stewart for one to three years already.

"We are going to have to update the website, and all our pages…" Maya stated with an exaggerated sigh to which Morgan responded with a pitiful pout. Oh, you poor thing. "But, hey, for you…" she finally 'relented,' and Morgan just laughed and pulled her into a hug. "I'm so happy for you," Maya breathed as she hugged her back. "That was so sneaky, the way you guys did it, and I kind of love it. Whipped out that license, no problem. Should have given you a round of applause for that."

"I might have channeled my inner Maya for that one," Morgan stated, to her friend's amusement and approval.

"What about the honeymoon? Are you going somewhere? School's starting soon…"

"We're going to have that over the Christmas break," Morgan revealed. "We've been saying for so long how we wanted to go on a ski trip, and we never did it, so we're going to use the opportunity."

Their second night around the campfire was even merrier than the first, as was to be expected. The little kids were none of them looking eager to turn in, not when there was music and people dancing again, but sooner or later sleepiness would win out against a pack of toddlers any day. Little by little, the group would retreat to their tents, and this time around they would all have a decent night's sleep, the better to wake in the morning and ring in a happy one-day anniversary to their newlyweds, treating the whole thing as though they had been married a whole fifty years and remembering fondly their time as husband and wife up to now, including such fond memories as 'that time when we had lunch' and 'that time when we were made to kiss a lot by a pack of children.' By the time they'd all pack up the camp site and get back in their cars, heading home would feel like stepping back into the world after they'd stepped into another dimension for a couple of days.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners