Summary:
There is a wedding on a farm two towns over from Lij. Everybody talks / or, no trauma au
#no trauma AU #everyone is alive AU #Jordie Rietveld Lives #Family Drama #Wedding Fluff #Alternate Universe - 1950s(but very vaguely)#POV Multiple #POV Outsider #Kaz Brekker gets to have a mom #Inej Ghafa gets to be a blushing bride #awkward dinnertime conversations #cottagecore au #everyone is ooc because they are happy and mentally healthy #mentions of human trafficking #Culture Clashes #heirloom jewelry #all comfort no hurt #Happiness because they deserve it
LIJ AND TWO TOWNS OVER
The wedding is to take place on the Rietvelds' farm, two towns over from Lij. The banns are read in church a month before the set date; when the names of the bride and the groom are announced, a collective gasp spreads through the congregation like wind through a wheat field.
Soon enough, a small Suli caravan arrives in horse-drawn wagons, intricately painted in yellows and reds. Their women wear veils on their heads and their children are dressed in all manner of colorful clothes that the quaint Kerch countryside has never seen before. Ilke, the miller’s daughter, falls out of her window in her attempts to get a better look, getting a broken leg for all her efforts (but then again, Karl, the shoemaker says to anyone who would listen, she was never the shiniest apple on a branch, if you know what I mean). They set up a camp by the forest edge, on the border of Rietvelds’ and van Graafs' fields. The children sneak in closer to gawk at them and their parents pretend that they don’t notice it.
It is said that the younger Rietveld boy met his bride in Ketterdam, during his studies at the University, but what the girl was doing there no one knows and the tongues waggle feverishly.
There is, of course, a leading hypothesis, because what else could a Suli girl be doing in a big city, but the voices hush wherever even a strand of hair on Theresa Rietveld’s head shows up. Everyone and their mother knows she is very protective of her younger son and she doesn’t tend to hold her words back whenever she feels his character is judged unfairly (and she feels so fairly often, according to the general opinion of her neighbors. Insufferable woman. But who could blame her for placing all of her hopes in Kazimir, after Jordan– )
Whoever she is and whatever she did back in Ketterdam, there is one thing everyone can agree on when it comes to Miss Inej Ghafa:
She’s so pretty, the little girls sigh and their fathers nod and their mother shake their heads.
The bride-to-be rides in the wagon leading the procession down the dusty country roads, all dressed up with ribbons and paper-mache lanterns and flowers. Sitting underneath the garland of red geraniums, she is as radiant as the sun, a light-yellow veil spilling down her dark hair and a sheer scarf around her shoulders. She doesn’t rouge her cheeks or lips like the bolder local girls do and she doesn’t wear curls. Her beauty is a quiet, intriguing one, not drawing attention but making it hard to pull one’s eyes away once they find her. She watches everything, wide-eyed, and Lij watches her right back.
She meets their stares, openly. Boldly.
