Page 314 of Bride of Choice

Gopher and a small mob of younger females at his back approached. In the middle of it all, was the biggest Lo denaii I’d ever laid eyes on, but he was sitting in a wheeled chair made of local materials of the likes I’d never seen before. Several very tall, thick Lo denaii males with one short, plump, dark skinned woman in the middle of them, her hand on the shoulder of the male in the chair, appeared to be leading this parade of people.

“Hold up just a minute there, boy!” A middle aged man with a thick thatch of grey shot brown hair, decked out in similar duds as Amee-lee had been, broke from the group to rush up to Gopher. The worn, tattered, ancient looking cowboy hat in his hands and the jingling of spurs on his boots had my eyes widening as I took him in.

His accent was thick but I was shit with accents. Hell if I could try and place it. Basically, he sounded like a cowboy in the movies and looked like he’d just stepped out of an old western.

Gopher turned to him as the movie cowboy guy glanced over to where Odix and I were standing.

Whatever he said to him, Gopher glanced down at his empty hands and nodded.

“Celia, darlin’?” the man called out and a small little girl, a small little human girl of no more than twelve, who favored the cowboy and the woman, broke from the group to come dancing forward.

“Here you go, Bibo!” Celia chirped happily, handing over a little bouquet, to give her big brother a hug, nod when her father, I presumed, motioned for her to rejoin the protection of their group, and danced over to Amee-lee and Elle, who seemed to be watching over the little ones.

Clapping him on the back, the man told him, “Now go on and do this right, son.”

Gopher looked so happy he could cry as his father placed something in his hand and stepped back as Gopher approached us.

Glancing at the item in his hand, he gaped. Whirling around, stopping mid-stride towards us, he turned to the woman and spluttered, “Mamma?”

Mamma smiled and nodded encouragingly. She spoke French at first but switched to English to tell him, “Now it’s your turn. Be happy, my heart.”

Gopher rushed her, making the cowboy and the Lo denaii surrounding her chuckle.

“He has asked, yes?” the seated Lo denaii called out loudly.

“No Bapa. Not yet,” a little Lo denaii human hybrid close to Celia’s age with dark fur and brown eyes leaned in to tell him. “Mamma has given him the ring and he has the flowers.”

He nodded approvingly, his eyes squinting in the distance, and made a gesture that said, Well, get on with it then. What are we waiting for?!

Gopher laughed, hugged his Mamma, then his Bapa, the cowboy, who he called Papa, and the rest of his Bapas, as he called them.

Gopher had a sea of sisters. There had to be at least eleven all together. I cringed in sympathy for his Mamma.

Nearly tripping over his own two feet in his rush back to us, he quickly got down on one knee in front of his entire family, I presumed, and asked, “Joanie, be my bride? Marry you Gopher?”

He fumbled for the ring to hold it out to me. I caught it before it fell and practically tackled him as I screeched, “Hell yes, I will!”

His bapas clapped and growled approvingly, while his Mamma and Papa laughed at our ridiculousness and hugged. Bending, his Papa reeled his Bapa in their wheeled chair in for their hug and plopped his cowboy hat on the Lo denaii’s head.

Gopher’s gang of sisters shrieked and cheered. More than a few winced and grimaced at their ear piercing theatrics.

Gopher was too busy sucking the lips from my face to pay any of it any mind.

A heavy hand clapping him on the back, sending him jolting and catching himself, forced us to break our liplock. Gopher bared his teeth, looking ready to snarl at whoever had intruded upon our special moment, but Odix, the back clapper, grabbed us both up in a hug. Gopher yelped, then spluttered when Odix butted right in, bumped foreheads with Goph affectionately, then stole a kiss from me right under Gopher’s sputter-laughing nose.

I laughed like a loon. It was too funny not to, and I was living in this moment, too happy for words.

Releasing us, Odix proclaimed, “Now Goph kiss my Jo. Make the smoochies good,” then ditched us to greet Gopher’s kin.

Gopher cuddled my snort-laughing ass close, grinning as I lost it all over him. My fit of the sillies tapered off into this weird mishmash of giggle-crying.

“My Jo, what this for?” Gopher brushed a finger down my cheek, catching a tear drop as it rolled down my face.

“I’m- I’m happy. These are happy.” Holding out the ring to him, I waggled my fingers. “I don’t know if it will fit any of my sausage fingers-”

“Grandmamma ring fit. BapaChii see it fit. Gopher see on him hand, match Jo ringed finger,” he murmured softly, looking as taken in the moment as me.

“I- You did? How…?” How the hell had he managed that?

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