Two years later…

Michelle

While the girls, now nine years old, were in their room, Michelle, Sarah, and Roumazi were all sitting on the couch, waiting for Amber.

Sarah and Roumazi were at opposite ends of the couch, while Michelle was laying across it. Her head was in Sarah’s lap, and her legs were in Roumazi’s.

Since Sarah’s misconception was resolved two years ago, they had all become much closer. In Sarah’s case, she often slept in the same bed as them, but not on nights when the others were going to have sex. And they would sometimes join her in her bed as well, though just to cuddle and sleep.

Roumazi was listening to music, though she used her magic to muffle the sound, Sarah was reading a book, and Michelle was looking at descriptions of potential houses they might move into.

It’s nearly time to finally leave this apartment. A little more space will definitely be nice. It’s a bit cramped for six people.

The apartment door finally opened, and Amber strode through it, beaming brightly.

She held up a sheet of paper. “I got it!”

The other three got up and hugged her, and the girls also came out from the bedroom to congratulate her as well.

What Amber had received was a certification that she had learned everything the apprenticeship had to offer. There was still more to learn and skills to hone, but the basics and plenty more had been thoroughly mastered. She was the last one to receive hers.

It was possible for someone to simply take a certification test whenever they wanted. People moving from one place to another would often have to do that if the distance was far enough. But not even Roumazi with her previous alchemy experience would’ve passed her test right away. She was still the first of the four to do so, however.

Roumazi proclaimed, “We need to celebrate!”

“Yes!”

The family of six went to the same restaurant where their much more intimate relationship with Roumazi began at. Walking through the door, they saw four familiar faces just ahead of them.

“Nipha!” Luna yelled and ran toward her.

“Luna!” the demon girl yelled back, and the two collided in a hug.

With Nipha were her three mothers, Senava, Malorei, and Rayna, who were a fairy, a demon, and a gnoll, respectively. They had all met many times over the past couple years.

Michelle, Amber, and Sarah even eventually revealed that they were from Earth, as they didn’t feel the need to keep their past a secret from their friends. It had also been difficult to avoid talking about their lives prior to arriving in Nibuolos without revealing anything, and they decided that it probably wouldn’t be a problem this far away from where they were originally summoned. It turned out that they weren’t very surprised by the revelation.

“Oh, hello,” Malorei greeted. “It’s nice running into you like this.”

Amber nodded, “It is. We’re celebrating tonight. I finally got my certification, too!”

“Oh, congratulations!” they said.

Rayna retorted, “’Finally’, you say. Most people take four or five years. And from what you described of your previous home, magic and monster materials add so much more to learn on top of everything else.”

“We were all very motivated,” Sarah said.

She chuckled. “That seems to be the case. Would you like to eat together? I understand if you would prefer to celebrate as a family instead.”

After some quick glances between them, Roumazi replied, “We’d love to. And I think Luna and Diamond would be quite upset if we didn’t.”

The girls were already having fun just talking with each other. Though Diamond was also friends with Nipha, she just didn’t quite click with the girl on the same level that Luna did.

A member of the staff pushed two tables together for all of them to sit at, as there wasn’t any one table that could seat ten people.

“So what are your plans now that you’re all certified?” Senava asked. “I know you plan to open your own shop, but I don’t think I’ve heard any specifics.”

Michelle replied, “We’ve been looking into places that have a home and a workshop on the same property. We still don't know if that's what we'll end up with, but that's what we're thinking about right now."

Amber happily added, “I want to design a lot of interesting pieces. Utility will always take priority, but I want to integrate aesthetics into our products. I feel that that’s a severely lacking element to most people’s equipment.”

Rayna smiled, “Sounds interesting. I look forward to seeing what you produce.”

It should be fun designing things again. Though I only ever did graphic design, unlike Amber and her cosplay. She’ll be taking the lead in that, but I’m more interested in the technical side of things anyway.

The two families of six and four chatted away into the night, but eventually had to go home. Rayna even mentioned that she still had paperwork to catch up on before going to bed.

After the girls had fallen asleep, which had happened pretty much the second they laid down, Sarah nervously approached the others.

“So…” she began, then chewed her lip as she found her words. “I’ve been thinking. I really appreciate and care for all of you. And love you three, in a non-romantic way, but what I feel for you is still really deep, and…

“Ugh, I meant to plan this out more… A-Anyway, um… Will you marry me?”

Michelle, Amber, and Roumazi were all stunned by the suddenness of the proposal.

“Yes,” Michelle was the first to respond, as her mouth broke into a smile.

The two others were brought out of their stupor by Michelle’s reply.

Amber gave a hearty, “Yes! I would love to!”

Grinning like the others, Roumazi said, “Of course.”

The four of them wrapped each other in a tight, blissful, and warm hug.

“Should we go tomorrow?” Roumazi asked.

Sarah replied, “None of us are working tomorrow, so I think we should. Unlike on Earth, there aren’t big ceremonies here except for prominent people.”

 

———

 

The next day, the whole family went to the officiator. Luna and Diamond had been ecstatic upon hearing about their marriage, but Luna was disappointed that there wasn’t going to be a big wedding. Still, she was quite happy for her moms.

They entered a small, white building, heavily decorated with stones of various colors, representing the pendants most married people wore.

A man with black wings in tight-fitting red clothes sat behind a desk. Upon seeing them enter, he asked, “Hello, what can I do for you?”

Sarah stepped forward. Gesturing to the other three adults, she replied, “The four of us are getting married.”

He smiled and nodded. “There is some paperwork for each of you to fill out, but it doesn’t take very long. Are you getting pendants made?”

“We are.”

“Then, seeing as there are four of you, that process will likely take a couple hours. If you don’t have enough time for that right now, you can come back later.”

“We’ll do all of it now.”

Okay, this is kind of underwhelming. But I don’t hate how small this is, either.

The paperwork was just some standard, basic questions, but the one that made all of them stop was the question asking if they would like to change their names or leave them as is, as they hadn’t actually discussed that.

Roumazi didn’t actually have a last name, but had given a generic one for previous paperwork she’d dealt with. The remaining three were Michelle Meadows, Amber Bowman, and Sarah Woods.

I guess there won’t be any more jokes about Amber being born to be an archer.

Thinking back to how they were here today because Luna had initially wanted to play with snow in a video game, Michelle suggested, “How about Snow?”

Amber gave her a flat look. “Then my name would be Amber Snow. No thanks.”

“Oh, I completely missed that. Sorry.”

Roumazi suggested, “How about we use Woods? Sarah’s the one who asked us, after all.”

“I-If you’re fine with that…” Sarah stuttered, blushing heavily.

“I like it,” Michelle said.

“Me too,” Amber added.

“I also like it!” Luna chimed in.

“Yeah. It’s good,” Diamond added.

Roumazi looked at Sarah. “It seems we’re all in agreement.”

Sarah nodded slightly. “This is the most embarrassing but also happiest thing I’ve ever done.”

I guess if she was used to being isolated from people in the past, then this would be pretty intense for her…

With the paperwork filled out, they were led to a different room in the back part of the building. An orc craftsman who was working on jewelry was focusing intensely on his task.

The man from the front desk spoke, “Jereth, four guests for you.”

Jereth nodded, “One minute.”

The clerk went back to his desk, and Jereth finally looked up, having finished whatever minute detail he was working on.

“Four of you, eh? Congratulations!”

“Thank you,” they all replied.

He nodded, then began a practiced explanation, “Right, so the way this works is that I use an enchantment to capture a three-dimensional portrait of you. That gets recorded into a small gem, and then your mana is imprinted into it as well.

“The enchantment in the gem will then be able to produce a holographic likeness of you whenever it is activated, and each gem will match the colors of the person whose bust is recorded in it.

“The gems are then set into a silver pendant for you to wear around your neck.”

Roumazi went first, as she was the calmest of the four of them. She was asked to keep a gentle smile while the portrait was recorded. That part took a few minutes, then making sure the portrait was recorded properly took another few.

Roumazi then pushed her mana into a device that would transfer it into the three gems, one for Michelle, Amber, and Sarah each. Jereth tested them after they were completed, and a half-size hologram of Roumazi appeared every time.

The entire hologram matched Roumazi’s blue, and the purple from her avatar's [State] modifier was imbued in key places throughout.

It took about twenty minutes for the entire process to be completed, and the end result was a beautiful dichromatic portrait of her in three separate gems.

Amber went next, and after that was Michelle.

Before they could begin however, he spoke to her, “I understand you may be nervous, but if you take a deep breath and relax yourself, it will turn out just fine.”

Understanding what the jeweler was getting at, she replied, “I’m not nervous, this is just my default expression.”

He raised an eyebrow. “That glare is your default expression?”

She glared for real, and the man actually flinched and let out a tiny squeak. Michelle could only sit there embarrassedly while the others tried not to laugh.

Jereth coughed. “My apologies.”

“It’s fine. Let’s continue?”

“Yes,” he agreed, though he did check with the others to confirm that Michelle really was showing a gentle smile.

Given what happened with Michelle, Sarah was able to relax enough for her own portrait. They then had to wait while he set the twelve gems into four pendants.

Each pendant had three gems arranged in a triangle formation in it when he was done with them. None of them had any particular desire for them to be in a particular order, so Jereth mixed it up for them so that no two pendants had the same person’s portrait in the same position in the triangle.

“Thank you, Jereth. They’re lovely,” Sarah complimented.

“You’re welcome,” he said. Smiling, he added, “Your paperwork will have already been submitted by now, meaning everything in the city with your name on it should already be updated. Congratulations, once again.”

Magical recordkeeping is so much faster...

They all thanked Jereth one more time, then left the building, each of them feeling overwhelmingly happy with each other and the small pendants they each now had.