Elizabeth Culmer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
edenfalling) wrote2017-07-03 10:27 pm
edenfalling) wrote2017-07-03 10:27 pm
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DVD Commentary: The Courting Dance, chapter 7
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bluejayfic, for the Fic DVD Commentary Meme (which is still open, fyi!)
The Courting Dance: Marriage is a bit more complicated than quarreling and making it up again, especially for the crown prince of Archenland and an exiled Calormene Tarkheena. (21,000 words)
Chapter 7 - The Beating of Our Hearts: Running from your problems is rarely a good long-term solution, but sometimes the change in environment can be helpful -- especially now that Aravis and Cor are on the same page. (1,600 words)
As bluejayfic's ask mentioned, this chapter is the one with the wedding scene. What was I thinking, putting the wedding halfway through the story? Well, I was thinking that the plot is as much about politics and worldbuilding as it is about romance, and the wedding is a major symbol of Aravis and Cor deciding to commit to each other despite various obstacles. Also, while it resolves their interpersonal problems, it doesn't resolve their external problems at all -- in fact, it makes some of them worse. So I figured it would make a good central turning point, where we switch from Aravis and Cor being pissed off at each other to standing back-to-back against the world.
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
Aravis disliked the journey into Narnia, though she had gone willingly five times during her first year in the north, so that she might speak to Queen Lucy and spend a week or two in a place where her role was clearly defined. The Narnians treated guests nobly and never begrudged her origin, despite Queen Susan's ordeal, whereas the Archens held ancient enmity with Calormen and were rarely sure what to make of her status -- something partway between king's ward, long-term guest, and unofficial hostage.
This is a little repetitive in terms of story arc -- we get it; Archenland has ISSUES with Calormen -- but I needed to explicitly establish that Narnia, despite the Rabadash incident, doesn't really share them. That will be important in future chapters.
Even in the height of midsummer the mountain road was prone to enveloping fog, and the trees pressed thickly all around like disapproving sentinels. Hwin and Bree passed the time trading gossip about their respective herds and territory negotiations with the centaurs and other grassland Beasts of Narnia. Cor rode silently, seemingly lost in thought. Aravis had nothing to contribute to the Horses' conversation and could not think of the right way to break into Cor's reverie, not when they hadn't spoken properly in so long. She held her tongue until they were through the pass and safely down past the narrow cliffside path, with the great valley of Narnia spread out before them like a landscape on silk.
She sat back in the saddle. Hwin took her suggestion and stopped. After a moment, Bree noticed he was walking alone and turned to eye them questioningly, his nostrils flared to catch any strange scent on the wind.
"We've crossed the border," Aravis said. "Now that we're nominally beyond Archenland's reach, I want an explanation."
Bree tossed his head. "An explanation of what? You wanted to run away, Cor wanted to run away, Hwin and I offered to help, and here we all are in Narnia. What could be simpler?"
Bree is a refreshingly straightforward soul. *wry*
Aravis ground her teeth. "I know why I wanted to leave Archenland. I know why you and Hwin helped. Cor, on the other hand, has spent the past two months treading dangerously close to denying me, which, after I accepted his courting gift, could well be considered grounds for blood feud. I know that you love your father and you wish to be worthy in his eyes," she added directly to Cor. "I know why you were delaying, which is why I was willing to take the dishonor of breaking the dance on myself. Yet here we are, fleeing Archenland as we once fled Calormen, with an even more uncertain future before us. What changed your mind?"
Context: culturally speaking, what Cor did was the equivalent of "it's not you, it's me" weaseling out of a betrothal, which is especially insulting after he'd put in a fair amount of effort to buy some expensive and not-easily-acquired courting gifts, and by doing so had reinforced Aravis's sense that he is the only other person in Archenland who shares her cultural background and perspective. Aravis has every right to be pissed off at him.
Cor swung his left leg over the saddle and slid to the slanted ground. It was strange to look down on him from Hwin's back. They had been of a height as children, but he had three inches on her these days, just enough that she found herself tilting her chin when they spoke face to face. It was also fitting that he stand lower now, like a supplicant come to her father's court to beg her favor. There was no obligation to respond to the overture of a dance, but Cor had met her, matched her, and then stepped back.
"The king is under the law, for the law is what makes him king," Cor said slowly, stepping up the grassy hillside with his eyes raised to catch Aravis's gaze. "Father said that to me on our first night in Anvard -- do you remember? A king in answerable to his country and his people. If he forgets that, he becomes a tyrant. I want to do right by Archenland. I wanted to make people see that you're the best thing in my life, that you could never be a weakness. I wanted to obey the law, to work with the Great Council rather than against it, and make Father proud."
Hwin shivered and took a nervous step sideways. Aravis loosened the grip of her legs and held herself straight and strong under Cor's earnest gaze. "What changed your mind?" she repeated.
"The law in Archenland isn't the same as the law in Calormen," Cor said. "It's about personal honor as much as rules, just like debt and testimony -- did you know that? What am I saying; of course you knew that. I should have known it, if I'd been thinking. The law is a promise between the people and the king." He shrugged, a slight self-deprecating gesture. "How could anyone trust me to keep that promise if I broke a more important one to you?"
Cor's reasoning here is one of the major keys to the story. He is trying to balance two cultures, and realized he'd been swinging back and forth in response to each new stimulus, but really he needs to find his own synthesis and stand there.
Or in slightly more concrete terms: when he accepted Aravis's Calormene-style flirtation and made her a Calormene proposal, he acted as if he were still in Calormen (where Aravis's choice would have mattered a lot since she's the daughter of a High Lord, and his would have been secondary at best since he was somewhere between a peasant and a slave).
Then he realized that from an Archen perspective, he'd just made a huge decision of state without consulting anyone, and that's bad. (Slippery slope to tyranny.) Obviously the Archens have a bee in their collective bonnet about Calormen, because Aravis is objectively a pretty good marriage prospect -- she doesn't have an inheritance anymore, but she's noble-born and grew up with court politics and such and can therefore shore up Cor's weak points, not to mention she and Cor are absolutely unrelated which matters in the mountain kingdoms (I think their nobles are all cousins of some sort at this point in history).
But then Cor realized that Archen law is based on personal honor as much as an impersonal set of rules, and if he broke his engagement to Aravis, he'd be breaking his honor and therefore creating a hypocrisy at the heart of his kingship. (Plus he really does think Archen prejudice against Calormen is wrong and wrong-headed.) So he found the place where he said, "This is my line in the sand," and refused to be moved any farther.
If Archenland won't have him as he is, then they can't have him at all.
Aravis swung her leg over Hwin's back and slid to the grassy earth. Cor stepped forward and took her hands.
"Do you forgive me?" he asked.
"We have two witnesses," Aravis said rather than answer directly. "Do you have objections?"
Aravis understands all the stuff I blathered about a couple paragraphs ago. She's also both Calormene (indirect verbal responses) and a fan of direct action, so her response is not to answer Cor's question but to SHOW him the answer by essentially saying, "I not only forgive you, I want to make absolutely clear that I stand with you, so let's get married right here and now, and do it the Calormene way to make an extra point."
For a moment Cor looked like the baffled boy she'd first grown to know on their journey. Then comprehension kindled a slow fire behind his eyes, and his fingers tightened around hers. "Bree, Hwin," he said, "will you stand witness to our marriage and attest its truth before any court?"
Bree looked utterly confused, but he nodded his head. "Yes, of course, but don't you need, oh, a dress, and some papers to sign, and another person to say a bunch of nonsense to make it official? Possibly something with ribbons or a fire?"
The implication of the ribbons and fire, btw, is that northern marriages are not church weddings as we know them; rather, they involve handfasting (tying ribbons around joined hands) or jumping over a fire while holding hands. There's probably also a variant where you jump over a broomstick, or just something to do with crossing a threshold, or crossing under an arch of flowering branches. Transitions and binding, that sort of thing.
"That's only if they want to be grand," Hwin said from behind Aravis's shoulder. "I saw humans do this in Calormen. All they need is themselves and a pair of friends to swear they said the words before they got down to mating."
Horses, Aravis reflected, had a very earthy way of seeing the world. She caught a blush rising in Cor's cheeks and was grateful yet again that her own slight embarrassment was not equally visible to him. "Well then," she said, threading a note of challenge into her voice. "Will you keep your promise?"
Cor raised their joined hands to heart-height and said, "In the name of Soolyeh, I take you for my wife. May our marriage be warm." He stared into Aravis's eyes, the slant of the hill putting them exactly on a level.
Aravis held his gaze. "So may it be. In the name of Garshomon, I take you for my husband. May our marriage be fruitful."
The words were familiar. Aravis had heard them many times, for her father had been prone to grant the request of his slaves and the peasants on his estate that he stand as their witness and thus bring greater dignity to their unions. She had heard them again when Ilroozeh Tarkheena had married her father, for though the trappings of the wedding might be grand beyond belief, the rite itself was always the same. And she had been made to embroider them and paint them in calligraphy lessons as she grew to be of marriageable age, for no Tarkaan wished his daughter to embarrass him when she left his protection to join her new husband's household.
But this was a piece of Calormen, not of the north. To hear these words, to speak the names of Calormene gods in the land of the Lion himself, was vertiginously strange.
Which is funny because Narnia is full of non-Christian gods and quasi-religious figures: Bacchus, Silenus, Pomona, all the various nature spirits, even Father Christmas. And yet, it's also a feeling I got while writing this, a sort of nagging, "But is this really appropriate?"
And that's how I knew it was important to include this. Because religious pluralism is never inappropriate. (If Lewis just rolled over in his grave? GOOD.)
"So may it be," Cor said, his voice wavering as if he shared Aravis's feeling of displacement. "In the name of your father, I take you for my wife. May our marriage be honorable."
Kidrash Tarkaan would approve of Cor, Aravis thought. "So may it be. In the name of your mother" -- whom she had never met, but King Lune had loved and respected her and therefore Aravis could but assume Queen Elwen had been as bright and honorable as her sons -- "I take you for my husband. May our marriage be true."
Someday I am going to get Queen Elwen textually into a story. Or else!
"So may it be," Cor said, and then paused, letting silence seep into the sunlit afternoon instead of continuing the last set of promises.
"Is that it?" Bree asked. "Pretty enough, I suppose, if you like that sort of thing. Only, don't Calormene rituals go in threes?"
"They do," Aravis said, knowing exactly why Cor was hesitating. She squeezed his hands, her sword calluses rubbing against his, and switched the lead. "In the name of Aslan, I take you for my husband. May our marriage be strong."
She should have said Tash, but while she would always respect the god of war and vengeance, she had lost his favor when she gave allegiance to the lands of his enemies. Even if she had still held him as the king of all gods, it would feel wrong to swear by his power in Narnia, and the Lion was equally strong and fierce, his power more than enough to hold as a support. Aravis had taken Aslan for her liege in the wars of heaven and so she would make her future in his name. She would marry Cor by the ways of Calormen, but they belonged to Archenland too, now. It was fitting that she acknowledge that heritage in her vows.
And here again we have the theme of finding a personal synthesis or balance point between two cultures.
Cor blinked, and then smiled, a small, private curl of his lips just for her. "So may it be," he said. "In the names of all the gods, I take you for my wife. May our marriage be forever." He raised their joined hands, sliding his fingers around to turn her hands palms upward, and kissed the soft inner skin of Aravis's wrists: a feather-brush of skin on skin, his breath to the pulse of her blood. His beard tickled across her open palms as he looked up into her eyes.
I find beards hot, okay? There is no deeper motivation here.
Aravis swallowed. "So may it be," she said.
She pulled; Cor came willingly. She met his breath with her own.
Which is a very roundabout way of saying, "they kissed," but I dunno, this phrasing feels a lot more emotionally and erotically charged to me.
---------------------------------------------
The post-chapter notes are as follows:
Cor and Aravis use a tweaked version of the Calormene marriage ritual. The traditional version goes like this:
Man: In the name of Soolyeh, I take you for my wife. May our marriage be warm.
Woman: So may it be. In the name of Garshomon, I take you for my husband. May our marriage be fruitful.
Man: So may it be. In the name of your father, I take you for my wife. May our marriage be honorable.
Woman: So may it be. In the name of your mother, I take you for my husband. May our marriage be true.
Man: So may it be. In the name of Achadith, I take you for my wife. May our marriage be strong.
Woman: So may it be. In the name of Tash, I take you for my husband. May our marriage be forever.
Man: So may it be.
And then they are married. The traditional divorce ceremony goes approximately the same way. Either the woman or the man can end the marriage at any time by saying, "In the name of Nazreen, I divorce you. In the name of Nur, I divorce you. In the name of Azaroth, I divorce you" -- again, three times makes it true. It's not done lightly, since the person who instigates a divorce may start a blood feud with that action, but it's still pretty simple and egalitarian.
I guess this would be where I explain some stuff about my Calormene pantheon? Okay. There are nine deities: four goddesses, four gods, and Azaroth who is usually male but there are some people who say otherwise. (Azaroth's domain is death. Boundaries get fuzzy there.) The official mythology and theology are those promoted by Tashbaan, but there are hundreds of regional variants.
Generally, Soolyeh is the goddess of the sun, of marriage, and fertility/agriculture. Garshomon, the god of rivers, earth, and agriculture, is her husband. (Soolyeh's symbol is a sun-disk; Garshomon's is a bull. A sun-disk surmounted by bull horns is frequently used on their shared temples and as a marriage blessing.
Tash is the god of war and vengeance and generally regarded as king of heaven. Achadith, the goddess of change, of victory, and of things out of place, is generally considered to be both the queen of heaven and Tash's wife.
So the marriage ceremony calls upon the deities most associated with marriage, as a general blessing and also an indirect request for children; calls upon the participants' own families as a reminder that marriage is ultimately a social institution; and calls upon the two most powerful deities to sort of tie the marriage into the legal fabric of the Calormene Empire and also remind the participants that there are consequences for breaking their vows. (Neither Tash nor Achadith is a comfortable sort of deity.)
The divorce ceremony calls upon Nazreen (goddess of wisdom, memory, regret, and liminal periods), Nur (god of education/educated professionals, disease, and medicine), and Azaroth (god of silence, darkness, and death). Nazreen and Nur are also said to be married, but their domains are more shadowy and associated with endings.
Sokda and Zardeenah, the remaining two deities, have nothing to do with either marriage or divorce.
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And that is pretty much that. :)
The Courting Dance: Marriage is a bit more complicated than quarreling and making it up again, especially for the crown prince of Archenland and an exiled Calormene Tarkheena. (21,000 words)
Chapter 7 - The Beating of Our Hearts: Running from your problems is rarely a good long-term solution, but sometimes the change in environment can be helpful -- especially now that Aravis and Cor are on the same page. (1,600 words)
As bluejayfic's ask mentioned, this chapter is the one with the wedding scene. What was I thinking, putting the wedding halfway through the story? Well, I was thinking that the plot is as much about politics and worldbuilding as it is about romance, and the wedding is a major symbol of Aravis and Cor deciding to commit to each other despite various obstacles. Also, while it resolves their interpersonal problems, it doesn't resolve their external problems at all -- in fact, it makes some of them worse. So I figured it would make a good central turning point, where we switch from Aravis and Cor being pissed off at each other to standing back-to-back against the world.
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
Aravis disliked the journey into Narnia, though she had gone willingly five times during her first year in the north, so that she might speak to Queen Lucy and spend a week or two in a place where her role was clearly defined. The Narnians treated guests nobly and never begrudged her origin, despite Queen Susan's ordeal, whereas the Archens held ancient enmity with Calormen and were rarely sure what to make of her status -- something partway between king's ward, long-term guest, and unofficial hostage.
This is a little repetitive in terms of story arc -- we get it; Archenland has ISSUES with Calormen -- but I needed to explicitly establish that Narnia, despite the Rabadash incident, doesn't really share them. That will be important in future chapters.
Even in the height of midsummer the mountain road was prone to enveloping fog, and the trees pressed thickly all around like disapproving sentinels. Hwin and Bree passed the time trading gossip about their respective herds and territory negotiations with the centaurs and other grassland Beasts of Narnia. Cor rode silently, seemingly lost in thought. Aravis had nothing to contribute to the Horses' conversation and could not think of the right way to break into Cor's reverie, not when they hadn't spoken properly in so long. She held her tongue until they were through the pass and safely down past the narrow cliffside path, with the great valley of Narnia spread out before them like a landscape on silk.
She sat back in the saddle. Hwin took her suggestion and stopped. After a moment, Bree noticed he was walking alone and turned to eye them questioningly, his nostrils flared to catch any strange scent on the wind.
"We've crossed the border," Aravis said. "Now that we're nominally beyond Archenland's reach, I want an explanation."
Bree tossed his head. "An explanation of what? You wanted to run away, Cor wanted to run away, Hwin and I offered to help, and here we all are in Narnia. What could be simpler?"
Bree is a refreshingly straightforward soul. *wry*
Aravis ground her teeth. "I know why I wanted to leave Archenland. I know why you and Hwin helped. Cor, on the other hand, has spent the past two months treading dangerously close to denying me, which, after I accepted his courting gift, could well be considered grounds for blood feud. I know that you love your father and you wish to be worthy in his eyes," she added directly to Cor. "I know why you were delaying, which is why I was willing to take the dishonor of breaking the dance on myself. Yet here we are, fleeing Archenland as we once fled Calormen, with an even more uncertain future before us. What changed your mind?"
Context: culturally speaking, what Cor did was the equivalent of "it's not you, it's me" weaseling out of a betrothal, which is especially insulting after he'd put in a fair amount of effort to buy some expensive and not-easily-acquired courting gifts, and by doing so had reinforced Aravis's sense that he is the only other person in Archenland who shares her cultural background and perspective. Aravis has every right to be pissed off at him.
Cor swung his left leg over the saddle and slid to the slanted ground. It was strange to look down on him from Hwin's back. They had been of a height as children, but he had three inches on her these days, just enough that she found herself tilting her chin when they spoke face to face. It was also fitting that he stand lower now, like a supplicant come to her father's court to beg her favor. There was no obligation to respond to the overture of a dance, but Cor had met her, matched her, and then stepped back.
"The king is under the law, for the law is what makes him king," Cor said slowly, stepping up the grassy hillside with his eyes raised to catch Aravis's gaze. "Father said that to me on our first night in Anvard -- do you remember? A king in answerable to his country and his people. If he forgets that, he becomes a tyrant. I want to do right by Archenland. I wanted to make people see that you're the best thing in my life, that you could never be a weakness. I wanted to obey the law, to work with the Great Council rather than against it, and make Father proud."
Hwin shivered and took a nervous step sideways. Aravis loosened the grip of her legs and held herself straight and strong under Cor's earnest gaze. "What changed your mind?" she repeated.
"The law in Archenland isn't the same as the law in Calormen," Cor said. "It's about personal honor as much as rules, just like debt and testimony -- did you know that? What am I saying; of course you knew that. I should have known it, if I'd been thinking. The law is a promise between the people and the king." He shrugged, a slight self-deprecating gesture. "How could anyone trust me to keep that promise if I broke a more important one to you?"
Cor's reasoning here is one of the major keys to the story. He is trying to balance two cultures, and realized he'd been swinging back and forth in response to each new stimulus, but really he needs to find his own synthesis and stand there.
Or in slightly more concrete terms: when he accepted Aravis's Calormene-style flirtation and made her a Calormene proposal, he acted as if he were still in Calormen (where Aravis's choice would have mattered a lot since she's the daughter of a High Lord, and his would have been secondary at best since he was somewhere between a peasant and a slave).
Then he realized that from an Archen perspective, he'd just made a huge decision of state without consulting anyone, and that's bad. (Slippery slope to tyranny.) Obviously the Archens have a bee in their collective bonnet about Calormen, because Aravis is objectively a pretty good marriage prospect -- she doesn't have an inheritance anymore, but she's noble-born and grew up with court politics and such and can therefore shore up Cor's weak points, not to mention she and Cor are absolutely unrelated which matters in the mountain kingdoms (I think their nobles are all cousins of some sort at this point in history).
But then Cor realized that Archen law is based on personal honor as much as an impersonal set of rules, and if he broke his engagement to Aravis, he'd be breaking his honor and therefore creating a hypocrisy at the heart of his kingship. (Plus he really does think Archen prejudice against Calormen is wrong and wrong-headed.) So he found the place where he said, "This is my line in the sand," and refused to be moved any farther.
If Archenland won't have him as he is, then they can't have him at all.
Aravis swung her leg over Hwin's back and slid to the grassy earth. Cor stepped forward and took her hands.
"Do you forgive me?" he asked.
"We have two witnesses," Aravis said rather than answer directly. "Do you have objections?"
Aravis understands all the stuff I blathered about a couple paragraphs ago. She's also both Calormene (indirect verbal responses) and a fan of direct action, so her response is not to answer Cor's question but to SHOW him the answer by essentially saying, "I not only forgive you, I want to make absolutely clear that I stand with you, so let's get married right here and now, and do it the Calormene way to make an extra point."
For a moment Cor looked like the baffled boy she'd first grown to know on their journey. Then comprehension kindled a slow fire behind his eyes, and his fingers tightened around hers. "Bree, Hwin," he said, "will you stand witness to our marriage and attest its truth before any court?"
Bree looked utterly confused, but he nodded his head. "Yes, of course, but don't you need, oh, a dress, and some papers to sign, and another person to say a bunch of nonsense to make it official? Possibly something with ribbons or a fire?"
The implication of the ribbons and fire, btw, is that northern marriages are not church weddings as we know them; rather, they involve handfasting (tying ribbons around joined hands) or jumping over a fire while holding hands. There's probably also a variant where you jump over a broomstick, or just something to do with crossing a threshold, or crossing under an arch of flowering branches. Transitions and binding, that sort of thing.
"That's only if they want to be grand," Hwin said from behind Aravis's shoulder. "I saw humans do this in Calormen. All they need is themselves and a pair of friends to swear they said the words before they got down to mating."
Horses, Aravis reflected, had a very earthy way of seeing the world. She caught a blush rising in Cor's cheeks and was grateful yet again that her own slight embarrassment was not equally visible to him. "Well then," she said, threading a note of challenge into her voice. "Will you keep your promise?"
Cor raised their joined hands to heart-height and said, "In the name of Soolyeh, I take you for my wife. May our marriage be warm." He stared into Aravis's eyes, the slant of the hill putting them exactly on a level.
Aravis held his gaze. "So may it be. In the name of Garshomon, I take you for my husband. May our marriage be fruitful."
The words were familiar. Aravis had heard them many times, for her father had been prone to grant the request of his slaves and the peasants on his estate that he stand as their witness and thus bring greater dignity to their unions. She had heard them again when Ilroozeh Tarkheena had married her father, for though the trappings of the wedding might be grand beyond belief, the rite itself was always the same. And she had been made to embroider them and paint them in calligraphy lessons as she grew to be of marriageable age, for no Tarkaan wished his daughter to embarrass him when she left his protection to join her new husband's household.
But this was a piece of Calormen, not of the north. To hear these words, to speak the names of Calormene gods in the land of the Lion himself, was vertiginously strange.
Which is funny because Narnia is full of non-Christian gods and quasi-religious figures: Bacchus, Silenus, Pomona, all the various nature spirits, even Father Christmas. And yet, it's also a feeling I got while writing this, a sort of nagging, "But is this really appropriate?"
And that's how I knew it was important to include this. Because religious pluralism is never inappropriate. (If Lewis just rolled over in his grave? GOOD.)
"So may it be," Cor said, his voice wavering as if he shared Aravis's feeling of displacement. "In the name of your father, I take you for my wife. May our marriage be honorable."
Kidrash Tarkaan would approve of Cor, Aravis thought. "So may it be. In the name of your mother" -- whom she had never met, but King Lune had loved and respected her and therefore Aravis could but assume Queen Elwen had been as bright and honorable as her sons -- "I take you for my husband. May our marriage be true."
Someday I am going to get Queen Elwen textually into a story. Or else!
"So may it be," Cor said, and then paused, letting silence seep into the sunlit afternoon instead of continuing the last set of promises.
"Is that it?" Bree asked. "Pretty enough, I suppose, if you like that sort of thing. Only, don't Calormene rituals go in threes?"
"They do," Aravis said, knowing exactly why Cor was hesitating. She squeezed his hands, her sword calluses rubbing against his, and switched the lead. "In the name of Aslan, I take you for my husband. May our marriage be strong."
She should have said Tash, but while she would always respect the god of war and vengeance, she had lost his favor when she gave allegiance to the lands of his enemies. Even if she had still held him as the king of all gods, it would feel wrong to swear by his power in Narnia, and the Lion was equally strong and fierce, his power more than enough to hold as a support. Aravis had taken Aslan for her liege in the wars of heaven and so she would make her future in his name. She would marry Cor by the ways of Calormen, but they belonged to Archenland too, now. It was fitting that she acknowledge that heritage in her vows.
And here again we have the theme of finding a personal synthesis or balance point between two cultures.
Cor blinked, and then smiled, a small, private curl of his lips just for her. "So may it be," he said. "In the names of all the gods, I take you for my wife. May our marriage be forever." He raised their joined hands, sliding his fingers around to turn her hands palms upward, and kissed the soft inner skin of Aravis's wrists: a feather-brush of skin on skin, his breath to the pulse of her blood. His beard tickled across her open palms as he looked up into her eyes.
I find beards hot, okay? There is no deeper motivation here.
Aravis swallowed. "So may it be," she said.
She pulled; Cor came willingly. She met his breath with her own.
Which is a very roundabout way of saying, "they kissed," but I dunno, this phrasing feels a lot more emotionally and erotically charged to me.
---------------------------------------------
The post-chapter notes are as follows:
Cor and Aravis use a tweaked version of the Calormene marriage ritual. The traditional version goes like this:
Man: In the name of Soolyeh, I take you for my wife. May our marriage be warm.
Woman: So may it be. In the name of Garshomon, I take you for my husband. May our marriage be fruitful.
Man: So may it be. In the name of your father, I take you for my wife. May our marriage be honorable.
Woman: So may it be. In the name of your mother, I take you for my husband. May our marriage be true.
Man: So may it be. In the name of Achadith, I take you for my wife. May our marriage be strong.
Woman: So may it be. In the name of Tash, I take you for my husband. May our marriage be forever.
Man: So may it be.
And then they are married. The traditional divorce ceremony goes approximately the same way. Either the woman or the man can end the marriage at any time by saying, "In the name of Nazreen, I divorce you. In the name of Nur, I divorce you. In the name of Azaroth, I divorce you" -- again, three times makes it true. It's not done lightly, since the person who instigates a divorce may start a blood feud with that action, but it's still pretty simple and egalitarian.
I guess this would be where I explain some stuff about my Calormene pantheon? Okay. There are nine deities: four goddesses, four gods, and Azaroth who is usually male but there are some people who say otherwise. (Azaroth's domain is death. Boundaries get fuzzy there.) The official mythology and theology are those promoted by Tashbaan, but there are hundreds of regional variants.
Generally, Soolyeh is the goddess of the sun, of marriage, and fertility/agriculture. Garshomon, the god of rivers, earth, and agriculture, is her husband. (Soolyeh's symbol is a sun-disk; Garshomon's is a bull. A sun-disk surmounted by bull horns is frequently used on their shared temples and as a marriage blessing.
Tash is the god of war and vengeance and generally regarded as king of heaven. Achadith, the goddess of change, of victory, and of things out of place, is generally considered to be both the queen of heaven and Tash's wife.
So the marriage ceremony calls upon the deities most associated with marriage, as a general blessing and also an indirect request for children; calls upon the participants' own families as a reminder that marriage is ultimately a social institution; and calls upon the two most powerful deities to sort of tie the marriage into the legal fabric of the Calormene Empire and also remind the participants that there are consequences for breaking their vows. (Neither Tash nor Achadith is a comfortable sort of deity.)
The divorce ceremony calls upon Nazreen (goddess of wisdom, memory, regret, and liminal periods), Nur (god of education/educated professionals, disease, and medicine), and Azaroth (god of silence, darkness, and death). Nazreen and Nur are also said to be married, but their domains are more shadowy and associated with endings.
Sokda and Zardeenah, the remaining two deities, have nothing to do with either marriage or divorce.
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And that is pretty much that. :)