For Bravely Shipweek day 6 - Wedding
“Will you marry me?” Ringabel asked her suddenly.
Edea had been eating, fork midway to her mouth. When he popped the question, blurting it out as he clutched his coffee cup, she stopped and stared at him, mouth hanging open.
After a long, uncomfortable silence during which she set down her fork, he awkwardly added. “Please?”
“Why are you asking me now?” she asked him, feeling heat creep into her face. “You’ve only just returned!”
He had shown up on the stairs of Central Command just that morning, looking like a mess. His hair had stuck to his face with sweat, dirty and grimy, and blood had stained his armor. Not his blood, he assured her before falling asleep on a bed of a guest room she had relocated him to when she’d noticed his frequent yawns. He’d been exhausted, sleeping heavily until about an hour ago, when he had woken because of an empty stomach.
She’d wanted to keep yelling at him, but it was almost dinner time. She wanted to eat, and Ringabel needed to eat, and there was nothing that said she couldn’t yell at him over food, except then she might lose her appetite, so she had told him that she was going to wait to yell at him until after they were both full. He’d understood, but now she wasn’t so sure that had been a good idea.
“It’s because I’ve just returned that I’m asking you,” he said, his cheeks slightly flushed. With madness or with embarrassment, she could not be sure. As she stared at him, the flush only deepened. “I have waited for years so that I might be able to ask to be your husband! I don’t want to wait any longer. Please consider it.”
She stirred her potatoes on the plate, biting her lip. An odd feeling was building in her chest, one that was painfully familiar. That dreadful feeling of loneliness, of being abandoned by the man who had claimed to love her, of not knowing when or if he might return, despite all his flowery declarations. Now he was back, and he wanted to just pretend the years of distance between them had never happened? That she would just accept his hand in marriage after all this time?
“I’m not leaving you again,” he breathed, as though he had read her thoughts on her face. “If you will have me now, you can have me forever.”
“Very well,” she said, her own voice sounding far away. She stared at her plate. “I accept. Let’s get married.”