The large wooden door opened with a creak, and in stepped one of the last guests to arrive. It had taken him long enough to prepare and to arrive, but prepared he was and arrive he did. Though tardy, he was not late enough for it to make a large difference. He inhaled deeply, taking in the sights and sounds around him, and moved with agile grace into the building, shutting the wooden door behind him. Eyes trailed naturally two him, several gazes landing on him and staying on him as curious looks degenerated into stares. He had expected as much. He was dressed unusually.

A linen robe hung across his shoulders, off-white and long enough to reach to the beginning of his ankles, spun with intermingling and very thin stripes of tan. Over the linen robe he wore a linen tunic of the soft linen, hemmed with silver threads and solidly off-white, falling almost to the middle of his shins. Over that he wore a surcoat, long enough to reach the knees in the back and split at the left so that it was buttoned with three large silver buttons. The surcoat was also hemmed with silver thread, and its color was tan. Over the surcoat was a ceremonial breastplate of copper and iron, buckled loosely over the shoulders and around the waist, where a pure white sash hung across his waist and cinched the robe around him. Low on his waist, half-hidden by the white sash, hung a decorative sword belt of bleached off-white leather. On it hung a pair of swords, one long and the other short, obviously made as a set. Both were worked with fine silver on the hilt, but their designs were simple. On his feet he wore boots of identical bleached leather, barely visible below the robe.

Quiet descended on the room as Kichaa Mesoa gazed about him, his eyes and face serious. A few looked away. Others gawked. Many had taken no notice of him to begin with, and he simply passed over them with quiet ease. No smile was on his mouth. Nothing about him seemed to be either pleasant or likeable—though some of the denizens of the room could bear the same kind of description. He frowned slightly at the large gathering of men and women he had never met, but said nothing. Instead he strode purposefully through the reception area and towards the room in which the ceremony was to be held. An usher stopped him and, after giving his appearance a strange look and his weaponry a very pointed gaze, to which the warrior simply narrowed his eyes, gave him a small frown.

"Whose guest?" he asked, his voice laden half with scorn and half with disbelief.

"The bride," Kichaa answered, clipped and precise. He looked down at the man from a good foot overhead and crossed his arms. He looked as unmovable as a mountain. The usher swallowed.

"Right this way," he mumbled, half-tripping over himself to lead the new arrival into the sanctuary. He lead the oddly dressed man to the left side of the room, the seats of which were conspicuously uninhabited, and indicated that he seat himself in the first row. He did so, giving the usher a dismissing glance that bordered on scathing.

It was purely accidental. The warrior had his mind on other things, and simply passed the man a look that he was accustomed to giving anyone he was dismissing. He often forgot that there were men and women in the world who were much more easily frightened than the kind of people he was prone to associate with ... though surprised him that such a person could have been found at this particular wedding. More accurately, it would have surprised him, if he had bothered to take note of the way the small man hurried back to his position at the doorway. The professional exterior of the tuxedo-clad greeter had been shattered briefly, but the man who shattered it was none the wiser. He thought about the ceremony to come and the woman who had invited him to share in her special day. It was her special day, after all; with what he knew of the fencer, that green-haired freak of nature, there was little in this ceremony that meant anything to the groom. It was solely for the bride that he had come.

He sat impatiently, waiting with narrowed eyes, and surveyed the guest isles occupied by those who had been invited by the groom. As he did, and as he compared it to the empty rows of seats on the bridal side, he began to better understand the loneliness he had seen in Selene. Did she really have so few friends?

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