It was in a familiar little church in Midlothian, Illinois, where Jon and Sarah Gibson found themselves sitting side-by-side with a great-grandchild of the bride and groom on each of their laps. A four year-old little girl, and a two year-old little boy.
Pregnancy and motherhood meant that Sarah couldn’t always take full courseloads, but it didn’t mean that she gave up on her academic ambitions. And Jon was doing his part as much as was biologically viable. That meant that Sarah was in her fifth year of undergrad, but she would finish at the end of semester, and she only needed to be on campus two days a week.
They’d already moved to Syracuse, where Sarah could commute to class for her two days, and Jon was already beginning to thrive working in the New York branch of McMillan Enterprises. Getting hired was a foregone conclusion considering who Jon’s father-in-law was, but he was still proving himself from the bottom up, and beginning to adjust to the fast-paced world of cubicles and paperwork.
But today, they were in Midlothian. And the crowd was a little bigger than the one in attendance at their own wedding some five or so years earlier, but it was still modest by any reasonable definition. Around twenty guests, all there to take part in the marriage of Malachi and Endora.
“I submitted the application this morning,” Sarah leaned over and whispered in Jon’s ear.
“What application?”
“You know,” Sarah nudged her head pointedly at Edgar Barleytunnel, who was officiating this wedding just as he had theirs.
“The High Council?” Jon asked just a little bit too loudly.
“Shh, I don’t want it to get out quite yet. But Roger Nelson is stepping down at the end of the month. Any witch can apply for an open seat, but…”
“But you’d be the youngest High Council member since Grandpa,” Jon intoned. “Splashy move. Might ruffle feathers.”
“I’d also be the first person in the history of the High Council,” Sarah turned a mischievous eye towards her husband, “to hold a seat while pregnant.”
“Well, I mean, sure if everything works out how we’ve planned,” Jon equivocated, completely missing Sarah’s meaning.
“No, Jon,” she tugged on his collar, pulling his attention right to her face. “If they accept my application, I will definitely still be pregnant when I’m appointed.”
Jon looked down at the belly that his daughter was, in that moment, using as a head-rest. Then he looked back up at his wife. “Really?”
She grinned. “Really.”
A flush arose in Jon’s cheeks. “You know, technically speaking, in a few minutes we’ll be cousins. Does that mean we’ll have an incest baby?”
“Ew, Jon,” Sarah recoiled in mock disgust. “Don’t even joke about that. You and I are soulmates. Grandma and Grandpa just, well, they just love each other very much. And right now they need one another.”
“I still think they should have done this years ago. I know they didn’t want to ‘betray the memories’ of my grandma or your grandfather, but from the moment we revived Granpa at our wedding, it was clear they belong together.”
“Shush,” Sarah shushed her husband as she caught Edgar’s eye. Either he was about to start the ceremony, or he had overheard their discussion about applying to the high council, or both.
In any case, when he did start talking, neither Jon nor Sarah paid much attention to his words. They were focused on their respective grandparent, and at the warm energy that passed between the two septugenarian sets of eyes.
And before they knew it, Edgar had tapped the couple’s hands, which opened a small void between them.
They placed their seasoned hands within the void, and pulled them out as Malachi and Endora Gibson. And somehow, the world felt more right in a way that nobody in the room could quite explain.
