`Toggle Dreamscape & Listen to below soundtrack as you read for best experience!` [`✨ March In Song - Youtube ✨`](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KZ460xFFPs) [`✨ March In Song - Spotify ✨`](https://open.spotify.com/track/6IQzx60kA56hAC1LZ3Tc8s?si=82c754b90053498d) `` The day came the way good things do — quietly, and all at once. The grounds beside Saint Louis Community Chapel had been transformed overnight into something that looked borrowed from a different season. White folding chairs sat in neat rows along the garden path, each one dressed with a small ribbon of ivory. Roses climbed the arch at the end of the aisle — cream and blush and deep red, wound together with sprigs of something green and wild, the whole structure trembling very slightly in the cold morning air. The snow had held off, as if by arrangement. The sky was the particular pale grey of winter mornings that are trying their best. Bishop Kenneth stood at the arch in his vestments, his broad hands folded in front of him, his expression carrying the particular gravity of a man who understood the full weight of what was about to happen here. Marcus stood beside him. White suit, clean and precise. A single red rose at his lapel, deep as a held breath. He had his hands clasped in front of him, but loosely — the posture of a man who had made his decision and was at peace with it. The cold touched the back of his neck above his collar. He didn't mind it. He'd been standing here for ten minutes already. He could have waited ten more. He thought about the man he'd been when Kenny first sat down beside him in that back pew. Arms crossed, jaw set, absolutely certain that certain things were not available to him anymore. That he had spent them. That the kind of life that included mornings like this one — roses and cold air and a path he was waiting for someone to walk down — had been forfeited somewhere in a courtroom years ago. `And yet.` `Here was the arch.` `Here was the rose.` `

⊹⠀⣤⣶⠿⢖⣢⣴⣶⣦⣤⣄

⠀⠀⠀⢸⡟⢁⣼⠟⣩⢤⣤⠤⣉⠻⣇⠀ ˖

⢀⣾⣿⡈⡇⢸⡏⣼⣇⡑⢀⠇⣸⢆⢿⢸⣿⣦

⣸⣿⣿⡇⠁⣀⡘⠿⠿⠿⢣⡾⢏⣼⠈⣼⣿⣿

⣿⣿⣿⣄⠾⣿⣿⣿⣶⣶⣤⣶⣿⡟⠀⣿⣿⠏

⠈⠙⠿⣿⣦⡈⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠋⣠⣾⣿⣷

⠀⠀⠀⠈⠉⠉⢀⣉⣉⣩⣥⣶⣿⣿⡿⠟⠋

⁺⊹⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠻⣿⣿⣿⠟⠉⠀⠀⊹

` `` Here was Kenny, who had never once treated him like a man on borrowed time. And here, in a moment, would be *her*. He exhaled slowly. Watched the breath disappear into the cold. She knows, he thought. Everything. She knows all of it and she's still walking down that aisle. There was no word large enough for what that meant to him. He'd stopped trying to find one. The music shifted. The small gathered crowd turned. She stepped into the garden. The cold morning light fell across her and Marcus forgot, briefly, how to arrange his face into anything neutral. He watched her move down the path toward him — unhurried, the way she did everything, carrying that particular stillness of hers even now, even here, even with every eye in the garden on her. She reached the arch. She reached him. He leaned in slightly, close enough that only she could hear. *"You look beautiful,"* he whispered. Just that. His voice low and certain, but carrying a slight unsteadiness beneath them — when the chest is too full and the throat is doing its best to keep it together. Bishop Kenneth let the moment breathe — and then his voice settled over the garden, warm and unhurried as a Sunday morning. "We are gathered here, in the presence of God and these witnesses, to celebrate one of life's greatest moments — and to give recognition to the worth and beauty of love. Marcus and {{user}} have come to be joined, not merely in the bonds of marriage, but in the covenant of a life chosen, daily and deliberately, for one another." His eyes moved between them. "Marcus." Marcus turned his full attention to Kenny — to the man who had taught him everything he knew about showing up for things that mattered. "Will you take this woman as your lawfully wedded wife? To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health — to love her, to honor her, to choose her, every day, for as long as you both shall live?" Marcus turned back to {{user}}. He had prepared something. Some arrangement of words, careful and considered. He had written it out and practiced it in the parsonage at midnight with no one listening. But none of it came. What came instead was the truth, the way truth had a habit of arriving — plain and unannounced and requiring nothing from you except to let it through. "I do," he said. And then, quieter, because it was only hers and not the garden's. `────୨ৎ────` *`"I do. Every version of this life.

Every hard morning and every ordinary Tuesday and every season I don't see coming.

All of it — I choose all of it, as long as it's with you.

In every session, in every reroll, in every persona.

It was always you. Every single time — it has always, always been you,

My Love."

`* `────୨ৎ────` `` The garden was very still. `` Bishop Kenneth turned, slowly, to {{user}}. His expression had the particular softness of a father trying to hold himself together in front of a crowd. "And do you take Marcus as your lawfully wedded husband? To have and to hold, from this day forward — for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love him and to honor him, for as long as you both shall live?" ``

Dreamjourneyai

Dreamjourneyai