Shotgun Wedding

[Gnomezilla]

[It was too delicious a prompt to go unused.]

Never. No good. Not any use. What were books? Civilization in paper wrappers. What'd they have to say about shucking off civilization and restraint and tearing them all to shreds? He slumped over the reading desk and rested his head in his hands. Even that felt different--

He felt another hand stroke the back of his, stroke his sideburns, and heard a voice coo in surprise. A sweet voice, high-pitched and honeyed. "Why, it's like pettin' a hound!"

The self-righteous man shuddered, and stifled a sob. Unauthorized physical devolution. Permanent. Coarse wolf's fur on his face, on his hands, instead of human hair. Was it the beast that made his heart spill over with emotion, or just the drink? Maybe beasts couldn't hold their liquor. But he had to drink now, before the beast took over and he fled from all the sweetness in the life of men--

"Why, I could just pet you all day..."

Hope surged back into him, as uncontrollable as everything else he felt now.

"You..." He swallowed, hard. "You do that, and I may just want to go on living."

"Why, that's the nicest thing anyone has said to me," she purred. Then, after a beat, her hand went slack on his, and she let out a cry of woe. "Ever!"

Those uncivilized tears he had been ready to shed a minute ago fell, now, and she started kissing them away from the backs of his hands.

 

She was less human than he was. Green skin. Pointed ears. Pointed teeth. But smiling. She smiled, at him, and blushed deep dark green when he showed her how much fur had grown on him.

"Never! Not once in all my days." She was sitting on his knees, sidesaddle, as he sat on a stump at the roadside. He couldn't remember leaving the library, but here they were. "Oh, they'd tell me I had buns like ripenin' tomatoes--"

"They're prettier than that."

"--or how it was real pretty I'd throw my head back chugging and they could see clear down to my belly button--"

"And a treasure of a belly button it is."

"--but never, do you hear me? Never said word number one about me." He tipped the mug between them so she could take a fortifying swig out of it. "Not 'til you came along." She sniffled, and tipped her head back as he tilted the mug, until she'd drained it and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. "You sure you mean it, sugar?" she repeated, and waved at the gremlins sulking nearby for another refill.

"Trixiebelle. I never meant it more in my life. You're the only woman for me. Marry me."

She snatched up the proffered liquor with a reflexive "for me?", then lifted it up to his lips. "Oh, sugar! I always wanted to marry a human! Yes!"

 

He shook the liquor off, somewhat, sometimes, as the city dwindled behind them. This time when he surfaced, it was night, he was lying under huge leaves on something soggy, and somehow his lovely bride-to-be had put on forty years and forty pounds. On her teeny, charming frame, forty pounds hung heavier than it should.

A woeful whine rose in his throat, but the gremlin matron smacked him sharpish in the Adam's apple with something with the reach to get underneath the underbrush.

"Guards're all knocked flat," she barked at him. "Now you're gonna get up, turn yerself around, step along on out over 'em--" He started to nod along with the string of prepositions until the matron reversed the giant spoon with adder-like speed. "--And you're not going to stop stepping along. Not for nothing. I won't see my girl wrecking her life getting hitched too young."

"Trixie..." he wheezed, through a fractured larynx. "Won't leave you, honey-bug..."

Mah Tucket rolled her eyes, and then her knuckles. The spoon's bowl seemed to expand until it filled the sky, and then he knew no more.

 

Armed gremlins crowded him on all sides. Every so often the crowd would heave too hard, and a gremlin or two at the edge would slide off of the hillock and splash, twice: once for the gremlin, and once for the gator. He couldn't seem to hear them properly. Nerves, that's why he only heard a drone from the crowd. He didn't like turning his back to it, but there was nothing and nobody to brace his back against but his honey-bug, and he'd never turn his back on her, not ever.

Maybe he had taken a fortifying sip or five too many because there were even gremlins in the sky. The maid of honor swooped down, grabbing daisies out of her decolletage and tossing them at the crowd below. Underneath Merris' flight path, it opened up a skinny snaky aisle to let his bride though. She had her finger on the trigger, of course, of that big ol' gun with the daises etched on the barrel. But she wouldn't shoot him...would she?

The man who had taken the train to Malifaux with fur-lined swagger reached out with his cane and lightly, oh so gently, lifted the hat off of Trixiebelle's head and transferred it to his own.

Noise hammered his ears then. They should've been cheering them on as gremlin and wife, and a few were, but most of them were still muttering low in their throats. Bullets clinked as they slid into chambers.

He growled but forced words out past his changing vocal cords.

"Trixie! Run! Fly if you can!"

He caught Merris diving out of the corner of his eye, as the first of the bullets struck the ground at his paws, behind his paws as he leaped into the hostilities.