A Selkie Story

Chapter Nineteen: A Wedding... Or Two?

It was not the best trip ever.

We'd left Frankie and the Murder Triplets back home with Sally as their guardian, making sure they were fed and all.

I renamed not just Myrrh but all three of the hobgoblins the Murder Triplets, because I'd found out--the hard, disgusting, horrifying way--that all three of them were very much capable of committing war crimes against the entire mouse population. It was time to call the Geneva Convention on those monsters.

Anyways, I digress.

The trip had started out fine and all. Molly was in no way a bridezilla, though I had predicted so to Andrei on the way there. That had started a whole new conversation about a certain tv show that shall not be named here, that we may or may not have decided to binge watch together.

Mom and Dad met us at the airport with Evelyn in tow. The little stinker screamed and threw herself at me once we'd gotten just past security.

Patting her head absently, I pulled away and gestured upwards to my boyfriend.

"Evelyn, say hi to Andrei."

She turned her head ever so slightly to look up at him with wide, shy eyes. She gave a barely passable nod hello, then ducked behind my body to peek at him from behind my out-of-season sweatshirt. Andrei, without prompting from me, took a knee and met Evelyn's eyes.

"Hello, Evelyn, I've heard a lot about you. I'm Andrei." He held out his hand for her to shake. Slowly, she placed her small one in his, and he gave it a firm shake. She giggled at his mock serious face.

"You're bigger than I thought you would be." She noted, a bit more comfortable now.

Andrei gave her a wolfish smile full of teeth and smile lines.

"I eat a lot of fish."

"Will I get really tall if I eat a lot of fish?" Her eyes sparkled, and Andrei's smile shrank into a smirk.

"You'll never know unless you try."

"Samantha, introduce us to this nice young man, here." I heard Mom say from her spot next to Dad. Andrei stood as I gestured to my parents.

"Mom, Dad, meet Andrei. Andrei, this is my Mom, Lillian, and my Dad, Perry."

Andrei shook their outstretched hands as he commented,

"Ah, yes, I remember. You asked me to call you Mother-in-law." Mom giggled like a schoolgirl, and I rolled my eyes and sighed.

This was gonna be a long car ride home.

***

It actually wasn't too bad, it was mostly Mom and Dad grilling Andrei for answers about his childhood, his job, how we met, et cetera. Evelyn popped in occasionally with a question. Andrei even got in some of his own about me as a child. Boy, did I ever not want to remember those stories.

Arriving at the house, almost the entire extended family was there already, having a bit for financial stability to take more time off work. Therefore, we were absolutely bombarded with almost the exact same questions we'd just answered once we'd walked in the front door.

Sarah was the first to absolutely flip her lid once she met Andrei in person. After giddily shaking his hand, she stage-whispered to me from behind her hand,

"He's hot, Russian, and tall. Where did you find this guy?"

I shrugged,

"In the ocean."