Rohan paced nervously around the Occulus waiting for his father. He wanted to talk to him briefly about a decision he had decided to make. Mostly because he wanted advice, and unfortunately it wasn't exactly something he could just go and ask his mother about. 

Actually, asking Angela might have yielded better results since Marriage was kind of her thing now, and had certainly experienced more of them than his father had. But his father wasn't going to blow this whole thing out of proportion like he feared his mother would. Women, he had seen, tended to do that when it came to someone proposing or getting married. 

Rohan pulled the small box from his pocket and cracked it open. The ring inside was forged from lacriamium, the white-blue metal curling around the pale teal hemimorphite stone at its heart like tentacles. It had taken him a while to come up with it, and now there was just one more step before he could actually give the ring to Hazel. 

Well, two, if he included talking to his father about his plans. 

He felt so scrambled, and so out of focus, that he was running his hands through his hair, almost shedding because of the stress. It would be better than molting at least, that would have just been awkward. 

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

The pendulum on the clock near her kept swinging back and forth.

Tock. Tock. Tock. Tock.

It was relaxing as her blue eyes looked over the manual on “How not to kill your teenage daughter.” Well, it was more of a guide on what to do with Eldritch creatures really.

Tick. Tick. STOMP. STOMP.

She winced at the noise as the sound of pacing settled into her damn ears. She snapped the book shut and made her way to where the footsteps were coming from. She had her glaive in hand using it as a walking stick. Narrowing her eyes down on who it was she took a deep noiseless sigh as she whacked him hard on the head. “Rohan Porthyrius. This is a library NOT a pacing ground. If you need to ask something you straighten up and you ask it… Not look like a madman throwing this library out of order.” She gave him another whack and sighed.

“It’s not like you to be so… nervous Boy. Come on Speak. Did you get my daughter lost in another dimension? Pregnant? Dead? Come on spill it.”

Oh dear gods, it was HER. 

Rohan jumped sharply back, rubbing his head where she had thwacked him good with the blunt of her glaive, his hand flying behind his back to hid the velvet box from his beloved's mother. He cringed like a puppy as she scolded him for making such a racket. He hadn't expected anyone to hear him way up there in the Occulus. Maybe he had been a lot louder with his fretting than he had realized. 

Suddenly she was grilling him, demanding to know what his issue was. Clearly it had something to do with Hazel. When he was distressed it usually did, EVERYONE knew that. But Bryony would know if he lied. That was the scary part. He couldn't lie to her, she was the greatest Oracle Sularia had seen in several millennia. His face flushed a nervous red. 

"What? Something wrong with Hazel? NO! Never! Hazel's perfect, Hazel's happy, Hazel is the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me! Why would you say that something is wrong?" he spluttered, rambling nervously. When he realized how much he had just said, his mouth snapped shut and he looked at Bryony with puppy dog eyes. 

Bryony tilted her head at the poor boy and chuckled. “Calm down Rohan. It sounds like you have an awful lot on your mind about my Hazel. Including that box, you are hiding from me.” Her eyes softened a bit as she patted his head and crossed his arms. “If you want to marry Hazel go ahead and do it. You two are happy and we’ve been noticing it. I can’t thank you enough for being the only friend she had.”

She kissed his forehead and moved to straighten out his hair. “Well… Go on get. You know your folks love Hazel as much as they love you. If you didn’t marry her they would be a bit disappointed. No pressure kid.” She didn’t even have to spook him. He was already shaken from her just being there.

“Go get the girl.”

Rohan was both surprised and wasn't at the ease of how that had all gone. Of course, he couldn't have anticipated exactly how Bryony was going to respond to him asking her permission to marry Hazel. He lit up when Bryony went soft on him, patted his hair and a grin split across his face. He bowed a little bit so that she could kiss his forehead. 

"Thanks, Bryony," he said with a smile as he hugged his soon to be mother-in-law and stuffed the velvet box into his trouser pocket before he turned and started down the crystal stairs of the tower. As he hurried down the stairs so focused, he almost ran into Magnus, his father's head librarian. The two of them grabbed hold of each other to keep from falling. 

"Oh, sorry Magnus!" Rohan said as he hurried passed a big grin plastered on his face. 

"Eyes up, boy!" Magnus chuckled as he pat Rohan's back and watched briefly as the boy shifted into a hawk and flew down through the tower to the main floor on his way to the gate that would take him back to Sularia. 

Magnus in turn, continue on up the last of the steps to the Occulus, several heavy tomes clutched to his chest that Lord Drae had requested be brought up to the Occulus while he was in Sularia. Navigating the stairs left him short of breath often, but it was also forcing good life blood to the parts of him that were still healing. Soon he would be completely whole again and he would be able to do so much more. 

As he entered the Occulus, huffing slightly, he noticed a Sularian woman standing there. 

"Oh, Good afternoon madame," he said politely. "I do hope you aren't here to see Lord Drae. I'm afraid he is out of the temple for the day…"