Tessawyn hadn't seen Isabel in ages, but the moment she heard that excited “Oh my gosh!” followed by a single clap, it was like she'd never left Saxony. Isabel bumped her way around the edge of a table to get to Tessawyn, and then, when she reached out to shake Tessawyn's hand, her silvery bangs fell in front of her eyes. Her hands darted around in mid-air for a moment, as if they needed to be in two places at once, despite the fact that she had two hands. Tessawyn, despite herself, giggled, and swept Isabel off the ground in a bear hug. Isabel, for her part, squeaked, and burst into a delighted, open-mouthed smile that lasted well after she was put back down.
The two had a lot to catch up on. Battles won and lost, the status of mutual friends, if that one bakery in New Leipzig was still in operation (it was, and expanded into a small chain), if Tessawyn had caught the end of that one radio drama series they'd listened to together (she hadn't, reception at the front was terrible), would Isabel retell it sometime later (with quite a bit of stammering, protest, and being asked twice more, she agreed, before dropping a hint about the fate of one of the characters with a wink, which caught her a gentle slap on the back of the palm from Tessawyn), and eventually, the question that everyone ended up asking and being asked at some point that night.
“What made you decide to do your Guardianship?” Isabel asked, with a conspiratorial grin that Tessawyn, for the life of her, could not parse. And despite dropping the usual “I'd settled into my career, gotten plenty of experience, and decided I was ready to pass that on to the next generation” or somesuch, she wanted to give Isabel a real answer. She opened her mouth, and at that point, she saw Julian come up the stairs, and lost track of every possible thought. It may have been years since she'd seen Isabel, but it had been well over a decade since she'd last seen him. And even if he'd changed much since then, she could still recognize him in an instant. His hair was longer, much longer, pulled back into a tight ponytail, and he'd lost weight, making him look even taller than his already considerable height. Tessawyn's heart pounded in her chest at the possibility that he might head her way. If he did, what would she say? What could she even say?
But that turned out to be a baseless concern. Julian strode past all of them, and planted himself firmly in the middle of the balcony, looking out at the mingling students below.
“Biological clock ticking?” Isabel said.
“What?” said Tessawyn, a little louder than she'd intended.
“Oh, you know,” Isabel said, mustering as much mischievousness as she could.
“Do we even have that?” Tessawyn asked.
Isabel shrugged. “No idea, but haven't you thought about how this is kind of like having kids? We pass our own ideas onto our Wards, and they pass what they've learned from us onto theirs when the time comes, and it's almost like a family.”
“That sounds like a you thing, Isabel.” Tessawyn looked back to the balcony, and Julian wasn't there. She scanned the crowd of hobnobbing Angels for him, keeping his new hair and distinctive crest in mind.
“Oh, maybe,” said Isabel, putting up a hand in front of her face, which was only a token gesture to obscure her blush. “Anselm and I work with a lot of families – it's fun to preside over baptisms and confirmations and weddings and all that – and it builds trust in the community – and well, you kind of get thinking, y'know? Like, what if me and him weren't Angels, and we had kids? What would that even look like?”
“You two?” Tessawyn said, eyes still darting around the room. “Probably pretty cute.”
“I know, right? And this is the next best thing! I've always been excited to do a Guardianship, but it's so sad thinking of leaving Anselm out there alone for four years, but I finally worked up the nerve and here I am!”
She couldn't find him. She could reach out with her magic, but in a room with so much latent magical energy in it, she'd have to amplify the signal immensely to overcome the background noise, and even if she was careful about it, people would undoubtedly notice.
“So? How about you?” Isabel asked.
Tessawyn sighed, and looked back at her. “It just felt like the right time.”