smelltheashes | The Reception

The Reception

In the depths of the bunker beneath the Greenbrier Resort Hotel is a massive, columned room, intended to be used to hold sessions of Congress in the event of a nuclear war.

Today, it's being put to a very different and much less somber purpose.

The wedding is over; the party has begun.

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"Alyx asked me to serve as one of her bridesmaids," Ellen admits. "I'm not really- we do weddings differently back home, and it's not a position I'm familiar with. Hopefully I did it right."

"Well, it looked like it went pretty well to me."

Ellen nods. "Annabelle and I were expecting we'd have to fight somebody off, to be honest," she says. "The fact that nobody came gunning for us was... pretty much the best we could ask for."

"Well, weddings in your world sound an awful lot like weddings in mine," he says. "In some places I've been to, anytime the chapel bells aren't followed by gunshots is considered a pretty good Sunday."

"It had more to do with knowing Alyx and Gordon have a lot of enemies than the way things are in my world," Ellen says, "but since I'd heard the best man was supposed to step in if someone tried to take the bride away, I figured bridesmaids were there to do the fighting for her, too, you know?"

"Sounds downright reasonable to me," Jim says.

"Greetings to the Waco Kid," rumbles the final groomsman. (Grooms-thing?)

"And greetings to the, um..." Jim tries and fails to find the appropriate word. "...well, I don't think we've been introduced."

"This one has no individual appellation," it replies. "Our kind are known to humans as 'Vortigaunts.'"

"No name, huh? Well, that's common enough among humans in some universes," he says. "The Western film genre's full of mysterious nameless folk, for one.

"Anyway, nice to meet you, Mr. Vortigaunt."

"We are unfamiliar with this 'Western film genre,'" it remarks, canting its head to one side just a little.

"The details aren't really important," Jim says. "Long story short, it's a kind of human storytelling that also happens to be the place I'm from. Don't ask me how that's possible."

"In the Vortessence," it says serenely, "all things are possible."

"I suppose," Jim says. "What is the Vortessence, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Your kind is ill-equipped to comprehend it."

"Do you mean quantum-physics-to-a-child ill-equipped or ending-to-2001-A-Space-Odyssey ill-equipped?" Jim asks. "'Cause if it's the latter, you can run it by me and I can see what I can get from it."

"It is both. And neither."

...unhelpful much?

"Oh. You mean a sort of understanding-the-mass-appeal-of-the-Transformers-movies-from-the-perspective-of-a-sane-man kind of ill-equipped. Gotcha."

Beat. "So, um...how'd you get to know Gordon and Alyx?"

"This one witnessed the Alyx Vance being struck down by the Combine Hunter," it says. "My kin kept her stable while the Freeman and I ventured into the antlion warren to retrieve the larval extract to save her. Preserving her Vortessence was not an easy thing, but it would not have been accomplished without the Freeman's aid."

"Huh," he says. "Not sure I understood the specifics, but I think I get you mean. There sure aren't a lot of weddings where someone can claim to have saved the bride's life."

"This one would not know. We have not witnessed the human ritual of binding before this day."

"Tell you the truth, I haven't either. Must've all been afraid I'd throw up in the punch bowl or something."

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The Reception

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