Eihlarian Courtship
Recently my sister Pakker, four years older than me, disappeared for a few days. When she came home, she brought with her a man we all pretended not to know. "His name is Garas," she told us, "and he's part of the family now."
This traditional Eihlarian announcement of marriage, though brief and simple, is the culmination of years spent building a relationship between two people.
As with most couples, Pakker and Garas met at school. Social development is an important part of our education. The classroom is where children are most likely to meet for the first time people not from their own family. In the early learning years, we are encouraged to build friendships through games and plays.
At adolescence, when we begin exploring different fields of interest, we also begin exploring deeper support relationships. School is an opportunity to spend time observing how someone behaves and reacts on a day-to-day basis. Also, it's helpful to have a spouse who shares an interest, so it's no surprise that the field-specific classes are ripe for man-picking. Still, adults speaking with the voice of experience like to remind us that a mind is easier to change than a contract, as a way of encouraging us not to jump too hard into love or other passions.
The apprentice years are a time of serious testing in our chosen fields, and also in our relationships. Many couples who thought they were made for each other find out that their feelings don't survive the separations of distance and time caused by immersing in different subjects, while others strengthen with the more occasional interactions. Even apprenticing together is no guarantee of a lasting relationship.
Pakker got lucky. She chose to specialize in minerals, a field men don't often go into. There were eleven in her apprentice group, two of them men, and one was Garas. They were so constantly together that the maestros suspected him of choosing the field for her sake, and never assigned them to work on the same project in order to force them to spend time apart.
But there's more to a marriage than just getting along with each other. A man needs to know what kind of family he's getting himself into, and the woman's family wants to be sure of approving the man she has chosen. Once a couple decides they want to marry, the woman begins the charade of inviting groups of school friends to her home that always include her husband-to-be. Although it is clear which one she is interested in, her family has to pretend they don't know. All of this goes on for at least as long as it takes for both of them to complete their apprenticeships.
If all goes well, at the end of the visiting process the woman speaks to her clan's Warden and asks to spend a few days alone at the clan's retreat home. Usually the Warden approves and schedules four days called "renewal", which means no one else in the clan may approach the building for any reason. The woman then goes to the man's home to collect him, and they begin their marriage with a quiet privacy that is usually lacking in a clan's home. On the last day of the renewal, the couple returns to the woman's clan and she formally introduces her husband.
A dark history: the past abuses of the old ways.
Courtship and marriage has not always been such a slow and careful game. Parts of our tradition today are reminders of the time of the blood feuds more than a thousand years ago, when men did not have the freedom they do now. They were regularly used as bargaining tools between clans negotiating with each other. A man could be rented or granted as part of a contracted alliance or trade agreement, and he didn't always meet the woman before the marriage.
At the very worst, he could be stolen. A clan might turn to kidnapping for a variety of reasons--greed, revenge, desperation, even convenience. A captured man would be hidden away in the clan's stronghold, and if he were lucky he would be released when their use of him was over. At the height of the feuds, this was a common enough practice that many clans would not let their men leave home without an armed guard. It would be hard to find an Eihlarian alive now who isn't descended from a man against his will.
Although we still speak about "stealing" husbands in a joking manner, we have not forgotten the tragic effects. They are reflected in the other half of the marriage tradition: the sorrowful parting of a man from his family. On the day that he leaves, his family holds what is best described as a funeral. They speak about him in the past tense, praising him and sharing memories until the coming of full dark. Then, one at a time, they extinguish all the lights in the home. When it is completely dark, the man sets out alone to meet his wife.
Exceptions to the rule
Not all couples become acquainted through school, and my own parents are one example. My family is a sept of a larger clan, and we often participate in each other's celebrations. That's how my father and mother met and got to know each other. Of course that meant that when my mother had to present him to the family as if he were a stranger... Well, as she puts it herself: "There was no one who wasn't laughing."Remove these ads. Join the Worldbuilders Guild
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