The Larissa Epic
Copyright© 2026 by Oz Ozzie
Chapter 14: Saturday 17 Dec 2022: Joe and Layna’s wedding #2
Coming of Age Sex Story: Chapter 14: Saturday 17 Dec 2022: Joe and Layna’s wedding #2 - At the start of the story, Larissa is a young woman failing to cope with Covid. The story trace's Larissa's growth through the challenges of Covid and marriage with Julian, and the lives of people around her, ending with Larissa and her friends changing the nature of Australia
Caution: This Coming of Age Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa mt/ft Fa/Fa Mult Teenagers Fiction Rags To Riches Light Bond Group Sex Orgy Exhibitionism Oral Sex Nudism
She was looking for Toni when Shane found her.
He was in his dress uniform with his cap under his arm, walking around the edge of the lawn, the way a man does when he’s mostly satisfied but cannot stop himself from checking one more time. He was also, as he went, getting introduced to people he had only ever seen on the news.
“Larissa.”
“Shane. How’s it holding up?”
“It’s holding.” The careful smile of a man who’d been on his feet for nine hours. “Quieter than my median Saturday.”
“You’ve been doing introductions.”
“I have. I shook hands with John Kerry an hour ago. I shook hands with the Prime Minister of New Zealand twenty minutes ago. I have not yet shaken hands with the Premier of my own state because he was eating a sausage roll and talking and I didn’t have the heart to interrupt him.”
“He’d have appreciated that.”
“That was my read.” He looked her up and down. “Are you holding up?”
“I’m fine. I’m having a great day, though I trying to catch up with Toni.”
“Toni’s around by the orchard with a card the size of a small dog, getting people to sign.”
“Of course she is. Thanks. Anything I should know? Anything not holding?”
“Nothing. The Secret Service have been gracious. The Federal Police have been great to work with. The army have not had to do anything visible, which is the army doing its job. Your private team are extremely good. The caterers have not poisoned anyone. The kangaroos have stayed in the orchard. Larissa — go enjoy the rest of it. I have one more pass to do and then I’m going to find something to eat that isn’t a service-station pie.”
“The food over there is excellent! And stay for the bonfire if you can.”
“I might.”
He went, ambling the way a senior officer can amble when the day’s going right, and Larissa headed off toward the orchard.
She never made it, what withe everyone wanting to talk to her. But later, she saw Shane again.
Shane had stopped near the edge of the lawn where Linda was standing with a small plate, on her own for once. He had stopped to say something, the way a man does who’s intending to keep walking and then doesn’t. Linda was laughing.
Larissa slowed.
It was nothing, really. Two people standing near a food table having a conversation that had gone on for two minutes longer than a polite hello. Shane had his cap under his arm again. Linda had set her plate down on the table beside her, which is the small physical commitment of a person who has decided to keep listening. They were both standing in that very particular way of people who are not technically doing anything wrong and not quite expecting to be doing it.
Larissa thought: oh.
Then she thought: well.
Then she thought: not my business, and walked the other way around the lawn so as not to interrupt.
But she filed it. Linda was going home in a week to end a marriage. Shane had been on his feet for nine hours and was supposed to be doing one more pass. People notice each other or they don’t, and sometimes they do and nothing comes of it, and sometimes they do and something does. Larissa was not going to be the person who guessed at which one this was. Yet.
She filed it, and went to find Julian.
She eventually caught up with Toni.
“So everyone has signed?”
“Still plenty to go, and family, which I’ll get later. So many people! Awesome! But what can I do for you?”
She led Toni further away and into the marquee, away from everyone. “This conversation is entirely confidential, a secret, and this time that’s going to be hard for you, Toni.”
“Oh, everything for you always is!” Toni assured her.
“Yes, but this will be particularly hard for you, you’ll see why. Toni, I have been nominated to be Australian of the Year next year.”
Toni was looking at her, wide-eyed in wonder. “Wow!”
“Yes. But I refused, so this morning, the Prime Minister called me and asked me to do it as a personal favour to him.”
Toni was speechless, so Larissa gave her time. Eventually she said, “Why would you refuse? You’re going to do it, right?”
“Well, if I do it, I will spend the whole year going to things around Australia. I just want to stay home and do my job and love my friends, my families, and my man. But maybe I’ll have to do it, if he’s asked me to step up and do my bit for my country.”
“Oh, you have to! Please!”
“Well, Toni, here’s why I’m telling you. If I do this, I’m going to need help. I want my sisters to travel with me as much as possible, to keep me sane. Layna, who also knows, she suggested that I ask you to be my travel assistant, to travel with me always. Suzy would do events, you just look after travel, and me. You’d have to take a gap year to do that. What do you think?”
“Are you joking? Yes, yes yes. Of course I say yes! That’d really be the best thing ever. It really couldn’t possibly get better than that.”
Larissa grinned at her. “That’s what you already said once before. And I have to warn you, Toni, part of my conditions of doing it will be that if there’s a natural disaster or something, I’ll be straight into it, whatever that means.”
“I’ll follow you into hell, Larissa, or even go there if you just ask, so of course, and you should! And I know I already said working for you was the best thing ever, and it was until right now. But really, this is the best thing ever!”
“Great, Toni. I’ll let you know as soon as it’s a go. We’ll have to figure out how to pay you, how much.”
“I don’t care! I’d pay you to do it!”
Larissa grinned at that. “Thanks, but you won’t have to. But you can’t tell your family until I say so.” Toni frowned. “I told you this would be hard. But you can talk to Suzy, she knows.”
Toni disappeared off in a bee line to talk to Suzy, which made Larissa pretty amused.
^^ G1: Quick serious one, everyone. We’ve been asked to clarify something for you all
^^ G2: We do not do serious. But the family asked, so we will
^^ G1: Right. Some of you noticed earlier that we showed some footage of a woman getting escorted across the lawn
^^ G2: But then we figured out what was going on, and cut away from it
^^ G1: The family have asked us to explain
^^ G2: So we will, because we can be serious
^^ G2: The person being walked was Zara, who is Zach’s wife, and Toni’s sister. Zach is Dave and Kat’s son. Zara is family to Layna and Joe in every way that matters. She has gone into labour a week overdue, which was not a surprise. Michelle, her other sister and her midwife - and also Steph’s midwife - has taken her to the hospital where Michelle works
^^ G2: Zara wanted to be here for the whole wedding. The baby cast it’s vote, and won, as usual
^^ G1: Zara and Zach are doing fine. Labour is progressing normally. They will meet their boy sometime tomorrow, probably morning. Family will go to the hospital after the wedding ends
^^ G2: We will not be giving live updates from the delivery suite. We have some boundaries. Not many. That is one of them
^^ G1: Also, Toni is walking around the lawn with the largest greeting card any of you have ever seen, collecting signatures for the baby. If you have not signed Zara’s card yet, please find Toni
^^ G2: Right. If you’re down there on the lawn and you’re listening to us, why? but if you are, she is hard to miss. The card is approximately the size of a small dog
^^ G1: Send Zara and Zach your love. They have been waiting a long time for this
^^ G2: Message to the Prime Minister: if you tweet us a message, we’ll put it on the card for you
^^ G2: That is the serious bit done. Back to your regular programming
^^ G1: Where were we
^^ G2: We were about to make fun of John Kerry for losing at cards. To Hautere
Walking back from the marquee, she saw a cluster of chairs pulled into a loose circle behind one of the rose hedges, in the shade. It was the kind of huddle that happens at weddings when people who normally would not sit down together decide that the wedding is the place to sit down together.
Robert saw her first and lifted a hand.
She drifted over.
Hannah was at one end of the circle in her wheelchair with Nick at her shoulder. Zali was on Hannah’s other side, leaning slightly forward, the way she leans when she’s listening hard. Beside Zali was a second teal MP whose face Larissa knew from the campaign trail. Opposite them was a Sydney climate organiser in green who’d done time after a protest in canberra two years ago. Beside her, in jeans and a faded shirt that looked exactly the same as the one he’d worn to half the protests Larissa had ever seen footage of, sat Mick — Mick from Newcastle, lock-on Mick, the man who had been at the front of every coal blockade for two decades and who Larissa hadn’t realised was on the invite list at all. Robert was at the far end with his glass on his knee. And Dan Andrews, of all people, had pulled up a chair at the edge of the circle and was holding a glass of something fizzy and listening.
“Larissa,” Robert said. “Sit. We won’t keep you long.”
“I’ll stand. The dress.”
Zali looked at the dress for a moment and then looked at the second teal, who was already smiling. “Allegra. Did you notice.”
“Of course I noticed. I wasn’t going to be the one to say it.”
Larissa was confused for half a second and then she wasn’t. “Oh. Yes. The colour. That was deliberate.”
“We thought it might be.”
“It was.”
Zali gave her the smallest nod. The kind of nod that closed a small private door behind it. Then she opened the next one.
“Larissa. We’ve been talking for an hour. We’d like to spend ten minutes telling you what we’ve been talking about, because none of us is going to say it as well later as we can say it now.”
“Go on.”
Robert: “Three pillars are walking away at once. Queensland’s environmental regulator filed a third notice on Galilee last night that the press won’t catch for a week. Two of the four major banks met about Clyde’s exposure ten days ago. And graduate engineers won’t take his offers anymore — that’s been Hannah’s people, Layna’s people, at the universities, for eighteen months. He’s running out of bankers, regulators, and competent young men, all at once.”
“And out of friends,” said the Sydney organiser. “He turned up to his own protest on Thursday with fifty people. He used to bus in thousands.”
Hannah said, mildly, “That bit was me.”
“That bit was you.”
“What’s the play from here,” Larissa asked.
Dan answered, quietly. “Robert and I have been talking about a Victorian decommissioning framework. We close brown coal here on a published schedule. We do it well — workers looked after, towns transitioned, framework portable. Bob and Thomas built that model. Now, we publish the model. Robert’s assets in the north start to look like ours: doomed. Once that happens it gets very hard for the federal government to argue that closing those plants is impossible. And once that happens, Clyde’s market starts to shrink for reasons no protest could ever generate.”
“Five-year play.”
“Five-year play. We’ve been in a one-year fight for fifteen years. Five is fine.”
Robert nodded, then added, “And while we’re being honest — I made more from coal this quarter than I ever have, but I’m serious about closing it down. But Clyde and the market are fighting me on that. So this will make it easy.” He glanced at Mick. “I understand that it’s easy to doubt me on this.”
Mick had been listening throughout with his arms crossed and the particular expression of a man who has spent thirty years deciding whether to trust the people in the room. He waited a beat and then leaned forward.
“Look. The reason I’m in at this wedding, Larissa, and not somewhere protesting, well — Hannah got me on the phone yesterday and she made me listen for forty minutes. I gave her ten. She used them well. Here’s where I came out. My people have been planning a thing for late January. Big thing. Mines, terminals, three states. I was personally going to chain myself to a piece of equipment I have already picked out. We were going to be on the front page for three days and we were going to break some bones doing it.”
The circle waited.
“We won’t be doing that thing in late January now. I’ll get us to do a smaller thing, somewhere else, on a date Allegra picks, that lines up with her motion in parliament. And the late-January thing we’ll hold in our back pocket for a moment that helps these people,” he gestured at Robert and Dan with a finger that did not quite hide his suspicion of them, “rather than getting in their way. That is not what I would normally do. I am doing it because Hannah convinced me that for eighteen months we can be one thing instead of three. After eighteen months, if Clyde isn’t on his knees, I’m going back to the equipment I’d already picked out. Robert, Premier, you have a year and a half of my cooperation. Then we’ll see.”
Robert dipped his head. “Mick. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. It was Hannah. And Larissa, in a sense, because the reason Hannah could ask was that this whole thing exists in a country where you and Layna have been making it possible for people to listen. So thank yourselves.”
“That’s generous.”
“It’s not. It’s accurate. The accuracy is what makes me willing to do it.”
Allegra, who had been waiting for Mick to finish, said: “And the next three months are the political part. Six teals, the Greens, two Labor backbenchers, one National who is quietly furious. Non-binding. Asks the government to review subsidies to coal infrastructure subject to recent regulatory action. Names no names. Means one name. Mick’s people take the streets on the right day. Hannah’s people run the comms. Layna covers it on the project. We time it to his next refinancing window. The pressure stacks.”
“That’s clever.”
“That’s Allegra,” said Zali.
Larissa looked around the circle. Two teals, a Labor premier with brown coal in his own portfolio, a carbon billionaire who’d been honest about his quarter, two of the country’s most effective climate organisers, the country’s most effective climate radical, Hannah, and Nick. None of these people had been in the same room together a year ago. Most of them would not have been in the same room together a week ago. Layna had built this. Layna would have known when she sent the invitations. Layna would not say so.
Zali turned to her.
“Larissa. The reason we wanted to brief you, while we have you, is this. You don’t speak in public often. Layna does. Hannah does. Mick does, in his way. You don’t. But when you do, it lands harder than anything any of us can manage. You are the wildcard in our hand. You always have been. We aren’t asking you to play. We’re showing you the table so that the next time you get to comment in public — and you will, you always do, sooner or later — you’ll know what shape we’re building, and you can speak into it rather than across it. That’s all this is. A brief.”
Larissa nodded slowly.
“That’s a generous way to say it.”
“It isn’t generous. It’s what you do. Now you know that a parliamentary motion is coming in three months, and a refinancing window is closing in five, and Mick is holding his chain back for ninety days, and Robert is taking a hit he can survive but doesn’t love, and the Premier of Victoria is doing more than he’s allowed to be seen doing. All of this falls apart if any one piece slips. If you speak, speak with the picture in your head.”
“All right. I will. It will be a pleasure.”
She glanced at Dan. Dan was looking at his glass. He did not say what he could have said about a date in late January, that would turbocharge all this. He would not say it later either.
Neither would she. The circle did not know they were both keeping the same secret.
Hannah added, “And if at any point you find yourself in your fluoro uniform after another monster bushfire, and a reporter asks what’s making the disasters worse — you don’t need to coordinate with us. You just say the true thing.”
“I do tend to.”
“That’s been noted.”
She lingered another moment, took a last look around the circle — these specific people, in these specific chairs, behind a rose hedge at her sister’s wedding — and stepped back.
“I’ll leave you to it.”
She walked back across the lawn. Behind her, Mick said something low to Robert, and Robert laughed — actually laughed — and the conversation kept going, the way these conversations keep going when the right people have finally found each other to have them with.
That was Layna’s genius - bringing unexpected people together.
Callum found John Kerry and Hautere were standing together near the rose bushes. He held up the small wireless mic with the apologetic question on his face. “We’re doing interviews, sir. Would you like to interview your friend for us?” Kerry looked at Hautere, who shrugged once.
“Sure, son. I’ve love to. Hand it over.”
Kerry took the mic and turned to Hautere with the slightly amused expression of a man who has done this thousands of times and is about to do it for fun.
“Good afternoon. My name is John, and I am sitting on a lawn in Australia interviewing the most interesting man I have met all year. Hautere, would you tell the people watching at home what you do for a living?”
“I run sheep on a hill farm in the Waikato. My family has been on that hill since 1923.”
“How many sheep?”
“Two thousand four hundred this year. Down from twenty-six hundred last year. The price of lamb is not what it was.”
“Is the farm in good hands going forward?”
“My daughter Tui will take it over from me. She is somewhere on this lawn. She is stronger than I am and she will run it better than I have.”
Kerry nodded slowly, and let the answer breathe for a moment. “Hautere. I love that answer. You told me earlier today that your father served. And that his father served. Would you tell the people at home about that?”
Hautere took his time before he answered.
“My grandfather Potere was in the 28th Maori Battalion in the second war. He fought in Crete and in North Africa and in Italy. He came home and he never spoke about any of it until he was very old. My father Manu was too young for that war but he served in Korea with the Australian and New Zealand forces. He came home and he ran the farm with my grandfather until my grandfather died. I was raised by both of them. They taught me what service is.”
“That is a long line of service to your country.”
“It is the line every Maori family has. The Battalion took everyone who could walk. We were not always treated well at home but we always served. My grandfather used to say — the country we fought for was the one we wanted, not always the one we had.”
There was a small silence on the lawn. Kerry was nodding.
“My own service was a long time ago,” Kerry said quietly, “and it was a different kind of war. But your grandfather and I would have understood each other.”
“I think you would have. He would have liked you. He liked the men who came back and then tried to make the country better. He had no patience for the ones who came back and pretended none of it had happened.”
Kerry handed the mic back to Callum without saying anything else for a moment. Then he put his hand briefly on Hautere’s shoulder, and Hautere put his hand briefly on Kerry’s, and the livestream cut away.
“Lets go and find this David the master bushman guy,” Kerry said to Huatere.
^^ G1: We are not OK
^^ G2: We are not OK at all
^^ G1: That was the best interview
^^ G2: Is anyone else crying or is it just us
^^ G1: It is not just you
^^ G2: We are going to be quiet for a few minutes
By mid-afternoon, it was time. Time for Joe and Layna to actually get married. The boys had stopped kicking the ball around, and the band was set up behind where the wedding was going to be, and there were a few rose bushes in pots framing a little table and a couple of stand up mics. The wedding paperwork was spread out, and Tim was ready.
“Everyone, it’s time to gather here to share in today’s main event.”
His voice carried across the grounds, and was carried on the live stream. People immediately started moving.
“While we gather, the band will play a medley of Joe and Layna’s favourite songs with original contributions by the band.”
Larissa paid attention to the band for the first time. Mason stood centre-stage with his guitar, the cello at his elbow — the only instrument out front with him, the way he liked it, the cellist a woman he had recorded with for years and who had said yes to this before he had finished asking — and behind them was his normal band, settled in and quiet, the people he made records with, the people who already knew this song down to the breath; and in front of all of them, at the centre mic, in a long dark dress and barefoot on the boards because she sang better that way, was Isla.
They played a medly of songs; she recognised bits of it - the Bond theme. The soaring power ballad from Brothers under the Sun, which Isla sang without words. The angriest bit of “Beds are Burning”. A portion of Mason’s indigenous music. Other themes she didn’t recognise. Wait, a bit from Bohemian Rhapsody. They finished with something that wasn’t quite the wedding march, but totally was.
While this was playing. People slowly gathered, brought chairs over from elsewhere, of if they were young, stayed standing in the area that Tim had indicated. The girls closed up, and climbed down their ladder. No commentary for this bit. Even the boys put the cameras down; there was just the fixed cameras now, and Dylan would switch between them as needed from his place in the team in the second row, behind the close family.
Joe and Layna stood looking at Tim, with Suzy beside him, who looked back at the audience. Julian and Larissa stood beside Joe and Layna respectively. The audience was behind them, in total silence.
When the music stopped, Tim took the mic from Suzy, smiled at the assembled crowd, and held the moment for a beat before he spoke.
“Good afternoon, and welcome. My name is Tim. I’m a pastor in Joe and Layna’s lives, and it is my honour to officiate today.”
“Most of you are here in person. Many more of you are watching on a livestream. Welcome to all of you. Whether you are family, friend, colleague, neighbour, or someone who just stumbled across this in your feed — you are welcome. This is an open ceremony and we are very glad you came.”
A pause.
“Before we begin, I want to say something to those of you watching who feel a little wary that there is a pastor standing here. I understand. Some of you have been hurt by churches and pastors, and you have good reasons to be cautious about us. So let me be clear about why I am here today. Joe and Layna asked me. They asked me as a friend who happens to be qualified to sign the paperwork. They asked me because they trust me with them, not because they believe you need any particular belief or to belong to any specific church to participate in their day. So if a pastor is the last person you wanted to see at a wedding today, please stay anyway. I will not be preaching at you. I will be helping two people I love make some promises in front of you. That is my entire job.”
“Joe and Layna asked for a wedding without fuss, with a clear message of love and compassion. That is what we are going to do.”
“You might know something about the community Joe and Layna come from. Our church has spent the last two years being publicly known for our part in the Larissa campaign. A few people have left over it. Many more have come. On the whole the work has been the work of relationships done right, and we are better off for having done it. We will keep doing it.”
“Today is one of those practices of love and compassion, made personal. Joe asked to speak first, then Layna, then we’ll do the vows themselves, then I will say a few more things, and then Julian and Larissa will bless the marriage. Mason and Isla will give us some music, and then we will have some photos.”
“Joe — over to you.”
Joe took the mic with his trademark quiet, looked out at the crowd, and waited until everyone was still.
“Good afternoon. Thank you for being here. Thank you to everyone watching from elsewhere. This is a day Layna and I have been hoping for, in different ways, for a long time, and we are very glad to be sharing it with the people we love and the people who love us.”
He paused.
“I want to start by saying what I think most of you already know. I am the luckiest person standing on this lawn today. I have known I was lucky from the moment Layna first sat down next to me at a party we both went to. I have not stopped knowing it. I will not stop knowing it. That is the first thing I want to say.”
“I know what people see when they look at us. I have looked at it from outside myself. I have spent quiet evenings trying to understand how I ended up here. I don’t entirely understand it. What I do understand is that Layna chose me, and that she chose me knowing exactly who I was, and that I have spent every day since trying to be worth what she chose.”
A breath.
“A great many people made today happen, and I cannot name all of them. Suzy and Madeline, who could run a country if anyone asked. Sophie and James, who opened their home and their lawn and their hearts so this could happen in a place that meant something. The team — every one of you in those chairs — who took a week of project time to put up tents and dig pits and check sound rigs. Mark, who lent us Suzy and made sure she was paid. The youth group from our church, who stacked chairs and called it ministry. The caterers, who have fed two hundred people from a truck. Greg from the CFA and his crew, standing somewhere up the back making sure none of us burn down. Security, standing all around us that we can’t see. And the two girls on the platform up there, who have been commentating this whole wedding with more energy than I will manage all day.”
He paused for the laugh.
“Thank you. Truly. We will spend the next year trying to be worth what you did for us today.”
He shifted register.
“And then there are the people who made Layna and me. The people without whom there would be no us.”
“My parents, in the front row. Mum, Dad. You raised me to believe that quiet was as worthy as loud, and that the way you treat the people who can do nothing for you is the actual measure of who you are. Layna saw that in me because you put it there.”
“My sisters. You have been gentle on this relationship from the start. But thorough. You interrogated Layna. You decided eventually that she could keep me. Layna will tell you she was more nervous about meeting you than meeting John Kerry. I am very glad you took her seriously. Thank you.”
“Layna’s parents, sitting beside Sophie and James. You did the harder work. You raised a daughter the world has opinions about, and you have stayed faithful to her through every season of that. Thank you for trusting me with her. I know what that trust costs. I will spend my life being worthy of it.”
“Sophie and James. The second set of parents I get to have, such magic. Layna and I both know that there is no project, no us, no today without you. The Wright family did not adopt us through paperwork. You adopted us through all the things you do. Steph, Asha, Jaiden, Xander — thank you for treating us as siblings without making us prove we deserved it.”
“The team. I will not name all of you again. You know who you are. You are the actual project. Layna and I are the bit at the front. You are the part that holds.”
“Jo. You have been Layna’s lady-in-waiting since you were both undergraduates, and you have made her queen in every room she has entered. You dressed her today. You will dress her at every important moment of her life from here. There is no one else who sees her the way you do.”
“Julian and Larissa.”
He stopped here.
“I do not have a quick way to say this. Julian, you were my best friend as soon as we met. You walked alongside me into the country I was about to live in. You taught me, with your hands and your patience, how to hold things that are too heavy to hold alone. Larissa, you are in our lives and our hearts exactly the way we need you, and you have stayed at exactly the angle we needed. You are the sister of Layna’s heart and you are the sister of mine. The four of us live in each other’s lives and we always will.”
He paused.
“Before I make the promises I owe you, Layna, I want to say what I love about you. Not all of it — we would be here all night and the catering staff would start to worry. But the things I came back to, again and again, when I was trying to decide whether I was brave enough to love you back.”
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