Chapter 2

We entered the dining room then, to find that most students had simply fled without a thought of food, but there were some others eating there, clearly trying to figure out what to do next. They rose with a start as they saw us, especially when they realized that most of us were naked (including me). There were six of them, including one professor, one campus cop, and four students. I looked very closely and realized that the professor was a woman, but very mannish in appearance. She stared very closely at Gabby and then it hit home ... she was gay! So was Gabby, from the way that she reacted with familiarity, even intimacy, planting a kiss on her professor at last.

“I’ve wanted to do that since we met, and now that you’re not teaching me, I can!” Gabby confessed, pulling the professor into her arms.

“I’ve wanted it, too, Gabby! Trust me, Rosales. I’ve badly wanted to make love to you, to kiss you, to take you as my bride. You’re ... a lesbian, too, then, like me?” the professor was so caught up in Gabby that she basically forgot everyone else for a moment.

“Yes, Professor Wathen, I am a lesbian,” Gabby told the older woman.

“Call me Anwyn. It’s my proper name. If we’re going to be lovers now, might as well, right?” the forty something professor encouraged her much younger partner.

“Gabby and Anwyn ... Wathen ... or Rosales?” Gabby laughed now, as she contemplated a future with the academic.

“How about ... neither? How about, whatever the fuck name we wish, since the world’s starting over with a clean slate. Tabula rasa. How about ... Slater?” Anwyn proposed, “Gabby Rosales, I am very much smitten with you, and while I don’t know if it’s true love, we can build that love together, as people often do in hard times. Will you ... will you do me the honor of giving me your hand in marriage? Will you become my wife? Will you marry me?”

“Si! Yes! I will marry you. Mrs. Anwyn Slater and Mrs. Gabby Slater ... has a nice ring to it, right? Adam, will you return my favor from before, if you’re okay with doing so before we eat? This can be your wedding feast as well as mine, or close enough to it as we’ll get in this brave new world of ours,” Gabby urged me, to which I nodded as I stood to do the honors.

“Gabriela ... what’s your middle name?” I asked her.

“Oh, no, I didn’t get your middle name, so you don’t get mine. That’s a secret for Anwyn to learn later, so she can scream it out loud as I eat her out!” Gabby refused, “just get on with it, please.”

“Very well, then. Gabriela Rosales, do you take this woman, Anwyn Wathen, to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, to love... ,” now it was my turn to get stuck, as I paused for indications of their dynamic.

“Honor and obey,” Gabby winked devilishly at me, even as she was in earnest.

“Honor and obey ... for better or worse, for rich or for poor, in sickness and health... ,” I recited before Anwyn interrupted me.

“And forsaking all others,” she said, creating a tense moment, as I wasn’t sure if Gabby was as monogamous as her professor was and I was not.

Gabby nodded at me, so I continued, “and forsaking all others, keep you only unto her, until death do you part?”

“I do,” Gabby beamed as she swore fidelity to her former professor.

“Do you, Anwyn Wathen, take this woman, Gabriela Rosales, to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, to love, cherish, and protect, for better or worse, for rich or for poor, in sickness and health, and forsaking all others, keep you only unto her, until death do you part?” I picked up enough clues by now to breathlessly recite Anwyn’s vows for her.

“I do,” Anwyn spoke without hesitation, adding, “I’ll never want another woman’s arms but hers again.”

“Then by the power vested in me by your mutual consent, I now pronounce you ... woman and wife. You may kiss your bride, Professor,” I teased them, recognizing Professor Wathen by now.

She had been one of the better history professors, even if she was sometimes a little fixated on rehabilitating female figures vilified by history.

“With pleasure,” Anwyn kissed Gabby deeply, making it apparent that she had a lot of passion to her, more than I would have ever guessed.

“I present to you, Mrs. and Mrs. Slater,” I continued for dramatic effect, earning applause as probably the first ever naked officiator that the group had ever met ... I doubted that they even had those in Vegas.

“I can see that you’re a nudist, sir,” the cop commented with a wicked smile playing at his mouth.

“Yes, and the days that you could arrest me for it are over. While we’re at it, I’m also a polygamist and two of my wives are underage, or were in many states in the past. Can’t arrest me for those offenses, either, not anymore. I’m Adam Clarke, and these are my wives, Xia Delan Clarke, Hannah Clarke, and Autumn Clarke,” I introduced myself, “As you can see, that’s Gabby.”

“Oh, I wasn’t going to arrest you, though handcuffs did come to mind. For one or both of us to wear. I’m gay, though, so I’m not sure how you’d feel about that. Name’s Lewis Cadarn, in fact. I’m a townie, though I’m not sure if I’ll stick around. We’ve been talking that over, the six of us. I guess that Anwyn will go wherever Gabby does now, or vice versa. Good for them,” the cop shocked us all by admitting his true feelings now.

“Cadarn, eh? Isn’t that Welsh, much like Wathen, in fact,” I observed, stalling for time as I considered the nature of his proposition.

“It is, in fact. Very clever of you to catch on, sir. I was born in Wales, as it happens. Long time ago, of course. Carmarthen in southern Wales, to be precise. Not surprised to find people of Welsh stock, of course, not in places like West Virginia, which is a lot like Wales other than being landlocked. Mountainous, forested, parts of it still wild,” Anwyn took obvious pride in her Welsh origins, “Ancient Britain, while no matriarchy despite attempts by some of my colleagues to sell it as one, was definitely more egalitarian about the sexes than some of its neighbors.”

“I’m sure that you still have family back there, then,” I noted as I also admired Lewis’s bulge through his pants.

“That I do. Cadog, my brother, and Uncle Cadwgan, though he’s a pervert, that one. Always tried to slip his fingers into my twat when I was younger. I won’t say how young. I’m not sure how you would take it, even with your young brides. I won’t say child brides, because, for all of my feminism, I’m a history professor first, and I know that historically, there were brides younger than them in the old days. Fourteen to seventeen year olds were par for the course and probably will be again.

“You’re at the start of a new trend, I suspect. At least you didn’t knock up a twelve year old and call it God’s will, like Edmund Tudor and Joseph of Nazareth. My uncle had a lot in common with those two men. I hope that if Wales gets a good strong government or even a halfway civilized warlord, he, or dare I hope for a she, hangs men like my uncle by their privy parts,” Anwyn ranted.

“Have you ever considered becoming that warlord yourself? You have a remarkable grasp on reality and common sense, compared to much of your sisterhood. Enough knowledge of history to have perspective, especially when cold, hard facts set in. Wales could do worse than you. Of course, you’d need guns. I hate to keep breaking it to you Europeans, but without guns, no one’s going to survive an apocalypse,” I suggested, “Wouldn’t that be a first for the books, a lesbian warlord in Wales? Be like something out of S.M. Stirling, wouldn’t it, though his anti-gun bit was rather unrealistic and stupid, an anachronism in a true sense, in that it didn’t fit the context.”

“Well, it is a thought, but only if Gabby came along for the ride. We’d have to gear down the firepower, eventually. Unless we can get the power grid working again, that is. You might some day hear of us and see portraits of me and my band of warriors with muskets and fixed bayonets,” Anwyn laughed, but there was a part of her that clearly liked the idea.

“Or see your face on coinage, as Queen of Wales, or whatever the equivalent is in Welsh,” I noted, making Gabby laugh as she listened in on us.

“I’d style myself Princess of Wales, in fact. Much like Llewellyn the Great, the only true Prince of Wales, that is. Tywysoges Cymru. A title that I would gladly share with Gabby here, as my bride,” Anwyn noted, “though, as a ruler like that, I’d need an heir. That could be tricky for a lesbian. Maybe my brother could succeed me.”

“That seems a reasonable solution, if you ask me. Brothers and sisters have done it a lot through history. That’s why rulers had so many children, just in case they were needed,” Autumn interjected, making Anwyn smile.

“Well said, my dear lass. Well said. Even so, I’d want him to share the power with Gabby, as I would make her my co-sovereign, and I’d expect him to respect that. If the society that follows is going to be a tad medieval, former rulers, especially ones as unique as her, would be at risk from jealous subjects the moment that their protector was dead. Alternatively, well... ,” Anwyn looked at me, “I know that you’re gay, Gabby, just like me, but perhaps you can let Cadog breed you, to give you a child or two that has my blood in him or her, an heir to our throne. And, well, I can’t promise that we’ll have in vitro as an option, given the technology.”