The Reunion

Chapter 11

"I Now Pronounce You"

CASSIE

The wedding was beautiful.

I know it was hard for Tobias and Rachel to decide on their wedding party. On one hand, the Animorphs were old friends, the people that knew their deepest secrets, the people they had been in life & death situations with.

But, they had been away from the Animorphs for five years. They each had best friends in Colorado, people they saw every day. Who had seen them grow and change into the mature adults that they had become. Tobias had lived with three guys from the Center for two years. They lived in the same house, ate together, worked together. Rachel had several close friends who she had met her freshman year of college. They'd leaned on each other through the stress of college, jobs and boyfriends.

When the final decision was made, Rachel had two bridesmaids – Nadine and me – and Tobias had two groomsmen – Zane and Ax. Two of Rachel's other college friends served as greeters. Jake and Marco rolled out the aisle runner for Rachel to walk on. Two of Tobias's coworkers served as ushers.

One of Tobias's volunteer buddies from the Raptor Center was a minister and performed the ceremony. It took place outdoors at the wildlife reserve near the Raptor Center, and at the end of the ceremony, two recently recovered birds from the center were released.

Afterwards, Nadine took dozens of pictures. We ate cake. Marco refrained from smearing any icing on anyone, but Ax managed to cover himself without any help. We danced until our feet hurt. I actually had a slow dance with Jake, which was nice. We tried to teach Ax the Electric Slide.

Rachel had brought a digital camera and a tripod. So after the rest of the guests had departed, the six of us Animorphs slipped off to take some private pictures with Ax demorphed. Marco slipped into gorilla morph for a couple of supposedly serious pictures and eventually the session dissolved into ridiculous animal morphing photos.

There's this awesome picture of Rachel in her gorgeous wedding gown, reclining against a Siberian tiger, with his tail draped over her arm. And there's a hilarious one with Rachel as an elephant and Tobias trying to pull the garter off her trunk. Tobias was a good sport about all the morphing, and even relented to being the sole human amidst an unlikely flock of highly incompatible raptors.

Rachel got all artistic with the camera and had me do some really weird mid-morph pictures. I really liked the one with me in my beautiful bridesmaid dress with giant wings instead of arms. The one where I have leopard spots all over my skin is pretty cool too.

I have no idea what we're going to do with those photos; obviously we can't stick them in a scrapbook or frame them. But it's nice to know that they exist. Ax and Marco will be able to take them back to the Andalite world to remember us by.

JAKE

Tobias and Rachel took off the next morning for their honeymoon in Hawaii. They left us keys to their house, and we all chilled there when we weren't morphing and exploring the area. We had some fun, memorable times in the Rockies as wolves. We rode the thermals over the valleys as birds of prey. We even acquired some squirrels and chased each other up and down trees like goofy idiots.

When Tobias and Rachel returned a week later, we all felt a little sad, knowing that our time together was coming to an end. We all had real lives to go back to. Lives that – for the most part – took us in separate directions. But this time, we were leaving each other with fond memories and warm feelings. Ax and Marco invited us to visit the Andalite homeworld sometime. And those of us that are earthbound talked about visiting the Hork Bajir Valley one day.

It will be interesting to see what the future brings. After all that time apart, we're still very much connected. I don't think we'll be shutting each other out of our lives anymore. These relationships are too precious to let them drift apart. We're going to make it a point to remember that strange, difficult part of our lives that made us who we are today. We made a promise to meet every year for an Animorph reunion.

Author's Note: This is the end of this story. I did try to leave it open-ended, so that possible spin-offs and sequels would be possible. But I don't have any plans to write more at the moment. I've drafted a couple storylines about what each of the other Animorphs were up to before the wedding, what was going on with the free Hork Bajir and freed human Controllers, and what a visit to the Andalite homeworld might hold for Tobias and Rachel… but with my limited free time to write, and my lack of good story-telling skills, I don't see any of those ever coming to fruition. However, if there's someone out there with a passion to get those stories out there, and you're willing to stay within my alternate universe, I'd be glad to work with you to create more stories.