Cernunnos' eyes widened as he tried not to react to the hissed words. "Then where's the bloody Chalice?" he hissed back, bringing her hand to his mouth for a quick kiss to hide his own whisper. Because he actually had no intention of ruining the ceremony for anyone, he tried to behave himself as he and his bride drew up to the elder and stood in front of him, their hands still clasped together.
Inwardly he was marveling at the woman; if he wasn't the one being handed a new wife every year, she might have a bit of a reason to be so grouchy about things. She was the one who was being a party to the pomp and circumstance by wearing the flowers and becoming involved in the ritual marriage in the first place, and the idea of public copulation had lost its shine about a hundred May Days ago.
And it wasn't even as if this were necessary. Ritual marriages and naked sex parties in the fields didn't influence the harvests one way or the other. Only seed quality, rain, sun, and diligence affected the harvest, but it seemed as if the mortals hadn't figured that out yet. The gods had taught the humans how to sow, to sort the good from the bad, the grain from the chaff, to save seed from one season to the next. To store food against bad harvests and to share good harvests with everyone.
But somehow it comforted mortals to think there were higher powers looking after them, and assigned them the capricious moods of the seasons. Therefore, if a harvest was bad, it was because they were bad, and the gods needed appeasing. And if a harvest was good, it was because they had praised and appeased the gods, and must continue to do so in order to bring rain, make soil fertile, and to harvest in plenitude.
All of that boiled down to a ceremonial mating of the May Queen to the May King and to have a lot of intercourse to encourage fertility of the land and the people.
Cernunnos just tightened his grip on his bride's hands as the elder started to speak. "Don't disrupt this ceremony," he muttered under his breath, for her ears only. He liked this village and respected its people, and he didn't want anything casting a shadow on the people's celebration or the upcoming growing season. If they worried, he was very, very unhappy.