Field note. The colony has assembled to witness two of its members enter a binding contract, and it has decided this contract requires witnesses to weep.
The two subjects stand at the front, elevated, immobilized in garments they will never wear again. One is wrapped in a great volume of white fabric that impedes locomotion; observers agree this is the point. The gathered humans have arranged themselves in rows and been sorted, unprompted, into two allegiances, as though the pairing were a treaty between rival tribes rather than an affection.
A designated elder recites a formula. The two subjects repeat the formula back, voices unsteady, water leaking from the eyes. This leakage is not distress. This is the malfunction they have traveled great distances to observe. Several witnesses leak in sympathy. One documents the leakage with a device rather than assisting.
They exchange small metal rings. The rings do nothing. They transmit no signal, store no data, restrict no blood flow of consequence. Their sole function is to be present on the appendage and to be noticed by others as present. A promise, they say, made physical, so that it cannot be forgotten. This suggests the human memory is a defective organ requiring external hardware.
Then the assembly consumes a large sugared structure, moves rhythmically to loud sound until exhausted, and disperses.
Preliminary conclusion: the entire apparatus exists to make an invisible agreement visible for a single afternoon, after which the agreement returns to being invisible and must be maintained by other means for the remainder of two lifetimes. The ceremony proves nothing. Amend that. It is not designed to prove. It is designed to be remembered leaking.