Welcome to Layman-upon-Waters. Elliot is the city’s new overseer for the Office of Municipal Integration, and his days are spent encouraging the region’s secretly inhuman denizens out of hiding and into cooperative citizenship.
Usually, each chapter is a stand-alone event with only a subtle through-line, so there should be no issue with reading them out of order.
Having said that, this penultimate chapter is quite story heavy. You may want to read up before diving in!
“Alright, you can turn around now.”
He did so. Melyssa brushed herself down in the shade of the Ilvarith pine, and she lit up the night.
“Goodness,” Elliot said.
Melyssa’s gown was a luxurious forest green. The puffy sleeves and wide skirt were full. Elliot had to wonder how she’d shipped it all the way out here without producing a litany of creases across the fabric. The spattering of silver moonlight that pierced Ilvarith’s thick canopy sparkled on the glittered embroidery around her waist.
“Does it fit well?” asked Lantern’s bartender, lifting the skirt to reveal soft dancing shoes beneath with one hand. With her other, she tucked her blonde locks behind her ear. “I didn’t have a chance to examine it in the twilight, only my bedroom’s lamplight.”
“It looks very fine,” said Elliot with a smile.
“Truly?”
“Absolutely. Only…” Swallowing his pride, Elliot nodded downwards. “It appears to be slipping.”
“Is it?” Melyssa followed his bashful eye and pressed her hands against her chest. The gown’s neckline was loose and low, cupping her breasts with more a suggestion of stability than anything corporeal. It looked about ready to fall off her, but Melyssa shrugged. “It looks fine to me.”
Elliot cleared his throat, but he said nothing. If she was sure, he wasn’t going to complain. He hoped the elves felt the same.
“I am envious of men’s fashion,” Melyssa sighed, approaching Elliot and tucking her fingers into the collar of his green dancing coat. She straightened the hem with a practiced brush of her hands. “Changing outfits in the middle of the woods is no difficulty for men. You barely have to strip at all. A woman must make herself bare before beginning the slow act of returning to decency.”
Elliot smiled. “Our fashion may be more practical, but I’d be hard pressed to make myself even half as lovely as you.”
Melyssa looked up at him through her fringe with a sly smirk. She reached up and grabbed his cheeks, then tugged. Elliot bore the punishment gamely. She’d been doing this to him a lot lately. He did wish he knew what it meant.
“Shall we?” asked Melyssa, sliding an arm through his, and the pair returned to the glade together.
In the moonlit night, the air was buzzing. Part of that was Ilvarith’s ambient arcane energies, or whatever it was that made the light swim. But part was the coiled spring that was Layman’s ambassadorial contingent. They had been travelling as a cluster of twenty-five for days now, long enough to get very used to and fond of one another, and that camaraderie produced whispered chatter that bounced between the pines like music. Low-Towners and city-folk excitedly shared final theories on what the elves were like, how their cities were built, which of the childhood stories were true. Their fine outfit choices were eclectic; the castellan hadn’t mandated any one style. But green and gold dominated the hues across the glade, the colours of their city livery. Most had silently agreed that such was appropriate for the night’s work.
At the far side of the glade, Castellan Thaddeus in his loose coat stood beside the Ambassador to the Elves, a woman named Harriet with a pragmatic green gown and a tight, white bun of hair decorated with a single daffodil. Elliot knew Harriet to be a keen mind where the dealings of the elves were concerned, and she spoke the tongue like a natural. Her lessons in elven etiquette and language during their hike through the forest had been invaluable. If only it wasn’t so hard to get her attention when she was lost in thought, as her idle smile suggested she was now.
Thaddeus noted Elliot’s arrival with a smile and a nod, then opened his mouth in preparation for calling for attention. Then he paused. His narrowed eyes moved from Elliot to Melyssa, over Melyssa’s semi-exposed bust. Elliot returned the frown.
She needed help with her corset, he projected silently. That’s what took us so long. Nothing else.
Thaddeus’ smirk suggested he didn’t believe Elliot to be so chaste, but then they were underway.
“My friends, my countryfolk!” he said, shaking the dense air with his voice. “We are about to begin a night of history! I would ask that you all recall the lessons Ambassador Harriet has been imparting during our days of travel. If you remember nothing else, and let me warn you that you may find your thoughts muddled by what you see tonight, remember this. You are here to encounter the joys of elvenkind. So please, be joyful! And for anything practical, ambassadorial staff are to come to myself, attendant staff to Elliot.”
A few Low-Towners took this opportunity to turn and wave at Elliot, and Elliot waved back with what he hoped was a confident smile.
“Now, let us begin!” called Thaddeus. “Layman-upon-Waters! Let us begin!”
The cheer went up at once, and the people marched as one behind their leaders. Elliot and Melyssa took up the rear, and Elliot suppressed a smile at the thought of a sheepdog herding an unruly flock.
Pressed against his shoulder, Melyssa wriggled. “So exciting!” she said.
But the chatter and laughter died the moment the crowd left the glade and arrived at the edge of the city. Elliot, trailing behind, wondered if there was some form of magic barrier that blocked the sound. But no, it was just that everyone had lost their voices. As soon as he passed into the city, Elliot began silently staring with them.
Ilvarith, the city of the elves. Her shining glow consumes all in the light of a new sun, as her residents named her in their tongue. The city was crowned with a central tower that stretched far, far beyond the canopy of the surrounding trees. The ivory spire scraped the clouds and threatened the moon. Trying to follow the spiralling windows in the side of the structure made Elliot hopelessly dizzy, and Melyssa’s arm through his gripped him tight as she was struck by her own vertigo. How such a structure wasn’t visible from Layman was a mystery indeed.
Around the tower were smaller buildings, likely homes and craft-halls and eateries. The elven design was uniform white brick built into an angular cylinder. Thaddeus had a length of foreign plant called ‘bamboo’ in his study, and Elliot was instantly reminded of the light wood. The elven buildings clustered together, circled by slim roads of white stone with grass growing thick between the slabs, and Elliot thought they looked cramped and tight, not very elvish at all. But then a wind blew across the city, and as it skimmed the angled roofs, it produced a humming song. The city itself was an orchestra, Mother Gaia its conductor. The people of Layman sighed as one, and their voices, without realising, matched the natural tone of the city.
But Elliot’s wonder wouldn’t last, as in the next moment, he saw his first elf.
“Friends of Ilvarith, you are most welcome.” The man was slim, decked in a purple robe with sharp shoulders and a pair of form-fitting tights. His long ears burst forth from thick locks of ruby-red hair, framing a cream face with a sharp nose and narrow, sparkling eyes. He held a circular tray containing a collection of wooden goblets with shining brass rims, plus one of glass with a rim of what looked like obsidian, balanced on one hand. The glass receptacle held a red liquid that swirled under its own momentum.
“Castellan Thaddeus,” said the elf, bowing primly at the neck. “Right on time.”
“Good evening, Sayge,” the castellan replied with a much deeper bow.
“Ambassador Harriet.”
“Eyes upon you, Sayge,” said the woman in the man’s native language, decorated with a cheery wave.
“And behold, so many new friends.”
The seneschal’s smile was thin, his eyes tight. Elliot was reminded of a teacher before a class of students, ready to begin the lesson but wary of the chaotic potential of youths.
Elliot’s gaze slipped beyond him. Ilvarith’s grand tower had its doors open, spilling warm firelight into the night, and the elves had appeared in droves. Male and female and both and neither, they clustered in the light and regarded their guests with open stares and wide smiles. Flowing gowns that trailed behind them, tight coats clasped high and chaste, and some wore nothing but a shifting cloud that danced around their bodies. Blue hair and red hair and gold and silver. None of the uniformity of Layman. Elliot recalled Melyssa’s low neckline, since he couldn’t take his eyes off the elves to look for himself, and realised she wouldn’t be in the least out of place.
And now that he saw them, more elves appeared. Elliot was surprised to see them peeking out of windows or from between trees at the edges of the city’s grand clearing, sitting on roofs or in the grass nearby. As if they had simply appeared out of thin air or, more likely, Elliot’s terrestrial mind had grown accustomed enough to this place to finally see them.
Naturally, Elliot’s eye sought the lavender hair of one elf in particular. But though he pushed up on his tiptoes to scan the crowds, he couldn’t see her.
“I have but one word of caution tonight,” intoned Sayge, flicking back his locks with a graceful swish of his neck. “Behold the two goblets you see before you. One is made of the precious wood of our sacred pine, and you may drink from these freely without obligation. The other is made of crystal glass. Please, do not touch these. They are for elven consumption only. In humans, the effects are… untested.”
Elliot gulped. How ominous. When a pair of Low Town lads ahead of him put their heads together and whispered about getting a sip of the forbidden drink, Elliot kicked one in the back of the leg and directed an angry scowl into their conversation. They both guiltily bobbed their heads and said no more.
“His Eminence the King is eager to see you all,” Sayge continued, “so I shan’t deter you any longer. Castellan, Ambassador, our time together begins shortly. All others…”
He smirked, and Elliot saw a sliver of genuine humour between the cracks of his professional mask. “Be joyful,” said the seneschal.
The human crowd was led into the tower. They turned their heads back and forth with the wide eyes of children. Each was offered a wooden goblet by Sayge before they crossed the threshold, and though the man’s tray was small, he never seemed to run out of refreshments for them. The elves on either side of the entrance cast the guests friendly smiles, and some reached out to stroke their shoulders.
Inside, the space opened up into a grand ballroom, bright with the crystalline light of a high chandelier, as well as the reflective illumination of the polished white walls. Round tables of Ilvarith wood sat at the peripheries holding trays of recognisable food and more of those goblets, and the centre of the space was given up to dancing elves, twirling and spinning alone or in groups. Elliot stared, enrapt, before realising there wasn’t any music. What were they dancing to, and all to the same beat no less?
Beyond the dancers, the hall rose in a wide set of carpeted steps towards a titanic pair of ornate wooden doors, slightly ajar to reveal nothing but dark beyond. The Elf King’s throne room. That would be where Thaddeus and the others would talk peace and culture with the highest authorities in elfdom. Other curved passages led east and west out of the ballroom at the base of the steps, and Elliot’s head ached when he realised the tower’s size didn’t account for additional interior space. As if the inside was larger than the outside. It was going to be one of those nights.
Melyssa hugged his arm tight. “It’s like a fairytale come to life,” she breathed. “Have you ever seen anything quite like it?”
“I haven’t,” Elliot replied with dry lips.
“Is the Elf King here? I don’t see him if he is.”
“He won’t come out from the throne room,” said Elliot. “Or rather, his presence extends to the city as a whole. He’s more of an idea than a man, or so Harriet explained it to me.”
Melyssa frowned. “Then he doesn’t have a body?”
“Oh, he does. He just isn’t limited to it.”
“Alright, good.” She reached up and adjusted her lascivious bodice. “I have a wish to have him see me tonight, Elliot, that he might be enamoured with me and make me his queen.”
The heady atmosphere, thick with magic, made Elliot laugh. “That might be a tall ask,” he said.
“I’ll settle for concubine, if that’s a concern,” she replied with her own rosy smile. “We do know his family have an eye for humans.”
She winked up at him, and Elliot felt dizzy again.
“Ah, and there she is now.”
This time, he almost fell over. Elliot clung tight to Melyssa and followed her eye up the stairs to the open door to the throne room.
Miriham, princess of elves, daughter of the King and staunch ally of the city of Layman, strode out of the dark. To Elliot, she looked like a young woman just a touch older than him, when in truth she was decades older. Her lavender hair was long and sleek, braided on one side of her fringe with green and gold cord, and her long ears were slender and graceful. Her sleeveless dress was likewise green, worn under a stiffer tabard of embroidered fabric. The golden leaves decorating the outfit swam under his vision, floating on an invisible textile breeze.
Her violet eyes and sharp features, the pink gloss of her lips, were tight with lingering frustration, and she turned at the top of the stairs to call something back into the throne room with a dismissive wave of her hand. She composed herself with visible difficulty, then turned and set a smile on her lips instead.
“I should let you go,” Melyssa whispered, slipping out of his arm and immediately getting caught in the spin of a dancing elf. Elliot barely felt her leave. His entire attention was fixed on Miriham.
Miriham, descending the stairs with a playful step. Miriham, clasping hands with Thaddeus and receiving a kiss to the back of her hand. Miriham, sharing a familiar jest with Harriet. Miriham, looking beyond them and seeing him. Miriham, her eyes widening and her lips parting.
The chattering ballroom fell silent in Elliot’s ears. All he could hear was the sound of his own heart beating. He didn’t feel Thaddeus’ hands on his shoulders, drawing him into their conversation.
“And here is one of our overseers,” said the castellan. “Princess, this is-…”
“Elliot,” she said. Her voice was like rich honey. “As if he could be anyone else.”
Thaddeus’ smile was wide and warm. He clapped Elliot proudly on one shoulder. Then, seeing that neither he nor Miriham were paying attention to the world around them, he took Harriet by the arm and led her away. The elderly ambassador watched the pair over her shoulder as she left.
“Do they know each other?” Elliot heard her ask.
He drowned in Miriham’s violet eyes. Magical, gemstone eyes, just like his. Or close enough to count, surely. Her wondrous smile was the air that he was breathing. Her rapt attention was nourishment for his soul. Then her hands landed on his chest, and he almost toppled over.
“Look at you!” said Miriham with an excited smile. “It is truly criminal that this is our first meeting, Elliot. And you, so grown up! A man in truth. I see it well. Hold, before we continue, I should say…”
Miriham looked left and right with a purse of her lips, and Elliot became aware of heat on the back of his head, the curious attention of the elves. He was being treated with such familiarity by their royalty, so their curiosity was understandable. Miriham slipped a hand down his arm and took hold of his wrist.
“Come,” she said. “A little privacy.”
The princess dragged him through the dancers and into an alcove in the side of the circular ballroom. The thick windows and severe corners turned the space into a moonlit nook that would block at least some of their conversation from prying ears. Once inside, Miriham placed her hands on his cheeks.
“I should say, I am so very sorry about your father,” she said, her eyes creasing. “It must feel so long ago to you, but I recall hearing the news as if it was yesterday.”
“I-I…” Elliot croaked, hating how base his voice sounded compared to hers. “I never… really knew him.”
She stroked his face tenderly. “Of course not. How awful. And yet, I see him here before me. I see him in you, Elliot. Eli lives on in you, and in your work, if what I have heard is accurate. A working man, toiling for the sake of-…”
He could bear it no longer. Elliot drew a breath into his lungs.
“Princess, are you my mother?”
Miriham was caught mid-sentence, and she convulsed, bending at the waist as if receiving a blow to the gut. But the gasping breath than emerged from her lips was a laugh, and it was followed by more of its kind. Holding tight to the collar of his dancing coat, Miriham began to guffaw. She choked on her own laughter. Her clear, elven expression contorted with uncontrolled mirth. She wept with it.
It was a very human sound, Elliot realised, and he wasn’t the only one. Beyond the alcove, a great number of elves had paused their eating and drinking and dancing to stare at their princess with saucer-sized eyes. Their princess, devoid of decorum and bowled over by laughter. Her eyeshadow running and her hair loose from behind her ears. It was a merry sound, a charming sound. Yes, a human sound.
It cut Elliot like a knife.
“Oh… Oh my!” Miriham gasped. “Oh, by my blessed ancestors! By my… ancestors…”
She pulled open her wet eyes to regard him through her eyelashes. On seeing his expression, her face fell. She dragged a breath into her lungs.
“By my ancestors,” she whispered. “You are serious!”
Elliot opened his mouth to say something, anything. Anything to rid himself from this moment where she looked upon him with such pity, such confusion. Miriham snapped a vicious glower into the ballroom proper, and as one, the elves returned to their merrymaking as if nothing had happened. She returned to him much more slowly and placed her hands once more on his cheeks.
“Elliot,” she hissed. “No!”
He swallowed. “N-No?” He couldn’t think of anything else to say but, “A-A-Are you sure?”
“Yes!” she replied with burning eyes. Her voice was low, secretive and deeply shameful. “Elliot, I would know if I had… birthed a living creature! Who told you this lie? How long have you been under this awful misapprehension?”
Awful? A lie? Elliot thought back to the preceding months, when being ‘one of us and one of them’ had seemed like a simple, logical certainty. Each connection he had made with the kin of humanity had made him surer that yes, these were his people. Not the snide fellow students of the Castle, not the loud adults in the merchant quarter, nor the sly, backstabbing nobility in the heights. The strangers. The outsiders. Those were his people. Those were his mother’s people. Surely. Surely!
“Th-Then…” he managed between bouts of effort to keep from sobbing, “wh-who is my mother?”
Miriham stared up at him, crestfallen. “Elliot… I do not know.”
The air shook. A tone beyond sound rippled out from the throne room doors and filled the ballroom. The elvish chatter escalated, the human whispers intensified.
Princess Miriham cursed under her breath, another very human reaction. “He picks now, of all times. Fate is against me. Elliot, sweet boy, please await the conclusion of my father’s meeting. I shall come to you then, and we shall talk on all of this. We shall fix this. I promise you.”
She stepped backwards and away from him, her hands trailing along his sleeves. “Please, be merry!” she said with an anxious smile. “Eat! Drink! Dance! Look after your fellows! Wait for me,” she breathed, releasing him. “Wait for me.”
She turned and left him, following Thaddeus, Harriet and the ambassadorial support staff up the stairs towards the throne room. She didn’t look back as she and Sayge escorted the humans into the gloom, then sealed the door at their backs.
Elliot swayed on his feet. The stone floor of the ballroom didn’t seem steady. When he took a step, it was as if the ground would give way beneath him. He held himself upright on a nearby table, letting the dance of elves and humans play out before him without really seeing it.
Miriham wasn’t his mother? Did that make him human, or something else? Who was he? Who… Who was he? Anything would do! For like this, devoid of answers, Elliot of Layman may as well have been nothing at all.
Around the ballroom, the celebration continued in defiance of Elliot’s world coming to an end. Melyssa danced gaily with an elven woman with shocking pink hair. Two Low Town lads enjoyed another goblet of human-safe wine while greedily eyeing the off-limits elven alcohol. Two folk he recognised from the Castle were engaging a pair of elves in a spirited debate, and another had sat down with a pretty elf girl to play something that looked like chess with pieces that were little sprouting saplings.
Everyone was joyful. Everyone was merry. That was well. Elliot, not wanting to bring down the mood, fled the ballroom.
* * *
The curling labyrinth of Ilvarith’s palace drew Elliot deeper into the tower’s confusing geometry, and he lost himself in its halls gladly. He picked his paths at random, hands deep in his pockets and scowling eyes fixed on the toes of his dancing shoes. He passed no others in his wandering, and that was well. Elliot didn’t want to acknowledge his own dour mood by having it witnessed.
Now and then, he passed curved doorways with intricate lintels of interlocking stonework. When the doors were closed, he let them be. But he couldn’t help but peek into those that permitted him. Elliot passed cushion-laden parlours and reading rooms, empty kitchens with polished wooden furnishings, a disused greenhouse with barren flower beds.
He wandered between stone sculptures lining the corridor. He didn’t recognise the immortalised stonework elves, and his mind slipped around impossible shapes somehow conjured out of the white rock. He took the time to regard each one regardless. He groped for something to distract his flailing mind.
Elliot didn’t have a mother, when he’d certainly had one just an hour ago. He’d been Elliot, born of the legendary love of a man and an elven princess. He’d been other, scorned by his own people but welcomed by fellow others. Fellow kin of humanity. Now he was human, mortal. Unimpressive and unimportant. His inability to connect to his own people was not their human xenophobia, but just the result of a shy boy’s insecurity. Just a weak human’s failings. Nothing more than that.
He paused beside a familiar painting hung opposite an open doorway. Miriham of Ilvarith sat proud and tall in a flowing dress of blue fabric. Her lavender hair was bound into a tower with silver thread, and her eyes reflected a cold, impatient light. She was seated in an armchair beside a writing table awash in ink vials and loose scrolls of parchment.
Who was Elliot to call such a creature ‘mother’? Who had Elliot thought he was? Dazedly, Elliot reached up and brushed the canvas with his fingertips, then stumbled back as the painting rippled like liquid away from his touch. The disturbance warped Miriham’s expression into something alien. Then it settled into stability once more. Elliot should be so lucky. He turned and fled into the open room at his back.
It was a sitting room. The little chamber had a curtained window at one end, a case of sealed scrolls on the other, and a long seat of curved wood was set up in the centre, facing away from the door. The cushions were red and thick. They drew Elliot in. Since there was nobody around to tell him he couldn’t, he sat down with a sigh. Then he tipped back his head and closed his eyes. The crystal lamp worked into the ceiling cast patterns across his eyelids.
Elliot didn’t have a foundation. He didn’t know where he came from, or who he came from. He only believed himself the son of Eli of Layman because Thaddeus had told him so. The painting in the Castle corridor did look a little like him. And Elliot was human, just like Eli. But he’d never met the man, that he could recall. Their relationship ended at a physical resemblance.
I see him in you, and in your work.
Then why had Miriham said that? Pity, most likely. She wished to flatter him by attributing to him a legacy that was not his. The mythical mischief of the elves; you couldn’t trust them, the stories said. Elliot had worked hard to erase that myth in his social circles, but maybe that too had been a weak human simply fooling himself. What did he know? Who was he to know the other? Who was he to-…?
“Aha. He is here.”
Elliot sat up with a start and turned on his seat, staring at the open door. From the corridor beyond stepped forth a striking elven woman, smiling a warm, sharp, feline smile.
“You gave me something of a chase, Elliot of Layman,” said the elf with a saccharine chuckle. “I usually enjoy chasing quarry, but I am glad you decided to let me in. We have much to discuss.”
She was quite unlike any of the other elves Elliot had seen this evening. The woman shared Miriham’s slender grace and long, pointed ears, but the similarities ended there. She was tall, for one thing. She had thick black hair made sleek and straight like ebony water, short at the back but long on one side to occlude an amber eye from sight. The angle of her hair was matched by the angle of her tight red skirt, which covered one knee but pulled up to the thigh on the opposite leg. The dress was made severe by a filigreed corset around her slim waist, underlining the subtle rise of her chest. It hugged her neck with a halter of interlinked gold clasps that exposed much of her shoulders and the curve of her spine. She had an obsidian band around one upper arm, another on her bare thigh, and her long fingers were decorated with gold rings and chains. She didn’t appear to be wearing shoes, though.
It was her skin that gave Elliot the most surprise. Where most elves he’d seen had pale cream skin like the moonlight of their forest domain, this woman’s tone was rich mahogany, a red-brown like expensive furniture. He thought of summer’s heat, of the hissing of crickets, of slick sweat painting his brow. Of pulling off your clothing and tossing it to the floor. He felt instantly thirsty.
The woman’s gait was rounded, a dancing step that brought her to his side. She sat herself down next to him. Her silk dress tightened against her luscious skin, but she didn’t wear discomfort on her expression, and the outfit didn’t burst against her thighs. She slid a hand along the back of the seat behind Elliot’s shoulders and crossed one sleek leg over the other. Her cherry lips curved with a proud and enticing smile.
Elliot spun again on the appearance of two more elves at the door. One was visibly masculine, the other feminine, and both had similar but lighter skin tones to their mistress. Their outfits likewise matched, a wrap of burgundy fabric around their shoulders and about the waist. One closed the door behind them, then both took up attention beside it, eyes fixed on the horizon. Would they keep him from leaving if he tried?
A finger on his chin drew his gaze back to the luxurious woman at his side.
“I would not have us disturbed,” she explained. “Not when our conversation deserves care and attention. Elliot of Layman, let us begin. My name is Evelyn.”
She held out her hand to him. Elliot took it. She didn’t shake his hand; the raise of her brow suggested she wanted something else. So, recalling Thaddeus in the ballroom, Elliot lowered his head and kissed it. Evelyn’s skin was sweet, her appreciative laugh sweeter.
“Wh-What…” he tried, clearing his throat when the words wouldn’t come. “What do you wish to talk about, my lady?”
Evelyn slipped her hand from his with a stroke of her fingertips. “You are an important human,” she said. “There is much to gain from drawing closer to you. I would hear all about you, if I may. I am sure you have many an impressive story to tell.”
Elliot looked away. “That’s not…”
“No? Then how did such a man gain friendship with our beloved princess, my cousin Miriham?”
Evelyn slid along the seat and pushed her thigh against his. Elliot could taste her breath on his lips.
“I would so love to hear what the two of you were talking about in the ballroom,” she whispered.
Elliot stammered. An overactive part of his heart demanded that he tell this wonderful elf everything she wanted to hear. She would certainly reward such loyalty. Also, she thought well of him, and however much a lie it sounded in his ears, he wanted to hear more.
But another, a piece of him trained in the corridors of Castle Layman where the nobility played, begged for caution. She was asking for a weapon, there was no ignoring that. The sharp shadows painted around her eyes were the marks of a warrior, or an assassin.
He licked his lips. “I-I manage an immigration process in the city,” he said. “Princess Miriham wanted to hear about it.”
Evelyn leaned back with a purse of her lips, and Elliot’s heart ached at her distance.
“Is that truly all you spoke of?” she asked.
“Y-Yes.”
“You seemed awfully disappointed with fair Miriham’s reaction.”
Elliot swallowed. “She was pulled away before I could… explain properly.”
Evelyn narrowed her attention. She pierced his eyes and examined the very back of his skull.
“I ask because there are rumours,” she said, turning her hand and inspecting her polished nails. “That Miriham seeks the… intimate company of humans. There was a man not so long ago who captivated her attention, her friendship. Some say, a place in her bed. Did you know that?”
Elliot looked away with effort.
“Ah. Of course you did,” Evelyn chuckled. “Such a fascinating turn in my culture, of course it would reach the ears of humans also. Miriham’s supposed proclivities have lit something of a spark in my people in recent seasons. There are many in attendance tonight who would sample the earthy tincture of a human behind closed curtains. It is in vogue, as your people might say. So…”
She lunged forward again. “Were you disappointed because Miriham did not show interest in you as her lover?”
“No!” His sharp voice made Evelyn flinch back, and he tempered his shock with effort. “No,” Elliot repeated. “That was certainly not my intention.”
Evelyn examined him closely. She dragged the nail of one finger along the skin of her thumb.
“There is something there,” she said at last. “I would have it.”
“M-My lady?”
“Would it surprise you to hear that I too am caught up in the vogue of my people?” she said, brandishing her nails and running their sharp edges along Elliot’s cheek. “If your kind is good enough for Princess Miriham, then they are certainly good enough for me. I would love to see what all the fuss is about. They say that humans possess a vigour that is quite spectacular.”
She ran her finger down his neck, over the buttons of his coat. “And when I am through with you,” she said leaning close to his ear, “when you are truly mine in body and heart, you will tell me all you know of my erstwhile cousin. A fair trade between our people, do you not agree?”
Her finger reached his breeches, and she teased the mound of his erection. His clothing was thin and airy, and her touch was firm and confident. Elliot shivered with pleasure.
“Let me have you, Elliot of Layman,” Evelyn whispered. “Let me have all of you.”
She kissed his neck, and her stroking finger turned into a full, kneading hand. Elliot’s eyes rolled, but he still managed to snap his attention on the two attendants at the door. Surely they wouldn’t allow this. But their eyes remained faraway. Indeed, it seemed from their nonchalance that their mistress’ behaviour was not out of the ordinary.
She felt so good against his skin. Elliot’s mind melted under her pampering. When his heart had darkened from the revelation of his parentage, Evelyn provided a flame to light his way. It wasn’t much, and Elliot knew that to humour the elf, who clearly had her own royal connections, was a mistake. She had no affection for him. She barely knew him!
But she felt so good. And Elliot was thirsty. His heart was aching, and she was making him feel better.
“Yes?” she crooned against his skin. “May I have you, Elliot?”
His lip trembled. “Yes,” he said.
“Mmm. Very good.”
With a laugh of triumph, Evelyn pushed herself up and straddled him. She wasn’t heavy. Elliot’s hands clamped instinctively around her corseted waist. His eyes travelled up her gilded body to the savage light in her amber eyes. She tossed her head, flicking her hair like a flourishing blade.
“Very good, human!” she sang. “You shall not regret this decision!”
Both hands dropped to his crotch, and she squeezed his cock with a desirous groan. Evelyn bit her lip.
“I can feel the size of this thing. It is just as the stories said. Quite impressive, human. It shall fit me rather well.”
Grinning with excitement, Evelyn dug her fingers into his breeches and pulled. “Give it to me!” she hissed.
Elliot pulled his clothing down with shaking hands. His rod was thick and red between her thighs. Evelyn ran a teasing sun-kissed finger up the shaft, and Elliot let out a gasp as he was filled with sweet lightning.
She ran her nail around the head of his cock. The organ throbbed, and Elliot’s hips bucked. Evelyn reached around to the back of Elliot’s neck and took a handful of his hair. Then she slithered forward on his lap. Her tight skirt dragged up the flesh of her thighs. Beneath, she was bare, even of pubic hair. Evelyn kissed his cock with her wet pussy.
“Give it to me!” she snarled. Then, holding him tight with one ring-laden hand, she pressed herself atop him and devoured him. Her fragrant body interlocked with his. Her muscles tightened beneath her clothes.
“O-Ohh, goodness!” Evelyn choked. Then she switched to her native tongue, and Elliot’s dazed mind struggled to keep up. “Oh, my blessed [???]! That feels [???] in my [???]!”
However lacking his vocabulary, Elliot agreed with her passion. Evelyn’s rolling pussy was a tight grip that refused to free him. Very tight. Elliot felt grand and impressive inside her, and her slick rub on his cock was nothing short of luxurious.
“M-Mmm!” he groaned. “Ahh!”
“Do you like my body, human?” Evelyn sighed. “A match and more for any human lover, I am sure you agree!”
He stared up into her glowing eyes and set a worshipful response on his tongue. But before he could reply, Evelyn’s thumb found its way into his mouth. Sweet.
“No need to speak, pet,” she laughed. “Tell me with your grand human rod! Tell me with your devoted rutting!”
She plunged upon his cock again, right down to the hilt, and she began to dance. Evelyn gripped his shoulders tight and rode him fiercely. She gasped and sighed into his face. She dragged the pleasure out of him.
Elliot held to her hips for dear life. He was melting away under her ministrations. He was being ground down to nothing by her relentless lovemaking. And Almighty above, didn’t it feel wonderful to be needed by someone! To be valued by someone! Someone so stunning, so clever! Eyes rolling and lips drooling, Elliot slid his hands up her waist and cupped her small breasts, searching for her nipples through the thin silk.
But with a bark of displeasure, Evelyn grabbed his wrists and pinned them back against the head of the seat. She said nothing, but her gritted teeth spoke volumes. Elliot froze, staring into her manic eyes. He held himself obediently still so she could make the most of him.
And she did use him, with great pleasure. Evelyn bounced heartily on his cock and grinned fiendishly into his eyes. She pressed him down and held him tight. She stole the last of his autonomy, and Elliot watched it go willingly. He could feel his heart breaking, and Evelyn slipping into the cracks.
“Oh, good!” she snarled in musical Elvish. “Good! My pet human! My [???]! Give it all to me!”
She opened her mouth to show off the red of her wet tongue. “Give it all to me!”
Elliot came. His whole body shuddered as he disgorged a load into Evelyn’s pussy. The release was long, painfully so, like his soul was being pushed out by the white tide. Sweat ran down his brow and into his eye, but pinned to the sofa as he was, he couldn’t wipe his face. All he could do was sing.
“O-Oh, wow! Wow… Oh… yes.”
He sucked in a breath and blinked his eyes. He recovered from his climax. Then he stared up at his partner.
Evelyn was scowling. She clicked her teeth with her tongue. “Already? My, what a disappointment.”
She released him and sat up straight on his cock. She examined her rings on one hand, and with her other, she took some of his leaking come from around her pussy onto her fingertips and rubbed it against her clitoris. Her red lips were a sharp line of disapproval.
“They said that your kind had stamina,” she sighed. “They said you could keep pace with us. Alas, naught but hearsay. How disappointing.”
Her words cut him to the core. So swiftly had Elliot gotten addicted to Evelyn’s smile, her praise, her gentle, teasing touch. Now gone, and Elliot was left staring into the void that was left behind.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “I… can do better. If you just give me a moment to recover…”
Evelyn’s lip twisted like she’d eaten sour fruit. “I am not a patient woman. I do not wish to wait.”
“But I-…”
“One of your fellows in the ballroom will have to pick up where you rudely left off.”
“No!” he implored. “Please! Give me another chance!”
His words were pathetic in his own ears. They sounded like the words of another man. But those weak words brought Evelyn’s eye back onto him, and her brow rose, inspecting him.
“You wish to make amends?”
“Yes!” said Elliot.
“Very well. Let us make this more interesting.”
Evelyn held out one hand and, unprompted by the elf’s gaze, one of her servants slipped silently forward. She pressed a familiar crystal glass rimmed with obsidian into her mistress’ hand. Evelyn swirled the eldritch wine, though the liquid followed a different set of motions to its container.
“All you need, human,” she said with a sly smile, “is the right motivation to exceed your limits. Let us see what you do with this.”
She tipped back her head and took a measure of wine into her mouth. A drip escaped and made a red line along her rich skin. But instead of swallowing, Evelyn placed the goblet to one side, took Elliot’s head in both hands and kissed him heartily. Her wet lips squeezed his apart, and her tongue invaded his mouth. And with it, a rush of… something. Certainly not liquid. A thought, an impulse. It bypassed Elliot’s throat and wormed its way into his soul.
Both attendants immediately rushed into view. Their expressions were tight with terror.
“Mistress, you cannot!” the female servant said in shaking Elvish. “He may perish!”
Evelyn left Elliot’s lips with a pop of air, then licked her own mouth clean. “Do not be dramatic,” she purred. “Behold.”
Her alien words swam in Elliot’s ears. The crystalline lamplight became thick as liquid. The faces of the attendants warped and melted. Elliot grabbed to the seat cushions as a wave of incredible vertigo overcame him, but the touch of the soft upholstery overwhelmed his senses. He sank into it. He was devoured by it.
“His eyes!” gasped a masculine voice. “Mistress, please! We must seek aid for him!”
“Wait,” Evelyn snapped, little more than a reddish blur in the centre of Elliot’s roving vision. “He shall come through this. All he needs is something to focus his attention. Elliot? Can you hear me?”
The elf rubbed her pussy against his soft cock. The wetness, the pressure, exploded in his overactive mind. Elliot let out a gasp of pleasure.
“Can you feel me?” Evelyn chuckled. “We use this drink to reopen our eyes to the truth of reality. To witness our ephemeral origins in the mists beyond this material existence. What do you think? Is it not beautiful? Like this, we can determine what truly matters.”
She was all he could see. Evelyn, dark and lovely. Sharp and cruel, in just the way he liked. Powerful. Doting. Elliot’s teeth gnashed in his mouth, and he growled. Between his legs, he throbbed.
“Ah! Yes! There he is!” Evelyn sang with laughter, sliding her hands back to his shoulders. Elliot wondered why her fingers didn’t sink into his skin and become a part of him. The elf rubbed her pussy against his growing cock with manic glee. “There he is! You still had so much to give me, did you not? Then come! Give it to me! Give me-…!”
He lunged. Elliot forced himself up off the sofa with Evelyn in his arms and around his hips. The elf squealed as Elliot took two heavy steps forward, then tossed her down into the sitting room carpeting and forced himself atop her. She shrieked.
But Elliot heard her voice as music instead. Evelyn felt good. In the swimming, ephemeral chaos of his new reality, his pleasure had become a core element of his understanding. She felt good on his body. And Elliot wanted to feel good. He didn’t want to wait for her to be ready. He just wanted to feel good.
Elliot gripped her thigh with one hand and pulled her legs open, keeping her pinned with his weight. He grabbed his cock, his grounding rod that tied him to physicality. Then he rammed it into her sopping pussy.
There. Much better.
“Mistress!”
Hands slapped onto his shoulders. A distant part of Elliot’s fleeting mind told him they belonged to Evelyn’s attendants. They tugged on him, trying to pull him off their royal lady. But Elliot could ignore their touch. It was transient and temporary, after all. Only pleasure was eternal. Undeterred, Elliot pounded his cock into Evelyn again, then again, and again and again and again.
“M-Mistress!!”
“No!” Evelyn’s sharp voice juddered under Elliot’s punishment. “L-Let him… w-work! Let him be!”
The hands slowly retreated, and Elliot loomed up and over his vulnerable prey. Evelyn’s amber eyes were dancing. Her smile was lop-sided, and her hand on his cheek was warm.
“Let him be,” she said in his own tongue. “He knows what he is doing.”
Elliot snarled. He grabbed her hand off his face and slammed it to the floor, then took a tight hold of her hips. With Evelyn held still and steady, he proceeded to fuck her. Flames of pleasure lit up the roiling of his spirit. His cock, burning with joy, rubbed sparks into his prey’s greedy pussy.
Evelyn tossed back her head against the carpet, eyes rolling madly. Her mouth was wide open to show off that tasty tongue of hers. She let out strangled gasps of joy in time with Elliot’s mad rutting.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” she cried. “A-A-Ancestors! Yes! Elliot! D-Does this not feel so g-g-good? Wh-When you are mine, y-y-you will-…!”
She was talking too much. Elliot didn’t like the way her words made his heart shudder. He released her wrist, then planted his hand around her neck instead. He squeezed, and Evelyn let out a squeak that may have been pain, may have been pleasure. Elliot loomed over her wide-eyed expression.
“Quiet.”
Small pupils, creased brow, messy hair. But still she smiled.
“I am sorry,” Evelyn hissed.
That tongue did look tasty. Elliot plunged his mouth over hers and sank his own tongue inside, prompting a croaking groan of joy from his prey. He lapped at the last of the wine on her teeth, sucking it out of her and draining it into his soul. And lower down, he began again to fuck her with his pulsing rod.
Evelyn moaned deliriously into his mouth. She caressed his invasive tongue with hers, and she stroked his pounding cock with the grip of her pussy. She responded to his rough treatment with her malleable form, letting him feel every inch of her body. Letting him have even the very depths of her. Evelyn melted under Elliot. She was ground away by his primal rutting.
Good girl. Good, obedient girl, making him feel so good. Elliot pulled his tongue out of her mouth and planted his lips instead on her neck. He pushed the points of his teeth against her. His nose brushed the lobe of one of her long, alien ears.
“Gonna come!” he snarled.
Evelyn shrieked with joy. “Y-Yes, please!” she sang. “Please, fill me! Fill my… F-Fill my [???] with your [???] [???] [???] right this instant!”
Elliot didn’t know those words she was using, but the intent came through. Hissing hot breaths against her neck, he hammered his cock into her at pace. He moaned and shouted his approval into her skin. And when he was ready, he sheathed himself deep, deep inside Evelyn and pushed a new load of come into her waiting womb.
And beneath him, Evelyn writhed. “Oh… yesssss!!”
The elf hugged her arms around his shoulders, her legs around his hips, as she came noisily on his raw, red cock. Her music was angular and disjointed, arrhythmic and chaotic. Elliot rather liked the sound of it.
And oh, how sweet the release this time. How much relief it gave him to see the discordant colours of reality harmonising with his climax. Panting and gasping, Elliot squeezed the last of his come out of his cock, then dragged the organ out of his prey. He took a series of aching breaths of air into his lungs. When he was ready, he pushed up on his hands and examined his work.
“Oh… fuck,” he breathed.
Evelyn was a mess. Her sleek hair was wet with sweat and tangled from misuse around her long ears. Her makeup was smeared, her red lips especially so. Elliot fancied a lot of that paint was now on his lips instead. The brown skin of her slender neck sported an unmistakable set of red toothmarks. Her dress was, miraculously, still in one piece. But a dark stain now coated the hem and front of the skirt, and one of the gold chains on her fingers had snapped. Her twitching pussy dribbled with Elliot’s come and her own overflowing lubrication. Her floppy limbs didn’t seem able to rise from the carpet.
But still she smiled. Her eyelids fluttered over the fat black of her pupils, and her lips were curved into a mad, but still very lovely, smile.
“Yes…!” she whispered. “That is a human! Just as the stories said! A beast!” Evelyn’s thighs pressed together as she let out another shiver of pleasure. “A wondrous, lustful beast!”
Elliot’s mind reeled. He’d done this. He scarcely remembered what had come over him, but the hot satisfaction of his cock was unmistakable. He’d done this to her. He’d become a beast for her.
“No…” he grunted. “No, no!”
He staggered onto weak legs, stumbling and holding himself up on the sofa. His breaths only entered him in short, sharp bursts, and his ears were ringing.
One of the attendants, the female, was between him and the door. When Elliot lurched forward, she flinched fearfully away with her hands crossed over her chest. Her eyes darted down to the sloppy rod still hanging out of Elliot’s breeches. Her male counterpart was there in an instant, interposing himself between her and Elliot with an uncertain scowl. Their expressions hurt him.
Elliot pulled his clothing roughly back to order. His hair was unkempt and his face was wet. But there wasn’t much he could do about that. He had to get away from this place first. Elliot pushed his way past Evelyn’s servants and yanked the door open. Then he fled once more into the halls of Ilvarith. At his back, the mad, satisfied laughter of the elf.
* * *
Elliot walked as quickly as his unsteady legs could carry him, keeping his head hunched to avoid the attention of the people in the ballroom. He heard a myriad of laughing voices, merry humans and merry elves celebrating as one. The sound still moved like water through his ear canal thanks to the last of the draught in his blood. It made him dizzy. It made him want to dance. He inoculated himself by humming a low note under his breath as he walked, and he made his way beyond the ballroom without incident.
He was outside. A stray breeze, accompanied by the wind-swept song of Ilvarith, washed over him, and Elliot battled the irrational thought that his ephemeral, intransient existence would be caught up in it. He fought the urge to cry out. Mercifully, the wind passed him by, and he staggered on into the moonlit night. He didn’t stop his march until he was within the trees beyond the city limits. Beyond the eyes of the elves. Only then did he let himself drop to his knees in the grass and gasp for air.
What had he done? Evelyn was… royalty, right? She was Miriham’s cousin? And he had defiled her! He was just the beast she’d said he was! Any moment now, royal guards would appear to haul him off to Ilvarith’s dungeons. He’d end the night with his head removed from his body. And rightly so. Stupid human. Stupid!
His hands turned to fists in the grass and tore a few stalks from their earthen bed. Lucidity was creeping back up his spine, and with it, a savage and irrepressible guilt. A sick realisation that he was Elliot, unfortunately. He was a beast. Building nothing, destroying all he touched. Just a rancid, hateful beast.
So when footsteps in the grass preceded a sweet voice behind him, Elliot felt like screaming.
“I thought I asked you to wait for me.”
“P-Princess,” he croaked, “please. Leave me.”
Her soft shoes appeared before him, so he closed his eyes tight. Miriham sighed.
“What is this? What are you doing? Is this about earlier?”
“Please…” he whimpered.
The sound of silk and the approach of warmth suggested she had sat herself in the grass with him. Miriham sniffed.
“I know that scent,” she said with an audible scowl. “Elliot. Did you take a crystal cup?”
He said nothing, tucking his body deeper. Miriham grumbled.
“You of all humans should know to follow the rules. By my ancestors, Elliot. A little self-control surely is not…”
She trailed off, then sniffed a few more times. “What is that scent?”
“Please!” Elliot uncurled himself and wriggled backwards through the grass to escape her. Her lovely violet eyes, creased with concern, had no right debasing themselves by witnessing him. “I am sorry if I offend,” he said, “but I’m not in the mood to talk. I wouldn’t be good company. So please… leave me be.”
Her frown melted into a sly smile. “Goodness,” she said, “as if I needed any more evidence that you lacked a mother.”
Elliot turned away with a snap of his neck, and Miriham laughed.
“I am so sorry! I should not have said that, but I could not resist. Forgive me. Elliot…”
She took his hands and pulled them towards her. Elliot tugged against her grip, but only lightly, as he didn’t want his beastly strength to hurt her. As such, she kept a hold on him, and she smiled.
“Let us talk,” she said. “And talk candidly. I do not believe there will be listening ears this far from a revel, so…”
She drew in a breath, then let it out. “I first met your father forty-eight years ago, by my counting. He was still a young adult by your people’s standards, and I was young enough to believe I knew all there was to know. He proved me wrong, and I fell in love.”
Miriham released one hand to tuck her hair shyly behind one pointed ear. “I have never since known such happiness as when I was making history with him. Not that I doubt there were other such lovers in our shared ancestry, but those are lost to memory. Enough so that I knew myself a pioneer. Enough that I knew our love would not be accepted by my father, nor by your… What are they called? The older humans who decide everything for your continent?”
Elliot tilted his head. “The… Accord of Regents?”
“Just so. Eli and I loved one another in secret. He came here to Ilvarith on a number of occasions, and I visited Layman once in a while. Whilst together, we found the time to learn about one another. We found… ample time.”
Her smile was rosy and wistful. A smirk appeared on Elliot’s lips unbidden.
“A son doesn’t want to hear that about his father.”
“Of course not, apologies,” Miriham laughed. “Our time together was sweet but fleeting, by my measure. Before I recognised what was occurring, Eli was aging. It took him longer and longer to reach Ilvarith. He complained of aches in his back, and the physical difference in age between us caused no end of insecurity. When we were together, he was sometimes not able to…”
Her eyes zipped up to meet his. “Ah, you do not want to hear that either. What I mean to say is that time rent a rift between us. Not inconsolable, but it invariably altered our relationship from young lovers to… old friends. I regret nothing, you ought to know that. I experienced a great span of Eli’s life alongside him as a true companion. I could not have wished for such a privilege from any other. But it did mean that we spent longer and longer apart.
“One winter season, I departed across the sea on a traditional ancestral pilgrimage. I was a-prayer for some time, contemplating my place in the cosmology of my people, then I returned home. And I learned that Eli of Layman had died while I was away.”
Her hand in Elliot’s twitched. “Just like that,” she whispered. “The faltering of a candle’s flame. Rendered naught but smoke with but a breath. I…”
Miriham paused to catch her breath, and Elliot squeezed her hand.
“I grieve him still,” she said. “I am yet to hand my heart to another, even now. It creates no end of frustration in my father, but I simply cannot. Perhaps by knowing you, his precious son, I can find the space to move beyond him. I hope so.”
She smiled sweetly, brushing her cheek with the palm of her hand. “That is the extent of my relationship with your father. Please do not share this with anyone. It is right that you should know, but no other. They would not understand.”
Elliot sighed out a held breath. Miriham looked so young. Lovelorn, lost in her own emotions. And she had known and loved his father. Elliot’s heart thudded in his chest.
“S-So…” he said, “who is my mother?”
“Elliot, I know not.” She wriggled forward in the grass and cupped his cheeks with both hands. “Your father’s meeting with her, their love and your conception all occurred while I was away. Five years of your time, but gone in an instant for one such as I. I wish I knew. I would love to meet the woman who captured his heart while I was not paying attention. The woman who helped to create you. But I do not know. I am sorry.”
He sniffed. “I thought… all this time…”
“I know. But really, Elliot, you should have known that two unrelated species cannot conceive children together. It is the stuff of fantasy.”
“I-I know. But…”
“But you hoped,” said Miriham with a soft smile. “I understand that.”
“I never knew my father,” he continued. “And now I will never know my mother. Who am I if I can’t know the people who made me?”
“I do not know my mother.”
He looked up, meeting her eyes. “You don’t?”
Miriham shrugged. “Some nymph or distant relative most likely. My father is not one to hold back his lecherous side around beautiful women. You should warn your associates, by the way, especially the buxom blonde who entered on your arm. She is just his type.”
Elliot snorted out a laugh, and Miriham joined him.
“I would be curious to know my mother,” she said, “but I have come this far without that knowledge. I clearly do not need it. Parentage grants perspective on one’s origins, but it is not necessary. We are best able to build a life with those who walk our path alongside us instead. Do you have such friends, Elliot?”
“Y-Yeah,” he said, thinking of home.
“Yes, I am sure you do,” the elf giggled. “Your adoptive father has told me a little of your habits, young man. Again, it is no wonder you grew up without a mother.”
“Sh-Shut up,” he said, laughing all the while.
Once the harmony of their laughter had died down, Elliot heard music coming from Ilvarith. He couldn’t place the instrument that made it. A string? A voice? In fact, thinking back, he couldn’t attest that it hadn’t been playing the whole time. He just hadn’t been in the right place to hear it.
“I can walk your path with you for a little while,” said Miriham. “I would like it. If you would have the friendship of the saucy elf who seduced your poor father.”
“I would love that,” he said with a wide smile. “Thank you… Miriham.”
“Now. I am yet to dance on this night, and I believe it is the done thing. Stand, young man, and join me in dance.”
He rose with her hand in his. His legs didn’t feel so weak any longer. In fact, they were brimming with unspent energy. When he made to turn to the tower and the Elf King’s Ball, Miriham pulled him back.
“Here is fine,” she said with a smile. “Just here, just us. I would prefer it.”
“Very well. But I should warn you,” he said, stepping towards her, “I’ve never danced in the elven style before.”
“Oh, I can dance to my people’s rhythm any day I choose. I hardly ever am granted the opportunity to dance in the human style.”
“You know some human dances?”
“Your father was a hopeless tavern dancer,” she giggled, “I enjoyed it immensely. Come. Do you know The River Twixt the Trees? A favourite of mine, and I believe it fits this beat rather well. Starting here, and… One, two, three. One, two, three.”
The music rose around them. Elliot put his hands on Miriham, and she on him. They danced as two fellow travellers beneath the Ilvarith glow.
laymenstory
Ewan Stone 
Leave a comment