At first glance, Lucinda had taken her for a human. In addition to the red hair, her skin had a tannish cast to it that was very un-elven. But she had happened to cock her head to the side just as Lucinda was walking past, and the distinctly pointed tip of her ear was unmistakable. It stopped her short, and once she noticed the ears it became apparent that the girl’s build and facial structure were elven, as well.

The girl saw that she had Lucinda’s attention and she smirked.

“If you keep your eyes on me much longer, I’ll keep your eyes for myself,” she said.

“You… what?” Lucinda replied, then decided to brush past that remark and be bold. She took a step towards her. “Would you mind talking to me for a few minutes?”

“I… you want me to talk to you?” the girl asked. She blinked, her eyelashes fluttering in what seemed to be genuine shock at the idea.

“If you don’t mind,” Lucinda said reassuringly. “I’m a reporter… I’ve been collecting a series of interviews with students of different races, to try to get a sort of broader perspective of life on campus. I was actually on my way to another one, but I’m running kind of early.”

“Is this going to be in the paper, then?”

“Probably not,” Lucinda said. “There’s not a lot of support among the paper’s editorial staff for this sort of feature. I’m developing an idea for something on the weave, though… sort of an ethereal column.”

“But people will be able to see it?”

“That’s the idea.”

“Women?”

“I’m not sure how I’d screen them out, if I wanted to,” Lucinda said.

“Will you make me sound… interesting?”

“Um… that’s the idea, I guess,” Lucinda said. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

The girl’s face took on a wicked look for a moment, but then she seemed to swallow and then she just nodded. Lucinda came a little bit closer but sat down on the ground a respectful difference away. The elven girl seemed to her to be skittish, almost fearful… there was fear hiding badly at the back of her big, bright eyes.

“My name’s Lucinda.”

“Semele,” the elf replied.

“Nice to meet you, Semele,” Lucinda said. “Anyway, I thought it was important to get an elven voice in the mix, given that elven students are such a large contingent of the student body, and yet they stand apart so much. There isn’t a lot of mixing between Treehome and the campus.”

“I do not live in Treehome,” Semele said.

“Really?” Lucinda asked. “Because you look elven enough… from what I understand, it’s open to students who are at least one quarter elven.”

“No less than one quarter elven and no more than one quarter any other race that’s not human,” Semele said. “That is the rule, but it doesn’t mean me.”

“What races are you?”

“Just elf. What they call autumn elves,” she said. “Or copper elves. I prefer autumn.”

“Why?”

“The elves you think of are mostly silver and gold,” Semele said. “Copper… silver… gold. It sets up values that seasons don’t have.”

“I guess I can see that,” Lucinda said. “So you are a fullblooded elf, then?”

“Yes,” Semele said.

“When I saw you, I thought you must have some human blood in you… your coloration, your hair and skin…”

“Most humans think that,” Semele said. She was looking down at the grass to the side of Lucinda as she spoke. “Many elves do, too. Even those who know my heritage. The story is that human blood is why we are as we are. It isn’t true, though. The elves of Athanasia were many colors.”

“That gets left out of the stories, though, doesn’t it?” Lucinda asked. “I mean, I had a book of elven poetry when I was growing up, and all the elves were fair.”

“Did it say so?”

“Well… I guess it didn’t,” Lucinda said. “I don’t think it really specified that they were any particular color. I guess since it didn’t say otherwise I just pictured them as, you know, normal elves. Or what’s normal today. The illustrations showed them that way, though it was all modern artwork.”

Semele nodded.

“See?” Semele said. “If someone says ‘elf’, you don’t think they mean someone like me. Not ‘normally’.”

“To be honest, I didn’t realize that elves came in different colors,” Lucinda said. “I mean, aside from the light/dark split.”

“And because you knew we didn’t, you kept on knowing that even after you saw me,” Semele said. “This is why sometimes I feel invisible.”

“Really? You’re pretty distinct-looking, to me.”

“People talk about elves, they don’t mean me,” she said. “‘Elven chic’ doesn’t include me.”

“You said that Treehome’s residency rules don’t include you,” Lucinda said. “Do you mean there’s a rule against… autumn elves?”

Semele shook her head.

“Were you discouraged from going there?”

“How do you mean?”

“Were you told not to apply?”

“Not specifically.”

“Somebody said something, though?” Lucinda asked.

“No, not about Treehome,” Semele said.

“So you could have gone there if you wanted to?” Lucinda asked.

“No,” Semele said. “Places like that aren’t meant for me.”

“Do you think they would have rejected you outright, or just made you feel unwelcome if you’d tried?” Lucinda asked. Semele just stared in her direction, still not meeting her eyes. “I’m sorry if the question offends you, but I’m just trying to understand…”

“Then why don’t you listen to what I’m telling you?” Semele asked. “I didn’t need to be told not to go to Treehome.”

“So is racism… or colorism, I guess… pretty endemic among elves, then?” Lucinda asked.

“Why do you think there aren’t more of us?” Semele asked. “Winter and summer elves, they don’t even like differences in their own skins.”

“Yeah, elven homogeny is pretty well-known,” Lucinda said. “I suppose it’s not surprising that it can extend to intolerance for those who are different.”

“Extend to?” Semele asked. “I would like to know how you idealize one shade of skin without putting the others below it.”

“I’m sorry,” Lucinda said. “This… I don’t usually do this so off-the-cuff. I didn’t know you were an autumn elf, or even what autumn elves are, when I approached you. Maybe what I should have done is set up an interview for later, after I’ve done some homework.”

“When?” Semele asked.

“Wh… you mean, you’d be amenable to that?”

“If you want to talk to me,” Semele said. “When?”

“Um… how about tomorrow night?” she said. “Like, around six?”

“Alright,” Semele said.

“Where would be a good place to…?”

“The Lazar Center,” Semele said. “In the coffee shop.”

“Okay,” Lucinda said. “Thanks… sorry if I was clumsy. I guess I’ll see you then.”

“Yes,” Semele said. “Yes, you will.”

To be continued…

Lucinda met her next interview subject on the terrace outside the dining hall. She hadn’t chosen the subjects of her interview series for this reason, but it was definitely easy to pick them out of a crowd. There was only one kobold eating lunch at the moment. Lucinda was fairly sure that there was only one kobold on campus, but being a reporter she wanted to make sure she had her facts straight.

“Hello… Shiel?” she said, approaching and giving a little wave.

“Yes,” the short rust-colored goblinoid replied. “You must be Lucinda.”

Lucinda had been watching her face carefully to note emotions and visible reactions, and she found herself looking at the kobold’s mouth in particular. If she’d been asked to describe what the mouth of a goblin or kobold before, she would have said “big” and maybe mentioned the sharp teeth. She’d never really made a study of them before, though, and had never noticed or thought about how they differed from a human’s mouth.

When Shiel’s mouth was closed, there was just a thin, slightly line across the bottom of her face. If it had been as narrow as a human’s mouth in proportion to the rest of her head it might have been easy to miss, but it curved up almost to her ears. When she opened her mouth, the skin seemed to be retracting separately from and faster than her jaw opened, making the act of opening her mouth not entirely dissimilar from unsheathing a multitude of jagged metal knives.

“Lucinda?” Shiel said again. Her right eye actually seemed to quirk upward a bit in a gesture that reminded Lucinda of a raised eyebrow.

“Yes, that’s me,” Lucinda said, shaking her head. “Hi. Is it okay if I sit down?”

“Be my guest.”

“As I mentioned in my a-mail, I’m going to be capturing an echo of this, if that’s okay,” Lucinda said, taking out her crystal. Returning to form helped her recover her equilibrium a bit. “I’ll be taking notes, too, but this way I have an exact record, if I’m not sure about anything…”

“That’s fine,” Shiel said. “You said this isn’t going to be in the paper?”

“Probably not,” Lucinda said.

“If it is, I want to see it before it runs,” Shiel said.

“That might not be possible,” Lucinda said.

“I don’t give permission for my remarks to be published in the Gazetteer,” Shiel said.

“As long as you’re being quoted honestly, I don’t think you could stop me,” Lucinda said. “Truth is the ultimate defense.”

“Do you often quote people’s words without their permission?”

“Well, no,” Lucinda said. “But generally if someone doesn’t want to be quoted they won’t give an interview, or if they don’t want their direct words used or there’s a question of attribution, that gets worked out in advance.”

“Well, I’m working this out in advance,” Shiel said. “I’m giving this interview with the understanding that you’re going to use it to promote an independent point of view separate from the official school-sponsored student paper. If you use it outside that, then you’ve obtained it under false pretenses.”

“I don’t think the paper would run what I’m working on,” Lucinda said. “But to be honest, I’ve always planned on submitting it there first, once I can show what I’m doing.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Lucinda said. “The benefit and curse of working alone is I get to grope around in the dark a lot more.”

“Then just leave me out of the version of whatever this is that you submit for rejection,” Shiel said. “And put me back into the one that you put out yourself. Is that really so hard?”

“It seems like an unnecessary step, is all, “Lucinda said. She was having a hard time reading how Shiel was feeling, especially since she’d given up actually looking at her face. It was uncomfortably mask-like, and she found herself plagues by visions of what could lurk behind a mask like that.

“It’s not necessary,” Shiel said. “You’re choosing to interview me. This is the condition I put on that. I assume there are other, less picky people you could be talking to.”

“Aren’t you interested in getting your voice out there?”

“Yes, and I’m also interested in seeing what you do with this,” Shiel said. “I’ve yet to see how well those interests will actually mesh. What I’m saying is, you’re not my only option, either.”

“Okay,” Lucinda said. As annoying as this caveat was, she had to consider that Shiel was already proving interesting before she’d asked a single question… and what she was asking wasn’t really that unreasonable. It had taken her by surprise, but it wouldn’t actually change anything to accommodate her. “Deal.”

“Then you may begin,” Shiel said.

“So… since we’re just meeting, the first question is: how do kobolds greet each other?”

“Chest bumps,” Shiel said. “But I wouldn’t try doing that with a human. Aside from the differing significance of chests and the height difference, there’s also the fact that humans aren’t, generally speaking, kobolds.”

“So it’s not something you do with outsiders?”

“I don’t know if no kobold does it, but I don’t see the point,” Shiel said.

“Okay,” Lucinda said. “So… your name…”

“Shiel,” Shiel said.

“Yes,” Lucinda said. “Is it, uh, just Shiel?”

“‘Just’ in what sense?”

“‘Just’ as in ‘only’. I mean, is that your only name?” Lucinda asked. “Your full name?”

“It’s the only name I own,” Shiel said. “I don’t have an aftername, as you do. We use ‘attachment names’ to show a connection between a person and an organization or between two people, but I don’t like what that implies.”

“Which is?”

“Are you serious?” Shiel asked, both eyes shifting up.

“Well, yes,” Lucinda asked. “You just told me it shows a connections, so that’s all it implies to me. I could speculate, but what I’m really looking for here is your perspective.”

“It’s a form of ownership,” Shiel said. “Your father gets to put his stamp on you when you’re young, and if you get married, your husband does, too. Men take attachment names based on military or professional associations, things they belong to… women get them based on the people we belong to.”

“It seems like a bit of a double standard, but to be fair, it doesn’t sound that much different from how human surnames work,” Lucinda said. “They’re inherited patrilineally, and women tend to take their husbands’ names after marriage.”

“It’s not exactly the same since the attachment names are individual rather than belonging to a family,” Shiel said. “But yeah, the problematic aspects of it are hardly unique. Human women benefit from the human hegemony, but humans still suffer from the effects of patriarchy as most gendered races do.”

“Do you think of yourself as well-informed on human culture?”

“I think it’s difficult and dangerous not to be.”

“How so?”

“In the way that it’s difficult and dangerous to take a boat out into the middle of the ocean without being well-informed about the ocean,” Shiel said. “Even back home, human culture surrounded me even if I never had any direct contact with it. The conditions in the Imperium, the relations between it and the ruling class, affected me. If I ever left the warren, I’d be venturing into human territory. It was like being on an island, in a way.”

“And now instead of being surrounded by it, you’re immersed in it,” Lucinda said.

“To a degree,” Shiel said. “I like to think that I’m keeping my head above water, as it were.”

“It’s interesting to me that you’d describe things in those terms,” Lucinda said. “Do nautical metaphors come naturally to a subterranean race?”

“I don’t know why it would it be more difficult for me to grasp the concept behind them than it would be for anyone who lives in a landlocked region,” Shiel said. “It’s maybe not the first thing that would pop into a lot of kobolds’ heads, but it’s not like water is some fantastically alien concept to us. I mean, we drink it. We bathe in it. We even swim.”

“Where do you go swimming?”

“Pools, lakes,” Shiel said. “There are underwater seas as big as this province, though not around where we live. We mostly dig under mountains. There are lakes there, too, but not like that… and you have to be careful, because there are some very old and dangerous things lurking in some of them.”

“Things like what?”

“Like I don’t know,” Shiel said. “You hear stories growing up… ‘bogey men’, I think is the phrase you use, though that’s horribly gendered. There was a lake near my warren that nobody went to. Supposedly, something from the surface had crawled down into it long ago and either became trapped or didn’t want to leave. It was supposed to have great big eyes so it could see in the darkness, and big flat feet that could paddle through the water silently so you never heard it coming. Years of solitude had driven it crazy, so it talked to itself all the time. People who dared go near the tunnels leading to the lake would swear they could hear its voice, having little conversations with itself.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t hear it coming,” Lucinda said.

“Well, it’s a story,” Shiel said. “I think the idea was to scare people even more by suggesting that if you couldn’t hear the voice then it was coming for you? I don’t know. I think there probably is something down that tunnel, but the stories are just stories.”

“Do you know if the underground seas or real, or do you think they’re just more stories?”

“I’m pretty sure they’re real. Travelers have to cross them ,” Shiel said. “Gorgon caravans. They range pretty far, in the shallow tunnels of the underworld. Powerful families that don’t have to work all the time and can protect themselves go on trips to the seas… for fun… vacations?”

“Vacations,” Lucinda said, nodding. “How about your family?

“What about them?”

“They could afford to send you to school,” Lucinda said.

“They’re not what you would call ‘upper crust’,” Shiel said. “I guess we’d be upper middle class, or lower ranked nobility, in other cultures. My father’s a guardsman. He works but he doesn’t mine.”

“Is it dangerous work?”

“Mining’s dangerous, guarding isn’t until it is,” Shiel said. “In the warren complex, the guards dwell in layers between the miners and the rulers, for the rulers’ protection.”

“They’re there to prevent an uprising?”

“Or to protect the rulers in the event of an outside attack,” Shiel said. “There are garrisons by the warren entrances, but the guards’ permanent quarters are closer to the ruling quarters. They’re the first priority.”

“What are the rulers called?”

“Urul. I’ve seen it translated as Master, Captain, Boss… I don’t like any of those words,” Shiel said. “Anything military would fit better into the guardsmen hierarchy. I like ‘ruler’. It’s purely descriptive. They have their own hierarchy with titles and areas of responsibility, but collectively they rule the warren.”

“So, if your family didn’t go on vacations, what do you do for fun in a warren?”

“There are games,” Shiel said. “Mostly involving imagination and bits of stone. Space is at a premium, materials that aren’t common rock are at a premium. But if you have nothing better to do, you can get pretty elaborate games set up with simple carved stones.”

“Like chess?”

“I’m not directly familiar with chess, but I’ve heard it’s sort of a war game,” Shiel said. “Yeah, like that.”

“And what do you do for fun here?” Lucinda asked. “Have you joined any campus groups or activities outside of Harlowe?”

“I’m not really involved in many ‘formal’ activities on campus,” Shiel said. “I went to a few meetings of the Women’s Action Guild, but while feminist theory speaks to me, the group… well, their concerns weren’t my concerns, to a large degree, and I felt like I had a hard time getting my concerns heard.”

“Don’t you suppose that could be because you were a new face?” Lucinda asked.

“A new kind of face, maybe,” Shiel said. “Other frosh didn’t have their voices silenced… not when their experiences matched everyone else’s. Can I make a candid observation, or is that against the rules of the interview?”

“No, go ahead.”

“That wasn’t so much a question as it was an apologetic for the status quo,” Shiel said. “I mean, I thought you wanted my perspective… but if I say I experienced something and your follow-up question is ‘um, are you sure?’, that’s kind of counter to your stated purpose.”

“I’m just trying to be rigorous,” Lucinda said. “I don’t want to give people a misleading picture of what the Women’s Action Guild is like.”

“Well, if you were quoting me saying something aren’t you kind of covered?” Shiel asked. “That’s explicitly my opinion, not something you’re certifying as objective fact.”

“It’s just, I was a member of the Guild last year and I don’t remember it being anything like that,” Lucinda said.

“Do you remember any non-humans in it?”

“Yes,” Lucinda said.

“Any who weren’t mammalian, traditionally aligned with humans, and generally conforming to human standards of appearance?”

“…maybe not,” Lucinda admitted.

“Did you happen to notice how many humans who weren’t white were there?” Shiel asked.

“I don’t pay attention to that sort of thing, generally,” Lucinda said.

“I suppose you don’t,” Shiel said. “I’ll confess I don’t know exactly where the dividing line is, but it looked to me like everyone who was there was white. It made me curious about the overlap between exoracism and endoracism, or ethnicism. Had the other-color humans who’d tried to join had experiences like mine? Or had they not even bothered to join, seeing it as a club for white women?”

“If somebody sees it that way, that’s hardly the Guild’s fault,” Lucinda said. “The membership rules are pretty explicit about welcoming women and allies of all races and colors.”

“I think there’s a difference between making a rule saying that people are welcoming and actually being welcoming,” Shiel said. “I didn’t feel welcomed.”

“What would it have taken for you to feel welcomed?”

“More effort than they were willing to spend, apparently,” Shiel said.

“Do you feel like campus groups owe it to you to make an effort for you in particular to feel welcomed?” Lucinda asked.

“Well, if they have a rule that says I’m welcome I’d expect it to be followed,” Shiel said. “Not me in particular, but anyone who’s not a member of the perceived default class. It’s not like it’s taking up energy they need for others… it’s easy to welcome someone who’s exactly like you.”

“You know, someone else was talking about something similar to me, today,” Lucinda said. “On my way here, even.”

“Really? Good,” Shiel said. “Maybe this campus is waking up.”

The next day, Lucinda met her next interview subject at the library. It had been her request… she had been unable to find many useable sources about elven ethnicities on the weave so was ready to hit the books… and to her surprise Rorick had not only agreed but said he would probably be there anyway.

“We have a sort of agreement with the library,” the faun explained. “Legally I can do my thing anywhere, but the library’s supposed to be quiet. Not pressing the point means I’ve got somewhere I can come to do my homework.”

“That makes sense,” Lucinda said. “After my first interview in this series, I’ve started off with the same question: how do fauns greet each other?”

“You ask everybody how fauns greet each other?” Rorick asked.

She laughed.

“No, I mean, I ask everybody how they greet each other among their own kind. You know, how would you do it in the… in your natural… among your own kind?”

“You mean, like… in the wild?” he asked.

“I’m not sure I’d phrase it like that,” Lucinda said. “I mean, that sounds kind of… that is to say…”

“You don’t want to give offense,” Rorick said.

“Yes,” Lucinda said. “Would you find something like that offensive?”

“If you, as a human reporter saying it in the context of getting a grip on ‘my people’, yeah, pretty much you’d get some head-shaking and disapproving finger-shaking,” Rorick said. “There are definite connotations of things like a nature preserve or a zoo when people start talking about my ‘natural environment’ or ‘habitat’.”

“Well, I’m not sure what else to say,” Lucinda said. “I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t exactly build cities.”

“Not cities, no, but there are usually a couple of huts and a lodge where we gather,” Rorick said. “I’ve seen less than that called a village, if the people who live there wear pants.”

“I’ll be honest… I didn’t realize that you lived in huts,” Lucinda said. “I think a lot of people would be surprised. That’s why I’m doing these interviews, though.”

“It’s not so much living there as sleeping there when it’s rainy,” Rorick said. “Wet fur isn’t pleasant.”

“I’ve heard that nymphs don’t get dirty. Do you?”

“It doesn’t take a lot of effort for me to stay clean, but I’ve got a bit of an earthier smell. Rain does not improve it.”

“It’s not unpleasant,” Lucinda said.

“And I’m not wet,” Rorick said.

“To jump back to what you were saying… you said that in the context of me asking you about your life, it would be offensive. Does this mean that…”

“Oh, don’t do that,” Rorick said.

“What?”

“Just don’t.”

“Don’t what?” Lucinda asked. “I’m just trying to get a handle on your perspective.”

“By turning this into ‘how come you get to say these things but I can’t',” Rorick said. “Please don’t do that. I want so much to like you. You seem likable.”

“Well, I think any time you’re telling people what they can and can’t say you should expect that you might have to defend yourself,” Lucinda said. “Add in what looks like hypocrisy… I’m not saying you are a hypocrite, or rejecting your viewpoint. I’d just like to hear it explained.”

“Look… the idea that words mean different things depending on what other words are around them and what’s going on at the time they’re said and all manner of circumstances that surround their uttering is fucking non-controversial, right?” Rorick said. “That’s how words work. That’s how we get by with a working vocabulary of several hundred or a few thousand instead of millions or billions. Nobody pretends like it’s ridiculous or offensive to suggest that context matters until they see it as an infringement on their all-important rights.”

“So you don’t think the right to speech is as worth protecting as your feelings?”

“This isn’t about feelings, but if it were, would you think your feelings are more important than mine?” Rorick said.

“What is it about, then?”

“It’s about a framework used to understand me and my kind in a way that allowed us to be treated as animals… to be excluded from the privileges of intelligent races, to be fenced in, fenced out, exploited, even hunted,” Rorick said.

“In a past age, maybe,” Lucinda said. “But society has progressed from that point.”

“Yes, give yourself a pat on the back for what you managed to do when a major goddess threatened divine retribution if you kept treating us like cattle,” Rorick said. “And no matter what the law says, the mindset I’m talking about is still there, and it’s still influencing how people see me, how people treat me… whether they see me as a beast man or a fuck toy or what. Jokes about ‘the wild’ or supposed compliments about me being ‘savage’ and ‘untamed’… they all play into that.”

“But people use those same words to describe some people of every race,” Lucinda said.

“Right, and if a human gets called a ‘wild child’ they can be pretty sure it’s a statement on something about them in particular as an individual,” Rorick said. “There’s no larger context it’s playing into.”

“But if someone sees you at a party, doing something, I don’t know, crazy-like and said ‘ooh, he’s wild,’ how do you know that’s not a statement about you as an individual?”

“Okay, two things first,” Rorick said. “One, I don’t go around correcting everyone who says something about how wild I am. You brought up offense so I answered your question and explained. Two, I also wouldn’t take exception if someone else was offended by it. We all draw our own lines in the dirt. We all pick and choose what bullshit we’re going to put up with. Can I say ‘bullshit’?”

“You can say whatever you want,” Lucinda said. “If I can’t say it in the final print, I won’t quote it directly. Okay, and to get back to the question…”

“Well, what do you think we do?” he asked.

“When you put it like that…” Lucinda said, blushing. “Though I don’t know if that’s not just bad stereotyping.”

Rorick laughed.

“The fact is we’re likely to clasp wrists, clap a hand on the back, or just say ‘hey’,” Rorick said. “Sex-as-greeting is pretty much limited to dealing with other races. That’s not to say we can’t be pretty casual about that sort of thing, among ourselves.”

“So you do have sex with other fauns?”

“Yeah,” he said. “For certain values of ‘sex’ and ‘with’. A lot of mutual masturbation, frottage…”

“Not a lot of penetration?”

“No,” Rorick said. “It’s not like there’s a taboo or hang-up, but… well, it can take longer. Sex with another faun is satisfying on fewer levels than sex with just about anyone else. It’s pretty much a masturbatory exercise no matter what. Best to keep things simple.”

“You’re rooming with a satyr,” Lucinda said.

“Right,” Rorick said. “He’s all about penetration. Which, I don’t mind.”

“Is that cultural?”

“I think it’s personal,” Rorick said. “Pride in his work, which for him means fucking, and fucking means penetrating.”

“Would you say you have a shared culture, or is it pretty different?”

“I’m not sure it’s all that different from two groups of humans or elves who live in different regions, at least before long-distance communications,” Rorick said. “I’m not even sure satyrs and fauns are separate races, in the sense that elves and humans are.”

“You look pretty different,” Lucinda said. “I mean, there are similarities… goatish notes, I guess you’d say, but…”

“If you told two different people to draw someone who’s half man and half goat, you might get a picture of each of us,” Rorick said. “And really, that’s about what it is. Individually, we’re the product of mortal arousal and imagination. If you go back much more than a thousand years, the ‘goat’ part wasn’t even standard. The satyrs of those days were ‘beast-men’, ‘bestial’, ‘animal-like’. Sometimes that meant goats, sometimes it meant bears or boars, sometimes it just meant generic indeterminate mammalian beast-thing”

“Really? How did that change?”

“Well, I wasn’t around… but I guess people started talking to each other more,” Rorick said. “They started making more detailed artwork and circulating it around. They wrote stuff down and copied it. The goat version caught on, I guess.” He shrugged. “And then about four, five hundred years ago artists who’d never seen a satyr started painting versions that looked like two-legged goat-taurs,” he said, gesturing down at his furry legs and hooved feet, “with prettier faces and chests and arms, a more clean division between man and beast.”

“So… you look like that because the people who made you pictured that?” Lucinda asked.

“Yep,” Rorick said.

“If we pictured nymphs as being animal-like, would they be?”

“Probably,” he said. “Possibly. I don’t know. They tend to have some small plant-like or geological features. I don’t know how much of that is malleable. My hair might have come out a bit furry no matter what went into me.”

“So wouldn’t it also be possible that you would always be a little… beast-like?” Lucinda asked. “Because it would be odd to me that we… the mortal races… would put that kind of stamp on you but not on your female counterparts.”

“Well, I suppose it’s possible, but it would be odd to me that we’d have this kind of distinct ‘stamp’ by nature and nymphs wouldn’t,” Rorick said. “I’m more inclined to think it says something about other races’ sexuality than it says about us.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” Rorick said. “That male sexuality is seen as wild and animal-like? Or maybe that female sexuality is supposed to be tamed? Or that women don’t need to resemble farm animals to be seen as exploitable? It’s probably a whole ball of fuckedness, to be honest.”

“Don’t you think there’s an equal chance it could be something completely innocuous?”

“Have you seen the amaranth nymph who goes here?” Rorick asked. “Assuming she was produced by humans, then we’re supposed to embody what the human race thinks about sex. She looks like something out of a comic book. A comic book about prostitutes. I look like a goat. Look me in the eye and tell me there isn’t something fucked up about the society that pulled these images out for us.”

“Well, there may be some issues there,” Lucinda said. “But to look deeper on something you touched on… and get back to what you said earlier about masturbation and sex with other males… for an embodied fertility spirit, you sure engage in a lot of… well, non-fertile sex.”

“Hey, listen… I’m willing to accept ‘fertility spirit’ as a fairly apt descriptor, but that’s all it is. A description, a label,” Rorick said. “It doesn’t define the limits of who I am and what I do. That’s a very human thing to do, you know.”

“What is?” Lucinda asked

“Finding a label to hang on something that sort of works, mostly… or that applies really well to one side of something… and then not dealing well when it turns out the thing being described is bigger than the description,” Rorick said. “Like calling me a fertility spirit. Okay, yeah. I’ll wear that hat. I do do fertility, after all… but then someone sees me with my dick up something that doesn’t make babies and they go ‘that’s not natural for a fertility spirit!’ Like it’s my fault their views are limited by their own narrow definitions. You see this all over the place but it’s particularly bad when it comes to sex. I mean, once someone observes that sex can lead to baby-making… that baby-making demands sex in most races and species of animals… they associate sex and baby-making. They assume babies are the point of sex.”

“What is the point of sex, then?”

“What’s the point of anything?” Rorick asked. “What’s the point of fire? Is it smoke? Is it ash? You get these things, generally, when you have fire.”

“Yes, but usually what you’re after is heat and light,” Lucinda said. “The smoke and ash is just the mess you might have to put up with in the pursuit of those things. To extend the metaphor… okay, I guess that metaphor doesn’t really need extending.”

“Okay, so let’s say the point of fire is heat and light,” Rorick said. “What if you light a candle just for light? Or a fire just for warmth? Or to destroy a paper? Or transmute iron? Is this wasteful? Is it departing from the purpose of fire? Is it perverting it?”

“Well, I’d say all of those things are uses of fire,” Lucinda said.

“Right,” Rorick said. “They’re all uses. None of them define what fire is. None of them are the point of it.”

“What is the point of it, then?”

“Fire. The thing itself. It has its uses. It can be pretty. It can be scary. It can save your life or take it. It creates and destroys,” Rorick said. “It does all these things and more, so much more than we could ever think of sitting here by ourselves, but fire is what it is and it won’t be limited by our definitions.”

“So then you have sex for its own sake.”

“Sex exists for its own sake,” Rorick said. “I have it because I need it, and because I enjoy it, and because it helps other people. Any one of those reasons would be a sufficient reason for me to have sex… for me to make use of its existence… but none of them are necessary to justify that existence. Sex is, whether it’s justified or not.”

“You seem pretty comfortable with sex, not surprisingly,” Lucinda said. “And yet you’ve used the word ‘exploited’ a couple of times now, to talk about how humans relate to you.”

“Well, yes,” Rorick said. “Not on the same level that nymphs have been… we’re not cultivated on the same level… but that aspect’s been there from the beginning. The ancient satyrs got used when they were convenient and killed or driven out when they weren’t. There’s not so much of the killing but there’s still quite a bit of driving out, and a lot of the using.”

“But isn’t it sort of a two-way street?” Lucinda asked. “I mean, you’re getting what you need out of it, too.”

“Right, well that right there is an inequality,” Rorick said. “I need sex. You don’t. Not on a personal level.”

“That doesn’t seem like it’s anybody’s fault, though.”

“I didn’t say it was,” Rorick said. “And on a practical level I’m not worried about the supply drying up. But it’s something I have to think about, to any degree, that you don’t. Food is provided as part of the cost of coming here. Nobody makes real allowances for sex. Nymphs are allowed to visit the guys’ dorms after hours. We’re not allowed to visit the women’s.”

“A lot of guys do, anyway.”

“And they’d get a slap on the wrist and told not to do it again if somebody made a stink,” Rorick said.

“Anyway, you’re wrong… we have to buy a meal plan separately,” Lucinda said.

“Right, but it’s there to be bought,” Rorick said. “It’s something that’s factored in to everyone’s expectations.”

“How would a sex plan work, though?” Lucinda asked. “Don’t you think there’d be something problematic about commoditizing sex the same way food is?”

“Sure, but again, the inequality is there,” Rorick said. “My sex is treated like it’s a resource. I don’t mind, much… but if I did there wouldn’t be much I could do about it. I’m not in a position to say no.”

“You don’t think you could be pickier at all about your partners?”

“A little, maybe, but I’d hate to experiment and then get shut out,” Rorick said. “And then there’s a whole religious thing… I’m not, like, fanatical about it, but my deity’s a bit more immediate than a lot of people’s. But still that’s kind of subject to interpretation and so I’m not even factoring it in here.”

“So on the balance, do you not like it here?”

“I like it here,” Rorick said. “I have a good time. I’m learning things. But there are things that are fucked up, and there are things that aren’t fun for me, and while I don’t go around bitching about them all the time I don’t really like the idea that I can’t have a legitimate beef about something unless it’s completely ruining my ability to have a good time.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that but there is kind of a mixed message,” Lucinda said. “When you keep going off on these things and then acting like you don’t really care about them.”

“I do care,” Rorick said. “Look, when you told me why you wanted to interview me… I got the impression you wanted something more than ‘I’m having a good time here and sex is fun.’ I could say those things. They’re both true. But are they what you’re looking for?”

“No,” Lucinda said. It sounded more like an admission than she’d expected. “No, I didn’t. And really, what you’re giving me is the sort of thing I was hoping for. Just…”

“Just?”

“I’m not entirely sure what to do with it,” she said. “I mean, you’re talking about things that have been going on for centuries, things that involve whole populations and cultural attitudes.”

“What, were you expecting to find out that racism and sexual fucked-upedness was something that five people came up with last week?” Rorick asked. “I don’t think anyone’s expecting you to solve anything. You’re a reporter. Write about it.”

“The more of these I do, the less sure I’m qualified to do that,” Lucinda said.

“Do you know anybody who is?” Rorick asked.

“No,” Lucinda said.

“Then I guess it’s up to you.”

Discuss this story on the Livejournal feed.

But she’d just barely begun to feel a trickle of panic when the reptilian head whipped up and looked over at her. A few swishes of that long tail turned her body around and propelled her towards the end of the pool where Lucinda stood.

“Ms. Blake,” she said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I was simply doing some memory exercises while I waited.”

Her voice was quiet and distinctly feminine to Lucinda’s human ears. It was somewhat flat, but not emotionless… it sounded like she was mildly but pleasantly surprised by everything.

This surprised Lucinda. She knew her interview subject was not human… that was the point. She had been braced for something distinctly inhuman, maybe croaking or hissing and probably subjectively creepy. She was known by the nickname “Hissy”, after all.

“That’s… that’s fine,” Lucinda said. “Are you… are you ready to do this?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Okay. Would you like to go somewhere we can sit down?”

“I have no objection if you’d like to. I am comfortable here.”

“Oh, okay,” Lucinda said, and she sat down near the edge of the pool, folding her legs underneath her. She took a crystal and a pad and pen out of her bag. “Is it alright if I make an echo of this?” she asked, holding up the crystal.

“Of the crystal?”

“Of the interview,” Lucinda said. “It will store everything we say, so I can check on it later.”

“I have no objection.”

“Okay,” Lucinda said. “Do you have any questions before we begin, about what we’re going to be doing, or why I’m doing it, or anything?”

“No,” Hissy said.

“Or about me?”

“No.”

“Okay. Then to start off, the first question I’d like to ask… because I’ve found it varies somewhat from race to race… is how your people greet one another,” Lucinda said. “Some races bow, some shake hands. What do you do?”

“We look at each other like this,” Hissy said. She tilted her head and stared at Lucinda. “To let people know that we see them. We acknowledge their presence. If we wish to be rude to somebody, we do not do that.”

“Do you say anything, like ‘hello’ or ‘welcome’?”

“I could tell you that you are welcome somewhere, or that I appreciate your company, if I meant to,” Hissy said. “But we don’t do that as a matter of course. We talk when it is needful or desirous to do so, and we remain silent otherwise.”

“Interesting,” Lucinda said. “Do you still do that when you greet people, normally? I mean, non-lizardfolk?”

“No,” Hissy said. “It used to be automatic, but I’ve learned not to. Other peoples often consider it to be rude or unsettling.”

“I’ve always seen your race called lizardfolk, which is descriptive enough but… well… it’s almost more of a description than a name. What does your race call itself?”

“Well,” Hissy said. “I could make the sound for you, but I don’t know how you’d spell it.”

“What does it translate as?” Lucinda asked.

Hissy sat there, silently… disconcertingly still, considering that she was floating in twelve feet of water. There was no outward sign Lucinda could discern that let her know the lizardwoman was thinking, but the student reporter waited patiently. She was trying hard not to be anthropocentric. Cetea, the gorgon, had been the most inhuman of her interview subjects, but even with her scaly skin and her strange, reflective eyes, her face had been… human-like.

Hissy was not just a humanoid with lizard-like characteristics, though. She was a humanoid lizard. Her face had an elongated muzzle filled with pebble-like teeth. Lucinda wouldn’t have known what to watch for in it.

“We, I suppose” Hissy said finally. “We folks here. It’s actually two words… one would translate as ‘we’ and the other ‘here’, but we say them together and they mean us, the people, folk.”

“You say them together? Like a kenning?”

“A knowing?”

“Sorry, it’s not a common concept in Pax… it’s something I learned in my Northern Literature class,” Lucinda said. “It’s a figure of speech where words are strung together to make a sort of allusion, like a fang might be called a wolf-spear or a spear might be called a battle-tooth or something like that.”

“Oh,” Hissy said. “That’s interesting.”

“Do your people do that?”

“Not really. We… it’s hard to explain, it seems natural to me. We speak in multiple registers, and the words we say together are important.”

“So you can literally say two entirely different things at the same time?”

“Yes,” Hissy said. “Sometimes more, though usually not.”

“Could you be talking to one person and having a second conversation with someone else?”

“Well… we call that circle talking or sideways talking, but it’s still one conversation,” Hissy said. “That’s a different mode, though, since in the one-on-one mode I’d still be talking in multiple registers. It’s hard to explain if you don’t understand it. You might think of it as each word is a root that means nothing on its own, it only gains meaning when it’s placed with another.”

“I guess that’s not so different from any other language, than,” Lucinda said.

“It doesn’t sound so different when it’s simplified to that point,” Hissy said. “I could explain it very easily in my own language, but that isn’t terribly helpful. It’s caused a lot of confusion. When three or more of us would stand in a circle and talk among each other, the missionaries thought we were singing. We didn’t understand what the word meant, so they showed us… it just sounded like more of their talking, to us, but with more repetition.”

“That’s interesting,” Lucinda said. “You mean a group of you standing together, all talking at the same time?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t that get confusing?”

“How so?”

“Well, I mean… how do you keep track of who’s saying what?” Lucinda asked.

“The same way we are now,” Hissy said. “If you and I started talking at the same time, I would not forget which of us was which.”

“But that would be rude,” Lucinda said. “I mean, in our culture. People talking over each other is rude.”

“Yes, and that’s strange to me,” Hissy said. “In mine, it would be rude to expect everyone else to be silent just because you have something to say. ”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Lucinda said. “So, then, what does it sound like when you sing?”

“It doesn’t,” Hissy said. “We don’t.”

“Do you play music?”

“I think you might say we recite poetry,” Hissy said. “I would say something, two words, and you would have to say something with one of those words and another, and the next person in the circle would then make a pair, and so on. It’s called… flow-weaving, I suppose.”

“Is it hard?”

“Children do it. But some do it better than others. You can do it alone, but it’s more interesting with others to chain off of,” she said.

“One of my other interview subjects told me she thought music was universal,” Lucinda said.

“That’s interesting,” Hissy said.

“Uh… so… how did you learn Pax?”

“From missionaries,” Hissy said.

“Was it hard?” Lucinda asked. “Given the different sounds, the differing basis?”

“It was and it wasn’t,” Hissy said. “It seems simple, in comparison. Most languages do. Elvish is a little more complicated, but Gobol and Kharoline were easy to pick up. Pax was harder because it was first, and I didn’t realize how easy it was.”

“Holy crap,” Lucinda said. “I mean… you speak all those languages?”

“Yes,” Hissy said. “And others. I speak Kobol, but I can’t read it. I learned High Draconic at the mission school. I taught myself Kharoline, Low Draconic, and True Draconic from that.”

“True Draconic? You speak True Draconic?”

“I can’t make all the sounds,” Hissy said. “But I understand it. The… logic… behind it is the same as High Draconic, and a lot of the words are similar to my own language. It’s only that High Draconic is intended for more mouths.”

“How did you learn True Draconic?”

“Talking to dragons,” Hissy said. “There are a mated pair of great green dragons whose territory included my village. They never hunted us because they liked having a ‘buffer’, as they put it, between the Imperium and themselves. We gave them gold and other things we didn’t need, when we found it. One of them guarded our egg clutches at all times, since they didn’t have any of their own. Ours and five other villages in their territory. We had better relations with our neighbors than many folk, because of that. We were all practically siblings.”

“And after you were born… hatched… you would, what, just chat with them?”

“Yes. We called them the Uncles.”

“What are their names?”

“I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Green dragons… I would have expected black dragons, in a swamp.”

“Alkaline swamp,” Hissy said. “Black dragons don’t like alkaline. They fought with a black dragon whose territory butted against theirs, but it was never very serious because she didn’t want their territory and they didn’t want hers.”

“You said ‘uncles’,” Lucinda said. “Are they both males?”

“Yes,” Hissy said. “That’s why they didn’t have any eggs. Although their agreement with the Imperium was that they wouldn’t raise any, anyway. I don’t think the Imperium knew.”

“Gay dragons,” Lucinda said, shaking her head in disbelief. “Gay dragons and a polyglot lizard.”

“I think most of us are good at picking up other languages,” Hissy said. “We all learned Pax and High Draconic quickly, and most of the other students could read Kharoline poems. Everyone who cared to try. The missionaries had books of poetry but they didn’t consider it important that we read them. So most of us didn’t.”

“Why did you?”

“Languages interest me.”

“So, jumping back a bit… the eggs were kept in a communal clutch, but you did know who your parents were, right?”

“Yes,” Hissy said. “We have five of them.”

“Five?”

“The closest to literal translation would be parent/wife, parent/husband, parent/egg, advocate/parent, name/parent,” Hissy said.

“I think I got the first two,” Lucinda said. “Mother and father?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know whose children are whose?”

“We are carried for eight weeks,” Hissy said. “During that time we form a bond with our mothers. We can later recognize each other instinctively. Fatherhood is as uncertain as it is for any other race.”

“What are the others?”

“The parent/egg is the clutch attendant who bonds with our egg,” Hissy said. “Mostly they are women, usually a maternal aunt if one is available and on good terms with her sister. An older female relative, or a well-regarded person, can also be a clutch attendant. It is a necessary position for most villages, though because of the uncles, it has become more like a pleasant tradition for us. Our advocate is the parent who takes our part in all things, so that the others need not worry about being harsh. The name-giver constructs our name out of parts of our other four parents’ names. They are usually selected by the father, as the clutch attendant is selected by the mother, but both have some say.”

“Now, ‘Hissy’ isn’t a translation of your real name, is it?” Lucinda asked.

“No. My real name is formed out of the words bell, leaf, gold, and apple,” Hissy said. “Each of which comes from one of my other parents’ names. One of those words will go into any child I stand as a parent for, unless I’m doing the naming myself.”

“You don’t have music, but you have bells?”

“Wind chimes, water chimes,” Hissy said. “We like the sound. I guess that’s music.”

“Did all five of your parents play a part in raising you?”

“Yes, more or less. Our villages are very communal. All children in a village are the village’s children. But the networks of parents ensure a tightly-woven net through which none can slip unnoticed,” Hissy said. “The missionaries tried to reform that arrangement. They discouraged any talk of our other parents and urged mothers to care for their own eggs directly.”

“How did that go?”

“They had little success,” Hissy said. “Some women took their own eggs and let the missionaries name their children. Nobody interfered. The other adults still looked after their children as much as the mothers would let them. Most of those children grew up to leave the village. Two of my teammates are such children, though they came from different territories.”

“So why did you leave the village?”

“My language hobby was taken to be a sign of unusual intelligence. The missionaries sent me to their school.”

“The mission school wasn’t part of the village?”

“No,” Hissy said. “The missionaries had a fort just outside the uncles’ territory, and they taught classes there, but the big school was in Blackwater. They told my parents that it would be a waste to keep me in the fen, so I went there for four years. The missionaries there encouraged me to take some tests, so I did, and they said I should go to university.”

“Do you think you’re unusually intelligent?”

“I have been told I am.”

“Do you think it’s true, though?”

“They have tests,” Hissy said. “They say I am. It isn’t a thing that I think about.”

“Is that cultural?”

“I suppose it is. Our idea of wisdom is tied to age and accomplishments,” Hissy said. “I’m thirteen years old.”

“Is that… is that young?” Lucinda asked. “I mean, when does your race reckon maturity?”

“When a person is mature. I haven’t taken adult rites, though I don’t know if I will,” Hissy said. “Being away from the village muddies the water.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s an expression we use…”

“We have it, too,” Lucinda said. “I guess I meant ‘how so?’”

“Ordinarily, my parents would decide when I was grown up,” Hissy said. “I suppose when I graduate from the university, human society will consider me an adult. But I’m a child, and we have a saying that would mean something like ‘child’s achievement, child’s crimes’. We say it when you would say ‘it’s no big deal’ or ‘it’s nothing’.”

“You don’t think high test scores are an achievement?”

“Words on paper,” Hissy said. “I like words, but talking is not something to be proud of.”

“You’re on the skirmish team, on the notorious seventh squad, the so-called ‘Monster Squad’… how do you feel about the decision to put all the Harlowe students on one squad?”

“I have no opinion about that.”

“Were you told not to speak about that?”

“No,” Hissy said.

“Did you play skirmish before you came here?”

“No,” Hissy said. “The mission school didn’t have anything like that. We couldn’t have spears. We were discouraged from fighting.”

“How’d you learn how to fight, then?”

“I come from a wild place.”

“Do you like skirmish?”

“Not for itself, no,” Hissy said. “I enjoyed the structure of the seventh squad. Belonging to it felt closer to being back in my village.”

“How so?”

“There were other lizardfolk to talk to,” Hissy said.

“Boys?”

“They are male, yes,” Hissy said. “Also, I enjoyed the sense of belonging to a group. I still do, a little, but I’m coming to understand the difference between my family and my skirmish teammates.”

“Do you feel like you had a choice in coming here?”

“No.”

“Why’s that?”

“I was told I should,” Hissy said. “I didn’t know I could say no. I don’t know if I would have been listened to if I had.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“It doesn’t bother me.”

“Why not?” Lucinda asked.

“Should it bother me?”

“It would bother me,” Lucinda said. “I think, among most races, there would be some resentment at the feeling of being forced into a course of action.”

“Oh,” Hissy said. “Very few people decide things for themselves, among us.”

“You mean somebody always tells you what to do?”

“Group consensus is sought. Usually with a circular discussion.”

“What about personal things? Say you had a decision to make that only affected you,” Lucinda said.

“I would seek another person to discuss it with, and we would arrive at a decision together,” Hissy said.

“Can you really get much done that way?”

“We get everything done that way.”

“Will you go back to your village when you graduate?”

“Probably,” Hissy said.

“What will you do there?”

“I’d have to talk to the others,” Hissy said.

“Is there tolerance of subtle artists?”

“It’s not an uncommon condition. Most of us have some degree of empathy with our mothers and clutch attendants,” Hissy said. “And with the Uncles, which they find amusing. It sometimes approaches telepathy. Those of us who have wider talents often end up being called to lead the larger discussion circles.”

“Like a moderator?”

“Yes.”

“Would you find that sort of life satisfying?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well… now that you’re here, how do you feel about life at Magisterius University?” Lucinda asked.

“It doesn’t bother me.”

“Is that it?”

“There are some times that something annoys me and times that something pleases me,” Hissy said. “But it doesn’t bother me.”

“Some of the non-human students have reported problems dealing with human students, or with the faculty,” Lucinda said. “Have you encountered anything like that?”

“I’m used to dealing with humans.”

“I mean, racism.”

“It doesn’t bother me.”

“But you’ve noticed it?”

“That people don’t like other races?”

“Yes.”

“Yes,” Hissy said.

“And how do you feel about that?”

“It doesn’t bother me,” Hissy said.

“Really?”

“Yes,” Hissy said.

“So if somebody avoids you, or picks on you, or singles you out somehow, you don’t worry that it might be because of your race?”

“Oh, no,” Hissy said. “I know if it’s because of my race. People don’t usually disguise that kind of feeling. It just doesn’t bother me.”

“How can it not bother you?”

“I don’t know,” Hissy said. “I don’t know why it would.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, that covers about everything I’d meant to ask,” Lucinda said, though she was in fact throwing out a whole host of follow-up questions that were apparently meaningless to Hissy. “Um… is there anything you’d like to say, a message to other students or anything like that?”

“No,” Hissy said, which she’d kind of expected.

“Okay, I guess that’s it,” Lucinda said. “Thanks for your time.”

“You’re welcome.”

Discuss this story.

“Hi, Cetea… thanks for agreeing to talk with me,” Lucinda said, getting to her feet and holding out her hand.

“No problem,” Cetea said, clasping her palm to Lucinda’s but curling her four sharp-taloned fingers up loosely around the top of Lucinda’s hand instead of gripping firmly. Lucinda observed the awkwardness and made a mental note to check out the hands of future interviewees before trying to shake them.

“Go ahead and have a seat, unless you want to get some food,” Lucinda said. “I’m just getting stuff organized.”

“I’m fine. Do you do shorthand?” Cetea asked, watching the student reporter line up her pens and flip through her notepad.

“Kind of,” Lucinda replied. “I’ve got my own system.”

“Ah,” Cetea said, reaching up to stroke and soothe the snakes. “My cousin’s a steno.”

“Nice,” Lucinda said.

“Can I ask a question?” Cetea said. “I mean, I know you’re interviewing me, but I’m curious about something.”

“Sure,” Lucinda said. “Feel free. An interview’s not a monologue.”

“What’s this for, exactly?”

“Well, I’m a reporter with the Gazetteer…”

“I know, but… I didn’t just win any awards and I’ve kept my noses out of the little scandals,” Cetea said. “So what’s the story?”

“That’s what I want to find out,” Lucinda said. She gave her friendliest smile. “What is your story, Cetea? Who are you? Where do you come from? That kind of thing.”

“Why me, though?” Cetea said.

“Well, I’m going to be honest… I’m gathering material for something I’m not sure I can talk my editor into running. But somebody said something that got me thinking about why I got into journalism in the first place.”

“What was that?”

“Something about it being my job to tell people’s stories,” Lucinda said. “And you know, if the union burned down tomorrow or one of the deans got caught stealing money or something, we’d print it… but on a day to day basis, that’s what we do. But it’s mostly human stories.”

“So this is an affirmative action interview,” Cetea said.

“I wouldn’t have put it that way, but kind of. I just want to get more voices in the public forum. Does that bother you?” Lucinda said.

“Meh. It’s not the worst motive,” Cetea said. “Let’s go for it.”

“Okay, I’m going to be asking you about yourself, and also about your culture, because I don’t think most of our readers are very familiar with gorgons,” Lucinda said. She put a crystal down on the table. “I’m going to be taking notes so I can organize my thoughts, but I’m also going to be making an echo of this for later, just so I can make sure I’ve got everything accurately if I quote you. Is that okay?”

“Sure,” Cetea said, holding out one hand to examine the long fingernails. Her skin was covered in scales that were a very reflective yellow-green… her nails in particular were long and yellow and very shiny, like brass.

“Is that their natural color?” Lucinda asked her, pointing at the claws.

“Is that an interview question?”

“It’s a place to start,” the reporter said.

“Mostly,” Cetea said. “They tend to collect grime, so I clean and polish them regularly… the first time I ran out of nail polish last year and asked my roommate if she had any, it was kind of a learning experience.”

“Your roommate was…?”

“Her name was Willa. She was a golem. She dropped out about a month into the semester. Married someone she met on that crystal ball thing. One of those bigger-type goblins… I don’t remember his name, I only met him once. I thought they were both kind of stupid about it, but I kind of had the impression she only came here to meet someone. She was very single-minded about it.”

“How about you? Why’d you come here?”

“Not to bag a man,” Cetea said. “Or a woman. I wanted an education.”

“What are you studying?”

“Enchantment theory, and music.”

“Music?” Lucinda asked.

“Yeah.”

“You don’t seem… I mean… you know, never mind,” Lucinda said.

“What were you going to say?”

“Something stupid,” Lucinda said. “I don’t know what a bardic student is supposed to look like.”

“Human,” Cetea said.

“Uh… yeah. Sorry,” Lucinda blushed. “Stupid.”

“Eh, you’re trying,” Cetea said. “My uncle… great-uncle… used to crawl around caves with this guy, Lazarus, who taught music here forever ago…”

“Professor Lazar?” Lucinda asked. “The guy they named the music building after?”

“Yeah,” Cetea said. “Him. We called him Lazarus. I have one of his harps. Not here… I had to buy the one I use for classes. It’s waiting for me when I graduate.”

“Oh, wow,” Lucinda said. “Cool for you. So… you came here to study music?”

“I actually came here so I could learn other things along with the music,” Cetea said. “We do have something like a conservatory back home. It’s kind of famous… even elves send their children to learn.”

“Where’s home, for you?”

“Down,” Cetea said.

“In the underworld?”

“Yeah. We weren’t an underground race, originally,” Cetea said. “But the surface got crowded, and we got crowded out. There are some colonies still up top, but they’re very isolated… underground, it’s a bit of a struggle, but we’re not so cut off. We trade with kobolds and dwarves…”

“With both of them?”

“We’re neutral. If they want to trade with each other, they go through us.”

“And elves come down to study music at your school?”

“They come up,” Cetea said.

“Oh… you mean dark elves,” Lucinda said, realizing. “Sorry. I got hung up there for a second.”

“Yeah,” Cetea said. “Seeing pale white elves was kind of a shock when I came here. Not that I saw a lot of elven skin around the colony, but… well… that was an adjustment, too. When I was a hatchling, I thought elves were ghosts… that you could take the cloak off and there wouldn’t be anything there. I learned better, but it’s still weird seeing them with bare heads.”

“What else was an adjustment for you, coming to a human… predominantly human university?”

“Well, everything,” Cetea said. “There were girls who’d never seen a toilet before coming here. I mean, I hadn’t, but I read a lot…though really, that kind of thing doesn’t make it into a lot of your stories. Anyway, though, it’s not just the human stuff. I spent most of my time in Harlowe the first year, and there are so many different cultures on the floor, it’s hard not to tread on anybody. I think I did okay, if only because I’m personally used to dealing with different cultures, but I’m not sure who’s being served by having a separate dorm.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not like we’re any less strange to each other than we are to humans, and learning how to get along with goblins and gargoyles is nifty but it doesn’t help much in a ‘predominantly human’ university,” Cetea said. “It would be more useful if we were learning how to deal with humans, and vice-versa.”

“But you came back to Harlowe for your second year,” Lucinda said.

Cetea shrugged.

“If it wasn’t here, and we all had to mix, I think things would be better,” she said. “But it is, and I’m not going to be the one who slips outside her place.”

“Has anyone in particular made you feel that way?” Lucinda asked.

Cetea raised a shiny hand up to her mouth and covered it. The snakes’ mouths all opened and they hissed, not quite in unison. It was creepy to Lucinda, how much it sounded like laughter.

“I’m sorry,” Cetea said. “That question… ‘anyone in particular’. I got that a lot, when I tried to talk to my advisor about how I felt last year. It’s not anyone in particular. It’s everything in general. The lizardfolk get treated as beasts, because that’s what humans do with ‘humanoids’ that look like animals that aren’t monkeys.”

“What race looks like monkeys?” Lucinda asked.

“Oh… um… no one. I was being hypothetical there,” Cetea said. “Anyway, they’re beasts but I’m a monster… and when you’re a monster, everybody’s afraid of you, until the moment they think you’re weak and they decide to be brave.”

“So, there were moments when you were afraid of what a human student might do to you?”

“There were moments when I was afraid of what a hundred human students might do after what I did to one who tried to do something to me,” Cetea said. “Which is sad, because really, I’ve got the perfect non-fatal self-defense device right up here.” She pointed to her reflective eyes. “But because I have it and they don’t, people are afraid of it.”

“In fairness, don’t you see how having poison snakes for hair might be legitimately intimidating?” Lucinda asked.

“First of all, I don’t have snakes for hair,” she said. “I’m reptilian. Did you ever see a reptile with hair?”

“I saw a bearded dragon once,” Lucinda said.

“Funny,” Cetea said. “But I mean, the snakes aren’t there instead of anything. I’m not ‘supposed’ to have hair to begin with. That’s a mammal thing. Isn’t that where the word ‘mammal’ comes from?” She mimed like she was fluffing up a big poofy hairdo. “Because you have mammaries?”

“Um… that’s not what mammaries are,” Lucinda said.

“Really? What are they?”

“Breasts.”

“Every animal has a breast, though,” Cetea said.

“Breasts,” Lucinda said. “As in, boobies.” At Cetea’s blank stare, she cupped hers briefly. “These.”

“Oh, really? I thought those were just the cuppy things you wore,” Cetea said.

“Um, no,” Lucinda said. “Those are for support, since they don’t have a lot of, you know, structure. Didn’t you ever notice, with your roommate…?”

“Willa moved out and I never got another one last year,” Cetea said. “I have a roommate this year, but I don’t see much of her. I just thought… well, the goblin girls don’t wear them, and they don’t have anything there.”

“Well, goblins don’t have mammaries,” Lucinda said.

“Aren’t they mammals? They have hair.”

“I don’t know what they are,” Lucinda admitted. “I thought they were reptiles, because they don’t have… you know.”

“Huh,” Cetea said. “Anyway…”

“Poisonous snakes,” Lucinda said.

“Yeah, well, the way I see it… if I have a dozen mouths full of poison fangs, or a flaming catapult in my pocket, or whatever, that should make it more reassuring to people that I’ve got a way of disabling an attacker without hurting them.”

“Speaking as somebody who honestly does find you a little intimidating, I can say that it’s hard to think about somebody turning to stone as being painless or non-fatal,” Lucinda said.

“Human magic can cure a lot worse than that these days, though,” Cetea said. “And anyway, it wears off in about a week on its own. That’s something else that was an adjustment, though… training myself not to open my eyes when I’m startled.”

“Your eyes are closed?” Lucinda asked.

“Veiled,” Cetea said. “Lidded. It’s not the same thing that you have. I can see out, but you can’t see in. We walk around like that most of the time, but if something threatens us… poof.”

“So what color are your eyes under there?”

“Dunno,” Cetea said. “Nobody’s ever got a good look at them.”

“Not even your family?”

“We’re not immune to each others’ gazes,” Cetea said. “They’d be able to throw it off in a few hours, though.”

“What about you, in a mirror?”

Cetea shuddered and all her snakes reared. Lucinda jumped back in her chair.

“Sorry,” Cetea said. “Mirrors… that’s another adjustment. Great big mirrors in the bathrooms. We have horror stories about mirrors… like a bride who gets stuck in front of one for a hundred years, until the dust on it’s thick enough that she can’t see her eyes in it any more.”

“If that really happened, couldn’t she just close her eyes or look away as soon as she, uh, thawed?”

“It would be too late… how long does seeing something take you?” Cetea said. “That’s why in the bad old days, the other races had stories about how horrible we looked. None of them got a good look at our faces because as soon as they saw it, poof.”

“If you don’t mind me saying, I think gorgons are kind of pretty,” Lucinda said. “With your shiny scales, and everything.”

“Thank you,” Cetea said. “If you don’t mind me asking, what races do you think are ugly?”

“Uh… um…”

“Rhetorical question,” Cetea said. “There really aren’t any races I’ve found that really match my aesthetic ideals, but that’s because a good crown is one of the first things we look for.”

“Crown… of snakes?” Lucinda asked, and Cetea nodded. “So… male gorgons have them, too?”

“Yeah,” Cetea said. “I’ve heard all the stories, that males don’t have snakes, or that they’re the ugly ones, or that we don’t have males… I honestly don’t know where they came from. Our men look exactly like our women, just like every other race… well, I guess the mammary thing is different, if that’s not just clothes.”

“I actually think more races have differences between men and women,” Lucinda said. “Which might be where the confusion came from.”

“Really?” Cetea said. “Well, I guess there are a lot of mammal races… but, goblins and kobolds are the same.”

“Except in the, you know, privates,” Lucinda said.

“The what?”

“The, uh, genitalia,” Lucinda clarified. “Men have different ones than women.”

“But they still look the same, don’t they?”

“I haven’t actually looked at any goblins,” Lucinda said. “But I think they’re normal.”

“What’s ‘normal’?”

“I mean, like ours,” Lucinda said. “Mammalian, I mean.”

“No offense, but I’m not sure I want to know what that means,” Cetea said, shaking her head. The snakes’ heads moved in the opposite direction. “That would be weird to me. Different… stuff… for men and women. I can’t wrap my head around it.”

“So, you’ve been going here more than a year now and you never realized that?”

“I didn’t spend a lot of time peeking in the boys’ bathroom,” Cetea said.

“Not to be indelicate, but did you never notice that men look different in tight jeans than women do?”

“I didn’t spend a lot of time staring at mammal crotches,” Cetea said. “But when I did notice it, I just figured they were aroused a lot of the time. I had no idea a lump like that was normal.”

“Well, see, we’re learning things about each others’ races,” Lucinda said. “Um, if I can ask a question about your crown?”

“Wreath,” Cetea said. “Men have crowns, women have wreaths.”

“But they’re exactly the same?”

“Crowns are male, wreaths are female.”

“Noted,” Lucinda said. “I’m not sure how to word this, but… can you see with them? I mean, it looked like they saw me first and then you did.”

“No, I only have two eyes that are mine,” Lucinda said. “But they ‘tell’ me things, and they respond to my thoughts.”

“So you don’t control them?”

“No,” Cetea said. “They knew I was looking for you, and they looked for you… but some days they get sulky, or they want attention. The worst is when they started fighting each other. I don’t know if they don’t realize that their blood is mine and they’re just making all of us sick when they bite each other, or if they don’t care.”

“They’re not intelligent, then?”

“They’re snakes.”

“So, if somebody tried to touch them…”

“They’d probably get bit,” Cetea said. “They bite me sometimes.”

“How long would they be, if they stretched all the way out?”

“About two feet long… but they really can’t just stretch out like that without something to support them. They’re halfway coiled most of the time.”

“Do you… uh… do you feed them?”

“They don’t need to eat separate from me, but if I don’t want my hands getting bit on the way to my mouth, I do,” she said. “They hunt rodents and lizards while I sleep. At home, I mean, they did.”

“Did they catch many from your bed?”

“Oh, we don’t sleep in beds,” Cetea said. “We all bed down in the kitchen, around the stove.”

“Do you wash them?”

“When I can,” she said. “They hate showers, so I don’t bother. I can’t really scrub them, or oil them up like I do the rest of my scales… that’s why they’re so dull compared to me.”

“Is it weird having a dozen living creatures sticking out of your skull?”

“Is it weird not having any?” Cetea asked. “I can understand how hard it can be to understand what it’s like, but I can’t really imagine what it’s like not to.”

“This might be getting into morbid territory, and please tell me if I’m touching on something taboo, but… if they’re alive, can they die? And what would happen?”

“Oh, they can be killed… older people often have lost a few to accidents or fights,” Cetea said. “They won’t die of natural causes because they’re not going to get any sicker from anything than I am, and they can heal from just about anything as long as I’m alive.”

“Could… forgive me, but my imagination… could they stay alive if you were dead?”

“Maybe for a while,” she said. “But I don’t think so. We share blood.”

“Sorry… I don’t mean to focus on your hair, er, your wreath,” Lucinda said. “Just tell me if anything I ask is bothering you.”

“It’s not bothering me,” Cetea said, smiling wryly. “But for reference, I think the closest equivalent would be you giving an interview all about your, uh, breasts.”

“Oh, well, let’s go to another subject,” Lucinda said. “Your uncle… your great-uncle… knew Professor Lazar?”

“They traveled together, a little. Cetus… my great-uncle… showed him the way around our neck of the underworld.”

“Is he the one who taught your people music?”

“Cetus?”

“Lazar.”

“Why would we need to be taught?” Cetea asked, and some of her snakes looked angry. “We already had the conservatory at that point… he was actually there to learn from us.”

“Oh! Sorry,” Lucinda said. “I didn’t mean to imply… I don’t think of reptilians as being musical. That’s probably stupid.”

“I don’t know any race that doesn’t have music,” Cetea said. “There was an ogre in one of my performance classes last year. He was pretty good, when he remembered to show up. Every race is musical. It’s the universal language.”

“By that token, what did Professor Lazar have to learn from you?”

“Our songs, I’d imagine,” Cetea said. “And the ones in our library. We had songs from all the races we traded with… dwarves, elves, kobolds…”

“Kobolds?”

“You’re doing it again,” Cetea said. “It was a cultural exchange. He had songs from all over the surface.”

“So, really, you were teaching each other, your ancestors and him,” Lucinda said.

“If this story comes out and it’s about how the brave Professor Lazar descended into darkness and taught the gorgons how to sing, I’m going to throw up,” Cetea said. “In front of you. And when I throw up, it’s a chain reaction.”

“I’m just thinking about the best angle to involve the average human reader in the story,” Lucinda said. “A cultural exchange is good.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Cetea said. “Anyway, he made four or five harps while he was down with us, and he left one with my great-uncle when he left.”

“As a sign of friendship?”

“As payment for a vase he broke,” Cetea said.

“Ah,” Lucinda said. “So, are your whole family musicians?”

“If they were, I’d probably never get the harp,” Cetea said. “My father is… I guess it would translate as ‘chef’, but there’s less cooking. We cook some things with heat, but our cuisine is more about presentation than anything else. Our mouths don’t chew well, so we keep portions small to avoid having to stretch out our jaws to swallow, and every meal includes a plate of amuse-gueules.”

“What’s that?”

“Distractions for them,” Cetea said. She pointed up at her wreath. “We have to make sure what they’re eating looks as good as or better than what we’re eating, or there are going to be bites. We’re each a little resistant to our own snakes’ venom, and those of close family, but it still doesn’t feel great.”

“Does anybody ever… muzzle or restrain them?”

“No, and I can’t imagine anybody doing that,” Cetea said.

“So, your father prepares food,” Lucinda said. “Is that a professional thing? I mean, does he do that for the family or…”

“I guess you’d call it professional,” Cetea said. “We’re communalists, it’s what he does for the colony. There’s usually a waiting list for his tables.”

“And your mother?”

“She teaches. Literature and storytelling.”

“Any siblings?”

“I have a sister, but she’s too young to have a path. I have a brother a few years younger than me,” Cetea said. “Nobody expects much from him, because he has feralia.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a condition where the snakes aren’t properly… connected? They act wildly all the time, they bite each other and the baby and anybody else that gets near. They have to be defanged, which… well, it’s pretty horrific for a child, but it beats the alternatives.”

“I’m sorry,” Lucinda said. “If you don’t want to talk about…”

“It’s okay,” Cetea said. “They still manage to cause a lot of trouble, even without fangs. He doesn’t get any feeling from them, so he never knows if they hurt themselves, and because they don’t send him signals he has a hard time getting around. He’s got to keep looking around and behind himself, stay away from walls, and stay out of narrow corridors.”

“I can see where some of that would be a problem, but nor… uh, I mean, other races can get around okay without a crown or wreath of snakes looking out for them,” Lucinda said.

“Well, maybe things are different for you,” Cetea said. “I probably couldn’t explain it properly to somebody who doesn’t understand what it’s like to have functional snakes.”

“To turn back to your experience here,” Lucinda said, “would you mind giving me some examples of what you were talking about, the problem of being viewed as a ‘monster’ among humans?”

“Well, if you want me to pull out the story about how I got lynched or the time I was chased out of town, I can’t help you,” Cetea said. “But you said earlier that I intimidated you.”

“Yeah, but… I’m here, sitting down and talking to you,” Lucinda said, sounding hurt.

“Sure, because you decided to do an interview with the ‘unknown voices’,” Cetea said. “Chances are you’re talking to me because I intimidate you. You didn’t pick a little goblin or a fluffy faun or something safe and ‘sexy’ like a mermaid, you went straight to the gorgon girl so you could make a point.”

“That’s not fair,” Lucinda said.

“I’m sorry, is this story about you?” Cetea said. “You asked a question. Let me finish answering. You’re intimidated by me. I understand that’s not anything personal, but that doesn’t change the fact that you are… and you’re not alone. People on the surface are intimidated by me, in general. I know this. Imagine how that affects me when I have a chance to decide whether to approach someone or not. Imagine how it affects others when they have a choice to approach me or not. Is it impossible for me to make friends with humans because I’m a gorgon? No, it’s not. Can I point to any one friend I lost when they suddenly realized I was a gorgon? No, I can’t. But knowing how you feel when you look at me, can you honestly say it’s hard to imagine that I have a harder time making friends than you do?”

“I suppose it really isn’t,” Lucinda said. “But… honestly, it feels kind of racist saying that.”

“Right,” Cetea said. “One human I met last year made a big deal about how she’s skinblind, as she put it. ‘I don’t see humans or gorgons or elves, I just see people.’ That’s a wonderful disorder for a human to have, but I can’t not be aware that I’m a gorgon surrounded by humans, and I’d rather have other people think about what that means than pretend it doesn’t matter.”

“Okay,” Lucinda said, scribbling on her notepad. “Um… I think that’s enough to work up a basic piece. I’ll probably quote you directly on that last, if you don’t mind, it was really good. Can I a-mail you if I have any follow-up questions?”

“Sure,” Cetea said. “I’d ask when this is going to go out, but you told me you don’t think it will.”

“Oh, I’m going to do something with it,” Lucinda said. “If it’s not in the Gazetteer, I’ll put it somewhere. I’ll cross that bridge when I get there, though. Thank you so much, Cetea,” she said, standing up. She started to hold out her hand, then raised it gave a little wave, which Cetea returned.

“You’re welcome,” Cetea said. “And just so you know we cover our eyes.”

“What?”

“When we’re greeting someone respectfully,” she said, lifting her hand and very slowly and putting it across her eyes, careful not to disturb the writhing snakes.

“Oh,” Lucinda said. “Do I do that back?”

“After I uncover mine,” Cetea said, doing so. One of the snake heads lunged for her hand and she pulled it out of the way. “That’s about the minimum polite time. You leave them covered longer when you’re greeting an important person, but they return the same.”

“Would it be an insult if they didn’t?”

“It would make them look foolish and petty, more than anything else.”

“This is good,” Lucinda said. “I know what my first question is going to be in my next interview.”

Discuss this story.

Lucinda hadn’t heard the door opening. The first indication she received that she was no longer alone in the office of The Gazetteer was when she looked up from her notebook and saw the black-skinned, cloaked figure standing in front of the desk at which she worked.

She yelped, her hand knocking over the soda she’d been reaching for. To her surprise, not only did the flimsy fast-food lid stay in place, but the drink righted itself.

“I apologize,” the white-haired dark elf said. She was smaller than Lucinda had pictured. She’d always known, intellectually, that a dark elf was first and foremost an elf, and that meant slim and petite, but it was strange to be face-to-face with one, cowl down, and realize how tiny they actually were. The voluminous cloak made her look a little more bulky, but there was no hiding her delicate facial features. “My name is Delia Daella. I am looking for somebody to speak with. It was my intention for my approach to not disturb you, but I did not mean to startle you, either.”

“‘Not to disturb’,” Lucinda said.

It was an automatic response. Her brain was recovering from the shock, and was starting to edge its way into fear. She was alone in the newsroom. The front of the room was all windows that overlooked the main hallway of the lower level of Harper Hall, but the blinds were closed.

Khersis damn it, why had Lance had to go and provoke the drow further with his stupid front page editorial?

“I beg your pardon?” the elf said.

Oh, shit. Did she hear what I just thought? Lucinda’s mind was reeling. She remembered that dark elves… particularly female ones… were supposed to have a higher incidence of telepathy than most races.

“You said ‘to not disturb’,” Lucinda said, choosing to react as though Delia Daella had been responding to what she’d said. “That’s a split infinitive.”

“I am afraid that I do not understand that term.”

“You can’t put a modifier in the middle of an infinitive phrase,” Lucinda said.

“Why ever not?”

“Because it splits it,” Lucinda said. “You see, the whole phrase denotes the unconjugated form of the verb.”

“I see. And?”

“And… it’s the rule,” Lucinda said.

“Why?”

“Um, because it’s like saying ‘disturb-not-ing’ instead of ‘not disturbing’,” Lucinda said.

“Except that it is not,” Delia Daella said. “‘To disturb’ is two separate words.”

“I just know what I was taught,” Lucinda said.

“I see. In my language, the infinitive form of a verb is a single word, so while I would hardly drop another word into the middle of it, I have a difficult time seeing the objection to placing an adverb alongside the word it actually modifies, as is the usual practice in Pax,” the elf said. “In any event, it’s not a matter I care to discuss at the moment. I came here for another purpose.”

“You’re here about the article,” Lucinda said. “Or articles. I’m afraid Kent and Lance aren’t here right now… would you like to come back later? Or I could have them get in touch with you?”

“You are here. I would speak with you.”

“I’m not the complaint department,” Lucinda said.

“Who are you, then?”

“Lucinda,” she said. “Lucinda Blake. I’m a reporter.”

“I am given to understand that it is your job to write people’s stories,” the elf said.

“Sometimes,” Lucinda said.

“Would you care to hear mine?”

“Uh… sure,” Lucinda said. She picked up her notebook and flipped through it until she found an empty section. “You want to tell your side of things?”

“I wish for people to understand why it is important to me that my name be rendered completely,” she said.

“Please, grab a seat,” Lucinda said. There wasn’t one on the other side of the desk she was using, but there were rolling chairs scattered around the room.

“Thank you,” the elf said, giving a small bow before she went to retrieve one. When she was settled comfortably in it, Lucinda began.

“So… I understand that you have a superstition about mothers and names?” she asked.

“That is an awfully loaded word.”

“I’m sorry. But that’s the gist of it?”

“I do not actually believe that my mother will die if I am not given my proper name,” she said. “No more than a human child is likely to believe that she truly will break her mother’s back if she steps on a crack.”

“Then why did you send the letter?” Lucinda asked. “Were you making a statement? Seeking attention?”

“I was… frightened,” Delia Daella said. “I do not believe that, consciously. However, this belief… as childish as it may be… is a feature of the society in which I was recently a child.”

“I guess I can understand how that might affect you,” Lucinda said. “You said your name is Delia Daella?”

“Yes.” She spelled the names out. “Though, those who are closest to me have long known me by the familiar name ‘Dee’. I offer its use to those who would think of me as a friend.”

“May I use it?” Lucinda asked.

“That is up to you.”

“Very well, then, Dee,” Lucinda said. “First off, though, the double name… the, uh, matronym. That means you’re a noblewoman?”

“The concept of ‘nobility’ is not an exact translation,” Dee said. “It means I am the firstborn of a woman of lineage. My family would likely be counted as ‘noble’ by most measures; however, my younger sisters are not entitled to use the matronym.”

“What are their names?”

“Duala and Deneira,” Dee said. “Though even their names proclaim their lineage. They are named in honor of Duala Deneira, our great-great-grandmother, who is the current matriarch.”

“How old are you?”

“In surface years, I am approximately thirty years old,” Dee said.

“I wouldn’t expect an elf, a nor…, I mean, one of the ones that lives up here… to have a pair of younger siblings at the age of thirty,” Lucinda said.

“It is not at all usual for us, either,” Dee said. “Ordinarily, a century or more would have been allowed to pass between the births, but my mother has sought… dispensations. It is her intention to bear a son. To my knowledge, she was set to try again shortly after I departed.”

“Wouldn’t she rather have daughters?”

“She has already discharged her duty to continue the line by bearing her first daughter,” Dee said. “Now she seeks to have a son to replace the one she lost… my older brother, who greeted the goddess shortly after he was born.”

“Oh?”

“He… passed away,” Dee clarified. “Nobody will speak of it, but she radiates terrible sadness when the subject is in her mind.”

“Do you have any idea what might make her feel that way?”

“I suspect the sudden loss of her infant son might have something to do with it,” Dee said.

“Sorry,” Lucinda said, blushing. “I’m sorry. My reporter’s instincts… I really want to dig at that, but of course, you don’t know yourself. You say he was your older brother, but you called yourself the ‘firstborn’?”

“Firstborn daughter,” Dee explained.

“So, sons don’t count?”

“For this purpose, no,” Dee said. “But I can assure you they count to their mothers.”

“I’m sorry,” Lucinda said. “But the impression I’ve always gotten from the literature is that your society, ah… undervalues… its men. Meaning absolutely no disrespect to your mother or your brother, this ‘firstborn’ business seems to support it.”

“Men and women exist in separate… tracks, I guess you might say. They are valued differently,” Dee said. “Like many things in our society, it goes back to the struggle for survival. Our race could repopulate itself in a single generation with a single male and many females, but it would take much longer to achieve the same were the proportions reversed. So, while military service is compulsory for all citizens, the men are the frontline fighters, and are more often tasked with dangerous jobs.”

“So, men are expendable?”

“I would not put it so bluntly,” Dee said. “We do not denigrate their accomplishments or their contributions to the group welfare. We honor and celebrate the sacrifices they make on our behalf.”

“How do they feel about their lot in life?”

“I think you would have to ask them, individually,” Dee said. “I cannot speak for them as a group. My impression, as one who is outside of their circle, is that they have a greater enjoyment of life. Outside of their military obligations, they have fewer responsibilities. They have less need to be concerned with the fitness of things.”

“It doesn’t sound as though they have many opportunities,” Lucinda said.

“Oh, but they do,” Dee said. “Our culture is… a structured meritocracy. My birth opens up to me the most prestigious positions within the house chapel. Though I still must be found fit to occupy them, other women who lack my advantages would not even be eligible for the tests. For men, the circumstances of birth is far less of a consideration, and any male soldier within the house guard may aspire towards promotion on the basis of his deeds and experience.”

“But on the other hand, you’re going to be matriarch someday.”

“If the goddess deems it so,” Dee said. “You have to remember that we are blessed with life until death. Our current matriarch outlived her own firstborn daughter and grand-daughter. By the time the question of the next matriarch is put before us, I may have grandchildren of my own, adding more possible heiresses to the line.”

“So, it doesn’t just go to the next in line?”

“No, as I said… a structured meritocracy. The potentials would discuss the matter among ourselves, and then present our recommendation to the priestesses of the house chapel. They—minus myself and any other claimants—would make the final decision, with the goddess’s blessing. Only in cases of a grave emergency would the matriarchy automatically fall upon the next oldest of the line, and that only temporarily.”

“So, you could be competing with your own mother for the crown,” Lucinda said.

“It is not a competition, and we do not wear crowns,” Dee said. “But, yes… assuming that she is still… she has not… that we are both…”

She stopped, trailing off, and lowered her head, her eyes closed. Lucinda didn’t say anything.

“I apologize,” Dee said. “It is very stressful for me. Though conflicting schedules have occasionally kept us apart for a span equal to several weeks, it has now been months since I have seen my mother, and it will be years before I return to her. The political situation was stable when I left, and there were no external crises looming, but I have no way of knowing if that is still the case, or how long the peace will last.”

“It’s okay,” Lucinda said. “Take your time.”

“This is why the initial piece was so very upsetting to me,” Dee said. “I do not feel that my response to it was out of proportion, or even unreasonable. For all the talk of ‘political correctness’ in the resulting editorial, it was a problem that could have been addressed with actual correctness.”

“Dee, I’m not in a position to talk about another reporter’s work, or the decisions of the editor,” Lucinda said.

“But surely, you can see that my response was not extraordinary,” Dee said. “To judge by the vulgar entertainments of a few decades back which are still replayed within your television boxes, it was not so long ago that an insult against one’s mother was the deadliest, most unforgivable of slights even among humans.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Lucinda said. “I tell you what, Dee, I think I’ve got the beginning of an article here, but if you’re not in a hurry, let’s get a little more background on you. Where do you come from, exactly?”

“The city of Durakesh, on the shores of Durakleh… or Lake Durak,” Dee said. “The house to which I belong, House d’Wyr, is situated within a rocky island projecting from the lake’s dark waters.”

“What does your house do?”

“Do?” Dee repeated.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know much about the economy of ‘down there’,” Lucinda said. “Do you have a business?”

“Like all the greater houses, we aid in the management and efficient rule of the city,” Dee said.

“Do you produce anything?”

“We provide elite troops for the common defense,” Dee said. “Our house wizards are available for hire, and our mental gifts are second to none. Everything that we have is available to the city at large, when the need is great.”

“What about food? Durable goods?”

“As a lake house, we own a stake in the output of the fishing fleets,” Dee said. “All great houses also share in the wealth brought from any mines operated from within the city, as well as the duties on trade.”

“So, it’s safe to say that you’re part of the upper class,” Lucinda said.

“No, I… yes. In your idiom, I would be,” Dee said. “But we are far from idle. Our society does not tolerate idleness. Those who do not, as you say, ‘produce’, are not expected to sit on their hands while the rest of the city feeds us. As I said, we are a house of highly skilled warriors, wizards, and more. While others toil in the mines or fungal clusters, we toil over our studies, perfecting our skills for when they are needed.”

“How about you? You don’t strike me as the wizard type.”

“I have been trained as a high priestess of Arakhis, and… unless she herself dictates another course for my life to take… will most likely become high priestess of the house chapel. While I am not likely to be found on the frontline of minor skirmishes, should full-scale war or some other disaster break out, priestesses such as myself will be expected to give our all alongside everybody else. Had my station not given me the privilege of decades of dedicated study, I would just be one more body to throw into battle.”

“So, in your mind, you’ve worked as hard as anybody?” Lucinda asked.

“I am in no position to judge how hard anybody else has worked,” Dee said. “I strive to work myself as hard as I am able to. Durakesh has known peace during my brief life, but as war is the eventuality most likely to end that life, it seems inevitable that I shall live to face it.”

“That sounds a little bleak.”

“It is realistic,” Dee said. “Surely, you must be aware of the inevitability of your own death.”

“Yeah, but… not every minute of every day,” Lucinda said.

“It is the same with me,” Dee said. “It is not given to anyone to know the hour of her own death. For whatever time I may have, I may take pleasure in the discharge of my duties, the love of my mother, and… the others whom I love.”

“How about your father?”

“We… do not track heritage patrilineally,” Dee said.

“You don’t know who your father is?” Lucinda asked.

“It might be better to say that I have no father,” Dee said. “The concept does not exist in my culture.”

“But, you know that somebody had to, uh, ‘lie with’ your mother, right?”

“We are not ignorant of the process,” Dee said.

“But you minimize the man’s part in it?”

“I cannot speak for the rest of my race, but I personally enjoy the man’s part immensely,” Dee said. “For as long as it lasts.”

“I… see,” Lucinda said. “I think.”

“In many cases, the male parent is known because the mother only has a single partner, but my mother’s sole consort is a woman, Durilla Degra. She only engages in sexual encounters with men when she has permission to ask for the blessing of motherhood.”

“She… only sleeps with men to get pregnant?” Lucinda asked.

“Yes,” Dee said. “She leaves it to Durilla Degra to choose her partners for the endeavor. There were, I think, five men she had judged to be suitable when I was conceived.”

“Do you have a relationship with any of them?”

“Two of them pursued me when I came of age, but my mother’s partners were chosen for their physical attributes, not their temperament,” Dee said. “To put it quite simply, none of them are my ‘type’.”

“Oh!” Lucinda said. “I meant… a fatherly relationship.”

“Again, that is a foreign concept to me,” Dee said. “My parents are my mother and Durilla Degra.”

“Durilla Degra is a firstborn, too?”

“No,” Dee said. “That would put her and my mother in the same line. While that’s not completely unheard of, it is rare. Their… marriage… allows her to use my mother’s matronym. I am allowed to address her without it, but as these remarks may be reproduced by your hand, I include it.”

“This is interesting,” Lucinda said. “So, if you had been interested, you might have had a physical relationship with your own father?”

“I tell you again, I do not have a father,” Dee said. “They are simply five male elves. They are all of older generations than myself, but as we do not age physically past the point of maturity, that is rarely seen as an obstacle.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to keep focusing on the lurid details…”

“I do not see them as lurid at all,” Dee said. “I just do not see the relevance. You asking me who my father is would be like me asking you who the high priestess of your house chapel is.”

“Okay, but, even if you don’t recognize the position, you do have a father,” Lucinda said.

“Who is your mother’s brother?” Dee asked.

“That would be my uncle,” Lucinda said. “If she had one.”

“And your father’s sister?”

“My aunt.”

“Do you suppose all cultures observe these concepts?”

“I guess I’ve never thought about it,” Lucinda said. “But even if they don’t, a mother’s brother is still a mother’s brother. He still has the same relationship to her children, even if they don’t have a name for it.”

“And what is the nature of that relationship, precisely?” Dee asked.

Lucinda didn’t have an answer for that.

“There are cultures on the surface of this world which would not recognize either or both of those kinships,” Dee said. “Wherein, if a man’s sister marries and has children, they are nothing to him, because in marrying she has severed one set of bonds and forged another. Would you take it upon yourself to tell these people that they are wrong, that some chain of obligation exists between the man and his sister’s children?”

“Well, no, I suppose not,” Lucinda said. “But… a father’s different.”

“I suppose it must seem that way, to you,” Dee said. “I apologize. We are getting off track.”

“Okay, yeah,” Lucinda said. “You mentioned others who love you. Did you mean, uh, your mother’s consort?”

“I’m sure that Durilla Degra does love me, in her own way,” Dee said. “She loves my mother and I am of my mother.”

“If I’ve followed right… and please, forgive me if I haven’t… but your mother’s name is Daella Degra?” Lucinda asked.

“Yes, that is correct.”

“Is there anybody else, though? Any ‘special someone’?”

“There are a few people who are special to me, yes,” Dee said.

“Okay. If you could talk to your family… your loved ones… right now, what would you say to them?” Lucinda asked.

“That I love them very much,” Dee said. “That I include them in my prayers. That I miss them. I think about them often. That… that I am sorry I had to leave them, and I will be back as soon as I can.”

“Why did you leave them?”

“I needed something I could not find in the underlands.”

“What’s that?” Lucinda asked.

“I do not know.”

“If we can talk just a little bit more about your pers…”

The door to the newsroom opened. Lucinda looked up to see the freckled face of Lance Cedar, the senior editor, staring at her with a look of mingled shock and outrage.

“Hey, Lance,” she said, trying not to look guilty when she had nothing to feel guilty about. “I’m just wrapping up an interview. I can take it to the filing room, if you’ve got…”

“What the hell is this?” Lance asked.

“Miss Delia Daella here wanted to set the…”

“I thought I made it clear that we’re not letting any special interest groups dictate our coverage to us,” he said.

“I must be a very special interest group, indeed, to consist of a single soul,” Dee said, getting to her feet and giving the man a shallow bow.

“Nobody’s dictating anything,” Lucinda said. “I’ll write a balanced article, showing her concerns…”

“You can write whatever you want,” Lance said. “But it’s not going in the paper. We’ve already made our position clear.”

“What the hell, Lance?” Lucinda said. “You print any shit the guys bring you, including that horrible, un-proofread…”

“Hey, we don’t air laundry in front of outsiders,” Lance said. “And if our standards have been a little lax in the past, maybe it’s time to tighten them up… starting right here, right now.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Cedar,” Dee said, interjecting with a courteous inclination of her head. “Am I to understand that you have no intention of running any piece that includes my views or the background behind them, whatsoever?”

“You got that right,” Lance said. “We are an independent publication, and we do not give into terrorism.”

“And it could probably go without saying that you have no intention of issuing a correction, retraction, or apology?” Dee asked.

“It won’t go without saying,” Lance said. “I’ll say it: no, no, no. Clear enough for you?”

“I see,” Dee said. She turned towards Lucinda and bowed. “Thank you for listening to me. I apologize for wasting your lunchtime.”

“I didn’t waste anything,” Lucinda said. “I’m still going to write the article, and I’ll put it up on the weave with a foreword explaining…”

“You can’t do that,” Lance said. “That’s a total conflict of interest.”

“What with? You don’t exactly have an exclusive contract for me,” Lucinda said. “We didn’t sign any non-competitive agreements.”

“Yeah, well… maybe it’s time to review more of our policies.”

“Please excuse me,” Dee said, turning for the door. “It sounds as though the two of you have much to discuss.”

“Look at that,” Lance said, watching her disappear through the door. “She talks tough, but…”

“What do you mean, talks tough? She asked for an apology,” Lucinda said.

“It’s not what she said, it’s how she said it.”

“How’s that? In writing?” Lucinda asked.

“The point is, I called her little bluff and she folded,” Lance said. “She met a little resistance, and she gave up completely.”

“Yeah, somehow, I don’t think that’s what she was doing,” Lucinda said. “I think when you look back on this, you’re going to realize she was giving us… giving you… a chance to make things right.”

“Oh, yeah,” Lance said. “Before she busts in here with her scimitars…”

“Oh, come on,” Lucinda said. “They don’t all use scimitars. Even I know that’s a myth. Anyway, what are you even doing here? I come in here over lunch so I have a chance to get some work done, alone.”

“Yeah, I see that,” Lance said. “It’s a great time for going behind my back. If you must know, I was going to meet Julie here to talk about giving her senate beat to Angstrom, permanently.”

“What? She’s been on that for two years,” Lucinda said.

“And she’s never turned in anything like Angstrom’s piece yesterday.”

“That piece of fluff? I can’t believe…”

She stopped as the door opened and Julie came in.

“Ah, good!” Lance said. “Julie, come over here. I wanted to talk to you about…”

“This is a bunch of bullshit,” Lucinda said, interrupting him. “Julie, I want you to know I have nothing to do with this.”

“With what?” Julie asked. “The naked dark elf setting up signs in the hallway?”