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.

It had to be one of the biggest and most crowded residence halls on campus, but it also seemed like it would be one of the most private. You could actually open your door up without worrying about the person across the hall looking in.

There was a good sized lounge in the middle of the floor, bisected diagonally by a hallway. The two halves were not quite completely separated, as the walls between them had big cutout windows and counters. The lounges were definitely in use… they had dimmer lights, which were low on one side where people were sitting and talking in quietly, and completely off in the other, where people weren’t talking as much but it was noisier.

No one was naked in the dark half, but the people who were in there weren’t letting that stop them from much… some of them were just making out, but a guy sitting on a weird solid block coffee table thing had a girl on his lap, riding up and down on his dick. Another girl was going down on a guy in a corner. I saw two guys getting handjobs. Some of the couples who were really involved with each other might have been doing more.

Even spread out in a big lounge, it seemed weird to me that everyone was so uninhibited… it was dark, but not so dark that anyone couldn’t see what they
were all doing. Were they all exhibitionists? Or just really, really drunk? Or was it something about it being Veil?

“Where’s the resident advisor?” I asked rhetorically.

“Nobody likes a tattletale, Mackenzie,” Ian said.

“I wasn’t going to tell, I was just wondering why nobody’s doing anything about all this,” I said.

“It’s Friday night, there’s a party downstairs,” Ian said. “There are probably like two of them on duty, and they’re probably making a point of not caring what happens with all the visitors in their dorm.” He put an arm around me and started to draw me into the lighter dorm. “Come on, let’s go sit down.”

There were people talking in private tones, and some people were making out in the light half of the lounge, though not with the same abandon as the pairs in the darkness. There were beer cans scattered around, and I saw no less than three cubes, one of which was empty.

“Looks like somebody got a confidence boost,” Ian said quietly, nudging me in the elbow. Semele, her skin kind of stained an ugly yellow, was in the corner, having a big sloppy face-eating contest with a kind of stout looking girl with chestnut hair. “Once you’ve conquered a nymph and a drunken skank in the same night, where do you go from there? What’s the trifecta?”

“Okay, now who’s being judgmental?” I asked him.

“Hey, I was getting on you for judging people by association,” he said. “I’m just saying what I see.”

“You’re not calling that girl a skank just because she’s making out with Semele?”

“No, I’m pretty sure it could be anyone,” he said. “That’s kind of the point.”

“I don’t think I like the idea of assuming that a girl kissing another girl is a ‘skank’,” I said.

“No, you’re right,” he said. “A girl who’s snowdrifted in with empty beer cans clumsily sucking face with a total stranger is definitely a lady of class.”

“You don’t know that they’re strangers,” I said.

“Right, they’re probably in a deeply committed relationship.”

“I’m just saying, you’re jumping to conclusions,” I said, and maybe I was a little too happy about it, but it was true. He was. “It’s not just me who does that. I’d think you’d know better, considering what happened when we first met.”

“Yeah, I was way off the mark there,” he said. “I mean, by at least a week.”

Before I could come up with what would probably have been a clever and biting retort, the human girl pushed Semele away hard enough that she fell off the edge of the sofa, leaving her with a look on her face like a kitten that just got shut out in the cold.

“Oh, my kosh, you’re kind of adorable but you’re also gross,” she said. “Your mouth tastes like lawn clippings and paint!” She laughed, then turned and looked at a really tan girl with really fake looking burgundy hair. “Oh my kosh, did you see that? I just totally made out with the elf-spazz.”

“I know, I saw!” her friend said. “That was hilarious!”

“You should make out with someone next,” the brunette said. She turned and looked around the lounge, her eyes stopping and focusing in my general direction. “Oh, it’s the demon spazz! You should go make out with her!”

“No way!”

“Tell her… tell her you think she’s pretty!” the brunette said, and they both laughed.

“You know, we can hear you,” I said.

“Oh my kosh, she can hear me!” the brunette said.

“Let’s go find somewhere… quieter,” Ian said.

“Hey, man, they’re playing some kind of games upstairs,” one of the spectators said. “If you’re looking for something a little tamer. Can’t take drinks up there, though, or we’ll all get busted.”

“Thanks,” Ian said.

“What was that?” I asked him as we left.

“What?”

“That guy just telling you that,” I said. “Did you know him?”

“Don’t think so,” Ian said. “Did you know that girl?”

“Never seen her before in my life,” I said. “Either one of them.”

“Well, I’d assume the guy was just trying to be helpful,” Ian said. “In a minimal, not-being-a-complete-dick kind of way. It happens.”

We found the stairs going up… none of the stairs in the tower seemed to run for more than a single floor… and found that the next floor up was similar to the first, in terms of being generally confusing. They didn’t seem to conform to the same specific plan, though.

The lounge seemed to be in the same general space, but instead of a rectangle cut into two long triangles, it was an oval with doors at either end.

Moeli had beaten us upstairs… he was sitting in a corner, surrounded by a small group of human girls who were listening to him drone on about fantasy stuff.

“…call it a ‘chained saw’, but that’s actually a misnomer,” he said. “It’s not saws that are chained together. It’s a chain that functions as a saw. The basic idea would work, but it would be hard to do with magic since a chain and a saw are fundamentally different items with different functions.”

He sounded like an obnoxious know-it-all… they were make believe. What did it matter if someone thought “chained saw” sounded cooler? I thought it did.

The furniture in this lounge was kind of mismatched. There were sectional couches along the curving walls, but even though they all fit the curvature, they looked like they’d come from different sets. The middle of one side of the room had a big kitchenette with counters and cupboards that also curved. There were more tables on that side, include a tall octagonal one with stools around it. Four people were sitting at it, playing a miniature-based war game like the one Shiel did… actually, it could have been the same game. Two guys were sitting at two sides that were at corners to each other. There was an empty space across from one of them where someone else was obviously playing, as it had cards and dice in front of it.

Opposite the other guy was a big… as in, really kind of hefty looking… girl wearing a hat that had cat ears, with whiskers drawn on her face in markers. That seemed to be the extent of her costume.

Sitting perched on a stool at the edge of her side was another girl dressed as an honest-to-goodness fairy princess, complete with a gossamer wings on her back and a kind of understated point to her ears. Her dress was very short and ruffled, kind of like what a pixie cocktail waitress might wear, if such things existed.

Her hair was kind of short, but wisped up in a cute way and with a silver tiara that set off her face kind of nicely. It went well with a strand of silver chain that she wore around her neck, decorated with some kind of jangly hoops. It was an interesting necklace… unconventional-looking, but kind of neat.

She was sitting a little uncomfortably on the stool, smoothing her skirt down to cover as much of her thighs as possible. I had to admit she had nice legs, for someone so skinny.

“How much longer do I have to wear this, Mar?” she asked her companion, and I remembered where I’d seen the bigger girl: she’d been using the game room when it was time for Two’s party. “If we’re not even going to go down to the party…”

“Oh, do you want to go to the party?” the other girl asked, not taking her eyes off the map.

“No!” the fairy girl said. “I’m just saying, there’s no point in wearing the costume…”

“You lost the bet,” the cat girl said. “Your ass is mine.”

Ian was staring at the skinny girl in a way I didn’t like at all… I didn’t want to be jealous, but he seemed way too happy to see her. Okay, “slutty fairy” was probably one of the old standby male fantasy fulfillment costumes… for some reason… but he had at his side a slutty barbarian, showing a lot more flesh.

“Hey, where’s your little boyfriend?” Ian asked her.

“Right here,” the girl called Mar said. “Good costume, isn’t it? I swear didn’t recognize myself. I caught sight of myself while I was getting ready and almost called out the campus guard for a burglar.”

“Don’t say a fucking word,” the fairy girl said to Ian. “Not one fucking word.”

“What is this, your ex?” I asked Ian.

“What, are you serious?” Ian said.

“Yeah, I’m serious,” I said. “What’s going on here? Obviously you know each other…”

“We’ve bumped into each other,” Ian said. “Amy, right?”

“Jamie,” the girl said.

“Remember the penalty clause,” Mar said to her.

“If he says something, it doesn’t count,” Jamie said.

“Funny, I don’t remember putting any conditions on that,” Mar said.

“Don’t say a fucking word,” Jamie said to Ian. “I will kill you. I will kill you and I will make a fortune and donate it to a temple so they’ll resurrect you and I can kill you again.”

“Oh, this is hilarious,” Ian said. “Mackenzie, do you have your mirror? I want a picture.”

“Where exactly do you think I’d be hiding a mirror?” I said.

“Probably in the back,” Mar said. “Looks roomier.”

“Don’t start,” I said.

“I haven’t yet,” she said.

“You really haven’t,” one of the guys on the other end of the table said. “What are you waiting for? It’s been your turn for fifteen minutes.”

“I couldn’t possibly move until Shiel gets back,” Mar said. “I wouldn’t want her to miss this.”

“Just go!” another guy said.

“Her turn is after mine, so I’d be hurrying up just so you can wait,” Mar said. “If she’s not back in five minutes, Fifi the Fairy Princess will dance for your amusement.”

“I’m not dancing,” Jamie said.

Shiel came hurrying into the room a couple minutes after that.

“This place is a maze,” she said. “And I say that as someone who grew up in a mining warren. So, is it to me?”

“It’s about to be,” Mar said. She started picking up the cards that were laying down in front of her and putting them down face up. “Spatial bridge,” she read. “Planar conjunction. Planar disjunction. Incendiary weapons. Forceful attack.”

“What the fuck?” Shiel said.

“If you gentlemen would be so kind as to help move the rest of my army up onto the ridges overlooking Shiel’s little valley fortress…” Mar said. The two guys started moving a bunch of the miniatures up in a semicircle around some of the others. Jamie helped them. “I’m not fussed as to who goes where… just try to achieve an even distribution,” Mar said as they finished. “Now, that’s my casting phase. It turns out I don’t actually need a movement phase, so… I guess that means… I attack now?”

“How the fuck did you pull that off?” Shiel asked. “I’ve never seen anybody blow five greater spells at a time.”

“Now you know why I kept holding onto them. I don’t know as much as you do about military strategy or tactics or little tiny rock people,” Mar said, “but I do know something about putting together a winning hand. Ask Fifi here.” She tilted her head to the side. “Should I roll for damage now?”

“I concede,” Shiel said.

“What was that? I didn’t quite catch it.”

“I concede!” Shiel said. “I give up. No need to roll.”

“Dude,” one of the guys said. “Dude.”

“Nobody’s beaten Shiel before,” the other one said.

“Yeah, well, you all play the way she taught you,” Mar said. “And she doesn’t pay attention to every aspect of the game. I’m not going to beat you guys unless you’re stupid… I lost too many men in the war of attrition with her while I was marshalling my magic, and now I’ve spent that.”

“So you’re giving up, too?” one of the guys said.

“No,” Marlot said. “Just making an observation. Anyway, I haven’t ruled out you being stupid. Anyway, our bet wasn’t that I’d win, it was that I’d beat Shiel.”

“Yeah, but we only agreed because it’s pretty much the same thing,” the other guy said.

“Except we’ve just established that it isn’t,” Marlot said. “It’s okay, we don’t have to settle up now. You’ve got to the rest of the game to come to terms with it.”

There was kind of a tense vibe at the table, which didn’t seem to concern Mar at all, but it made me very uncomfortable by proxy. I wandered away from the game, and Ian followed. He was snickering over something.

“What’s so funny?” I asked him.

“I’ll tell you later,” he said.

“Why not now?”

“Because it’s probably worse to keep… oh, anyway, it’s not like there’s nothing you’re waiting to tell me,” he said.

“Hey, guys,” Moeli said, waving a big hand at us. “What are you up to?”

“Just hanging out,” Ian said.

“Oh, cool,” Moeli said. “So you’re into motorcycles and stuff?” he asked me.

“Yeah, kind of,” I said. “I mean, I used to spend a lot of time on the ethernet at school, before I came here.”

“What sites?”

“Mostly fan fic and roleplaying tapestries,” I said. I felt awkward talking about my ethernet activities in real life, in front of a bunch of people I didn’t know, but I felt it would have been rude not to answer.

“Oh,” Moeli said. It was hard to tell if he was unimpressed or if it was just his normal somewhat muted reaction. “You ever go to the Garage?”

“Which one?” I asked. “The Garage” had to be the most common nickname for mechanic-themed sites. As soon as I asked, I kind of regretted it, because it just meant the conversation was going to keep going.

“T-Lou’s,” he said. “Part of the Fantasy Lovers weavesite.”

“No,” I said. “Never went there.”

“It’s kind of a big deal in fandom,” he said. “How about the Basement? Good people there.”

“Yeah, I think we must just have moved in different circles,” I said.

“Probably,” he said. “I never really cared for most fan fiction.”

“Yeah, that explains it,” I said. Could this conversation get any more fun?

“It’s been good talking to you, but I think we need to go sit down,” Ian said to Moeli, pulling me towards a couch.

“What was that about?” I asked him when we were sitting down halfway across the room.

“You didn’t want to stand there talking to him, so I got you away,” he said.

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“It was either that or wait to die of old age for you to walk away on your own,” he said. “Actually, though, you probably would have said something to piss him off and end the conversation before then.”

“That’s not exactly fair,” I said. “It’s… not exactly untrue, either, but that doesn’t mean it’s fair.”

“Hey… you know I like you, Mackenzie,” he said. “But you’ve got…”

“Issues,” I said. “Yeah. That’s why we’re going out next week, right? So I can get some socializing in.”

“You were just socializing,” he said.

“With someone I have just enough in common with to not have any common ground,” I said. “What was I supposed to do?”

“It might have been a good time to learn to gracefully disengage,” Ian said. “I mean, you knew what you wanted to do… I could see it on your face. But you wouldn’t. You usually wait for something to happen… for a conversation to end, for someone to solve your problem, whatever. You don’t do much.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked him. “I have done an incredible amount of shit in the school year so far, and it’s just getting started.”

“No, you’ve had an incredible amount of shit happen to you,” Ian said. “And don’t get me wrong, I sympathize with you for that. But you’re not exactly… pro-active… about a lot of stuff. You don’t initiate things.”

“I initiated things with you,” I said. “Physically.”

“All on your own?”

“Okay, point,” I said. “But… I’m not like some apathetic blob that’s just hanging around waiting for things to happen. I ran for the student senate.”

“All on your own?” he repeated.

“I do stuff,” I said. “I do.”

“How many times have you gone into town on your own?” he asked.

“It’s more fun with friends,” I said. “Since I finally have friends, I’d rather go with them.”

“Maybe I’m way off base,” he said. “I realize we don’t spend all our time together, so maybe I’ve picked up the wrong idea somewhere. It’s just… do you know why I really don’t want to just follow in my dad’s footsteps? Why I tried the thing with the band…”

“You gave up the band?”

“I’m in the process of trying it, I guess I should say,” he said. “Like I’m in the process of trying the gladiator thing. It’s because I want to do something, something that feels like it matters.”

“I do stuff for racial awareness,” I said.

“What do you do?” he asked. “When an issue falls on you and you get mad enough, you take a couple swings at it, and then you forget about it.”

“Well maybe that’s just me,” I said, feeling defensive. “Maybe I’m just naturally boring. Is that what you’re saying?”

“You’re not boring,” Ian said. “You’re anything but boring. Mackenzie, you’re… you’re amazing, honestly.”

I laughed.

“You don’t sound like you’re talking to somebody amazing,” I said.

“Okay, well, I’m talking to somebody who could be amazing,” he said. “If you tried… and I don’t mean just one time and then giving up, I mean a… a… concerted try, a repeated and sustained try…”

“How can I repeat it if I’m sustaining it? That doesn’t even make any…”

“Okay, that’s one thing you do do,” he said. “You’re very pro-active about knocking serious discussions off the path by throwing up meaningless semantic objections.”

“I wanted to go to the dance,” I said. “I was excited about that.”

“So excited you waited until I picked something out for you to wear,” Ian said.

“That’s not true,” I said. “I just didn’t think of anything better. Couldn’t, I mean. It’s not that I didn’t give the matter any thought…”

“But at what point did it become a priority for you to actually do something about it?” Ian asked. “Look, Mackenzie… this whole thing of us going out and doing an ‘activity’ or whatever… it’s not going to help. Not on its own. I can lead you to water, and all that. You’ve got to honestly want to change, you’ve got to try. I’m trying things… I’ve tried so many new things since I’ve come here…”

“Yeah, I’ve done one or two myself,” I said. “Don’t overstate the case.”

“Okay, you’ve got a point,” he said. “But I believe that you know what I mean. You do, don’t you?”

I sighed. The thing of it was, he was right… I did know what he meant. It did seem like I’d been going around in circles, beating my head against the same walls, making resolutions and then stopping when I found the same barriers in my path. I’d made progress… I honestly believed that I had, and I wanted him to acknowledge that… but how far had I really come?

“Before I answer… you don’t think I’m hopeless, do you?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “My hand to Kh… my heart, I wouldn’t be having this conversation with you if I thought you were hopeless. And, to be fair, you do make some progress.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I just want to know… I don’t need like a promise or anything… but I just want you to tell me that you’re going to try a little bit harder, that things are going to be a little different from here on out. I’ll do what I can to help you, but I can’t do more than help. It’s got to be you, Mackenzie. You’re going to have to do this.”

I nodded.

“Okay,” I said. “You’re right. And tomorrow, I’m going to be laying some stuff out on the table, and if you think I’m the most stupid, selfish, thoughtless person in the world when you hear it, I won’t be mad if you walk away.” I was talking without thinking, but the words sounded right. It was time to start coming clean, before I acquired an even bigger logjam of secrets that would result in an even more devastating flood if the dam ever broke.

“What if I already think that?” he asked.

“I’m serious,” I said. Tears were filling my eyes, but despite the fact that I was talking about him leaving me, it wasn’t because I was sad. It was more just rising emotion that was squeezing them out of me. Fear, insecurity, and a small amount of triumph… and maybe it was the triumph that was making the difference. A little triumph could be a big thing. “No blame, no anger. If you stay… things are going to be different. They’re going to have to be. I’ll never make it through the rest of the semester if I keep going like this.”

“Hey,” Ian said, touching my cheek with the back of his hand. “You’ll make it. You’re strong.”

“I have strong friends,” I said. “I have people who are willing to support me, to put up with shit and prop me up when I’m falling. I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t have gotten this far without you, without them.”

“I’m happy to,” Ian said. “Most of the time… the times I’m not? Well, the rest of the time makes up for it. I wouldn’t be here if it didn’t.”

“Thanks,” I said. I sniffled a little. “Thank you, Ian… for putting up with me so far, if nothing else. Even if you can’t help me any more, it means a lot to me.”

“Hey, you’re not a charity case…it’s not like I don’t get anything out of it,” he said. “Sex aside… and I’m not going to lie, that is a factor… you’re nothing if not entertaining. Except when you’re painfully uncomfortable to be around, or devastatingly clever…”

“I’m devastatingly clever?” I said.

“Sometimes,” he said. “Probably not as often as you think.”

I blinked a couple times, and then laughed.

“Thank you,” I said. “Do you want to get out of here?”

“You mean go back to the dance?”

“If you want to,” I said. “But I think I got what I came here for.”

He looked at me, long and hard, and then he said, “Yeah, okay. Let’s go.”

We met Two and her friend Hazel coming into the oval lounge as we were going, and appropriate greetings were exchanged. Hazel was talking about someone.

“…be drunk as a skunk in no time flat,” she said.

Two laughed at that.

“It’s funny because skunks don’t drink beer,” she said.

“Yeah, it’s a laugh riot,” Hazel said dourly.

Ian and I picked up our pace to avoid eavesdropping, but we weren’t quite around the corner when Two said, very loudly and clearly, “That girl has a penis like Steff’s!”

“Fuck!” Jamie yelled, and Ian laughed.

“It’s a good night,” he said. “Happy Veil.”

“Happy Veil.”