The Industrial Elf Ch. 05

He held out his hand, and after a second, Aggie grasped it to shake, since they were so formal now, she said. "Is there anything that I can do for you? I think that I have misjudged you badly and I'd like a chance to fix my mistake."

"Well there is, Aggie, but I'm not sure if it would be worth your time. I have this sense that you're not really up for it, but I could use a guide to poke around out here. I don't always want to stay covered in grease underneath this thing, and I thought that while I'm here, I'd like to see the sights a little."

He pointed to the sidecar rig on the trailer. "Either you or Donna could give me the guided tour. I can even take you both along, one in the sidecar and one on the seat behind me."

He enjoyed the moment where she looked slightly horrified. It was actually why he'd made the offer. He didn't think that she'd take him up on it.

"You can do that?" she asked, "the streets here are in terrible shape, and the countryside is pretty rough. You'll get stuck, won't you?"

"No," he shook his head, "I'm not looking to bounce around hard. This thing's got two wheel drive, the rear wheel, like any motorcycle, and the sidecar wheel can be engaged as well if it gets rough. The original design was for a military purpose a long time ago. They still make these, and I love it."

There was a pause as she stared at the rig, and then Aggie looked over, "Could we do this tomorrow? I have to help Donna with supper soon. It wouldn't leave us much time."

He nodded, delighted, "Sure, but I would have bet a lot of money if I was a gambling man that you'd have declined."

"You are surprised then?" She seemed a little surprised herself. It was the first time that he'd seen Aggie smile at him. She was such a beautiful woman. They both were, he thought.

"Donna has always told me that I should enjoy things more. I know that she is right, but I have such trouble." She looked at Jack cautiously, "I'm not sure how to say this, but I think that I should. I will go with you. I want to say that you should not feel ... hopeful with me for anything other than this, and..." Aggie looked as though she wanted to hide under his boot in her discomfort.

"You don't need to tell me the rest, Aggie. That wasn't really why I was asking," he said. "I really do want one or both of you as a tour guide, though I could probably manage alone. If you're up for it, I'm happy about that, and I don't mind waiting until tomorrow. But you ought to dress for it. Jeans would be better than a pretty dress like that."

Aggie nodded and walked away smiling a little, but it was clear to him that she was nervous about it. Jack didn't care. He started whistling as he got back to work.

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The evening meal was still cautious, but it was an improvement. Donna asked Jack what getting the internet service would entail and as he outlined it, he could see that Aggie sat with a bit of interest now and no hostility toward him. Tony had declined to have supper.

"So you need to take some pictures of the area, and then a few of what you'd consider to be attractions and points of interest, like the mine headstocks and things like that. Get at least one of the house from the front because it's very attractive, the way that you've done it up. The internet service provider usually will have somebody who can help with that."

Jack thought for a moment. "You have to have your phone number displayed prominently, and your email address, so that people can make reservations ahead of time. I'm sure that would help you with your business." It had taken a long time to explain the internet to them both.

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It was well after dark when he walked to the glade by the stream. He sat on the ground, leaning with his back against an ancient willow not all that close to the stream itself where the long thin branches would provide him some cover.

He had something that he wanted to do for himself since there was this place here, but he wanted to be sure that he was alone first, so he waited.

Not long after, they came. He wasn't surprised.

Jack stayed still, looking off through a gap in the branches toward the moonlit mountains as they sat and talked quietly on the bank forty feet behind him. Jack left quietly and walked alone in the moonlight for a time. It was a little under an hour before he looked and noticed that they'd gone. He went back to the stream bank and waited for perhaps ten minutes more before he began his ritual.

He took off his clothes and stepped to the stream. He bathed slowly and carefully, since it was a religious rite as much as a desire to actually cleanse his body. A few minutes into it, he noticed the small ripples in the moonlight reflected from the water that he could see between the bullrushes, but by then he'd begun and wouldn't stop unless he was actually disturbed.

He didn't much care anymore. It had been a long time since he'd found a place where he could worship in the moonlight, and this one would do.

He stepped out of the stream and walked to the tree where he'd sat the day before and stopped where he had a clear view of the moon. Turning to face it, he knelt and placed his forehead against the earth there beginning to pray in the tongue of his people.

He thought of his long life and the passage of the time. He thought about his princess, how she'd gone to find others of their kind, leaving him in charge of the small clan. He remembered the sadness on the faces of the others as they'd left to begin their journey to the west while he remained behind for centuries waiting for her to return, waiting for one who would never come back to him.

When he looked up, his silent tears had begun as they always did. Elves normally don't cry, but he did when he worshiped, a little, anyway. He thought about the human woman that he'd loved and how deep that love had been, though her human life passed him so quickly. His thoughts turned to the elf woman who had come at last with news of his princess' death long before.

Jack remembered how it had felt to have the love of one of his kind for a time. But for all of that, she'd done what was unthinkable to his own people. She'd ended it once they'd found her clan in the mountains, being drawn to them rather than wanting him, since he was of a different type. He remembered her statement about wanting to have her own kind around her again.

Though he was what they were, he was still an outsider and the differences were obvious.

It was the way of his people to have a number of small loves when young, but to make the final selection only once. What he'd been through was not the way of his own clan. No matter what the cause had been, each parting was as the death of the most important one in his life. Once was enough. The loss of Madeleine had felt like a grievous wound to him.

When Illmare had come to him to speak of how she felt toward an elf that she'd known as a child, he'd looked at her and asked her if she was certain. When she'd nodded, he'd wished them well.

She'd asked him what he would do then, and he'd only said that he'd travel to seek his own kind. Illmare had then asked that he stay with her clan, mentioning the names of several who would have wanted him. He'd smiled, and refused as politely as he could. Polite refusals between elves can take a long time, he thought back.

A week later, he was on the road, and he'd been traveling ever since.

Mostly, he was cold inside, but whenever he found a time and place to worship, he felt the pain rise in him anew every time to some extent. It did help him, and that was one of the reasons that he did it. He sat up and felt his tears again as he spoke his quiet prayers to the moon and the stars. Finally, he bowed his head to the earth again.

When he knelt back and stood, she was there not far off. He'd felt her presence before he'd seen the ripples.

He looked at her, and wondered how anything with this sort of beauty could have come to be here. She stood in the stream, long and a little dark, with her arms down at her slender sides. He noted the black hair down her back from what he could see of it, and how her long legs looked different from about the knees down.

The breasts that he could make out in the shadow of the moonlight were little more than swells in her shape and her arms would be long for a human, but on her, they seemed to fit, though they ended in long claws.

Jack noted that one or two of them twitched a little, as though she was deciding something. The motions caused his eye to remain for a second, and it was then that he saw the end of the short tail with long hair similar to what he'd seen on horses sometimes though the tail itself was longer.

It came to him that the tail wasn't all that short -- it only looked to be because of the hair that covered it -- and he could see that it moved, though not in the way that say, a horse's or a dog's tail might. Her tail was prehensile to a degree, or at least it appeared to be to him.

He looked at the face, as lovely to him as the rest of her, but her eyes appeared to be set a little far apart, though not excessively so. He'd seen humans like that, he realized. It took nothing away from her as he looked at the teeth there, not quite hidden.

She stepped forward cautiously onto the bank, and he saw the short feet with their own claws and realized why her legs had looked different. The nearest feet that he'd seen like that were on a mock-up of a dinosaur in a museum. Three large clawed toes at the front, and one clawed toe at the back. It gave her a rather graceful appearance in her stature, as though she was on her tiptoes.

They stared at each other for several minutes, only breathing.

She went to the pile of his clothes as though drawn to something and, pushing them aside carefully a little with one foot, she saw the haft of his sword. Her eyes opened wide and she jumped back a bit with something like a quiet rumble in her throat.

"Why?"

It was a bit raspy, he thought, or just a little smoky. He supposed that he might have been astounded at her ability to speak with him, but he wasn't, really. She was obviously very intelligent and anyway, he'd already heard her speak - just not very often.

"It is a part of what I do now," he said, "One who makes their observance must lay down their weapons before beginning. I had to have a weapon with me to lay down. It can be my dagger or my bow as well. Tonight, I chose that."

It seemed to pacify her to a degree. "Hah," she nodded quietly in understanding, "Not for me."

He shook his head, "No."

The eyes went back to the way they'd looked before, very similar to a cat's visage. What he'd seen before had looked human, but now he knew that it was only a disguise of sorts. She was hiding nothing here, and that included her eyes. He watched as her irises widened and narrowed, depending on the brightness of what she was looking at.

He asked his question very quietly. "Does she know that you're not human?"

He saw no surprise or shame in the gaze that she returned. She nodded again and made the short and quiet sound, "Hah."

He realized that from her it signaled understanding or agreement. In this case, it seemed to be an affirmative response from her.

She cautiously stepped over to him, very close now. It was obvious to him that she expected him to back away in fear of her or at the worst, to jump in fright. He did neither, and he could see that it made her very curious.

She reached up slowly with those claws. "Is it permitted?"

He looked at that face, glancing from the teeth to the hair. His eyes settled on her nose and then stopped at those eyes again, the vertical slits there open fairly wide in the darkness.

He shrugged a little, "Yes."

The answer seemed to surprise her for a moment, and then he saw her lips pull back into a soft smile. Her own fingertips ended a couple of inches behind the tips of her claws, but as her hand came up, he saw them retract, and she lightly ran her fingers up his long ear.

"You are not human either," she said, nodding once, "and now I know why you always wear a hat."

Deciding to test him playfully, she ran her fingers through his long blonde hair and then rested her hand on his shoulder. He watched as the end of her long tail rose to appear in the air there beside her. As it stopped, he saw the sharp end of a stinger extend slowly from the tip, about three inches long and pointed at him.

She raised her other hand to rest it over his heart for a moment. She looked a little bit surprised at what she felt there as well.

"You are not afraid," she remarked as she watched his hand come toward her. She hesitated for an instant, but then stood still to allow it. He reached to her face to lightly touch the skin of her cheek and then he brought his hand down to rest over her heart for a second. He felt tension there, but it eased off quickly.

"No," he said, pulling his hand away slowly, "I am not afraid. I am in wonder of you. I have never seen anyone like you."

He smiled, "I hope that you don't mind, but I feel very fortunate that I have."

The statement caused her to smile a little more, though her wonder was still evident. "I knew that you were there behind the tree at first. I felt it and knew that you had gone after a time." She said it plainly, as though it was a fact beyond dispute.

"It is hard for me to feel you near me, "she said, "not like the humans. I feel them easily from far. Even here with you, I have to feel very carefully to sense you. To know that you were here before took a long time."

He looked into the questioning eyes and nodded, "I was not there to intrude or to watch. I waited only for you to leave so that I could do this. I require water for this, enough running water to bathe under the moon. I knew that you came back. I thought that if I had waited for you, then you might wait for me to finish as well." He nodded a little once, "Thank you."

"I thought so," she remarked, sliding her hand down to lay her palm against his hip, her long clawed fingers curling around the side of him a little. "I feel no wish in you to harm anything. It is very different. I wanted to talk with you like this, though if you had shown fear I was ready to kill you."

It was another statement which she made as though it was irrefutable. "It would make me sad," she said as the stinger in her tail was retracted. "I have enough to feel sad over." Her tail disappeared behind her out of his sight.

She saw that his eyes were still wet. "Why did you cry?"

His expression changed and she instantly regretted asking him.

"It's a long story," he said, "I have no wish to tell it."

"Sorry that I asked it from you," she said softly, "I see that there is hurt in it. Where do we go now, you and I? I think that we are both creatures which try to remain hidden from people here. I have found someone for myself. Donna and I love each other. She waits for me to tell her what I have learned here."

She looked down and away, "She makes me sad now, a little. I try to understand what she says, but it is hard. She tries to push me away, but she does not want to hurt me. I have known this would happen for a time, but it is still hard for me."

He smiled and placed his hand on her hip, trying to feel from her as she learned from him. She turned to him, but didn't flinch or look uncomfortable. He actually thought that she looked pleased. "What have you learned?" he asked.

"That there is one here who is also different, and need not be feared as I had first thought." He noticed that she'd said it with a bit of a smile. "What did you learn?"

"The same," he nodded, "I feel some of what you say. I don't know what I can do to help, but if you want to talk about it while I'm here, just ask. I won't mind. I think that from what I can tell, you have trouble with the way that humans are sometimes."

He smiled, trying to look helpful, "I do too, but I've gotten more used to them than you, I think."

He took his hand away and she did the same, stepping back. She walked to the stream and stepped in, but she turned back after a second to regard him a little shyly. "I also learned that our visitor is as beautiful inside as he is on the outside. It makes me happy to know this."

Jack smiled at her and noticed that her long mane ran in a stripe over her spine and was not only attached at her head. He watched the sway of her slender hips and her tail as she walked away to disappear into the tall rushes.

He had the strangest feeling come to him as he stood. It didn't take much thought at all for him to know that her existence must have been strange and difficult if she'd been in this place for as long as he thought that she must have been, since what Tony had told him now began to make just a little sense to him at least.

He still felt very fortunate to have even seen her. She looked like nothing that he'd ever seen before, but he thought that she was beautiful as a creature. To find that he could converse with her had been another surprise.

He didn't really understand what she'd meant by her sadness about Donna, but he guessed that he could relate just a little anyway. If there was trouble between them, he hoped that they'd get past it. He thought that everybody deserved at least a chance to be happy.

Well, almost everyone, he thought, as he looked up at the moon again for a moment with a quiet sigh.

He began to dress.