“Yes,” Sandra said. “I would like that very much.” Her words were very formal to Tsomis’s ears. She spoke slowly pronouncing each word and seeming to take a break before she moved on to the next word. “I will join you for coffee today.”

Sandra held out her small arm and waited for Tsomis to take it. He walked around and graciously took her elbow, leading her away from the school. He caught himself swinging his books and stopped. He liked to think his manners were good but his mother always told him differently. He tended to have a short attention span when it came to social interactions. He would lose himself in thought and then the social mores would disappear when he concentrated on other things.

Sandra walked gently placing one foot in front of the next. “Do you believe in fate, Tsomis?” Sandra asked. She still spoke slowly. Tsomis began wondering if she spoke that way because she considered him a child, or for that matter, all humans as being children. He fought down the urge to ask her and think the worst. He tried to think of her as nothing more than a small human. Her skin did have the orange coat of the lower class, but even with it she was something more. Her people, for whatever the reasons in the past, still held sway over the government of the valley. Tsomis believed that would change for the better very soon. And he hoped to have an impact in how and when that changed.

“Fate?” Tsomis said, mentally returning to the conversation. “What do you mean by fate? The way we happened to run into each other at the front stairs of my school? No, not really. I do not think our lives are controlled by external factors. We make decisions based on rules, and those decisions stay with us to the end. Our circumstances are random, and ”

Sandra did not answer. She continued to walk stately down the tree-lined road. Tsomis had escorted many ladies from school down this road. He had never escorted an elf. He kept glancing over to look at the top of her head. She was half a step ahead of him. Her legs movement, even at the slow pace they walked, seemed to blue slightly. He wondered what was going through her head. From what he had heard, elves could think many thoughts in the time it took humans to think one. It did not mean they were smarter. He saw how they lived: they lacked even the barest of essentials. They did not have pillows for beds or brushes for their teeth. If anything, Tsomis always thought of the elves as a bit animalistic. The way he thought of his two sight hounds at home.

“What are you doing in the valley?” Tsomis asked, looking to continue the conversation during the few blocks walk to the coffee shop.

“This is my first time in the valley,” Sandra said. She looked over to Tsomis and appeared excited by this thought. “I peeked out from time to time, and of course, I have read all this histories about this place and about your people. I was sent here to enroll in your school, to better get to know the people here, how you live, what you learn.”

The speed of her speech was incredible. Tsomis had to stop walking, dropping Sandra’s arm, in mid-sentence. He watched the back of her head as she spoke, the words running one into another. Sandra stopped and turned around when she finished talking, seemingly not having realized that Tsomis had stopped walking with her.

“Is something the matter?” Sandra asked, her sentence blurring together into almost a single word.

Tsomis took a moment to deconstruct what she had said. “I guess it is true what they say about elves,” Tsomis said. “You do speak and move almost outside of our dimension.” Tsomis shook his head and stepped forward to catch up to Sandra. He took her elbow and began walking.

Sandra turned her head in a blurred motion and looked ahead, her head was tilted upward, her nose pointed into the air.

“I’m sorry,” Tsomis said. “I hope I did not hurt your feelings. As I said before, we do not see many elves around these parts, but we do read and hear a lot about you. I never did believe the speed thing before I saw you. I mean, I have seen how fast insects and small animals can move, buzzing along and everything. But I never thought a humanoid, an elf, would be like that as well.”

Sandra did not respond and they continued to walk down the tree-lined street away from the school. Tsomis resisted looking over to Sandra. It was a difficult resistance. He imagined himself like the couple that they had passed earlier. If he had brought his house servant, the picture would be complete. Then he thought of the umbrella. Okay, the house servant with the umbrella and then the picture would be complete. He smiled to himself, trying to keep his face straight.

Sandra noticed the internal smile. She found the human boy intriguing. He was shorter than she expected, and he had a power around him. It radiated from his being, as if he was telling you something about himself, or sharing something about himself.

They arrived at the coffee shop. It was on a wide street that intersected with the more residential street leading to the wide street. Stores lined both sides of the avenue, and at the corner was a coffee shop with iron wrought chairs outside the doors. The chairs were empty and the wooden door was closed. A wooden sign hung over the door with a white painted coffee mug. Tsomis let go of Sandra’s arm and opened the door for her.

The head of the fireplace washed over him as Tsomis stepped in after Sandra. The coffee house was crowded with early office dwellers and students of the university who were making their way to school. The warmth felt good after the cool autumn air, and it took Tsomis a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the darker coffee house. The coffee house seemed quieter than he expected. When his eyes adjusted he saw that everyone had turned in their table to look at Sandra. She stood by the table, her nose still pointed up in the air, ignoring the looks of the customers.

Tsomis led Sandra to a nearby table and held out a chair for her to sit. The silence ended as rapidly as it began and there was a loud buzz in the room. Tsomis tried not to listen but he heard the word “elf” muttered and whispered a number of times.

“Do you drink coffee?” Tsomis asked, still standing by the table.

“I have never tried coffee,” Sandra said, still not looking at him or anyone else in the coffee house. Her eyes were focused on the wall in front of her, which had a small painting with a white character surrounded by blue streak marks. It was one of Tsomis’s favorite paintings in the coffee house. He had tracked down the painter who had little to say about its creation outside of a discussion about technique. He offered to purchase it or other works, but the painter no longer painted, and he had sold or destroyed all of his works. Tsomis thought it was a waste, but it was probably good for him to get going on something more productive.

Sandra watched as Tsomis went over to the counter to order coffee. The smells in the coffee house were as amazing as they were described in her studies. It really did smell like turned earth and roasted chestnuts. She drank in the smells and listened to the conversations of the people around her. She knew they were talking about her. Elves were rare in the valley. When her parents were growing up, seeing an elf in a coffee house would not have been that strange. These days, seeing an elf anywhere in the valley, except by the king, was very strange. The elves were not welcomed anymore. Sandra felt like she was an ambassador for change. Someone who was going to remind the humans of the time before, when elves were trustworthy and helpful to the valley’s society. She knew she would have to do much better at some point to bring them into line, and get them to see her and her people as a group that is trying to do what’s best for the valley.

Tsomis returned to the table holding two mugs. “I am not sure if you have been to a coffee house before,” Tsomis said as he placed the mug in front of Sandra. “It is a place that we go to hang out, to be with our friends and discuss things. Except for the baristas, there is not many servants in the place. It is what I like to refer to as a high class establishment.”

“I still do not understand the servants in your society,” Sandra said. “Why do some people voluntarily spend their lives serving others for gold? If it was noble or out of love, I think I would understand it. But out of an obligation in exchange for goods, it is a strange circumstance for elves to see.”

Tsomis laughed at Sandra’s joke. Only she was not smiling. How could she question the very fabric on which the valley was built. It did not make any sense.

Sandra watched as another boy walked over to their table. He kept turning around and seemed to be laughing as he spoke to the people back at another table. He walked over to the table and grabbed the empty chair. He turned it around so the back of the chair faced the table and threw his left leg over the chair so he sat with his chest against the chair back.

“What do we have here?” the boy asked.

“We were having a conversation,” Tsomis said to the boy. “And I do not remember inviting you to the conversation.” The boy was larger, larger than Tsomis, and he wore his hair long, tied in an elaborate pony tail with beads and multicolored string. As Tsomis spoke, the boy continued to turn around and look to a round table with four snickering boys sitting around it.

“Tsomis, drop the act,” the boy said. “We just want to know where you dug up this relic. I thought all the elves were trapped in their dusty caves, or hiding behind the king for his protection. I thought you were one of us.”

Tsomis did not answer.

“One of who,” Sandra jumped into the conversation. For the first time since meeting Tsomis she seemed genuinely interested in something. Tsomis saw the interest in her eye. He now realized that the entire walk over and even their philosophical discussion, she was feigning interesting, repeating words that she likely read in some book somewhere about how conversations with humans were supposed to go.

“Dirty elves,” the boy said, spitting out the words. He no longer looked back to his friends. It was clear that their snickering was not out of humor but anger. Sandra was surprised by the reaction. She knew that the elves and humans were not on the best of terms; but she could not believe that their relations had deteriorated so much.

“Kenneth,” Tsomis said, trying to break up the conversation.

“No,” Sandra said. “Let him finish. He was talking about dusty elves, and I want to hear the rest of what he has to say.” To Tsomis’s ears, the words barely made sense. It took him a few moments to separate the words that blurred together. It took Kenneth even longer as he tried to puzzle out the words. He still looked angry, but his anger seemed to miss focus. He did not know if he should be angry at Sandra or where this was heading.

Tsomis knew where this was heading. Kenneth was known for being a bully at school. He was not picking a fight with Tsomis. Even though he was small, few kids at the university dared pick fights with him. Most of their futures were not guaranteed when they came out of school. There was a pecking order for futures, and with Tsomis’s father being a chief judge, it did not take the other students long to realize that it was in their own best interests to stay on Tsomis’s good side. Sandra, Tsomis knew, had no such assurances.

Word count: 2,114 (18,850)

Words remaining: 31,150

There was almost action at the end of today’s scene. Almost.