Sandra remained seated as the boy Charlie looked down at her. This was her second interaction with a human. Her mind was racing through her possible reactions. She knew the right path before she even finished. She leaned back in the chair until the front legs lifted from the ground.

“May I help you?” she asked, motioning with her hand to calm Tsomis whose face had reddened when Charlie asked him to stay out of it.

“You can help me by returning to your caves,” Charlie said. Charlie was a large boy in every sense of the word. He had an oversized face with multiple jowls that made it difficult to see where his neck ended and his chin began. He wore an oversized button down shirt that hung down beyond his waist and almost to his knees. His hair was oiled and perfectly still. It looked as if it had recently been cut and shaped. Her face was covered with the scars of a teenage acne battle that he was just getting out of. He no longer turned back to his friends’ table for support. He towered over Sandra, who was still tilting back in her chair.

Tsomis took in the situation and tried to gauge his reaction. He was not sure how to react. If he had been in Charlie’s position and had seen Charlie enter the coffee house with an elf, he may have had the same reaction. It might have been him looming over the table making vaguely threatening speeches at the elf. He again questioned his own decision to bring Sandra to the coffee house. He wondered what he had been thinking. After years of training in the cordiality of noble class, he had no choice in his reaction. He had to make good and talk to the elf.

He looked over to Sandra. She looked calm as she leaned back in her chair. She was rubbing and pulling her left ear. It was a small ear, like the rest of her. Tsomis had never realized how child-like the elves were. There was a deep set maturity that he had not seen in her earlier. She looked like a bored cat waiting for her toy to move on its own. Tsomis should have been insulted by her wave. Instead, he took it in stride and decided to see how she would handle the situation. He looked around the room and located the table where Charlie had come from. He recognized the three other boys he was sitting with. He dismissed them without another thought. They would be no trouble if things went wrong. They were all from good families and understood their reputations were at stake. If Tsomis stood up, he expected they would remain sitting. Tsomis started to study the other tables in the coffee house. He found that all of them were watching his table with great interest.

“I will return to my cave,” Sandra said. She did not look at Charlie when she spoke, but instead looked around the coffee house, catching the eyes of the lurkers. Each person she looked at looked down. She moved on to the next person as she spoke until they, to, gave up and lowered their gaze, pretending to look at their table or look over Sandra’s shoulders or somewhere else; anywhere other than the table where the real drama was going down.

“But it probably will not be for many years,” Sandra said. “You see, I just enrolled in the academy down the road, and I have not even begun classes. In fact, except for the Tsomis, who has been nothing but a gentleman, I am not terribly impressed by the caliber of the students in the academy.

Charlie’s face went livid with rage. “I was not asking you to return, elf,” Charlie said. He was speaking slowly and could no longer control the spittle that shot out of his mouth as he tried to contain his anger. “I was telling you to get out of the coffee house and out of the valley. You are not welcome here, and you are certainly not welcome at my university. You probably would not even know how to use any of our advanced technology. I am surprised you are able to work doors. Aren’t you people afraid doors and locks and all those mechanical contraptions? Isn’t that why you sleep on the floor and you hide in your caves, not sharing in our ways; not even using our money or our industry. Why don’t you go back to your orange dust and your hallowed halls and live out your short lives and leave us in peace. You have done enough for us and we are ready not to have you around anymore.”

“Now this is getting interesting,” Sandra said before Charlie finished the last word in his sentence. She dropped the front legs of her chair and the chair slammed into the ground with a loud clap. The sound broke the silence and there was a startled gasp from further into the coffee house. Tsomis looked over and saw even the barmaids and baristas had stopped working to watch the drama unfold. A thin older man wearing a white apron stood on the far side of the counter. He rubbed his hands with a rag. Tsomis wagered he was the owner of the place. He probably did not want any trouble here, but he could not upset his customers, particularly since he did not know which way they would end up and what they would do.

“Now we are having a discussion,” Sandra said. Her feet did not touch the ground, but unlike a child she did not fidget or swing her feet. She planted her small palms on the wooden table and leaned forward toward where Charlie stood, towering over her at the far side of the table. Tsomis felt a bit left out of the situation. Here he was bringing a guest into the coffee house and he was not even standing up for her virtue. He was not sure if he wanted to stand up to her. He was as curious as the rest of the coffee house patrons to see how this unfolded; how the elf, who looked no larger than a small children, would stand up to this oversized boy.

“You see,” Sandra continued, her voice picking up in speed and emotion as she spoke. “You actually presented an argument. It is not that I am different that you were worried. I am no different than lots of other people in your valley. It’s that I am from a people who is different who has badly affected your life and the lives of those who live in your valley. What you lack, I believe, is a history lesson. You have no understanding of where you came from or where you were before we came along.”

It was getting difficult for Tsomis to follow the conversation. Sandra was talking faster and faster, and he began to lose what she was saying. Charlie, however, did not seem to have a problem following her. Sandra no longer looked around the coffee house. Her face and eyes were focused completely on Charlie. Her mouth moved quickly and her voice grew louder. The words continued to tumble out of her mouth. The sounds sounded fully articulated, and he heard snippets of elves and dust and humans and hundreds of years, but he could no longer follow her speech.

Charlie did follow and he grew redder as she spoke. Sandra’s voice took on the sing-song nature of the elven speech. It was said that their speech was mesmerizing, that once you heard it, once they focused their talk on you, their magic took you to different places and convinced you of things you had no idea existed before they began to speak. For the first time, Tsomis began to believe it. He expected Charlie’s face to relax as Sandra’s magic overtook him. He was mistaken, however. If anything, Charlie continued to grow angrier and angrier. The redness had move up his face and now covered him from neck up to his hairline. His arms, which he held close to his body stiffly, now ended in reddened fists. He shook with rage. His eyes, which were usually small and deep set into his puffy face, now appeared to be popping out of their sockets. In short, he was incredibly angry.

And to this Sandra continued to speak. Her voice accelerated and the words that fell out of it did not sound human anymore. She reached her feet to the ground until her tiptoes touched the floor of the coffee house and pushed herself up. The chair squeaked across the wooden floor as she stood, pushed back away from the table. Charlie continued to look at her and she continued to speak in whatever language she now spoke in.

With a roar Charlie pushed over the round wooden table. Tsomis fell back from his chair as the table flipped on its side. He fell off the back side of the chair, almost tumbling to the ground until he caught the top of the chair and steadied himself. He felt a hand on his back and looked over to find that one of the boys sitting on the next table had caught him as he fell. He did not notice for his eyes were locked on Charlie.

After throwing the table over onto its side, Charlie had taken a step toward Sandra. There was nothing between Sandra and Charlie. Charlie reached out both his hand toward Sandra’s neck. In a blur that Tsomis could not follow, he watched as Sandra stepped into the space between Charlie’s two outstretched arms and brought her elbow up against his chest. Her sharp elbow made contact and Charlie fell backwards. Sandra turn one-hundred and eighty agrees and lowered her shoulder toward Charlie’s falling form. Charlie took a step backwards, his balance completely off, and his feet were in front of the upper part of his body. Tsomis watched in fascination as there was nothing for him to do but fall, and seemingly to fall in slow motion.

Before he could finish his fall, Sandra hit Charlie in the chest, jumping a bit off the ground as she made contact with her shoulder. She landed softly as Charlie fell against a chair holding a patron. The patron kept Charlie from falling and helped him gain his balance. The people who sat close to where Charlie and Sandra stood got up and began pushing the tables and chair away from them, creating a clearing for them to duke it out.

“Stop this at once,” Tsomis yelled. He freed himself from the patron that had caught him before falling, and took a step toward Sandra and Charlie.

“Stay out of this,” Charlie roared. He was busy rolling up the sleeves on his shirt. He rubbed his chest where Sandra had struck him as he finished folding the sleeves. “This is between me and the little bitch. You keep your good blood out of this. I’ll deal with you later for bringing such a creature into this establishment.”

Tsomis had never heard such vitriol in any of the students at his college. Even when drunken fights broke out when they went bar hoping on the weekends, he had never heard them speak like this. It was like he was possessed.

“Did you hear her?” Charlie continued, still speaking much louder than was necessary for the entire coffee house to hear. Tsomis saw a small crowd develop outside of the coffee house, trying to peer through the glass to see what the commotion was. “Did you hear what she said? Did you hear the words she used? If she was a woman, I would not fight her. But she is an animal, and she is an unwelcome animal. I will teach her to speak to her betters like that. I will teach her what it means to walk among the humans as a dirty elf.”

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I promised Chuck that I would not bore you with words of discouragement. I didn't have the energy to find something worth sharing either.