Lucas was coming to visit, and Lee wanted to help Clary and Elsie, the cook and her assistant. They were getting the special dinner ready.

Clary beamed at the night-hag as she entered, and Lee grinned back. “Heyyy, Clary. Is there anything I can do help?” She touched Elsie’s arm. “Hey Elsie, how’re things?” The girl gave her a shy smile.

“Everything’s in hand, my dear,” said Clary.

“Well I like watching you work, even if I can’t be so clever at cooking.” She tapped her cheek. “’Cos I’m a night-hag, my taste-buds aren’t as sharp as yours. A bit of a problem when it comes for cooking with spices, hey? When I cooked for Karl and my sisters, I had to stick closely to basic recipes in old mortal cook books.”

“The vanilla balance in the cake is tricky to get right, but I can do it,” whispered Elsie, her cheeks flushing pink.

Lee beamed at her. “How clever of you.” The girl blushed even more.

The hag checked over the spices on the shelf. Even if she couldn’t help with them, she was still curious about how mortal cooks could prepare intricate flavours for wonderful mortal beings with sensitive palettes. She picked up a little jar labelled ‘red eye tears’ and tried to taste a drop, put accidentally poured the entire jar into her mouth.

She held out the empty jar to Cook. “What was this one for, Clary?”

“Oh, my dear, be careful, that one’s awfully strong. Really stays on your breath, too. Only to be used for very spicy dishes.”

“Aw… doesn’t taste that strong to me. Just about tickles my tongue, though. I quite like it.” Elsie giggled and Lee smiled at her. “Hey, hows about I chop the veg?”

Lee could at least do the basics well. She’d had plenty of practice. She could use two knives at once, one in each of long green hand. Elsie kept stealing glances at the night-hag and blushing and Clary commended Lee when she had finished. After that, the green-skinned chef stirred the cream ready for the mortal cooks to use in the cake.

“Ma’am, you have something…” stammered Elsie, pointing at the tip of her button nose.

Lee smiled at her and knelt on the floor, so their faces were on a level. Elsie wiped the tip of the hag’s nose with a handkerchief. “There… looking great…” she flushed furiously and touched Lee’s bare arm with her soft, dry little hand.

“Thank you, Elsie,” said Lee, standing up. She clapped her hands together. “Well you’re doing wonderfully, girls, as usual.”

00O00

In her palatial bedroom, Lee brushed her hair in front of her mirror with a gilded frame. Her long, green face was again shining with a sheen of perspiration, even though she had just washed.

Gilly, the chambermaid came in with a pile of folded linen. “You have beautiful hair, Ma’am. So long and red. My dream hair.”

“Thank you so much,” said the night-hag, grinning at her. People here were so sweet. She wished she and Karl could have got here sooner. Their experiences of Rosewood were just so happy. Her son had some semblance of his royal status back, and she could walk down the street in broad daylight as she was. And if they had arrived sooner, she would have had more time to learn about etiquette and how to properly welcome members of the nobility to her dinner party…

She stared into the mirror. Her bright green face gazed pensively back. She had tried red lipstick. Mortal ladies looked so pretty when they put that on. She had found that on her own yellowish-green face, red lipstick just looked garish.

By the Moon, if only Lee could stop sweating. She decided to wear a light, silvery dress tonight, one of a silky, almost gossamer material, that left her broad shoulders, arms and tummy bare. Then she made sure Karl was dressed right, fussing over his suit and fastening the buttons for him. His silvery suit resembled Ostinian Princely style, but it was simpler and more elegant. “There. Don’t you look handsome?” She gazed at their reflections in the tall mirror. She towered above Karl, but he looked so sweet in his silver suit with gold trimmings, and they both sort of matched – they were dressed mainly in silver.

00O00

When Lucas arrived, Lee thought she had worked out a way to greet him without being overbearing. Last time she had accidentally shoved his face into her bosom when she hugged him, because he was so much shorter than her… she still cringed at the memory. So this time, she crouched to measure his height, gripping him by the shoulders, her face close to his. “Welcome, dear Lucas,” she said, trying to sound formal and enunciate her words, and disguise her own weird accent. The result was she that she sounded even weirder and breathed out heavily onto Lucas’ face. He flinched, his moustache twitching. Oh dear. She had got it wrong again.

Her heart swelled with happiness as Jason entered. The sight of his handsome face made her ache with happiness. He ran up to her and she gathered him up in her strong arms and he hugged her very tight, touching his soft, smooth cheek to her own and making a little moaning sound. His body against hers… strong and muscular for a mortal, his heart beating against hers… so full of life… His sweet breath tickling her neck.

“So glad you could come, darling,” she said softly. If only the hug could have gone on and on...

At the table, Lee realised she didn’t know what to talk about, nor did she have a clear idea of how much conversation was warranted. She had sat Karl next to her, but Jason sat himself on her other side and Lucas was across the table.

She checked that Karl’s napkin was on straight. “Mum…” he was blushing a little.

She laid a hand on his shoulder. “Now as we always say, you must eat your vegetables.”

It was so adorable the way he blushed so prettily and pinkly. Her heart swelled with pride and in that moment, she wanted to share a treasured memory. She beamed around the table. “I remember once when I said that Karl must eat his asparagus and that it is good and ate a piece myself. He said: ‘you’re lucky your taste-buds don’t work and you don’t get the flavour, Mum.’” She laughed. “So clever of him – because I’m a night-hag, I can only taste the strongest flavours, hey?”

Karl stared fixedly at his plate, but Jason grinned up at Leevana and touched her bare arm. “That was pretty smart of him.”

Lee tried to start up a conversation about the type of literature Lucas liked. “So Jonathan Swift was an example of really biting satire, hey?” She immediately wondered whether she should have said something more interesting.

“Too biting,” said Karl, pulling a face. “He must have been quite twisted.”

Leevana privately agreed with Karl, but did not say so.

“A scathing social commenter. Darkly humorous,” said Lucas. “In his world there were very few rules and anything could happen at any time. The satire was all he cared about.”

This literary discussion sort of petered out. Jason clearly wasn’t interested in it.

When it came to desert, Lee checked round to make sure everyone had enough. Elsie came up to the table with a tray of cupcakes. “I made these myself,” she said, blushing. She had made one for each of them. Leevana’s was made to resemble a tiny cottage with a miniature picket fence made of chocolate and little candy pane windows, with the night-hag’s name surrounded by little hearts painted on the walls in icing. For the three mortals, she’d made ordinary cupcakes.

Lee was delighted with hers. Clearly the girl had put a lot of effort into it. She grinned at her. “This is absolutely wonderful, Elsie. Thank you so much.” She touched Elsie’s arm and the girl’s eyes gleamed.

“I know you said Clary and I didn’t have to, but I want to wait at the table,” said Elsie, flushing furiously.

“As you like,” said Lee. She noticed Lucas only had a tiny portion of the carrot cake, so she cut some of the fudge cake for him. “Here, try some of this,” she leaned across the table to push it towards him, but accidentally stuck her nose in the trifle. “Oops. A trifle creamy.”

Jason laughed, and she leaned close to him so he could wipe the cream off her face. For some reason Elsie bit her lip and looked at the floor.

“There we are. All perfect.” Jason laid his hand on her green one and stared into her eyes. His eyes were so beautiful… so enchanting that for a second, she forgot everything else.

00O00

Time for Lucas and Jason to go. After Jason had bowed to Karl, he grasped Lee’s long hands and didn’t let go. “Please… I can’t travel just yet…” He looked anxious.

“What’s wrong, darling?” asked Lee in concern.

“It’s alright to go home without me, father,” said Jason to Lucas. Then he whispered to Lee. “Can this be private, please?”

She nodded. “Come again soon, Lucas, hey?”

She led Jason to a private room and they sat on the velvet couch there and she put her arms around him. “It’s troubling me again,” he said without preamble. “Odette dumping me… it’s bringing other stuff to the surface. Like mother dying … it’s been so hard. I keep wishing she could reassure me… after Odette said I wasn’t a high flier.”

She held him to her, their chests pressed together, feeling his heart beating against hers. Gazing into his shimmering eyes again, the hag felt all warm and fuzzy inside. “Your mother would be very proud of you if she were here today. I can gauge these things. Cos I’m a mother too, hey?”

His freckled cheeks were flushed with a rosy pink tinge. His sweet breath tickled her face. His prettily coloured eyes shone with emotion. “I – I l-“ He breathed in and out and touched the tip of his cute nose to hers. They sat together in silence for several long moments.

“You know what I do sometimes to blow the cobwebs out of my brain?” said Lee tenderly. “I go flying. It really helps. Shall we?”

“I’d happily go on a flight with you,” said Jason. “It would be a dream come true.”

00O00

Straddling Twiggy, Leevana and Jason flew high into the night sky, Jason strapped to the green hag. The wind blasted their faces and made Leevana’s long red hair flow back. “See the world as I see it, dear Jason,” cried Leevana.

Higher and higher they flew. They were bathed in silvery moonlight and the stars glittered in the heavens above them, like bright gems. “This is like a dream,” said Jason.

“I’m a night-hag,” said Lee grinning. “Kind of what I do, hey?”

“Oh yeah, night-hags are dreamy,” said Jason. “I do know that now.”

They flew high above the clouds. The cloud formations really were fantastic this high up, but it was cold. Not that it was a problem for Lee, but she was glad Jason was wrapped up warm.

“Look at that.” Jason had seen cloud people moving around on a cloud. Even mortal eyes could make out the misty shapes moving about on the cloud now they were near enough.

“Cloud people, Jason,” said Lee. “They do vital work for the ecosystem.”

They flew near a higher cloud with a field of rainbow crystals growing on it. “Can we land?” asked Jason.

“Only I can walk on the cloud, my dear,” said Leevana. “You’ll have to stay strapped to me.”

Carrying Jason on her back, she trod on the surface of the cloud with her bare, green feet. No human could do this – they would just fall through the misty cloud.

A lone cloud farmer approached them. She was as tall as Lee, but shadowy and indistinct.

“Could you please spare me a bouquet?” asked Lee. “A souvenir for Jason?”

The cloud woman gave her a bouquet of rainbow crystals. “He is your husband?” The cloud woman projected that thought telepathically, so only Lee could understand.

“N-no…” Lee thought back, glad her green face couldn’t blush.

Back in Lee’s private room on the surface of the Earth, Jason turned the crystal flower over in his hands, the glittering rainbow lights playing on his perfectly sculpted face. “I do love brightly coloured, unearthly beauty,” he said, gazing at Lee’s face.

Elsie very thoughtfully came in with a tray of bread, jam and tea prepared for the night-hag.

“Thank you, Elsie, you’re so considerate,” said the hag, grinning at her. She touched Elsie’s arm and the girl beamed.

When Jason was ready to go, Lee gathered him in her arms again and they gazed into each other’s eyes. “Are you ready, Jason dear?”

“Not ready to go, but I suppose I have to,” said Jason.

Their faces were so close. They nuzzled their noses together.

“Have you been eating a lot of spicy food today, Lee?” asked Jason.

“Ah… it must have been the ‘red eye tears’ extra strong spice I swallowed this afternoon,” said Lee. No wonder Lucas had flinched earlier when she breathed on his face.

They rubbed their noses together again. As Lee took Jason out, ready to fly him home, she noticed Elsie looked perturbed, her brows drawing together. Why was that?