The town of Basilglen was significantly nicer by daylight. There were far fewer people on the street, and those that did exist were more in line with what Xaxac expected of elves, well dressed to the point of regality, being accompanied by one or more humans as they went about their business in the sort of shops that had been closed when Xaxac had arrived, the sort of places that sold jewelry, home goods, and fine clothes.

Interestingly, however, Agalon did not seem to be going to any of those places.

Xaxac was not accustomed to the wide open space, the cobblestone streets and the display windows, and had it been left up to him he would have stopped at each and every building they passed to look through the glass at all the marvels within. But it wasn’t up to him, it was up to Agalon, and Xac clung to his arm as he often did, trying to project an illusion of fear instead of the wonder he actually felt.

He was a cute, innocent little bunny, and he was afraid of all these new sights, smells, sounds, all the glittering gold and chattering people- a carriage clopped past on the road, and he jumped for good measure and buried his face into Agalon’s side.

“Darlin,” Agalon smiled and untangled his arm from his grip to wrap around his shoulders, “I promise, nothin ain’t gonna get you when you’re with me. I might be the most powerful mage in this town.”

Xaxac nodded and thought of Billy, so big and strong he boasted he could kill any human in Uril, reduced to a pile at Agalon’s feet with a gesture. He had never seen anyone use magic except Agalon and Hattie May, so Agalon’s boast may very well be true. He briefly wondered if he should give up the act altogether, but Agalon tightened his grip and smiled down at him, so Xaxac smiled back and snuggled further into his side.

“Magic is scary,” Xaxac explained, “I don’t know nothin about it.”

“There’s a hell of a lot to know,” Agalon said, “Folks go to school for more than a decade to learn how to do it right.”

“Can you control it all the way out here?” Xaxac asked, “I mean… them wards you put up at the house…”

“Darlin, a skilled mage can keep up a ward from another continent,” Agalon said, and Xaxac tensed in his arms, so he continued, “Ah, hell, I shouldn’t’ve said that. Listen, Honey Bunny, ain’t nothin gonna get you. Nobody ain’t gonna cast at you long-range like that. It ain’t gonna happen.”

“Ok,” Xaxac said trying to channel all the meekness he could muster.

He didn’t see Lee smiling approvingly as he walked behind them.

They turned and headed into a particularly large building, the primary feature of which seemed to be an enormous clock, so tall it cast a shadow over the town around it. The inside was smartly decorated, but not in the kind of ostentatious way the Inn had been. Instead it housed a large number of plants and seating with comfortable, but not overstuffed, couches and chairs beside several small tables laid out with very thin books. The entire place smelled of healthy earth and brewing coffee.

The large room they had walked into seemed to serve some sort of purpose that involved waiting in long lines to get to a desk, behind which sat many earth elves, and behind them was a wall lined with several doors and another clock. The incessant ticking was so loud as to be heard over the conversations all the employees were having with various patrons.

Agalon led them to the back of one of the lines, put a hand on Lee’s shoulder, squeezed, then walked away with Xaxac on his arm. Xaxac looked behind him to see that Lee seemed resigned to his fate, then looked forward to see that Agalon was leading them to one of the many small sitting areas. He plopped down on one of the couches, looked up to make sure he could see how far along Lee was in the line, then leaned forward and began rifling through the thin books.

“It smells real good in here,” Xaxac said as he gingerly sat next to Agalon.

“I guess,” Agalon said, “It smells like coffee. You want some?”

“Do we have to sit here until Lee gets to the front?” Xaxac asked.

“Yup,” Agalon said as he finally decided on a book, “We’re registerin for the rodeo season. Bureaucracy ain’t exactly exciting.”

Xaxac glanced up, and to his surprise, the book Agalon was reading was not comprised entirely of the squiggles he couldn’t understand. There were large pictures printed there, sometimes taking up almost the entire page. The one Agalon was currently on displayed a beautiful earth elven woman in a dress that dragged the floor standing beside a floating roll of fabric.

“Do books have pictures?” He asked eagerly.

“This ain’t a book,” Agalon said, “It’s a magazine. This one is ‘The Urillian Review’, tells you about all the hottest new trends and whatnot. Darlin, you reckon you could run and get me a cup of coffee and a muffin or something? Might have fruit and whatnot over there.”

“Of course, master,” Xaxac said, then drew in on himself a little and asked, “Where is it? Will I be able to see you? In case somethin happens?”

“Yes, darlin,” Agalon said in a tone that made Xaxac think Alex was right about the ‘cute and innocent’ act not being sustainable. He lowered the magazine and pointed, “You see that girl over there? Go over and tell her what you want.”

Xaxac followed his directions and saw another line, though this one considerably smaller than the others, leading to another desk, behind which several humans moved in quick succession.

“Ok,” he nodded, “I can… I can do that.”

“I’ll be here,” Agalon said in the tone of a man who could not be more bored.

Xaxac stood, walked briskly across the room and stood behind an earth elven man at the back of the line. The smell of food was even more strong from his new position, and he leaned to the side to see whatever he could past the other patrons. The area behind the desk reminded him of the restaurant where he had eaten with Lee. It must be a fairly common occurrence, in towns, to be given food by someone on the other side of half a wall.

The line moved quickly, and in a few minutes he found himself staring up at the woman as she asked, “What do you want?”

“I’m supposed to get two cups of coffee and see if you have any muffins or fruit or whatnot,” he said with great confidence.

“Yeah, we got blueberry, strawberry, and apple muffins,” she said, “And all them fruits.”

“This would be so much faster if they could read,” an earth elven woman behind him said in what seemed to be great annoyance. Her tone was so derisive that Xaxac thought very seriously about turning and telling her that he was the personal pleasure slave to the Duke of the Agricultural District, but he only turned around enough to see her hand pointing at a chalkboard covered in the same symbols he always saw in books.

The last set of squiggles were all the same.

That was the symbol for ‘muffin’.

“Can I get two strawberry muffins?” Xaxac asked, then hastily amended, “They got any meat in um?”

“In a muffin?” The girl asked as if the concept was ridiculous. “You want cream and sugar?”

“I… don’t know?” Xaxac admitted, and turned behind him to glance at Agalon, who was still looking at the magazine, “No? I guess?”

“Alright, there you go, darlin,” The woman sat two cups full of hot, dark coffee and a small plate with the muffins on the counter, and Xaxac had to carefully arrange them to carry them.

“Here we go!” He said chipperly as he sat them on the table with the books, then picked up one of the cups to hand to Agalon. “I like it here! People just give you stuff!”

“They ain’t givin nothin,” Agalon said as he sipped his coffee, “What we pay in they oughta have a five course meal. Darlin, you know you can’t eat that.”

“The lady said there wouldn’t no meat in it,” Xaxac promised as he sat beside Agalon and picked up the muffin.

Agalon threw the magazine onto the table and took the muffin from him.

“I told you to get fruit. You don’t know what’s in this. Could have eggs or somethin, and you can’t have that. Darlin, you’re allergic to anything like that. You can’t eat nothin a rabbit can’t eat. You said yourself you got sick. You can have this kinda stuff at the house because the cook knows how to make it so you can eat it. I’m takin this from you because it’ll make you sick.”

“I’m sorry,” Xaxac scooted further back into the sofa and lowered his head. Agalon was right. He barely remembered the one time he had eaten something he wasn’t supposed to; he had gotten so ill the memory was fuzzy. He just remembered and intense pain followed by a soothing blackout.

He was lucky he had someone looking out for him, because left to his own devices he very well could make himself sick. He wondered if he could die from it. He had always relied on other people to protect him, first his parents and now Agalon, because he was too stupid to even feed himself. And everyone knew it. Alex had even said he wasn’t smart, and Alex was really nice, had tried to teach him. His own father had to apologize to Agalon for his stupidity, and Agalon had still been kind enough to take him in.

He bent forward and picked up his coffee to sip it.

“Ew,” he said as he recoiled from the taste.

“Oh,” Agalon swallowed the bite of the muffin he was eating and said, “Yeah, I always put sugar in yours. It’s an acquired taste. Keep goin and you’ll start to like it. You’re actually only gettin that because we’re so close to the capital. They ain’t just givin this away anywhere else; it’s expensive. It was imported from the Fire Continent and don’t grow easy here. We gotta grow it in the greenhouse.”

“If I keep goin I’ll like it?” Xaxac asked, “Like the wine?”

“Yeah, lots of things in life like that,” Agalon said and sipped his coffee.

Xaxac couldn’t believe how little Lee had moved in the line.

“Can I take Lee this muffin?” he asked.

“If you want, but you better not be tryin to trick me,” Agalon said playfully.

“I can’t trick you,” Xaxac said, because he didn’t understand the joke. The idea had never occurred to him.

“I know, darlin,” Agalon snickered.

“Ok…” Xac said with unease as he stood, picked up the plate and headed for the place where Lee stood in the line.

“You want a muffin?” He asked.

“We’ll be here all day at this rate,” Lee huffed as he took it, “Thanks. Why’d you try to eat this? I seen him take it from you. Don’t do nothin else to put him in a bad mood.”

“I forgot!” Xac pleaded, “I thought… it’s bread.”

“You got one job,” Lee reminded him, “Keep him happy. Lord, Xac.”

“Everybody’s done woke up on the wrong side of the bed today,” Xac huffed.

“Just go sit down,” Lee told him, “Smile and be quiet.”

“Fine,” Xaxac rolled his eyes and returned to the couch where Agalon had picked up another magazine.

He sat softly and sipped his coffee, listening to the ticking of the clocks and the murmurs of conversation around him.

“Places like this’ll bore you to tears,” Agalon said as he turned a page.

“I don’t get bored easy,” Xaxac said pleasantly, “Don’t worry about me, master. I got used to it. I don’t hardly never do nothin.”

“You humans are lucky,” Agalon smiled, “It don’t take much for you. Elves are different. We get bored easy, and we live long lives. It’d be nice to be able to turn my brain off like that.”

“I don’t know,” Xac giggled, “I like you as an elf. I don’t think you’d like bein human. You need your brain. You’re always readin and writin and stuff. What are you always readin? Alex said his master read to him.”

“He does,” Agalon said, “I don’t know if Alex really likes it. He’s cute but he ain’t as smart as you. You’re smart, for a human, one of the smartest I’ve seen.”

This information shocked Xaxac.

“You think I’m smart?” He asked.

“You got a good head on your shoulders,” Agalon said, “You had the sense to know you needed to be controlled, when you shift. I think there’s probably humans out there who woulda fought me, woulda got somebody hurt. You got the sense to know you need somebody to take care of you. Not everybody does. There’s no greater fool than somebody who don’t know their own weaknesses. I worked with folks like that.”

Agalon worked with elves. Was he saying that Xaxac was smarter than some elves?

Xac drew his legs up on the couch and leaned back to sip his coffee. He wasn’t really liking it any better as time went on.

“They love clocks here,” he said at length.

“Yeah, there’s a clocktower outside,” Agalon said, paused, then looked over his magazine at Xaxac. “Hey, Honey Bunny, do you know your numbers?”

“I think so?” Xaxac asked. “I can count.”

“Can you count to sixty?” Agalon asked.

There are sixty tiles on the ceiling of the bedroom.

“Yeah!” Xaxac said proudly, “One, two, three-”

“I believe you,” Agalon cut him off, “Here then, let me show you somethin, but don’t tell nobody.”

“A secret?” Xaxac whispered as he scooted closer.

“Yeah, a secret. Look at that clock up there,” Agalon smirked, “You see those two hands? The little one is the hour and the big one is the minutes. When the little one is between the big ones it’s whatever hour the smallest number is. For the minutes, there’s five between each number, so the one is five, the two is ten, and on and on like that.”

“Oh,” Xac frowned before he caught himself, “I don’t know what they look like, though. I can say um but I don’t know what they look like.”

“The one on top is a twelve and the one beside it on the right is a one,” Agalon explained, “Count um up.”

Xaxac nodded sagely.

“So what time is it?” Agalon asked.

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,” Xaxac counted under his breath, “It’s Nine… something…” he counted the space between the numbers silently, staring intently at the clock on the wall, “Nine fifteen? Fifteen after nine?”

“Goddamn,” Agalon’s smile held real pride, “Yeah. That’s right! Don’t tell nobody you can do that.”

Xaxac stared at the clock and watched the big hand move. That’s what was making the ticking sound.

9:16.

Why wasn’t he supposed to tell anyone he knew that? Why did he instinctively know he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone that he knew which squiggles meant ‘muffin’?

The clock said 9:45, and Xaxac was almost certain he could replicate the numbers on it as he sat, still watching it, curled up on the couch with his head on Agalon’s shoulder as he read, when Lee finally made it to the front of the line and called out, “Master Agalon!”

“Finally,” Agalon threw the magazine down and Xaxc moved to let him stand, then hopped to his feet to follow him to the front of the line.

Agalon dug around in his bag and produced a stack of papers, the same papers Xaxac had seen him squiggling on back in his office, the ones with the little boxes he had filled in. Agalon sat them on the desk and spoke in a very matter-of-fact voice, which Xaxac had heard him use before and which left no room for argument. Xaxac thought he probably talked like that because he was ‘part of the nobility’, because he was a Duke, because he was important. That was how important people talked.

“I’m here to register for the rodeo circuit,” he said, “my cage fighters.”

“It’s so good to see you again, your grace,” the woman behind the desk said as she took the papers and picked up something Xaxac had never seen before, a stamp. She pressed it into a pad of ink, then to the bottom of the paper, then flipped to the next sheet and repeated the process, over and over until they all had a symbol at the bottom, a rose surrounded by text that Xaxac could not read. She picked up a piece of paper from one of the many stacks on her desk and began writing on it, then picked up a piece of paper folded many times until it was rather small, and held the two together out to Agalon.

“Here you are, sir,” she bowed and smiled.

“Thank you,” Agalon said as he unfolded the paper she had handed him and looked down at it, “Hope we see you here, for the primaries.”

“If I can get the day off,” the woman gestured at the line behind them.

“Have a wonderful rest of your shift,” Agalon smiled, and Xaxac thought he looked charming.

“You too!” The woman said, and Xaxac thought that made no sense because Agalon wasn’t working a shift. The woman seemed to realize this as well, but not before Agalon had already turned away, and a look came over her face that revealed she thought herself very stupid.

Xaxac jogged until he caught up with Agalon as he was tucking the papers into his bag, and threw his arms around Agalon’s arm on that side.

“That was a lot of waiting for her to not do much,” Xaxac said.

“Government work in a nutshell,” Agalon said as if it was a joke, and though Xaxac didn’t understand it, he smiled with him.

“Let’s go check on my furniture and get you some clothes,” Agalon smiled down at him.

“I’m so excited!” Xaxac said, because he was. He had never been inside of a store before, and they all looked so beautiful from the outside.

“Yay, errands,” Lee mocked so quietly he seemed to think Xaxac hadn’t heard him, but he had. But there was playfulness in his voice, and Xac was too excited to get angry over nonsense.