“It was so hot, for so long,” a voice told Xaxac in the darkness, “felt like the whole sea boiled. They had to leave, had to abandon everything.”

“Really?” Xac asked without opening his eyes. He was too sleepy, too comfortable in the warm sand as the ocean waves lapped at him.

“Then it started to rain,” Lapus continued, “It rained for longer than you can comprehend. All the water that boiled away had to come back down. But it got cold. The rain turned to snow.”

“That happens when it gets cold,” Xaxac said, rolled onto his side, and opened his eyes to glance up at Lapus. He looked beautiful, sitting there on the beach, staring off at the ocean.

“I’ve had a lot of time to think,” Lapus said, “and… he was right, you know? He was absolutely right. That’s the worst part about it, in the end.”

“Who was right?” Xac asked.

“Morgani,” Lapus said, staring out at the ocean.

Xac hummed in agreement and rolled back onto his back to feel the salt of the surf on his skin, and thought of how comfortable he was.

Xaxac opened his eyes.

He was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling, at the sixty tiles there, with their beautiful flowers. His head was pounding, and he tilted it from side to side in an attempt to get the pain to dissipate by even some small degree.

He needed to get up, because he was almost certainly going to vomit everywhere, so he bolted from the bed toward the water closet, and doubled over as an awful pain wracked his body from the core outward. He had moved more quickly than he meant to, and his aim was off, but he couldn’t focus on that as the convulsions wracked his body; that was a problem for future Xaxac, and one that he didn’t particularly want to deal with.

“Honey Bunny?” Agalon called from the sitting room, “You up, darlin?”

“Oh good,” Lorry said, sounding much closer, as if he had stepped into the bedroom, “He’s dying. Great. Perfect.”

“Is he really hurt?” Cremia asked, with none of the sarcasm Lorsan had used, “He is alright, ain’t he? Just hungover? Is he sick? Does the shiftin make him sick?”

“You alright?” the vet asked, and Xaxac felt his hands slide around his waist and was thankful for it as he let his legs give out.

“I gotta… rinse my mouth out…” Xac begged.

“He’s dehydrated,” The vet decided, “and… I think malnourished. Like not just right now but in general. Kai you gotta get him some grains and grass type stuff.”

“He’s just hungover,” Agalon said as Xaxac rinsed his mouth out, “And I do hate to cause a fuss but he gets real skittish when he wakes up so if y’all can just go on back to the sittin room and let him get presentable, that’d probably help out.”

“Even me?” the vet asked as Xac spit into the sink.

“I mean, you can stay if you really want,” Agalon said, and Xaxac watched Lorry put one hand on Cremia’s shoulder and lead her out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

The vet led Xac back to the bed and heaved him onto it, where he jingled heavily.

“It’s just a hangover,” Xac said, “I just… my head hurts and it makes me sick.”

“Hair of the dog, darlin,” Agalon said and handed Xac a glass of wine.

“Thanks, Aggie,” Xac smiled up at him, “I’m ok, I swear. I just… is there folks in the sittin room?”

“Yeah, darlin, our guests are here to see you,” Agalon gently booped his nose, smiling down at him.

“Can Jimmy shave me?” Xaxac asked, “I’m shakin real bad…”

“Lee can do that,” Agalon said, “If you don’t feel up to it, darlin.”

“Lee’s mad at me,” Xac said.

“Darlin, that’s just how he is,” Agalon said dismissively, “Everybody loves you.”

“I think… I can’t remember, but I think we got in a fight?” Xaxac asked.

“I don’t reckon,” Agalon said in the same tone, “Ima go ring for him, you just do what you gotta do, Honey Bunny.”

Xaxac frowned into his drink before he caught himself, realized the vet was still there, took a deep breath and smiled up at him. Xac couldn’t remember why Lee might be mad at him, but he had a vague recollection of some sort of fight. He had done something wrong last night. And tonight, he was going to shift.

He stood and made his way slowly to the dressing table to take off his makeup.

Lee moved the blade across Xac’s skin with practiced precision, and Xac stared at his stern face in the mirror. He let himself be perfectly malleable, let Lee tilt his head however he wanted. He wasn’t humming today like he normally did, he stood, silently, swishing the blade in the water then running it again over Xac’s face.

He swished it one last time, then dried it on the hand towel.

“You’re finished,” he said.

“Thanks,” Xac said as he ran the wet cloth over his smooth face, “Um… Lee?”

“Yup,” Lee said as he collected the tools he would need to wash.

“Are you mad at me?” Xac asked, “I got real drunk last night. I don’t remember what happened?”

“I ain’t mad, Xac, I’m tired,” Lee said, and Xaxac half believed him. “And thinkin about tonight. Please, please just… just try, alright, youngun?”

“I can’t control it,” Xac said as he rubbed the lotion into his skin, “Um… thanks. For not bein mad at me. I feel like I did somethin wrong.”

“You… did about what coulda been expected of you,” Lee said, then walked into the water closet to wash out the things he had taken with him, and Xac turned to the mirror to fix his hair and makeup.

Xaxac took a deep breath, steadied himself, put a hand on the doorknob, and tried to open it.

It turned.

The sitting room was full of elves.

On the table where he and Aggie normally ate, a game had been laid out that he didn’t recognize, a tower built of wooden blocks. Cremia was in the process of taking one from near the bottom, so Xaxac though the object might be to disassemble it without knocking it down. Lorry was sitting at the table with her, and seemed as if he was actually enjoying himself. It was a rare sight.

The sofa and armchairs were completely full, not just with the people he recognized from the previous night, but with a new addition, the man in the soldier’s uniform who had once drug Lorry, kicking and screaming, back home from wherever it was he had gone. He had been leaning on the armchair, talking to the vet who sat in it, but he stopped speaking entirely, like everyone else, when Xac entered the room.

“He don’t look no different,” Mr Loraxina said.

“He won’t, not till the moons rise,” Mrs Loraxina said, “They don’t do nothin till the moons rise.”

Xaxac wondered where Helen and Alex were.

But he smiled and crossed the room quickly to climb into Agalon’s lap.

He glanced at the clock on the wall and saw that it was a little after noon. The sun normally set after seven in the evening.

Seven hours remaining.

“No!” Lorry lamented, drawing out the word, as the tower on the table tilted, collapsed, and the wooden blocks scattered.

Cremia giggled and Lorry bent to collect them, maybe to rebuild the tower.

“I don’t always lose,” Lorsan told her, “but when I do I lose the game and half the pieces.”

“Cute outfit,” the soldier said to Xac, so Xac smiled up at him.

“Thanks! Are you gonna watch me shift, too?”

“I don’t reckon anybody… no offense, Kai, but I don’t reckon anybody can really believe it, before they see it, you know? Like I don’t think you’re lyin, I just can’t figure it out.”

“I am as against this,” Lorsan said as he tossed wooden blocks onto a table, “as somebody can be against a thing, while still letting it happen.”

“Lorry,” Agalon said in a tone of warning.

“Daddy,” Lorsan said, matching him exactly in tone and cadence.

“Look,” he continued as he stood, “All y’all listen to me. We get out there y’all keep a respectable distance away. I don’t know why daddy’s tryin to play this off like he ain’t dangerous. Y’all need to remember that that is a monster.”

“I don’t think he is,” Cremia said, “He’s been so sweet.”

“Yeah I don’t… know why no one is listening to me,” Lorry said, “Like it keeps consistantly happenin and I don’t know why.”

“Lorry, sit down,” Agalon ordered, then, to his adult guests he continued, “I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”

“I told you, it’s the exhaustion,” Mrs Loraxina said, “all them kids are gettin that. If you don’t watch him he’ll faint.”

“He ain’t got the exhaustion,” the soldier said as if the suggestion shocked him, “Lorry’s one of the strongest mages at the academy. He’s real sound. Physically strong, I mean. He could make it in the army.”

“Thanks,” Lorry said, though Xaxac could not judge his sincerity, “put that on my chart.”

“I did,” the soldier said, “I mean it, Lorry, you know you got a future.”

“Are you goin into the military?” Cremia asked him as she rebuilt the tower.

“Actually,” Lorsan turned in his chair to speak to the soldier, “Sir, I’m thinkin real serious about the private sector after graduation. Dr Neldor says I can apprentice with him.”

“A vet?” The soldier said as if the idea was ridiculous, “Lorry, you can be a medic, you can be a doctor!”

“Excuse me?” The vet said as if he had been insulted, and Xaxac didn’t blame him, “Do you know how much harder it is to be a vet than a doctor? Doctors gotta know one species, I gotta know the entire taxonomic classification of life. You even know what that is?”

“That ain’t what I meant,” the soldier said, “But uh… I realize it sounded like that. I’m sorry. Didn’t mean no disrespect. I just hate to lose him.”

The door opened and Jimmy stepped inside followed by two other human men, all carrying large trays piled high. Jimmy’s had an entire tea set, and the other two were piled with food.

“Oh, lovely,” Cremia said, and Xac admired her positivity. It was catching, and he needed it.

Jimmy sat the tea on the coffee table while the other two humans sat up folding tables for the food. The general idea seemed to be that people would wander and get what they wanted, like at a party. Xac wondered if Alex and Helen would get anything to eat.

Xac wondered a lot of things.

It was strange to be here, silent and pretty, in what now had to be classified as a party. There were so many people in the house that it had to be a party. And it was, all things considered, a party for him.

As he watched the elves, dressed in their finery, taking slices of cake on small plates and listened to the talk turn to the prices of cash crops, Xaxac thought of the sort of things he was not supposed to think about. He thought that Mrs Loraxina had a child, which meant she had to have been pregnant at some point. He thought that while she had been pregnant, she had likely lived much as she did now, sitting around eating cake and talking about tobacco prices. He thought of Alley, pregnant and dealing with what his mother had called ‘mood swings’ while she worked from four in the morning to long after sunset, on her feet with kitchen duties. He thought of how Cremia had been playing the piano since she was a child, and of how Alley’s child wouldn’t know what a piano was.

He thought of how, when they had traveled to Basilglen, he had walked into the human dining area and it had struck him that there were far more humans than there were elves. He thought of the staff it took to keep up the house, which only had two elves in it, and most of the time only had one. It seemed strange to him, in that moment, that there were so many more of them than there were of the elves.

Agalon handed him a cup of tea and he stared down at it and wondered where it came from. Agalon had said that coffee came from the fire continent, and Lorsan had said that there had once been fire elves, but no longer. Xaxac thought of the pretty little blond woman on the tapestry at the hotel, the one overlooking the islands that now belonged to her, but once had not, the water continent where Alex had been with his master.

The earth elves had taken those places. They could go anywhere.

Xaxac thought of locked doors.

He thought of the ceiling, of the sixty flowers he could see when he closed his eyes.

He thought of a man with blue skin and hair the color of seafoam who told him that once it had started raining, and the rain had turned to snow, and the snow had fallen forever.

Xaxac thought of a sky with three moons.

He thought of the two moons that were, right now, below the horizon, waiting to control him.

He thought of the painting Alex had made for him, of the man with eyes like the void between the stars.

He squirmed in Agalon’s lap, leaned over toward the mantel, and picked up the bag that had been situated there. He pulled his needles out of the bag and began to knit.

The conversation around him flowed without him, because he was just a pretty little thing, in a room full of pretty little things, making another pretty little thing.

Clack clack clack clack went the needles, as Xaxac transformed a length of string into a blanket.

Tick tick tick tick went the clock, narrowing the gap between the boy and the monster.