“A human” mumbled a nearby elf sitting on a pillow, before standing up and smiling at Rum, looking him up and down, left and right. “You look hilarious human!”

Oh no, Rum thought, I’m still wearing the silly outfit from my visit to the doctor. Rum quickly touched his chest, closed his eyes and whispered “Renew Clothes”, and within seconds he was wearing what looked more likely to be a morning robe, with an opening in the front similar to a buttonless jacket, but lazily bound shut with nothing but a long thick piece of cloth akin to a belt. The robe wasn’t without style, and it reached quite far down, and yet Rum felt like he was one step away from nudity, which was a little awkward, though just a little. He’d become quite experienced in awkwardness over the years, and so benefited from a bit of resistance in such situations.

“Nice trick there, human” the same elf said, looking him up and down again and smiling wider now. “A mage? What’s your name?”

Behind the elf, other elves started to rise up from pillows and couches, gathering near Rum to stare at him, and giving him all manners of normal, awkward or just plain weird smiles. It was a little menacing to have the attention of so many elves at once, but he’d faced many quite worse situations.

“My name’s Rum”

“Rum?” the elf said with a raised eyebrow, then half-nodded in a thinking sort-of way. “You humans can have such strange names. My name is Ovaduva Zizik, people usually say it with a bit of musical rhyme, like Ova-Duva-Zi-Zik” the last pronunciation of his name had a sharp fast rhythmic expression, like the elf was about to jump into some kind of exotic dance, which he almost seemed to do as his neck and shoulders went back and forth with the beat of the pronunciation.

Rum just raised his own eyebrows, not wishing to point out the irony here. “And what is this place, Ova-Duva-Zi-Zik the elf?” Rum tried to pronounce with a similar rhythm, it went okay, and made the elf smile.

“This, Rum” the elf spoke in a sweet lazy voice, “my new – hopefully soon – friend; is our home.” Ovaduva spread his arms around, gesturing at the elves behind him.

“Rum is looking for someone” Royath began saying from behind Ovaduva, where he’d started mingling with his people, “An elven woman apparently, named Irvanir The Bright. Anyone here heard of her?” Royath spoke with smoothness with the entirety of the crowd as his audience. His attitude was cool now that he was among his fellow elves. Or his roommates? Rum suspected as much. This was a lot of elves in relatively little space though. Did anyone of them even have real beds here?

Another elf, a woman, walked up to Rum from the crowd, carrying a pear in her hand. She smiled warmly with red round red cheeks, and put it forward for him to grab. “Would you like something to eat?” she said, her voice innocent and quiet. Rum grabbed the pear. He was quite hungry after a long day and so took a big bite out of it. “Would you like to sit?” the elven woman gestured at the largest sofa in the room, which, joined by comfy chairs and big pillows, surrounded a large table, and gave space for maybe 15, or possibly 20 elves. As every elf in the room watched with lazy smiles and curious interest, Rum followed the elven woman to sit down in the sofa. A few elves followed and sat down around the table, whether they just didn’t want to stand anymore or wanted to be near him, Rum didn’t know, but he guessed the later, as all of these elves stared at him with the weirdest of smiles.

“Can’t say I’ve heard of anyone called Irvanir before.” A male elf mumbled from around where Royath stood. Royath himself was currently hugging and gently embracing, or rather being hugged and being gently embraced, by a small group of three or four elves taking turns giving Royath more of a physical home welcoming. “Me neither. Who is she?” another male elf around Royath responded.

“An apothecarian.” Rum said, while eating from his pear and strangely enough being given a little embrace from that elven woman next to him. She was warm and soft to the touch, and sweet of mood, so Rum didn’t mind, although it was a little sudden to experience this, his life experiences was varied enough that he didn’t think too much of it. Also, he wanted to focus on the inquiry, the reason for him coming here. So he continued: “Irvanir would probably have an apothecary somewhere around The City Forest. Do anyone of you know any apothecaries?” Most of the elves just shook their heads in response, while others mumbled their ignorance of the matter, and some steered clear of Rum’s gaze and preferred to remain shy.

As Rum finished his pear, his elven embracer leaned over the table in front of them and picked out an apple from a large plate full of different fruits and vegetables, and traded it for the last inedible bits of the pear in Rum’s hand. He took the hint, and as he was still hungry, he started eating the apple too, while she put the inedible pear parts away and went back to her little embrace of him, which mostly consisted of her hugging his right arm while smiling sweetly.

“Rum, the human mage” started Ovaduva Zizik, who sat down in a big comfy chair opposite of Rum and Rum’s elven embracer on their sofa, “you know it’s dark outside, and we’re fast-approaching nighttime here. Why don’t you sleep here with us, with your soon-to-be elven friends?” A softness and dreaminess was in his voice, like he was putting a high charisma to good use.

“Well I have somebody to get back to” Rum responded, his thoughts going to White Rose and what ze might be doing now that he’d been gone for so many hours. This was the first time in zes new life that Rum wasn’t present to guide ze or tell ze what to do. Hopefully that mirror keeps being as entertaining as ze seems to think it is.

“Oh I’m sure” Ovaduva said ever so softly, “that whoever it is can survive without you for a night. Or is that not so?”

“Well” Rum said, trying to think about the issue while answering, “I suppose that is possible. But also, you know I came here to find Irvanir The Bright. She has something I need in order to cure some post-healing damages I have.”

“But will you search throughout the night, and not sleep?” Ovaduva raised both eyebrows, displaying surprise and maybe a little worry on Rum’s behalf.

“No, of course I’ll sleep–“

“–then that’s okay then! Sleep here, with us. It’ll be a good night’s sleep I promise you, and in the morning we’ll help you find Irvanir The Bright. We’ve even been thinking of having a gathering tomorrow, and then you might meet many elves who could know something about The Bright. What do you say? Would you let us keep you here, sleeping in comfort with us, and with many delicious food for you to eat freely and be satisfied?”

Rum leaned back and thought for a moment. Playfully, his elven embracer put a hand forth and began touching and stroking his beard for him while his eyes were searching beyond the ceiling. Can I leave White Rose alone? But my brother is there. He’s not that much less qualified than I am in taking care of ze, or at least so I think. And ze has followed my instructions so far, so ze would probably not start any problems I should worry about? I told ze not to go anywhere, didn’t I?

He looked down again, and the hand about his beard retracted to continue its embrace of his arm. “I suppose it would be fine. And I do really need to find Irvanir, so I suppose if you could help me do that, I could stay here for a night.”

“That’s great” Ovaduva smiled a big warm smile.

Not just one, but at least three other elves mumbled “Really?”. Meanwhile, another random elf commented “A human will stay here? It’s been so long since last time. This is indeed fine to hear!”

That night, the elves quizzed Rum for nearly an hour about his recent days, seeming particularly interested in his trip to Jorteg’s Dungeon. In return Rum quizzed the elves about their lives, before finally, they all went to sleep as Rum and elves started to yawn.

The method of sleeping among these elves was a little unusual to Rum. Instead of beds, green-elves of the Spruce Committee slept tight next to each other, embracing for body warmth. Rum felt quite popular too in this regard, he slept on the sofa with a tall elven man to his back, the elven woman from before in front, whose name he’d been told was Eidinun, and with two other elven trios both near the top of his head and near the bottom of his feet. Everyone was keeping each other warm and cozy, and thin elven silken blankets were used for cover. The temperature of the room stayed at a comfortable level the whole time, whether this was by the tree’s magic or something else, Rum didn’t know, but it certainly felt perfect somehow. Rum did hear one or two snores while he slept, but not loud ones, and only momentary ones. It took him a bit of time, but eventually he entered the land of dreams.

While in the land of dreams his thoughts centered on White Rose. He dreamt that ze snook out of Amez’s shop backdoor, and then danced around the stony grounds of the town well, catching a great crowd of spectators. And just as suddenly ze managed – somehow – to sing: “I AM A SKELETON! A SKELETON IS ME! COME EVERYONE, HERE IS THE SKELETON!” White Rose grabbed the cloth surrounding ze and began ripping it apart, using zes overpowering magical strength to shred it to pieces. Within seconds ze stood there, naked, zes bones on display for everyone to see.

Rum didn’t wake up from this nightmare, but someone must’ve been consoling him through the night, because suddenly he dreamt of elven ladies comforting him with hugs and soothing words he couldn’t quite grasp, and yet understood the meaning of. The meaning was that it was all just a dream, none of it was real, it was all okay. Everything is okay.

Hours later Rum woke up feeling a sudden radiant warmth. Across all of his face he felt rays of sunlight, capable of penetrating his eyelids with each. But not just his face: his hands, his feet, and on the very silken blanket covering him there was a warmth, a kind of burning almost, that only the sun was known by him to cause. Involuntarily he opened his eyes, only to see that the ceiling was gone. No really, it was all gone, somehow. As he looked around he soon discovered he was still in the same room that he’d gone to bed in, but somehow the ceiling had crawled backwards to reveal the wooden room to the splendid clear blue sky, the blazing bright sun, and the other great boughs of the tree above, whereupon nearby elves sat or stood around, relaxing or having fun. As he focused his eyes on one particular balcony of elves, he noticed one of the elves over there, carrying a big slice of watermelon in his left hand, waving at him with the entirety of his right arm. It was almost like the elf was happy to see Rum, although Rum was pretty sure he’d never seen that elf before, nor had any other connection with him other than being on the same great tree.

Looking around the sunlit room, Rum saw the elves from yesterday sitting about lazily in sofas and on pillows. Some of them were drinking lemon juice. Others partook in eating a large bowl of thoroughly mixed salad with sauce, also drinking lemon juice though. Another two elves, and probably the same elves from yesterday, read small books in the chairs next to the room’s great bookshelf. Opposite the book-readers sat yet another three elves on the wooden floor, playing with water paint on themselves as well as the naked body of a sun-bathing fourth elf man, perhaps pretending to be a canvas? Rum was unsure if the sunbathing elf did so by choice though, or if the trio weren’t just exploiting his naked sleeping on the ground to paint a yellow sun and a white moon on either of his buttocks. As Rum sat up from the couch and threw the blanket off, he discovered he was the only one who hadn’t already fully stood up for the morning. Putting the blanket aside yet another elf came to his attention, it was a small but adult elf, sitting and leaned over a table, reading glasses on his face, and his hands writing something on a large piece of paper.

Taking everything in for half a minute, Rum felt there were significantly fewer elves than yesterday. But all of the elves he remembered the name of: Royath, Ovaduva Zizik and Eidinun, they were there. Royath and Ovaduva were sitting on large pillows and discussing around a small table, together with four other elven women Rum didn’t know. From their expressions and contemplative stares it looked like they were discussing a boring but necessary subject of sorts. Maybe related to the gathering? Or the Committee? How did even these Committees work? Right now Rum’s experience of the Committees only made them feel like some kind of pseudo-clan organizational structure. Eidinun, whose full name was really Eidinun The Lovely, was one of the elves water painting the naked sun-bathing male elf. Yesterday, as Eidinun had gone away for a bit to attend to some issue, Rum had taken the opportunity to ask Ovaduva about why the elf woman behaved with such a strange instant affection towards him. Rum had assured Ovaduva he didn’t mind it, but that he was curious. That night Ovaduva had explained that Eidinun was very fond of the other races, and her behavior was nothing out of the ordinary. She particularly liked dwarves though, and dwarves apparently also liked her a lot, and thus they’d been the ones who’d given her the title of The Lovely, which she’d accepted. Ovaduva had further gestured at Rum’s beard and suggested Eidinun must’ve found Rum to have among the most essential features of dwarvenhood, and had so treated Rum as a she would a dwarf. Dwarves hadn’t visited the Spruce Committee for some time though, as apparently the Council of The Dwarves at The Little Mountain, an organization trying to unite and promote dwarvenkind within Ermos, had tried multiple times to forbid dwarves from visiting the Spruce Committee. Exactly why this had been done wasn’t Ovaduva quite forthright with, but he’d suggested it’d been because of dwarves who skipped work in the iron foundries to go attend elven gatherings and celebrations, and not returning for several days after what a representative from the Council of The Dwarves had termed “excessive and degrading fun”.

Rum decided to stand up from the couch he was on, and in his morning robe from yesterday, walk over to the six elves. There were no other seats around the table, so he sort of knelt next to Ovaduva, the one elf he felt most readily available to answer questions, after yesterday’s talks. Ovaduva noticed Rum kneeling next to him.

“Hi Rum, a great morning huh?” Ovaduva said so while weakly waving a finger up at the blue sky and bright sun.

“This is the first time I’ve gone to bed under a roof, and woken up without one.” Rum responded.

The elf chuckled. “Yes, we elves are so used to it, but I always forget you others don’t have the luxury of living in a sentient, caring, shape-flexible tree. Great Spruce likes for us to bath in the sun whenever the weather is great. You were lucky to get to experience such a good day.”

“Yeah” Rum nodded in his knelt state, “it’s a unique experience I must say. But Ovaduva, what is the word on this gathering of yours? When will it happen? I don’t want to waste the day away, when I could be looking for The Bright.”

“Oh it’s coming Rum, don’t you worry! We sent some of our housemates to invite the other houses here. Everyone in the Great Spruce is invited! We even sent a couple of housemates to invite some ground elves, and some elves living around the forest borders – and we did it for you! For our guest here! And of course also because it’s been waaay too long since we’ve had any of the elves from the forest border and outside the forest altogether. But, to be brief: don’t you worry. In three, or maybe four hours? Something like that, the guests will start to arrive, and then they’ll continue to arrive until the evening.”

As Ovaduva Zizik completed his talk, Rum noticed all the others elves had stopped talking, and were looking at the two of them. With all this excess attention, Rum took the opportunity to voice what was immediately on his mind. “So what were you talking about, before I showed up?”

One of the female elves, a younger version of what may once had been Lamboveri, Rum’s obese and beautiful Professor of Spell History at Flip University, replied with an expression of tired annoyance: “Committee budget”.

Another skinnier elf, with unusually short-cut hair, added: “We’re The Sub-Committee for Economic Concerns for The Committee of The Spruce. Or The Econs, as the other elves call us.”

“It’s all very boring, human.” The Lamb-like elf commented.

“It’s mostly boring because we never have much money and always have to argue about where to save money.” Commented Royath. “The Northern Lemon Juice Bar where I work at, and the Southern Lemon Juice Bar which Ovaduva sometimes work at, is never bringing in enough cash to buy all that our elven friends want. Neither is the Lemon Export Bureau, which is handled by Yovini and Ovoni over here.” Royath gestured at the two as-of-yet silent elves, who were two vaguely similar young elves with long blond hair (like almost all green-elves), and their hands on their knees instead of the table, the only ones to show this kind of reservation.

“You only make money selling lemons?” Rum asked curiously.

“It’s mostly that.” Ovaduva responded, "But we also sell a little bit of other produce when we grow a surplus. Occasionally some of our members are also hired to play music for the wealthy, or organize parties for dwarven dwellings at The Little Mountain. Not any recently, but there have been many fine parties we’ve organized in the past, I attended most of them myself. Besides that, some of our older elves are also serving as tutors for wealthy children. We help the human and urban elven children mainly with reading, writing, literature, music, painting, the basics of magic, and history. Often our elders serve in history, that’s one of the perks of being long-lived: one becomes very good at history. Tutoring is one of our best sources of money, but the jobs are few, and they only want our most senior elves.”

“Most green-elves also used to be good at archery” Royath interjected, “but living in this less natural and more limited forest gives few opportunities to practice the craft in hunting, and none of our committee members like fighting in the dungeons.”

“We have a couple of art stores as well” interjected the Lamb-like elf woman in turn, “one inside the city wall, and one in-between The Little Mountain and The Iron City. They made a lot of money when we first set them up a decade or two ago. But neither of them makes much money these days, we mostly have to be cautious with our earnings there, unfortunately.” She ended her interjection with a depressed sigh replacing her earlier mild annoyance.

The sigh of the Lamb-like elf was infectious, and soon after Royath and Ovaduva, and the second elven woman to have spoken, one-by-one they sighed, some sighs bigger than others.

“Well I don’t have too much money. But if you will send out some more elves to try and help me find Irvanir The Bright, you can have this.” Rum put his hand within a large pocket on the side of his morning robe. As he’d guessed, his spell had placed his coins inside of it. After a bit of fishing he got every coin and put them in a stack on the table in front of him. There were over three and a half gold there. The elves looked upon the stack of coins with mild awe.

“All of it?” Ovaduva questioned, while picking up a gold coin.

“Hmm, all but one gold coin.” Rum responded, and picked up a different gold coin for himself, putting it back in his robe pocket. “I probably should have some money, after all.”

Ovaduva nodded, and then looked at Royath, and they both nodded, and then the two male elves looked at the four female elves, and they all more or less nodded. Ovaduva returned to look at Rum. “We can do that. This is certainly a fortuitous bit of coin. How did you come by this much?”

“My venture into Jorteg’s Dungeon. This is about half the share I was given after we sold the loot.”

“Oooh” Ovaduva exclaimed, “that’s a lot then. Maybe we should reconsider forming a dungeoneer group.”

“But it’s so dangerous” said the Lamb-like elf with a big frown on her face.

“Why” began Royath “don’t we set up a dungeon expedition sub-committee? If the committee could find among our elves those willing to challenge The Desolate Lands – then we have our group. If nobody wants to form a group, then we don’t have one. Doesn’t that sound fair, Erviola?” Royath looked over at the Lamb-like elf, and thus Rum finally knew her name.

“Hmm. And how would we fund their expedition?” responded Erviola.

As the Sub-Committee for Economic Concerns, or The Econs, descended into a debate about budgetary balancing, Rum retreated from their table and went over to Eidinun The Lovely, who was now water-painting a trio of different species trees along the sunbathing male elf’s quite long left leg. On the other long leg were another elf woman together with a young elf man, both having lots of fun painting a lemon tree along the sunbather’s thigh and halfway down to his ankle. As Rum came up close he noticed the sunbather twitch for a moment as Eidinun not-so-accidentally tickled his feet.

“You’re having fun?” Rum said smiling, before sitting down cross-legged next to Eidinun.

“As fun as the sun” she smiled in return without looking at him.

For the next few hours, while the house prepared for its gathering, Rum followed Eidinun The Lovely around on all of her fun activities. After water-painting the entire backside of the naked sunbathing elf man from ankle to neck, the elves and Rum started water-painting each other’s faces, necks and legs, filling them with mostly scenery, like trees, bushes, undergrowth, ponds, fish and wildlife. As they grew tired of water-painting, and also started to run short of paint; Eidinun, Rum and some other elves went outside to pick fruit, berries and nuts. The found them in nearby trees and bushes hiding on the various trails leading up to Great Spruce. The tree’s humanoid torso waved Rum and the elves farewell when they left, and got strangely excited when they returned with the produce, even wanting to inspect it, and eating one apple for itself, which apparently had gone bad. Of course Great Spruce didn’t as much eat it as crunching it inside its mouth and magically absorbing its nutrients. Rum and the elves also went to various produce storages, which were wooden sheds on the trails and close to some small fields where things like potatoes and carrots were grown. The sheds existed so that the elves didn’t have to carry the food all the way to the great trees every time, but so that they instead could routinely collect their produce there during harvest time, and pick it up when they ran out back home.

As Rum ran these trips along with the other elves, the house sent out three more of their housemate elves to go inquire about Irvanir The Bright, and if they found here, then attempt to invite her to come to the gathering.

An hour or two of fun and errands left Rum exhausted, and together with the other elves he lounged on the sofas and the great pillows of the house, drinking water with lemon flavor while waiting for the gathering to start happening. The water in his glass came from a highly convenient special vein-like structure inside the tree which efficiently soaked up mineral-rich water from the earth, and concentrated it towards the higher extremities of the veins. To Rum these end-point vein extremities just looked like soaked pieces of wood at the tree’s walls, although with a myriad of very tiny holes. Gathering water for the elves was a mere matter of uttering the phrase “Great Spruce, could I get some water?”, and then the nearest such piece of soaked wood started spewing a hundred tiny streams of water at a pressure that would quickly fill up any glass and any bucket. The lemon of Rum’s glass meanwhile was cut and squeezed near a small mountain of lemons, sitting on a roughly bowl-shaped low-standing table at a corner of the large room. There one would always find at least one elf operating the cutting and the squeezing of lemons, ever so often adding spices of all kinds from a nearby spice rack.

Before the first guests had arrived, Rum had drank multiple glasses of water-lemon. And when the guests did start to arrive they came, at first, slowly, like with most gatherings. However, after the fifth elf or so the rest of them started arriving like a continuous stream for a long time, filling the room up to its brink. Elves started sitting and lying on the bare floor, while small and skinny elves sat in the laps of larger elves. In the end not just elves showed up, but also a trio of humans and half a dozen dwarves in funny silken robes – funny because dwarves would rarely ever wear anything such casual. Though these dwarves were obviously a little rebellious, defying their leaders and all that. Eidinun were all over them as soon as they arrived, and the dwarves obviously knew her because they were very happy to see her too, all cheeks blushing while they greeted her in near unison. For some reason Eidinun decided to introduce Rum to the dwarves. The six dwarves all had relatively long beards that’d been beautified to an almost silly degree with jewelry and creative braiding. However, these unique traits despite, as soon as Rum learned their names he also forgot them, though he didn’t forget their faces, and in particular their menacing frowns. When Eidinun had grabbed Rum’s arm playfully with her left arm, pointing at each dwarf successively with her right and telling him their names and occupations – all of them either bankers, bakers and an armorsmith – there had been instant daggers in the dwarves’ eyes, or was that perhaps battleaxes? Rum wasn’t sure, but along with their frowns was an almost imperceptible flex of their collective big shoulder muscles, which were particularly prominent on the armorsmith, and their eyes spoke of at least some kind of blade, one which they would eagerly use to rid Rum of his beard and possibly castrate him for good measure. In short, the dwarves weren’t keen on sharing their elf friend with Rum. Rum hadn’t even known Eidinun for a day so wasn’t overly attached to her, thus as the gathering unfolded he tried to not get the attention of Eidinun as best as he could, in order to safeguard himself against future dwarven sanctions.

Why the dwarves tolerated each other though is another question. Probably it was a clan-thing. Dwarves of the same clan stuck together after all, and Rum knew that dwarves practiced polygamy out of necessity. This is because dwarves tended to give birth to more male dwarves than females, and as such male dwarves would often compete for the female dwarves’ attention. A thousand years ago the practice among dwarves of higher society had often been to fight bloody duels over the right to court dwarf women. This was common knowledge. This practice had later been ended, and instead today male dwarves would often proposition dwarf women jointly, so that if the dwarf woman were to agree she would marry two or even three dwarf men simultaneously. This was a form of risk reduction strategy, since any one of the dwarf men could be turned down individually, they hedged their individual bets by forming a husband package, the package also included a gift of wealth and not just the actual dwarves. For particularly attractive dwarf women, sometimes many dwarf men would proposition together in order to form the largest possible husband package of fine dwarves and rich gifts, hoping that their collective proposition be more tempting than what any other lone or group of dwarves could provide. Interestingly enough, when impregnation occurred the dwarf woman would often have sex with all her dwarf men in order to make it impossible to know which dwarf man was the biological father – at least until the dwarf child grew up and started resembling some dwarves more than others. Because of this practice it was common for dwarf children to have multiple fathers as well. The whole process was sometimes even formalized with a game the dwarves called impregnation dice, in which all the dwarf husbands would jointly impregnate a dwarf woman over an evening or a weekend, making it even more difficult to determine who is the biological father.

Rum recalled all these facts about dwarves while staring at them from a less noticeable part of the room’s crowd of sitting and lying people. He was trying not to get noticed, in particular by Eidinun, which was happily chatting up the dwarves, each one beaming at her with the most intense admiration, and seeming dizzy with joy whenever she’d touch them for whatever reason. While sitting there, mostly alone, Ovaduva Zizik discovered Rum and came over to him, whereupon he knelt.

“You know she’s just over there” Ovaduva said, and pointed, not at Eidinun, but at a tired-looking green-elven woman in a dark green robe, with that all-too-familiar long blond elven hair.

“It’s Irvanir The Bright?” Rum quizzed in turn.

“Indeed” Ovaduva said softly. “We found her apothecary. It’s actually quite a bit west from here I was told, and kind of hidden away at the bottom of a street where mostly wealthy urban elves live. The area is known as Oldemora’s End. There’s a large assemblage of trees there at the bottom, kind of like a park, and her apothecary rests alone in between the trees there. I’ve been to that miniature forest once before myself, once when I partied at a house of an elf who live in the street. Interesting place.”

“Well I need to go there this evening.” Rum replied. “I suppose I’ll get to see what’s interesting about it.” Ovaduva just smiled in return, and then left Rum to his thoughts.

Rum went on to stare at Irvanir The Bright. She was a green-elf, but not very talkative with the others, and spending a lot of time analyzing her lemon drink with a bored expression. That said, she mingled well enough with the other elves. After about half an hour of hiding in his obscure place, Rum decided to go chat her up. As he stood up Eidinun however happened to glance at his direction, and across the giant murmur of the crowd between them tried to call for him, even trying to wave him over to her. Rum tried seriously not to notice, and pulled up his robe so that his beard was less visible, as if Eidinun had some pair of beard-detecting eyes that wouldn’t see him if he hid his beard. He also started walking faster and stumbled twice in elves lying spread on the floor. The second time just as he came upon Irvanir The Bright. As Rum sat down next to Irvanir she gave him a major question mark of an eyebrow.

“Hi there.” Rum mumbled with his robe over his mouth. “Nice meeting you, I’m Rum.” He stretched out his hand to shake hers. She took it, her eyebrow not much lowered.

“Hi Rum?” She said with a skeptical tone.

“Your name is Irvanir The Bright, right?”

“So they call me.” She lowered her eyebrow a little. “Anything I can do for you? Something wrong with your face?”

Rum lowered the robe, revealing his beard. “Yes. A Doctor Sharam told me that you could make a potion which could help me heal internal damages I have, which were left after magic did what it could. I was shot by an arrow not long ago, but even though I’m a mage, my magic hasn’t been able to heal it. Could you make such a potion?”

Irvanir nodded, without breaking eye-contact. “You know Doctor Sharam?”

“I was his patient for a moment.”

“Ah. But not anymore?” she looked at him, a skeptical raised eyebrow again.

“I decided I should seek out the source directly.”

“Well here she is. And you want me to make that for you? I must warn you, Rum The Mage, that I’m quite expensive, and what you’re asking me to make is one of the most expensive things I offer.”

“No, no, I don’t need you to make it.” Rum said, shaking his head. She frowned, confused. Rum continued “I just need you to think about making it, for a moment.” Now she looked at him again with both eyebrows raised, as if he was being stupid. Which in fairness he was, and as she stared at him he sat a little closer to her, putting his right hand on her back. With a direct connection to her body he faked a cough into his left elbow, and while there, with his mouth muffled, whispered a spell: “Mana Ghost”. The elf woman next to Rum collapsed, and she collapsed into his arms. With the sneakiest bit of skill Rum forced the magic to travel through their clothing where their bodies connected, and leaning forward Rum was sure few elves would’ve noticed the magic jumping out of his robe neck and into his forehead.

“Are you okay, Irvanir?” Rum said, a statement that both carried genuine care, but also a pretension of ignorance at what had just occurred.

Irvanir didn’t speak at first. Multiple elves around them had noticed Irvanir tip over and looked at the duo. After a couple of deep breaths Irvanir pushed herself up from Rum, looking at him with confusion. Did she realize I just used magic on her? Rum worried a second. But then calmed as Irvanir responded: “I don’t know what just happened to me. I just… lost myself there. Something must be wrong with me.”

“Oh I’m sure it was but a brief moment of…” Rum stopped and tried to think of a good reply. He didn’t like lying and so tried to speak as truthfully as he could without making her worry or upset: “It was probably nothing you can do anything about right now. Things happen sometimes.”

Irvanir didn’t quite listen though. “I think I should go home. Something wrong definitely just happened to me.”

“Aren’t you fine right now? You feel any symptoms, anything wrong?”

Now it was her time to stop up and think. “No” she replied after a moment, “unless you count randomly falling over and feeling like something took over my body for a second, unless you count that as a symptom?”

Rum felt a little guilty now. She was definitely worrying about what just happened. And of course she’s worried! She’s a healer! It’s her job to know when something is wrong.

“I think I should go home. Coming here must’ve done something to me.” And the elf stood up.

“Oh. Would you like an escort? I’ll help you get home if you’d want to.”

“Actually?” she eyed him, “Yeah. What if I fall over again like that while I walk?” she sighed and looked into the ground, “I could benefit from an escort.”

Rum didn’t say anything, but he did feel a little awkward over the fact that he was now to escort her home, because of a rather unpleasant experience he had given her.

The 2 of them walked out of the room together, Rum quickly saying goodbye to Royath, Ovaduva and Eidinun, the last one from afar as she was giving him a big wave. Out of the room they went down the stairs and out of the tree, with Great Spruce’s torso giving Rum a big wave of goodbye as well.

Irvanir led Rum through the west-bound trails and across the City Forest, into Ermos City’s south-western neighborhoods. After passing through several streets they came to one street that bent towards the right, and went slightly downwards. The sign at the beginning of it reading “Oldemora’s End”. Down the street the duo went, passing by wealthy urban elf houses, which were wooden villas with simple gardens of fruit trees and strawberry plots. At last they came upon the tiny forest – the end of Oldemora’s End. The sun was still up as they stepped within the trees, though the long process of sunset would soon be upon them. The large assemblage of greenery, Rum noticed, was more like the largest collection of plants and fungi, exotic and rare; that he’d ever seen. Funny shapes, rich colors and a large variety of sizes were on display everywhere. And around every wonderful or funny tree, another different wonderful or funny tree revealed itself. The assemblage was like a treasure trove of nature, but with treasures that only a truly advanced apothecarian would ever know how to use.

As they walked among these wonders, the powerful rays of the sun looked to become a great ally of Rum – an ally because its bright light would likely obscure what he was about to do next, as he decided to take this opportunity to attempt a correction of the earlier problem he had caused. This person in front of him was obviously gonna worry about her perceived problem for some time, so what Rum needed to do now was to take that worry away – and he had a spell for that. Sure the spell was a little problematic on its own, but what about just a small dosage? Just a few hours of thinking positively? Maybe she’d forget about the problem in its entirety after that? Rum reasoned.

Walking right behind her, and as they circled around a waist-high pink mushroom and stepped in between two orange-bark trees, Rum whispered his spell: “Positive Mind”, and the magic shot out in fast obedience. Trying to be sneaky, Rum made the magic jump onto her back, and then crawl up and above her head, before entering her forehead. As the golden-yellowish misty magic made itself visible, Irvanir began trying to look up to see what was glowing above her. Rum witnessed her panic in the act, and she tried to more her head left and right up and down, and spiraling round and around. For a few moments this went on before the magic disappeared, absorbing into her mind and body. She looked around herself now, confused at first. Then Rum witnessed a gradual transformation of her expression, and a calmness befall her. She looked relaxed.

“I thought I just saw something above my head. But now it’s gone.” She may have talked to Rum, but her expression was one of wonder, perhaps talking to herself more than to him.

“Is that so.” Rum responded less like a question, and more like an attempt at sounding bored, a facade to hide his guiltiness.

“You didn’t see anything?” she asked. Rum severely disliked that she did ask him, because now he had to try and dodge the act of lying. Pretending like he hadn’t heard her, he instantly changed the topic.

“Is that your building over there?” he pointed to a large cabin of sorts ahead not too far away beyond several rows of trees. Lucky for Rum, she took the bait and got distracted. She turned around.

“Oh yes, that’s my apothecary. And my home.”

As they arrived at the building she looked over at Rum: “Thank you, for walking me here. I… don’t know what happened today.”

“Just go and sleep, drink water, eat some nuts. I feel very confident nothing too bad will happen.”

“Yes, you are… probably right” she said the words with a kind of wonder to them again, as if she was tasting the probability of his statement, her mind only barely able to accept that demanding amount of positivity that Rum knew to be actively orchestrating her thoughts right about now.

“Well, goodbye Rum The Mage. I seem to recall you wanted something from me though?”

“Oh it was nothing. Nothing now at least. If I need you I know where to find you.” He turned around, and pretended to walk away. As he heard Irvanir The Bright close the door behind her, he turned around again however and walked back right up to the building.

“Oh course!” he whispered to himself. “Of course it won’t work with just her knowledge! What value is the knowledge of an apothecarian without her apothecary? Without her tools, her herbs and her plants?” Rum took a couple of deep breaths of fresh air, then let his mana out and flooded the cabin with his magical presence. Through his mana he could listen, and he could feel, the very inherent mana signatures of the objects of the world itself. For a while he stood there, taking it all in. Finally, as his mana had reached into the tools, into the plants and into the very structure of the room where his mana recognized the outline of an apothecary workshop; he grasped all of it under the intensity scrutiny of magical analysis. With this magical essence extraction at work, the cabin shook, first once, then twice, and then many times over like an almost constant vibration. Eventually the climax: a burst of bright blue magic flew from the cabin into Rum’s head, filling his mind in a relentless push of information on the essences of objects. Little separation was made between the natural essences of the world, and the essences given to objects through their use by people. Rum’s mind devoured it all. In the end he had to stagger backwards, grasping his forehead and feeling a brief but powerful headache, so relentless was the flood of information.

“OOOoooaaargh” Rum moaned. But not for long. He was, after all, done here now. And not wanting to risk Irvanir coming back out of her cabin and seeing him still standing there, he began leaving. At first he had some difficulty standing up straight, but then he managed to shamble back the trail and away from the cabin. His final destination? Home. Home to Amez’ shop, and home to White Rose.

But before that he had just one tiny little last thing he had to do.

Later that evening a wealthy dwarf walked down a beautifully stone paved road, aiming for his lavish mansion near the center of Ermos City. He was off work now, and waiting for him back home was a large staff of servants, a magnificent dinner, a fine dwarven wife, and the comforts of a bed worthy of kings.

The dwarf thought about all this with a stupidly happy grin on his face, making up for tired eyes. Suddenly however, that expression froze. And this entire dwarf froze up in his walk, and with no control of his body, this happy collapsed forward.

The dwarf was in great luck though! Just as he fell: a bald, long-bearded human in a morning robe caught him midair and put him down gently. Even later that day towards the night, the dwarf would attempt to recollect what exactly had happened. The dwarf could’ve sworn seeing first blue lights, then a kind-of golden-yellowish light. But, he pretty great, very unusually positive in fact. So really, he didn’t let the event bother him. He was home, he was in his great bed, he was all right. Everything was all right.

In an alley two blocks away, and just a few minutes after the incident however; the same bald, long-bearded human – full of excitement – yelled a phrase he’d never spoken before, but which this evening felt like the exact right thing to yell: “TRINITY OF HEALING!” Following the phrase, an intense green lightshow blasted outwards from the human, a lightshow that would continue for nearly half a minute, attracting attention from many a man and woman who saw the green lights emerging from the alleyway. In the end the lights died down, and what the onlookers saw then was the bald, long-bearded human, sighing a happy sigh, his face calm and full of serenity.