The Industrial Elf Ch 07

**Poor Aksun. Already beginning to feel a loss, not knowing what she'll do now and drawn to Elohan at the same time. Now that's got to be a bucketload of emotions all at once. Fear and uncertainty, a little bit of hopefulness, and yet a guilty sense to that just the same.

She can't figure it out, but she does know that she feels better when he's near her. Maybe that'll be good enough, maybe not.

Even in my fiction, my characters are at least a little real in terms of their fallibility. They're not quite perfect, just like everyone else, I guess. o_O

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The next morning, Aksun came to knock on the camper door. Elohan came from behind her. He wasn't doing anything differently, he was only walking, but to almost all humans, his footfalls would have carried no sound. He'd just finished cleaning out the camper and had gone to dump the cleaning rags and paper towels in the bin out behind the barn.

Aksun turned around, "See? I am learning to feel it when you are near to me." But then he watched her face fall a little as she remembered what she'd come for.

"I will make our meal this morning."

In the kitchen, Elohan watched as she tried to prepare breakfast. He could tell that she'd likely done this a thousand times, but it looked like nothing was working for her today. She almost dropped the bacon. She'd made a perfect pot of coffee – for one which contained no coffee, since she'd been too distracted to remember to measure it out into the pot. When her frustration caused her to hold onto the handle of the frying pan, looking as though she wanted to throw it, he told her to sit and he'd make breakfast. She sat, looking miserable as he began on the bacon.

In a minute, Aksun began to speak quietly. "Donna does not feel well. She will let me lie with her, but she asks that I don't try to love with her. She says that she doesn't have the breath for it anymore and it makes her chest hurt her."

He could see that all of this was weighing on her, though she was plainly trying to put a calm face on everything and hold it together. It was quite plain to him that Aksun was upset and confused. The feeling that he got from her told him that she was torn in several directions, and didn't really have a handle on any of them.

"She also says that I am to sleep with you or near to you now." Aksun looked down and stared at her human hands, "She says that it is important to her that I begin to feel like I belong with you now."

She looked up at the ceiling and he could tell that she was fighting back tears, "I do not want to do this, Elohan," she looked at him, "And yet I want to do it very much at the same time. I don't know what is wrong with me."

She looked at his back as he turned the bacon and spoke over his shoulder, "I know what's wrong, and it's ok. I think that besides not feeling well, she's pushing you away a little bit because she's trying to prepare you. I think that it's the only way that she can think of."

He set the bacon aside and drained the pan. "What you feel is a need to be comforted and loved in a setting where everything that you knew and were accustomed to is shifting under your feet."

He cracked her eggs, "I think that it's more important for you to do whatever feels right to you. Sleep with her and comfort her. If she gets upset at you for it, then go and sleep in the camper. I'll leave the door open and sleep in my room upstairs. If you don't find comfort like that, you can sleep near me or with me, whatever makes you feel best." He looked at her after checking the eggs, "I'm certainly not going to do anything but try to comfort you as much as I can and only if you want that."

She smiled at him a little, "I know that. I feel better when I am near you. Will you pray tonight?"

He nodded, flipping the eggs, "Yes. Tonight will be the last night when the moon is full. I want to pray for her and you both. It will take some time."

"You will pray that I will love you, after?"

He shook his head, "No, I'll pray that something happens and Donna gets better so that you can go on as before."

She shook her head, "That is not possible anymore, that we go on as before, but thank you for the thought. No, if something happens as you say and she gets better somehow, it will be different and very difficult. I know Donna and I know myself. We will embarrass you, because you will then have two females who love you and each other, and we both will not be able to stop ourselves from wanting this."

He stood looking at her and his hands slowly went to his sides. The look on his face caused Aksun to laugh in spite of how she felt. "Calm yourself, Elohan, it cannot happen that way, can it?"

She got up and walked to him. Putting her arm around him, she sighed, "She told me that I am to try to learn your ways from you. She said that I have to ask you to teach me the musical way that you speak in your language, and learn to pray the way that you do. I want this too, if you can even teach it to me. If we become a pair later as Donna wants, then I want this. I have had nothing to believe in the whole time that I have been here, other than Donna. If I can, then I would like to kneel beside you and help you to pray for her, if you would let me."

He nodded and smiled, "You wish to become an elf, Aksun? I think you'd make a lovely elf-maiden. Sure, I'll teach you."

They sat at the table eating breakfast. More correctly, Elohan was eating.

Aksun was only pushing things around on her plate, sniffling now and then.

She looked up for a moment, doing her best to try to be a little less miserable. She looked at him and tried hard to be objective and serious. She knew that they liked each other, and it wasn't even a very long jump to see that something could easily grow between them, as different from each other as they were.

The thought came to her that based on what she'd seen on him as his reproductive organs, she didn't really know how it was to be done with a creature such as he was, other than the commonality of the insertion of the male organ into the female one. She knew that what had happened between her and Donna had been more good fortune and blind luck than design, and now she wondered about the mechanics of loving someone like him physically. They weren't exactly made for each other.

But she knew that she liked him enough to want this, and decided at last that if they grew close, then they'd have to see what was possible, and what wasn't. She was the odd one here.

She knew that even though he was different from humans, he was enough like them, from what he'd said that he could love one.

Maybe he could love her as well, she thought. She had already decided that she could love him on an emotional level somehow, so she resolved that if it happened, she would try to learn what it was that pleased him. Even if any sort of real mating wasn't possible, she'd do what she could, and hope that he'd try to help her as well.

If any of this came to pass between them, it was all the hope that she had to have something like a mate for herself.

That line of thought brought her to a crashing halt.

She remembered what he'd said about how the female that he'd loved had turned from him to love another. She wondered if it could happen to her as well. What if he found another of these elves – a female?

She had no better option. If this happened, she'd have to do her best.

Then she had a thought of the impossible. What would happen if she suddenly stumbled across a male of her own kind here? As far as she knew, she was the only one of her kind on this world, but, what if?

She looked at him as he picked up his coffee cup. She admired him for his impossible beauty and his heart.

She decided in an instant. It was easy. If it happened that he came to love her anything like the way that her kind loved, then she'd take him as her mate and be happy for it. She wondered if she ought to try to be more like what he would want, if he had a real choice.

"Can I ask something, Elohan?"

He set his mug down with a smile, "Of course, Aksun."

"What was different about the sort of elves in that other clan? How do the females of your kind look?"

He shrugged a little, "Overall, we are the same," he said, "but that kind appear a little darker in their skin than mine here, often with a little red on their cheeks. Ours would look pale beside them. Their hair is often a dark brown, and sometimes it's black. I even saw two females there who had red hair. These colors are possible among my kind, but it almost never happens. Most of us have light hair, like mine and even lighter sometimes, almost white. Sometimes, it is even a very warm golden color. Their eyes are sometimes green, but most often brown. Ours are green and blue, only rarely brown."

He looked away for a moment, out of the window as he remembered. "Our girls seem to me – as I remember it – to have lighter voices, where the wood elves' voices are fuller and, I guess a little richer. Our females sing a little higher, clearer."

She watched him as he looked off in the distance. "How long do they keep their hair, Elohan? Do they cut it short, and does it curl?"

He smiled, trying to remember as he looked down, "I have never seen a female of my clan who wore her hair short. Always, it was kept long, as though it was a point of pride for a girl to grow it long. I remember my mother sitting to begin to braid her hair. She had to, for her hair was long enough to reach to her thighs unbraided."

"What about the rest of them, Elohan?" she asked, "How were they made? Thin, thick? I try to see from what comes to your mind, but I like to hear you speak of them."

He chuckled, picking up the last piece of his toast, "To one of us, they all looked different, I suppose. There were thin ones, and some a little heavier, some with fuller figures, and others with little in the way of curves. And yet," he laughed a little, "that was to our eyes. To the eyes of a human man, they were all of them lithe and thin. The differences that I would see as wide were only subtle to humans. I think it is the same as how they all see us a beaut- "

His toast dropped from his fingers and his fork clattered down onto the plate as he stared.

Aksun smiled hopefully at him as she sat holding a hank of her hair in one hand. She looked at the very light blonde tone of it, perfectly matched to his own, her long ears showing through as the tips poked up. She'd used his features as her models and it made her happy to try. "I cannot have this as really long braids, like what you say that your mother had. I can only change so much. My hair is my hair," she said, "I can change the color, but not the length. I can change my skin to look like yours, but my body is still the same."

She reached for one of her small breasts through the material of her cornflower blue dress for a moment, "I only hope there are elves who have as little as I have."

Elohan's jaw fell open in wonder. "There is nothing wrong with what you have. I like them as I like the rest of you but why, Aksun? You looked beautiful to me before, but I am amazed at you now. Why have you changed yourself?"

She looked closely at him for a moment and felt what was in his emotions. She decided that he liked what she'd done, and it helped her.

"Because it makes me feel better to feel how you like this," she said, looking at the fairness of her own arm for an instant to see how closely she'd come to what she saw in his memories. "I must learn to be an elf-girl," she said, "I hope to be what you are and learn from you, and if there are others where we go, I want to be beautiful, just as you are to me."

"But, you were beautiful to me before, as the dark girl, and as you are naturally," he said.

"You do not like it?" Aksun began to feel a little foolish, and was about to change back, but he reached for her arm.

"Stop, Aksun," he said, "Don't change another thing." He looked at her for a long minute in silence with a small smile.

He chuckled, "I have to get used to you like this. It is a big change, but I like it. It has been so long since I saw an elf-girl as lovely as you are to me." He nodded once in appreciation and wonder, and then he laughed. "You look like my sister."

Aksun's blue eyes opened wide in her surprise. She thought that she'd done something wrong. "Forgive me, Elohan," she said, almost in horror, "I didn't mean to offend you. I didn't know that you had a sister. I'm so sorry."

He laughed again and kissed her hand, "How could I be offended? You make me feel as though I sit with one of my clan again. I like this so much, and anyway," he grinned, "I never had a sister."

Aksun threw back her head and laughed, knowing now that what she'd done had pleased him. It made her forget her own troubles for a little while, seeing him like this, without the cloud of his life hanging over him for once. She felt as though she'd accomplished something wonderful.

And she had, though she didn't know the extent of what she'd done for him. She didn't know it at all, but without even trying, the sound of her laughter thrilled him to hear that clear purity in an elven female's voice once more. He hadn't known how much he'd missed that music.

"So you like this? If you say yes, then I will look like this for you. I see how it makes you smile."

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After breakfast, he was about to wash the dishes, but she came to him, looking the way that he'd first seen her – a dark-eyed, black-haired beauty, though he could see that the magic that he'd seen had been diminished for a while.. "Donna asks to see you."

He nodded and walked up the stairs. He found Donna smiling at him a bit weakly. "There you are, Jack. Could you do me a favour very soon?"

Elohan nodded, already knowing what she would ask of him.

"I need you to dig me a hole," she said. "If you can, and if it's alright, I'd like to be under the willow tree near to the stream, but not too close. Just under the shade of it. It's always been my favorite place here. Could you do that for me and say some of your prayers for me?"

"Of course," he nodded, "Am I to bury Tony there as well?"

She frowned, "I hadn't thought of that."

"No," she shook her head, "he's had his way all of our lives and been miserable. I wanted to leave here with Aggie and try to make a life for us away from here, but he told me that I had to take care of him. A man like him with me doing everything for him his whole life.

I'm not going to miss him at all," she said, "only Aggie and you. It was a mistake to beg Aggie to keep him alive. Leave him in his bed. Put him wherever you want, but not near me. Throw him down the mine shaft so he can be with Dad, for all I care. I leave that up to you. He's been nothing but misery for me. If it wasn't for him, I might have seen some of the world. I'm sorry if my words are hard, but that's how I feel."

She held up her hand and he took it, "Please take care of Aggie. She tries to hide her feelings away, but we've been together for so long that I can see through her. She already loves you, but she's trying to keep it covered, Jack. I hope that one day soon, she'll be able to show you her heart. I hope you're ready for it when it happens, because you'll find that there's nobody on this earth who can love from the heart like her."

She drew a tired breath, "I'm glad that you have each other. You both have long lives, and you are both what the other one needs. Be patient with her. She wants your love, and I think she'll have to learn to make love with a man now. I know that's what she wants, though if I know her, she's trying to figure out just how to do that with you. I'm sure that you're the kind of person that she needs for herself. Just be ready for when she realizes that. That's all I'm saying."

He watched her close her eyes for a moment, and then she said, "I'm so tired now. I just want to sleep."

With that, she was gone, her breathing slipping almost instantly into a deeper rhythm.

He walked back downstairs, smiling a little at the way that she'd winked at him as she'd spoken to him.

The graves took him little time, once he'd found a shovel. Elohan worked as quickly as he could, thankful that the sounds of the digging went a long way to cover the sound of Aksun's weeping.

He was thankful that Donna's grave didn't seep water from the stream, the only tough thing about it had been the roots that he'd had to get past. Tony would lie farther out in the sun, a hundred yards away from his sister.

He came back to the barn and filled the sink to wash the dirt and sweat off. It was a strange enough feeling, what he was doing here, but this hot climate was the only place that he'd ever sweated before. He didn't think that his kind even could sweat until he'd come here. It was no wonder to him that there were no elves in the deserts of the world. He looked over to the doorway.

Aksun stood there with tears again, holding a metal box by the handle and worrying the hem of her skirt. She looked at him. "Donna gave me this. She said it's for me now. She went to Briarton last week and was gone all day. I think that it came from a bank there."

She brought it over to him and opened it. There looked to be a few thousand dollars in there. She closed it up again and offered it to him, "I told her that I didn't need it, and that I didn't know what to do with it. She said that she was sorry for never teaching me, and to give it to you because you'd know what to do with it."

He sighed heavily, "It's money, Aksun. Put it inside the camper there. We'll save it for you. I have enough to get us to where we're going. We'll use a little of it to buy you some new clothes."

Looking up into her dark eyes, he said, "If you can, you ought to pack a few clothes now or soon. You'll need something to travel in, and one or two of your pretty dresses, but mostly pants and shirts. Running shoes are the most important shoes, but take one or two pairs of other kinds for when you wear a dress. I've seen her now and I don't think it'll be long anymore. How is Tony?"

"She only takes soup from me now, and he only sleeps. I'm very afraid, Elohan. I've never been anywhere other than here. This is where I woke up when I was sent here."

He dried himself with a towel, "Come here."

She walked to him uncertainly and set the box on the ground. She leaned against him and inhaled, "I don't know what to do anymore."

He held her, "Don't worry about traveling. It's mostly very boring. I will take care of you, Aksun. There's only one thing that bothers me a little, and that's crossing the border into Canada when we get there. I know you don't know what that is, but it's a different country.

There are rules to living as a human. You've never run into them living here, I guess, but they're not too hard. Over there, they have mostly the very same rules, but when you cross a border, they want to know all about you. I was born there long before you needed any papers, and I've learned how to get papers that they need. You don't have any papers yet, though I'll get you some somehow later on."

"The problem is how to get you across the border. It they see you as you really are, well I guess you already know all about that, but if they see you like this, as a woman, then the way they think, you'll have to have papers. It will be a problem, but we'll work it out beforehand, long before we get to the border."

She listened to him, and then smiled a little shyly, "I can help, I think. Look."

His jaw fell open as he saw her blouse and skirt hovering over a pair of socks in shoes. He couldn't see her at all. "How ...?"

She was back, filling her clothes in an instant. "It is the way that we hunt," she smiled.

"I'll bet," he laughed, "And I'm magical, you said."