Chapter 16: Chapter 16 – Civilization

Chapter 16 - Civilization

When we had finally escaped the Allenwood, it had been a gradual affair. The trees around the road became simultaneously larger and further apart until finally they gave way to grassland. Or more specifically, moorland, given the name of the town we were approaching. I was not really sure what a ‘moor’ was supposed to be. For some reason, I had been thinking of something like a bog. But to my eyes, it looked like a hilly grassland. The ground was pretty smooshy, to be fair, but then it had been raining quite a lot. I did not see any cotton, either. At least, not here.

Instead, I saw plenty of evidence of lumbering activity. That had accounted for the distance between the trees. Apparently, the people here had been avoiding clear cutting the forest in favor of selectively cutting the tallest and straightest trees. I saw several tree stumps dotted around, although there appeared to be an effort to burn them away. I could not see why they would make the effort, but I am sure they had their reasons.

The first people that I saw in many many days were a pair of men and a woman, all of the elvish-type race that Jax had belonged to. They were operating a double-headed saw and cutting length-wise down a tree trunk, which had been lifted onto a pair of sawhorses, into planks of wood. The woman seemed to be the gofer, as she was carrying the finished boards away and stacking them into a rough pile. The sight of ‘elves’ cutting up wood for lumber was jarring to me, at first, until it occurred to me that just because they looked like elves, that did not mean that they were thousand year immortals that lived in elaborate tree-houses.

That brought up a question, though. “Jax, what race are those people?” I indicated the trio.

Following my finger, he immediately responded, “Them three be of the Laoi kind. Though the woman do look like she might be from up north, somewheres.”

Looking again, I did see that she had a slightly darker complexion than the other two and with regular blond hair, cropped just below her ears, instead of the neon colors the other two sported. It seemed odd to me that someone with that kind of skin tone would be from the north… and combined with blond hair? Were we in the southern hemisphere? That might explain it. The skin tone, anyway. On the other hand, I was not entirely sure that I was even on a planet. For all I knew, this could be some infinite plane or other oddment. I gave myself a half smile. Best to stick to what I knew for now, I decided.

Considering Jax’s reply, I wondered why he could identify his former race so readily when he could not say what he himself had been. On the other hand, maybe I just had not asked the right question. Surely, there was a way around the mental block. Maybe not. Either way, I knew the answer now.

“So… the laoi? What are they like?” I asked.

He shrugged, “Jus’ regular folk, I guess.”

I looked at him.

He rolled his eyes, “Alright… uh… le’see. They’s the most common kind round these parts. Tend to build homes out o’ what’s local, so wood ‘n sod round here. You’ll be seein’ that when we hit town. Uh… what else.” He frowned thoughtfully.

“Are they particularly strong?” I asked, trying to help him out.

“Ye mean naturally? Nah. Or not compared to some. They tend to start a bit higher in Agility than most, though. Though their women-folk are a bit stronger than the men,” he replied.

“Really? Is that common?” I asked, surprised.

“No, no. Unique to laoi, far as I know.” He looked at me, “But then, I never met all the kinds that be.”

I smiled, “It’s the other way around for humans. I couldn’t say exactly how big the difference is, but I saw a weight-lifting competition once. The starting weights for the men started heavier than the final weights of the women. But then, human men also tend to be bigger than women. On average, anyway.” I trailed off.

He nodded slowly, frowning, “Were they… all even layered or sommat?”

I considered how to answer that before settling on a definitive, “Yes.” No layers at all should be the same as ‘even layered’. In my mind anyway.

“I never saw a weight lifting competition afore,” he said. “That’d be pretty excitin’! What do they do? Lift a big walloper of a rock o’er their heads? Throw shite fer distance?”

I laughed at his enthusiasm, and began explaining some of the many varieties of weight-based sport that humans had come up with. That conversation carried us for several miles. Humans, I decided, were a very bored species.

When we finally arrived at the town of Kemry-in-the-Moors proper, we were met at a wooden palisade by another laoi fellow sitting on a bench smoking a pipe. He had a halberd propped on the wall behind him and was dressed in an ill-fitting green and black tabard with some kind of stylized creature sewn into it. This was draped over a scale shirt that the man had hiked up over his belly for some reason. When he saw us approaching, he stood up and made a half-hearted effort at straightening himself out, fetching a pot helm from somewhere behind him and slapping it crookedly over his head. Once we got close enough, he stepped in front of us and asked a question. It was only then that I remembered that I did not actually know the language around here. We had been speaking English this whole time.

Seeing my look of confusion, Jax jumped in. The conversation was fairly short, as the man did not seem overly interested, but I did notice that Jax used the word ‘Angleseffa’ when he jerked a thumb at me. As we were allowed through the low gate, I looked at him and asked about it.

“He wanted ter know where ye was from is all. I told ‘em ye were from the land o’ the Angles. Ain’t that what ye said afore?” he asked.

That… was not totally wrong. I mean, there was over a thousand years of history, a mass migration, a whole other continent, and a lot of wars between that people and what would eventually become my own… but… yes? Kind of. “Right. Angleseffa,” I agreed. Why not? Much easier, I figured, to say that I am from some place people have never heard of than try to explain what had actually happened. If people still had wooden walls with gate guards, then I had to assume that world-wide exploration was a laughable dream. Unless ‘magic’, of course. Well, whatever. I would ride the lie as far as I could.

“Did that guard recognize you, at all?” I asked.

He snorted, “Nah. When ye be cursed, people only see the notice o’er yer head.” He grinned, largely, “Believe me, if’n I’d still had that shite hangin’ o’er me, there’d be no way we’d even have tried going through the gate.” He puffed his chest out and gave it a thump, “But I be respectable now. Come on. The inn here’s got a crackin’ good pub, and I ain’t had a drop in half a week.”

I had to wonder how he knew so much about the town if there was such a stigma about the curse. Clearly, there would have to be some sort of underground network they could operate through. After all, he had mentioned that ‘illegal activity’ was not enough to mark you, and there had to be plenty of people willing to work with, and likely take advantage of, people who had been divinely outcast. I could only hope that wherever Jax was taking me was not some seedy den of iniquity.

Fortunately, whether through design or happenstance, the place we ended up at was rather nice. To me, anyway. I was probably looking at it too much through the lens of the tourist to make an unbiased judgment. As a modern man from the Midwestern United States, a place whose architecture had more in common with Soviet Russia than medieval Europe, I might as well have been a kid at Disney World.

The building he led me to was the largest one in the town square, which was a business district of sorts. The area was centered on a well that had been dug into the ground and lined with cobblestones rising to about the height of my ankles. This had been covered over with a wooden platform set flush with the stones. At present, the hatch built into the wood was open, and several people were standing around it to draw up water.

There were quite a few shops all around, too, from a tailor to a blacksmith. None of them seemed to maintain much of a storefront, though most had one or two items on display. I had to assume that you had to order anything you wanted custom. All of the buildings were cramped together and at least two stories tall, but probably the single most unifying feature of the place was that every roof was covered with nicely manicured green grass. And as nice of an effect as that was, it was contrasted sharply by the chewed up wet mud that the streets were made of. Honestly, I could not fathom why they would go through so much trouble to maintain roofs like that and have streets that looked like a hog’s wallow.

Having caught myself gawking, I hurried to catch up with my partner. The place he entered into had a staggering four stories, although from the look of it, I had to assume that it had not been built all at once. It seemed to have been assembled from various bits and bobs, with pieces sticking out and random gables attached with no rhyme or reason. As I stepped onto the raised platform in front of the building, I took note of the sign over the low door which did not have any lettering. Instead, there was a nicely inscribed carving of an upside-down donkey swinging in the wind. I later learned it was called the ‘Flopped Arse’. I loved it.

Cleaning my shoes off on the boot scrape beforehand, I stepped through the open door. The bar took up the entirety of the bottom floor and was set on raised slats set diagonally across the room. For all the mud in the street, the place looked well swept and reasonably clean. Jax was already making his way to a corner table and signaling a bar maid. I had no idea what time it was other than the nebulous understanding that it was within the late afternoon, so the place was already hopping. The crowd hardly went silent at our entrance, as I feared what with me being some weird alien creature and all, but I certainly attracted my share of looks.

Most of the people here were of the laoi race, though I did see a few familiar types scattered here and there. The dwarven rhino men had several representatives sitting together at a long table in the center of the room, and there was one of those gray orcs sitting at the bar, though this one was female. The right side of her black hair was cut short while the rest was swept over to the left. I took note of her rather shapely backside as I walked past, as it was jutting out prominently due to her laying at the bar passed out drunk. I also noticed that she was being given a wide berth despite her unconsciousness.

“What do ye want to drink, mate?” Jax asked as I sat down.

“Uh… mead, maybe?” I asked. That was what you ordered in places like this, right?

“Mead?” he cocked an eyebrow.

“Yeah… you know. Honey wine?” I clarified.

“Wine?” he snorted. “Ye be lucky to get a stout spirit out here.”

“Okay,” I said, a little lost. “What do they have, then?”

“Well, that depends.” He started counting off on his fingers, “Do ye wanna drink? Do ye wanna drink and feel happy ‘bout it? Or do ye wanna get the Flop-Arse Special?”

I laughed and put on a haughty air, “One simply does not visit a place that decides to put a ‘special’ on the menu and not at least sample it out of courtesy.”

He grinned widely at that and almost ordered, but I interrupted, “However, I haven’t eaten in almost two days. So let’s start with the number one for now. We can get fancy once I’ve lined my stomach a bit.”

“Alright, ya poof. Fine,” he said, exaggeratedly.

He ordered several things from the patiently waiting barmaid, a comely laoi woman wearing what I would consider stereotypical medieval peasant garb — a white, low cut blouse with a brown, leather corset tied just under her breasts — save for the pair of loose pants she was sporting. I also noted that she was probably three or four inches taller than Jax, though still a tad shorter than myself.

Jax and I chatted about nothing for a while as we waited on the meal. He had not been here in over a year, apparently, and was excited to finally eat a prepared dish. I could only share his sentiment, though I was a bit nervous to eat fare from this time period. This was hardly the era of celebrity chefs and food culture that pervaded the twenty-first century Earth. Who knew what kind of food I would be looking at? Then again, the last thing I had eaten back home had been a microwave pizza pocket.

First, though, I needed to address an eminent problem, “Okay, so clearly I don’t speak the language around here. Have you been speaking a local dialect or is there a common tongue I should be learning?”

“Jus’ Laoi’na,” he said. “Though the slang do drift a bit from city to city. Course the other kinds have their own languages. Dunno none o’ them though.”

The barmaid set a couple of tumblers on the table for us, said something with a wink, and left again. “She says she likes yer beard,” Jax chuckled.

“What? Really?” I floundered. I reached for one of the beers to hide my embarrassment. She was kind of cute, actually. And those pointy ears were a plus for a fantasy fan-boy like myself.

Jax was in the middle of downing his like a bar shot, so it took him a moment to reply. “Ahh,” he belched loudly, “that do hit the spot.” Smacking his lips, he set his tumbler down and waved for another. He turned back to me, “Aye, hair like ye got on yer chin be unusual fer most. Ye be exotic, mate.”

Taking a cautious sip of my own ale, I found it fairly smooth but rather unpleasantly sweet. It tasted something like a wheat beer. Good enough to do the job, I decided. Personally, I rather hated having facial hair. Then again, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I had gotten a compliment from a woman. I might have to reconsider my position on the matter. On the other hand, it was pretty lame to do something you hated just because it might get you laid. On the other other hand… it might get me laid. Choices, choices…

“Do you think I have a shot?” I asked.

He snorted, “What’re ya gonna say to ‘er? Ye can nay speak the language, remember?”

Right. “You’re just going to have to teach me, then,” I said.

He chuckled, “Well, sure, mate. But it ain’t gonna be quick like what…” He trailed off, his eyes going distant for a bit before he finally looked back at me, “Well, that be the oddest.”

“What is?”

He looked away for a moment, as if trying to decide whether he wanted to continue. Finally, he said, “The Lady just told me that she’d allow me to gift ye me tongue if…” he paused, listening to it once more to be certain, “if I could get me… uh… you, that is, ter admit ye think ‘women with horns’ is sexy?” He looked at me in utter bewilderment.

I blinked. I mean I did, but… “But I’ve never met anyone with horns?” I said, quizzically. Jax was right. The Lady he was experiencing was completely different to what I had seen. “…And I don’t understand what… why would she ask that?”

He opened his mouth to reply, but the barmaid chose that moment to bring us our meal. We were served a generously large slice of bread with some kind of meat and a spicy gravy on top, rather like a topless sloppy Joe. And huge. These were presented on what I would describe as a wooden cutting board with a handle. On the side were an assortment of unidentifiable fruits and nuts with a large slice of white cheese. Altogether, it smelled divine.

Jax thanked the woman, I assumed, but she held out her palm, expectantly. He nodded, “Hand me one o’ them Dungeon Silver, mate.”

“Oh, right,” I said. I had them tied up in a bundle in my pack, but secured so they would not fall out of the holes. I really needed to get a new one.

“How long do ye wanna stay here, anyway?” he asked. “This here ain’t gonna cost but a few copper. May as well negotiate board while I’m about it.”

That was a bit of an open question. I did not have any goals, per se, at the moment. I had sort of assumed we would be heading on to Bradfirth, it being the largest town around here, but I could easily be dissuaded. We would need to talk it over. “Let’s go with two nights for now. I want to see if we can buy some supplies tomorrow. Also, see if they have a heated bath?”

“A heated bath?” he rolled his eyes. “Aye, yer lordship.” He turned to negotiate with the woman, holding up the silver. Her eyes widened a bit at the sight of it, and after a few words, she excused herself. “She says she don’t know the exchange fer it. She’s gotta ask the barman,” Jax explained.

“What do you mean about the ‘horns’ thing?” I asked, taking the subject back around.

He looked at me conspiratorially, as if anyone could actually understand us talking, “It be the oddest thing. She keeps eggin’ me on, tryin’ to find out yer, uh… taste in women, let us do say. At first, it were kinda pissin’ me off ‘cause… well, anyway, this be the first time she be offerin’ sommat fer the knowledge.”

I had no idea why a goddess or whomever Jax was talking to wanted to know something like that. Still, I quirked an eyebrow, “Pissing you off? Why? You getting a little jealous?”

“Boil yer head,” he took a swig from his fresh tumbler.

“But why ask you, though? I don’t get it,” I asked.

Before he could answer, the barmaid returned with our quote. Whatever it was, Jax was none too pleased, and they argued back and forth about it for a short while. Finally, in resignation, he took the coin and, to my horror, snapped it in half. Before I could say anything, he took the half coin and halved it again. Handing me the two uneven pieces, he gave the remaining quarter to the barmaid, who pocketed it happily and left.

“Bloody quarter silver fer two nights? Bah. Flamin’ soldiers just lit out o’ here, apparently. Ate up a lot o’ their stores,” he sighed. “That’s the luck.”

When he had talked before about quarters and half silvers, I had assumed he had meant by way of exchanging it for coppers or something, not literal quarters of silver. Looking at the coin, I could see that there had been grooves cut into it, I now realized, exactly for that purpose. From the look of it, you could could snap it down to eight equal parts. It had never occurred to me that they were for breaking them into pieces. I looked up. Pieces of eight. Like pirate money. Neat!

“Well?” Jax asked.

“What?” I blinked.

“Do ye like ‘em with horns or not?” he looked around. “Honestly, though, even if ye don’t, just lie. Be an easy way to learn a language, I reckon.”

That was true. Still, if a goddess was asking questions about me, I figured my best policy was to be as straightforward as possible. I leaned forward, “Alright, so here’s the deal. Where I’m from there’s a… oh, I don’t know. A legend? Story? Myth? About this…” I waved my hands vaguely, “creature? Called a succubus, okay?”

Jax nodded, listening.

“So a succubus is supposed to take the form of an amazingly beautiful woman, like… almost, too gorgeous. And she’s always hungry for sex.”

“Oh, I be likin’ this story,” Jax’s eyes were starting to shine a bit.

I smirked, “Yeah, well, the thing is, that part is an illusion. Her beauty, anyway. When she gets you to uh… you know.”

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“Fuckin’,” Jax supplied, excitedly.

“Right. That,” I agreed. “Anyway, you die. She sucks the life out of you.”

His eyebrows lifted, “What? Through ‘er fanny?”

I snorted, “Well, I don’t know precisely how it’s supposed to work. Anyway, nobody really knows what they look like underneath the glamor, but usually, they are drawn with horns and wings and such. So… as you might imagine, the story does appeal to me. I mean… you’ve got to admit. It would be a good way to die.”

He nodded slowly, “Aye that. A good way to go.”

“There’s more to it, of course, and the story changes in the telling, but that’s the short version, anyhow,” I finished. I broke off a hunk of cheese and gave it an experimental sniff. It was pungent to say the least. Tasted pretty good, though.

“So… are ye sayin’ that’d be how ye’d want to die? Or what are ye sayin’, exactly?” he asked.

“Oh, no. See the appeal is in the forbidden nature of it, right? It’s a thing that you would really want but can never have,” I paused. “Or that’s how it’s supposed to be. The beauty of it, though, is that it’s just a story. You can edit out the parts you don’t like, if you want to. You know, since we’re using our imaginations here.” I looked at the massive slab of bread and meat. How was I supposed to eat this thing? Fold it over like a gyro?

Jax had yet to touch his food, preferring to concentrate on his beer. “What do ye mean? How would ye change it?”

“Well, get rid of the death thing, for one,” I laughed. They had provided a huge knife with the food, though it was not overly sharp. Experimentally, I started sawing at the bread with it until I had something roughly bite-sized. Shoving the square into my mouth, I decided I quite liked it. Very homey. Licking my fingers, I continued, “I’ve read some versions where they just feed on… uh…” I lowered my voice a bit unnecessarily, “semen, amongst other things. I’m kind of torn about that version though. Equal parts hot and gross, ya know?” What a conversation to be having over a meal. Ugh. How had we gotten onto this topic? Oh, right, “I guess it’s not really important. But, to answer the question, yes, I guess you could say it’s a fantasy of mine.”

Jax finished off his second beer and looked at me thoughtfully, “I can see the appeal, I suppose. Though, why you’d go through the trouble when ye can just pay a whore, I don’t know.”

“Well, for one thing, prostitution is illegal where I’m from,” I said, shoving another square of food into my mouth.

Jax was idly sniffing at one of the fruits, but he dropped it in shock at my admission. “What?! Illegal? W-what… why?!”

I sighed. There was no way that I would be able to explain this sufficiently. “My people tend to be very… repressed, let’s say, about a lot of things. Especially, sex. There is a tendency, when we see something we don’t like, to just outlaw it instead of regulating or controlling it. We even tried it with alcohol for a while. That was a disaster.”

“Alcohol!” Jax exclaimed in horror. “That’s sick! Remind me never to visit yer homeland.”

I laughed. I had expected that reaction, after all, “Yeah, well, that was well before I was born. They changed course on that one after… oh… ten years or so.”

“A decade!? A whole decade without booze?” he said disbelievingly. “Oh, ye poor bastards.”

I grinned, “Oh no no. No one went without. It was just forced underground.” I looked away, “Made a lot of very shitty people very rich, too.”

Jax waved for another beer before looking at me, thoughtfully, “So, who’s gettin’ rich off o’ forbiddin’ whorin’?”

That was an interesting question. I mean, I knew that prostitution was still around. There was always a demand for it, but I did not know of any kind of organized crime centered around the industry. Not that I would be any kind of expert on the matter. Who was getting rich off of sex, then? Then it came to me, “Porn.”

“What?”

“Pornography. You see, while it is illegal to charge for sex, it is not illegal to charge people to watch you having sex,” I explained.

He blinked at me, slowly. “Yer a wee clipe, ya know that?”

“Yeah, I don’t know what that means. But, anyway, it’s a huge industry. And the more repressed people are, the more money they tend to spend on watching. There’s a lot of offshoots, too. Stories, for instance,” I hinted.

He looked at me, “Ah, now it be comin’ together. Ye like yer horned women so much because ye been lackin’ a good whore!” He slapped me on the shoulder, “Well, good news! We ain’t got that problem ‘round these parts. Come tomorrow…” he paused, “well, no, probably not here… no… but in Bradfirth proper, they got a nice red house. We’ll set ya up good, mate.”

Oh. Oh, no, that was not… “Uh… that might be a little over simplified…” I began, but the barmaid was back with another round of beer. I had finished off my plate, so she collected it before bustling away again. Jax, I noted, had still not touched his food.

“Are you not going to eat?” I asked.

He frowned slowly, “Ye know… it be a curious thing. I were hungry, sure, afore I came in here. But…” he shook his head, “I ain’t now.”

My face turned to concern, “Are you not feeling well?”

He seemed to think about it for moment before answering, “Actually, no. I feel great! Better than I have for a long while.” He looked at his beer mug, suspiciously, “Ye think they be cuttin’ the beer with sommat?”

“I feel the same as normal,” I said, though in truth, I was getting a bit tipsy. “Maybe you should try to eat anyway?”

Breaking off a piece of cheese, he nibbled the edge of it before spitting to the side, “This tastes shite.” He sat back, looking over the food like he had was nauseated by the very idea of trying to eat any of it.

“Are you sure you’re not sick? Would you get a status update if you were?” I asked.

He nodded, “I should’a, aye. Let me ask, anyway.” He muttered quietly to himself for a while, apparently asking several questions before he finally looked back at me, “Well… two things.”

I looked at him, expectantly, “Yeah?”

“One… apparently, as a lilim, I be immune to disease,” he said.

“Really? That’s a nice bonus,” I said. Why did I have to find out about these things second hand? This world really loved the whole ‘you’ll find out’ gameplay mechanic.

He tilted his head in acknowledgment, “Aye, that. And two,” he continued, “She be sayin’, I do nay need to eat food no more. I can if I be starved, but it ain’t me ‘primary source o’ life energy’.” I could hear the quotations.

“Okay…” I said slowly. “And what would that be?”

He shrugged a bit, “I do nay understand it. Something about… emotion, I guess?”

I sat back, “You… you feed off of emotions?”

He frowned, like he was trying to find the words, “Not feed… she said… absorb? And the stronger, the better. I think. She be usin’ words I do nay know.”

“Okay, what did she say exactly?” I asked.

“Uh… sommat about an ‘Empathic Absorption Matrix’ and how it were just recently formed. And how it be ‘Unspecialized’?” he tried to explain.

“Okay,” I said slowly, “Well, an empath is someone who is very good at telling what emotions other people are feeling. Some even claim that they feel them themselves. I’m absolutely terrible at that, incidentally.”

“I noticed,” he interrupted.

“R-right. As for the rest… well, a ‘matrix’ is… uh… well, it’s like an array, I guess? It’s a lot of similar things working together for a common goal. Something like that.”

He looked at me blankly.

“Okay, to paraphrase… I would say you have a new… organ? I guess?” I was hedging in a big way, but it sounded like a decent interpretation to me.

“An organ?” He looked down at himself, “Where?” He began poking at himself in random places.

“How would I know?” I said automatically. “Out of curiosity, can you tell what emotion I’m feeling right now?”

“Confused,” he said immediately. Then he continued in a searching manner, “Also… impressed? Intrigued?”

I was looking at him wide-eyed, “You’re like a damned Betazoid.”

“Now you be feeling wildly happy, fer some reason?” he said. “And what were that ye called me?”

“It’s another one of those stories. Fictional race. Natural empaths. Or… some of them are. I don’t remember,” I explained quickly. “How long has this whole empathy thing been going on?”

“I ain’t sure,” he said. “Sometime in the Dungeon, I reckon. Though it were weak at first.”

I pursed my lips in thought, “This might be part of your race change. In fact, I’m sure of it.”

“Ye think so?” he asked.

“It must be. Think about it. Back when I cast that spell on you, your race changed, but nothing else did. Even now, you are indistinguishable from the laoi.”

He balked, “I ain’t no laoi.”

I lowered my head and cocked an eyebrow at him. “Oh, come on. You look exactly like one. You’ve got ridiculously red hair. Pointed ears. You’re the same size and shape. You even speak their language! And it was the only one you knew before you met me.”

He twitched, “That… that don’t feel right. I mean… I get what yer sayin’. But… it just don’t feel right.”

I nodded in sympathy, “Yeah, I think that might be part of the mental changes you experienced when the race change hit you.” I patted his shoulder, “Look, don’t worry about it. You’re a lilum now.” I found the eyes of the barmaid and signaled another round. “Why don’t you order us a couple of those specials?”

“Bah, away you. But I’ll nay turn down more booze.” He looked away for a moment before asking, “Do ye think anything else’ll change? Now that I be a lilum.” He looked at me, fearfully.

I let out a slow breath, “I wouldn’t know for sure, but… that seems likely.” I avoided looking at him for a while, in guilt, before eventually shrugging it off, “It’s not all that bad, though, right? I mean, as long as you’re around people, you won’t starve.”

He smirked, “Aye, true. I used to like food, though.” He poked at his bread with his knife.

I could sympathize. Everyone likes food. But, then I considered… people like food because they need food. People like sex because the species needs sex to survive. Ergo… “Do emotions… taste like anything?”

He looked at me and sat back, thinking, “I… I dunno? I did nay know I were doin’ it ‘til just a second past.” He sat there silently, trying to pay attention to what he was feeling.

While he was doing that, I looked down at his uneaten plate. “Uh… since you’re not eating… do you mind?” He distractedly pushed his board of food over, and I dug in. I felt like a pig, but then, I had been on a starvation diet. Today was my cheat day. The waitress showed up just then, timing it perfectly to hand us another round, too.

Jax came out of his reverie to say a few words to her, then turned to me, “I ain’t sure what I’s feelin’ exactly. There’s too much goin’ on in here. Most people in here be just happy the day’s over an’ gettin’ to wet their kisser. It be makin’ me feel… buzzy.”

I swallowed one of the fruits before replying. It was blue with ridges spiraling down it and tasted rich and sweet. “What are these called?”

“Bluetwists,” he supplied.

A little on the nose but that was fine. We had blueberries and oranges, after all. “Buzzy, huh? What do you mean? Like excited?”

He nodded, “Excited and kinda… hyper? Like I wanna move. Dance maybe. I think I would be if they had any music in here.”

I, for one, was glad of that. I was not one for dancing. I had really internalized the persona of ‘awkward white guy’. “Okay, so… how do we collect on that language thing?” I asked, bringing the conversation back to our starting point.

He began murmuring to himself to find out just as the barmaid came back with some new mugs. I was still about halfway through my current round, so I was a bit surprised. Jax must have ordered us the special the last time she came by. Whatever it was, it had a massive head of foam over top of it. I gave it a quick sniff and found it similar to a stout or a porter. I sipped at it and grimaced at the thickly sweet yet oddly bloody flavor. Make that a Russian stout.

Just then, Jax reached for his and downed it in one go. I was extremely impressed but also lightly horrified. A beer like that was not meant to be quaffed. Gasping for breath, he said, “Oh, I ain’t drunk enough fer this.”

“What? Why?” I asked.

He looked over at me, “She says I gotta kiss ya.”

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