Luca sat at the small bar, looking into the dark red liquid in his cup, he lifted it, pinching the skinny part of it with two fingers and drew it closer to his mouth, drinking it. It started off sweet, then sourness hit, which made Luca’s face wrinkle, but it left as he swallowed, leaving an again sweet aftertaste, which was nice, but didn’t helped with the strength of the sourness, he pced the cup back onto the bar and nodded to the waiter.

  “Thanks but not for me” he said as he swallowed saliva, trying to get the feeling of the sourness off.

  “Well, the only other free thing is water sir” he said as he smirked, probably from the grimace Luca made.

  “Fine by me” he shrugged, as the waiter pced a big gss and filled it with a jar of cool water.

  “Enjoy” he said, nodding before retreating and taking the wine cup back with him, Luca sighed and took a drink of the water, which helped calm the heat in his insides.

  But it was like a spit against a house fire, he pced his elbows on the bar and rested his head against it, gncing at the multiple fancy alcohol bottles behind the bar, some of them he didn’t want to look at the prices. He tasted the inside of his mouth, the sweet aftertaste was nice but not worth the feeling of the sourness. He didn’t get how his mother was a big fan of wine, he remembers the birthday he and his sister saved up enough money for a fancy bottle, and how when their mother saw it she almost squealed with joy. Then they spent the rest of the day just chatting as they emptied the bottle, well, he and Lana took a cup and their mother emptied the bottle .By early morning Lana had fallen asleep on the table from tiredness, and Luca had a blurry memory of talking to his inebriated mother, as she leaned back on the chair smiling and slurring her words. He remembered her sitting on the floor after she stumbled, ughing, her dress slightly riled up showing off her legs, and the strap of her bra leaning to the side as she ughed with a sultry-

  Luca finished the water in a swig, then looked around and when no one was looking smmed his head on the bar and pyed the noise off by looking around acting confused. This was getting out of control, was he now remembering things in this manner too? He felt ashamed, how could he be feeling this way just from seeing… He shook his head, this wasn’t the first time this happened to him, when he was just a teen, he also started noticing and focusing on other aspects of life, how certain people looked, how certain things looked, the memory of his sister bargaining into his room during his… relieving routine, made him feel his head crumpled like paper from the embarrasment. In the end it took a month of sleeping in his mother’s room for him to be able to control himself as he didn’t have any time to complete the routine that way, a weird method, he thought so too when his mother proposed it, but he couldn’t deny the efficacy. When he didn’t … attend his duties, for a while he felt the urge become stronger, but it passed, eventually it came full circle and he started caring less. He then remembered when his sister went through a simir phase, and he thought of bursting in her room to get his revenge, but decided that wasn’t a very mature thing to do, the memory did calm him down a bit. Luca figured that, maybe it was like an animal, it got hungry but not when it slept, and it did wake up from time to time, but it was easily fed, now thought it apparently was famished and angry, the analogy helped make light of the situation, almost bringing a smirk to Luca’s face.

  “May I sit beside you?” a soothing voice bringing him back from his thoughts, he was getting distracted more tely, lots to think about.

  “Y-Yes of course, refill please?” he excimed to the waiter and as they refilled the water he focused on it filling the gss, trying to distract himself from all the noise in his mind, “thanks.” He decided to not pay attention to the person to his side, no use in getting more things to think about, when Alyska came back from the bathroom they’d eat something, so he’d go to one of the small standing tables to eat it, he took a swig of water, feeling the noise quiet slowly as the waiter backed away to the other extreme of the bar.

  “Is it tiring being that pgued with the desire for carnal pleasure?” Luca choked on the water, coughing loudly as he covered his hand with his hand.

  “Huh?” he looked in disbelief at the person to his side, thinking he must have heard them wrong, the sight of the elf, sitting to his side, sending his mind far away.

  “...” the elf simply stared, their pale skin almost glistening to the shine that the outside brought through the windows, looking at him with a certain indifference behind their deep blue eyes, which Luca felt looked through him, he noticed perhaps a couple seconds too te that he was staring bnk faced.

  “S-sorry! D-Didn’t mean to- I-I don’t… s-sorry…” he awkwardly looked back at his drink and hoped that he was adept enough in magic to become invisible.

  “You haven’t answered yet” they said, still stoic, which caused Luca to get startled and gnce at them, still with his shoulders dropped.

  “... yes” his answer was dry on purpose, so as to not entertain the conversation much, his cheeks getting warmer.

  “And how do you usually resolve it?” Luca gnced at them again, their gaze still piercing him, their head now slightly tilted.

  “... it’s usually not this bad… I usually just work hard to forget about it” maybe if he gave them what they wanted they’d stop insisting. At the answer, the elf’s eyes looked upwards, thinking to themselves.

  “So you tire the body, so as to make it unable to respond to the call?” they said, bringing their gaze back to look at Luca in the eyes. “It doesn’t sound like a method of resolving, rather like a method of deying.”

  Luca considered these words, looking at the distance as he contempted the meaning behind them. Perhaps he had been putting it off for too long, and his body snapped, not able to contain neither emotions nor urges anymore, the whole experience starting with so many unknown things, setting his mind to work extra and overworking that it forced it to give up the restraint.

  “I see what you are saying… still, how did you even know-” Luca still looked flustered, his cheeks were reddened and his hands were getting slippery, but he managed to still speak fluently, at least until interrupted like now.

  “Your leg was moving up and down without your knowledge” he expined looking at each proof that helped him to determine the facts “you were running your finger along the wood of the bar, as if to scrape it, and stly…” they stayed quiet for a couple seconds, perhaps trying to keep their composure “at one point while you were thinking, your eyes shot wide open and you smmed your head against the bar” Luca started wondering how fast the train was going, how easily he could open the windows and how far he was from home on foot.

  “... didn’t realize someone saw me…” the elf exhaled through their nose lightly, he wondered if perhaps that was an elf ugh, they then tilted the head slightly.

  “You are a very expressive person, I noticed so before as well.”

  “What do you mean? Wh- oh…” He looked down to avoid his gaze “Sorry for staring… I-I didn’t mean to…”

  “Did you know that it has a name?” they leaned slightly forward to make Luca look at them again which they did “It’s called the tale effect.”

  “... what, the staring?” he remembered Alyska telling him that, ‘it happens to all of us’, he opened his eyes wide as he understood.

  “Do you think you could figure out why it’s called the Tale effect?”

  Luca wondered if perhaps it was because of his ck of interaction with new people or his own infatuation with them, but though the question seemed kind off condescending, he didn’t feel it coming out that way, their eyes still fixated on his, had a hint of curiosity, so Luca decided to take them seriously, he folded his arms and thought, looking at the ceiling, after a couple minutes of which the elf waited patiently, he responded.

  “Becaaause… you hear tales of elves all the time, like in stories and stuff, and you think they are too like… magical to be real, like too perfect, but then you meet one and they actually look like the tale so much that you stop believing it might be… actually a story? So um, seeing it, you think that all stories can be real a-and that shocks you to that level for like a second… yeah” He was happy with his answer, it felt right. The elf raised a leg and positioned his foot on the seat of the barstool, then they surrounded their bent leg with their arms and then id their head on the knee and gazed at Luca as their hair fell down behind their head and covering the lower part of his face, flowing down till it came to a stop just a foot above the ground, the pose and gaze made Luca’s heart skip a beat, realizing this person of myth was indeed a person, made them realize how cute they were and how nervous he got around them.

  “It happens the other way around too, you know?” His voice came slightly muffled as their mouth was covered by their arm. “Although the other way, it’s called the augury effect, instead of fairy tales we are told forewarnings about other races… like humans”

  “...” this fact left Luca feeling weird, him living only among humans all his life, meant that he never experienced discrimination for his race. “And, it happens enough that it’s named?” The elf nodded, face still behind their robes and hair.

  “The first time it happened to me was with a bloodied warrior, being brought back to my kingdom” he stayed quiet, listening “He had killed a noble and was being walked through the city to his execution, his jaw was jarred, he was covered in scars, and his eyes had hatred like no other thing I ever saw…” their gaze lost itself as they looked forward, reminiscing “just like in the books in which humans attacked the elf kingdom… hairy faces, hateful eyes and strong jaws for biting ears off.”

  “Well… the jaws aren’t for biting ears off…” the elf gnced back at Luca.

  “And I don’t float just because I’m good with magic” he was taken aback, looking down on the ground with an ashamed smile, he was easy to read it seemed, very easy, at least to them, the sound of a giggle made him look back. “You are intriguing, human of red hair and a weakness to flesh” he resented the st part, but the look of their eyes gncing at them made all worries disappear.

  “Look who’s talking, t-the elf of the deepest eyes…” he didn’t know if he was insulting them or complimenting them and he didn’t know if he was doing it well, but what he knew was that he couldn’t look away from them, the elf tilted their chin backwards, empathizing their eyes with an almost embarrassed look, thought he could be seeing things.

  “Touché” he didn’t know what that meant “perhaps we both look out of pce…” as the elf finished, they incorporated and stood up, walking past Luca they stopped beside him then looked at him, the closeness stealing the air from his insides.

  “I have a feeling our paths will meet again soon, and I did enjoy our conversation, might I ask your name human?” the way they looked at Luca made him melt, but he stood as solid as he could.

  “Luca… no st name…”

  “Last names were made by gnomes when their colonies got too big and the names too common… they were the profession the gnome did, or whatever they’d do” they turned their body to face him instead of the door “What do you do Luca?”

  “...” he looked down, thinking about what he did, or what he tried to do, he chuckled “my best…” the joke didn’t quite nd, or maybe it did, they weren’t as expressive as they cimed he was “I’ll get back to you on it.”

  The edges of their mouth twitched, at least Luca thought he saw it, “Dashiell, he who lives above the wise” with that and a solemn nod they turned and began floating away, but from the angle Luca was in, he saw a shadow of a foot moving forward, which reminded him that no one is safe from the so-called ‘tale effect’.

  “Hey! I’m back” Alyska said as she sat down where the elf sat as they exited the door. When it closed, Luca looked back and smiled. “Just for the record, I wasn’t that long in the bathroom, I just didn’t want to interrupt your conversation with them, you both seemed quite enraptured in it.”

  “I-I guess I was, can’t speak for them though” Luca scratched the back of his head, focusing on breathing to calm down, from all the hot people he had been talking to that day.

  “I think we can get something to eat, before we arrive at my destination, it’s close though” she then gnced around before snapping back to look at Luca, which startled him a bit “Oooo! Did you catch where they were going? Maybe it’s the same pce as you or I.”

  “N-No, I did get their name though” he cleared his throat and tried sounding as melodic as they did “Dashiell, he who lives above the wise” the impression made Alyska giggle and the name made her sigh pleased, both reactions made him smile.

  “Elven st names are so pretty… I wish Eain was just as poetic…” Luca thought of saying something about the musicality of her st name but he was cut off by her saying “I’ve always been bad at identifying their gender though, I guess the asking technique still goes unrivaled” they both chuckled.

  “Wait, where does the gender thing come from?”

  “Well I couldn’t tell before, could you?” she said as she signaled the waiter for two menus.

  “And you can now?” he grabbed his menu and opened it to look inside.

  “Well… he who lives above the wise?” she opened her menu and looked inside as well “doesn’t leave much for the imagination does it?”

  Luca looked at the menu, but his eyes didn’t read the words, he… the elf was a he… the elf whose eyes, voice and presence made his heart flutter was a man… as he himself was…

  Dashiell had helped him see that, perhaps, suppressing something or ignoring it may not be the best solution for certain things, but just this once, he would allow himself the comfort of addressing that one ter.