"I am sorry. This is the only thing that I can offer as an apology."

Indeed, even his throaty voice is extremely charming, she pondered internally to herself before she stormed with an endless flood of questions like a child: "Do you draw?"

"Sometimes."

"How did you end up here?"

"I was lost searching for a place to stay and it happened to be here." His answers were quick, straightforward, and didn't hold much detail. His voice was quiet and serene, which made him more appealing in her eyes. She desired to know more about him.

"I don't understand. Why did you end up here? Why didn't you go to Babel or Akkad? Or any other big city, where there are more choices."

"You are talking to a mongrel, my lady... No matter how big a city is, the bigotry against us is unbearable."

He said that while he raised his right hand and rolled up his sleeve, then started to remove the white bandage that was covering his arm down to his fingers. After a couple of minutes, folds began to fall, beneath it appeared a dark black skin as if it was made by charcoal, his five fingers were tailed by long sharp unguis. He stopped when he heard Chewa snap.

"You have a bone-eater arm, so what? Still, not convincing... If I am in your place, I will cut it and went somewhere where there are more choices..."

Her voice was sharp, a blend of displeasure, self-pity, and envy. She lifted her both hands to show him. They had only three fingers and one of her arms was longer than the other. Her pointed slim nose instantly transformed into an ugly pig, chopped and her ears turned out to be more fox-like. She said like she was going to cry: "This is the kind of deformity that we can't change."

Tears start falling from her eyes again, she is trapped in this hideous body, and she can never run from this truth.

"As much as I detest my incomplete metamorphism: my right hand, my right leg, and my ..., they were the reason I am standing alive at this moment," Rokah articulated, comforting her and himself at the same time.

She wiped her tears in clumsy motion. When she tried to look at him again, she saw him working on the white fabric, folding it multiple times to envelop his arm and his fingers. He looked at her sincerely and continued with the same tone: "At first, it existed just in my hand, when I tried to cut my hand. It propagated to my forearm, then to the upper arm. You can never cut a bone-eater. This birthmark is like a curse. I don't remember how many times I tried to cut it before I learned to lower its impact. Maybe that's what got me into the art of medicine in the first place. Believe my lady; Babel, Akkad, Ashur... In all of those big cities, you will take your misfortunes no matter where you go."

Listening to his calm voice, Chewa felt that she has transcended her boundary. Her emotions got the better of her. Possibly the death of her father and little sister had a big impact on her more than she wanted to admit. Perhaps that was why she screwed everything till now, starting from causing mass panic in the pub, the stupid fight with her mother, to the burst of emotions in the front of a man she met about minutes ago. She felt a shame and chose to alter the course of the talk to something lighter: "Why do you use this leaves' fume? I mean, it makes the air hard to breathe, and it burns the eyes."

"Not really! It only burns the eyes of those who were crying."

Chewa blushed at his statement. She was an easy girl to read, maybe very naïve or just very young. Her foxy face had nothing to do with the craftiness of foxes.

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She sought to clarify herself by telling him the purpose of her visit, then she brought out the list of the newly accepted residents and tried to pronounce his name: "Mr. Ro-ka-h... Rokah!"

"Yes! Correct. You are very impressive. Not every one of us can read."

The young maid's face became extremely red, nerveless she continued the reading to impress him more, but she was startled; "No family name!"

He wore a sad smile. "Sadly, no."

She looked at him with tenderness and affection, demonstrating that she sympathized with his circumstance. While the pictures of her family danced into her memory and made her grief bleed. She refrained from wailing and proceeded with a voice close to breaking:

"In the name of the Count Francis Leal Di Montez, I am here to inform you about the acceptance of your demand of joining the Di Montez Manor."

A minute of silence followed the declaration of the statement. Rokah signed his name on the list and before the young maid stepped out from the room, he wanted to ask her help to find a place where he could get white papers to draw. But he halted. The silent tears that flow like rivers from her tired eyes made her so beautiful, so vibrating. Even more, the mask he was wearing.

***

After a while, Rokah found himself drifting away, blending slowly into the guise of this village and the life between its residents, starting to forget everything about his goals, motivations, and his epic quest for what he thought was his salvation.

His original reasons and plans that bring him here are now fading away and the idea to reside in this place began to roam in the back of his head.

This sense of belonging overwhelmed him. He had truly become a part of the community, yet the verity of his situation permanently snapped him back to the real world, continually reminding him of what he truly was.

Soft taps on his back took cast him outside these thoughts. He recognized the person behind him from the sweet odor that tatted his nose, then he asked her a superficial question to hide his real goal: "How was work?"

She lowered her head and let her ears rise; she answered him with spasmodic disarticulated words: "Not... Very... Good... I am dismissed... For the time being..."

After she lifted her head, he could see the disappointment all over her face. He could be careless about the reason. She is the kind of worker who will spite all the details about what's going on inside the manor. She probably will get fired sooner than later. Maybe the rumors about "no dismissed workers from the Manor" were wrong.

There was no point in approaching here now. However, what raised his curiosity was the reason for her employment in the first place. He wondered about the requirements for a person to work directly with this Lord.

He tried to melt the ice a little and asked again: "How long were you working in the main house?"

"About two years..."

The short answer that she gave him was enough to understand that any pressing in this direction won't get him far, thus he shifted the dialogue:

"I thought that you are going to show me around?" He gazed at her face, then added: "Or maybe my company won't make you forget about your worries, even for a second?"

Her ears twisted to hide her narrow eyes, then she preceded him by a few steps before she said with a cheerful voice, "I will show you where you can find the paper".

He felt like he was a hypocrite; well, he was a hypocrite and a liar. These were the only effective methods he had learned to use. It always brings him remorse whenever he meets someone who can't characterize the situation like Chewa.

He was vigilant, giving one ear to Ms. Chewa blabbers, and the other to the locals in an attempt to localize the whereabouts of the Aractanthrope. However, when they reached their final destination, the person they had sighted was Mr. Nicolai Hendrickson.

Rokah knew that Mr. Hendrickson was short-sighted, yet he spotted them right away as if he was waiting for them.

In the near future, Rokah confirmed that this meeting with Mr. Hendrickson wasn't by accident.

He felt uneasiness coming from Ms. Chew, hence he stole a few picks. She was stoned, her nose started to deform, taking the shape of the pig's nose. Her face was a mix of surprise and fear.

By means of prior observations, he had learned two things about her; when she is depressed or embarrassed, she loses control over her ears. When she is afraid, she loses control over her nose.

Rokah set in front of a wooden table, using his left hand as a pillar to sustain his head. His eyes were wandering in the void, his head empty. Sounds seemed far, far away from him as if he was lost in another world.

When Mr. Hendrickson asked him how he was doing, Rokah just shifted his line of vision toward his face, but his mind was still blank.

Rock has been always proud of his extra sense to detect a nearby threat. But it has never been alerted to the point of confusion...

It never ringed with this force, even when he was in front of the Aractanthrope, yet he did not sense anything when he first met Mr. Hendrickson.