"Is your magic abilities connected to your hair?"

"The truth is far deeper than that, though. The Elf's body is weak and in frail health. I rely heavily on my stinging, strangling tentacles to survive. My Elf's body is badly injured, with a lame leg, and I can barely walk with the Elf's legs. I move with my hair, most all of the time, carefully wearing these long skirts to hide my feet, hiding the fact that I'm actually walking on my tentacles and not on my feet."

"You can walk on your tentacles and fly over people that way."

"Yes. But that would terrify Humans. They would call me a witch and crush me under rocks or drown me with chains tied to my feet. You know how Humans are when they think there are witches about."

"Are you also able to use your hair as a weapon?"

"Oh yes. When threatened, and feeling I have no other way to escape, my hair takes on a Medusa-like life of it's own, lashing out at my attacker, either pulling them away, or wrapping around them."

"Can you kill people with your hair?"

"I can. I have. When confronted by life-threatening situations, I have been known to use my hair to strangle my attacker to death."

Quaraun glided back to the ground, and gently sat himself back down on the pillows. His hair slithered around, coming to rest snuggled around his body as if protecting him and keeping him warm.

"Being a JellyFish, similar to the Portuguese Man of War, my tentacles are full of highly toxic venom and I can also sting my enemies to death. But, with my hair-tentacles cut off, I can barely stand, let alone walk. And I hide the fact of my being a JellyFish from most people. Only people I strongly trust know that I am actually a JellyFish. Thus why the claim that I can not use magic and must go into hiding, after my hair is cut. Cutting my hair is cutting off thousands of arms and legs and causes me serious injury. It takes a long time to heal with ninety percent of your body is sliced off and chopped up."

"You really are a jellyfish."

"Yes. I live inside the Elf's skull after I ate his brain. I let my tentacles grow out of his head like hair."

"Aren't they heavy? I mean, tentacles must be even heavier than hair, and hair that long is pretty damned heavy. That many of them, that long, they must be heavier than the whole rest of your body."

"They are."

"How do you walk?"

"I manage. My body was made for swimming. Not walk. But this ocean, your water, this planet it is toxic for me. I could not swim in it. And I die out of water. So, I live in this Elf and get by the best that I can."

Quaraun got up and moved to the altar, which Ghirardelli only just now noticed. She was certain it had not been there a few moments ago. The altar was small, rough hewn wood. A low table that one must kneel before to reach. Nothing fancy or ornate. It did not match the rest of Quaraun's furnishings which were elaborate. The altar had a prayer cloth covering it. On the cloth was a random mix of candles, religious statues, and scriptures.

Before Ghirardelli had a chance to ask what the altar was for, Quaraun knelt on a prayer rug before it and appeared to be praying, though Ghirardelli was uncertain in what language the Elf spoke. When Quaraun finished speaking, he did not get up, but rather continued to sit in front of the altar.

"Are you religious?" Ghirardelli asked.

"I am a priest," Quaraun answered. "That fact alone should speak for itself."

Ghirardelli looked around at the items on the altar. A book of Psalms open on the altar, and beside it a Jewish menorah candle holder. Beside it sat a statue of the Hindu god Ganesha. Statues of Jesus, Mary, Krishna, and Siva also stood on the table. Next to these lay a tear drop shaped amethyst of a swirly lavender purple with paler and darker areas.

"What religion are you?"

"I am a priest of the Di'Jinn Order."

"Yes. You said that before. But what I mean is, are you Christian or something else?"

"Does it matter?"

"I ask because you have Catholic icon statues, but I see Jewish and Hindu statues as well. And a Bible. And a Q'raun."

"I reverence and respect all religions, even Human religions, even ones I do not agree with."

On Quaraun's wrist was an evil eye glass bead bracelet tied with purple flocked ribbon. He fiddled with it, seemingly counting the beads as he did. It was now that Ghirardelli noticed the gold armour plates on the Elf's fingers.

Ghirardelli had noticed earlier that Quaraun seemed to have trouble gripping the tea pot and the tea cup, holding one hand below them, as though his fingers could not grip the handle well and he feared dropping them. But she could see now why this was so.

The heavy metal plates, completely encased his fingers. Each hinged at the knuckles allowing him to bend his fingers ever so slightly. Ending in long claw like points over his finger tips. Gemstones in the shape of small pink hearts encrusted the elaborately detailed gold armour finger plates.

They stood out to Ghirardelli now, as she was now standing over the old Elf, looking down at him, watching as he ran his fingers over each blue glass evil eye bead on his wrist.

Quaraun was having great difficulty moving his fingers over the beads, because the heavy metal armour on his fingers drastically limited his movements.

"Why do you know remove those?" Ghirardelli asked.

"Remove what?" Quaraun looked up at the Human, wondering what she was referring to.

"The armour on your hands. It seems to hamper your ability to put things up."

"I can not use my hands at all, without them."

"What do you mean?"

"The day I was castrated. They crushed my fingers in the grinding wheel of a mill stone, after they ripped out my fingernails. My hands are damaged, almost to complete immobility. The armour helps brace my fingers so that I can use them. Without the armour I can not use my hands at all."

"You're crippled?"

"In more ways than one, yes. They drove a sword through my hip and another through my knee, that same day. I've had a lame leg ever since. I can not run, or even walk at a brisk pace. Thus the cane. I was not yet an adult when it happened. I was still an adolescent, when they did these things to me. I was 75 years old, which, in terms of Human years would have me, equivalent to 14 of your Human years. I've been crippled my whole life."

"So, you were still a child when you were castrated?"

"Yes."

"You were a child when they castrated you for having a male lover?"

"Yes."

"But. . . wasn't. . . I thought. . . you were a child? Really? I thought? Every one said. . ."

"My lover was an old man, with a habit for sexually abusing little boys. I was a naive child. Unaware than of what he was doing. Unaware still, when I was punished along side him. People accused me of being one of loves male and I was the victim of a rapist, a child abuser, and rather than rescue me from him, they deiced to punish him, by mutilating his favourite victim. Me."

"I didn't know."

"Not many do. Not because they didn't hear of it, but rather, because they would rather turn a blind eye to the truth. The whole town was there. The whole town joined in. Every person took turned torturing me."

"That's monstrous."

"It is easier for them to accuse me of sin, than to open their eyes and accept the truth, that they are child abusers as well. They can not face that they punished his victim to hurt him, rather than rescue me from him. But that is the way it always is. Blame the rape victim, not the rapist."

"I'm sorry."

"Do you know the irony of it all?"

"No."

"I did not love him. Before."

"Before? Before what?"

"Before what they did to me. I was too young to understand what he was doing to me. I was confused. Had the Hanging Tree not happened, I think I would have grown to hate him. Despise him even. Looking back now, I can see he was a sexual predator, who preyed on young boys. But as a child, I did not see, did not understand. But after the Hanging Tree, that is a different matter."

"Why was it different after?"

"They left me in the streets to die."

"Who did?"

"My friends. My family. My neighbours. I was a child, castrated, bones broken, flesh ripped off, body mutilated. They left me to die."

"I'm so sorry."

"They abandoned me. But BoomFuzzy did not. They left me to die, and he came and found me and took me away."

"The man who sexually abused you?"

"Yes. He tended my wounds, mended my broken bones. They broke my fingers so badly I can not use them. BoomFuzzy made these gold armour plates so I could my hands again."

"Those are actually useful?

"Yes. I can not use my hands without them. They hold my fingers stiff and bend, so that I can pick things up. My hands are dead. My hands do not work otherwise. BoomFuzzy made these for me, so I could use my hands again."

"They aren't just decorations?"

"No."

"I thought they were jewellery."

"He knew that what they did to me, they had done, because of him and he felt terrible about it. He never sexually hurt me again. He didn't dare to. He was terrified if he ever touched me again, the town would do worse to me. He knew they were hell bent on believing I was demon possessed, hell bent on attacking the odd child, the not normal child, for any reason, any excuse."

"Odd child? Were you seen as odd before BoomFuzzy?"

"I was. The village idiot, the boy who didn't have enough brains to think. They called me a changeling. Said I was a Faerie in disguise. The Hanging Tree was not the first time they had done things like that too me. It was just the most violent one they did. I almost died. He feared they would kill me, that they would use his sexual indiscretions towards a mentally disabled child as an excuse to hurt me again. Had they REALLY wanted him to stop, they would have gone after him, not his victims. Or they would have gone after ALL of his victims."

"Where there others?"

"There were many. For a lot of years. In a lot of places. I bragged about it. He was a sexual deviant."

"You say that like you hate him."

"On some levels, I do. I hate what he did to me when I was a child."

"And yet, you say you love him, now?"

"Yes. I do. It is confusing, how I feel."

"And you were the only one hung in the tree and publicly tortured?"

"Yes."

"Why you and not anyone else?"

"Because my father led the charge. My father didn't care what BoomFuzzy had done to me. My father had murdered my mother, and I saw him do it and he knew I saw him do it. So he was ready to jump on any excuse to get rid of me. Kill me too. He wanted me dead. What they did to me, they did because he dragged me into the street and told them lies about me. Told them what he knew would enrage them. He fired them into a fury, so they would attack me, the rape victim, and not BoomFuzzy, the rapist. That's why only me, and not the other boys nor our attacker."

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"So, this whole thing was about your father covering his own ass."

"Yes. There were many. But they singled out me, because I wasn't smart enough to learn an education. I didn't have enough brains for math or science. They lived in a so-called perfect society and I was imperfect and could not tolerate the existence of imperfection. My father said all the things they WANTED to hear, and they attacked me, because I'm the one my father threw into the crowd once they were ready to tear apart the first person they saw. He had them so fired up, they would have attacked anyone he threw at them. And BoomFuzzy saw what they did, he heard what my father said. He knew that none of this was about him, that all of this was about my father wanting to get rid of the last witness to his murdering my mother. So, he knew, if I lived, my father would do it again. Worse than before. BoomFuzzy became scared for my life, scared of how easy it would be to trigger my father into stirring up yet another mob. So, BoomFuzzy took care of me. Became my friend. My protector. That was how the man who sexually abused me when I was a child, went on to become my best friend, when I was an adult. He actually did care about me. No one else did."

"I'm sorry. I. . . I don't know what to say."

"There is nothing to say. No one cared about me then. No one cared about me since. No one cares about me now. I am accused of things I did not do, because I was a child who was the victim of a sexual predator. For that, people make up rumours and gossip and lies about me, which they spread through every town, every state, everywhere I go, the rumours have been there first. I am accused of things I did not do. Judged unfairly, falsely accused, harassed, cast out, chased out, welcomed no where, forced to live my life forever alone, all because Humans are so quick to hate based on rumours instead of listening to truth, facts, and reason."

"I'm sorry."

"People who are truly sorry, stop doing the things they are sorry for. But people like you, say they are sorry and don't mean it, because soon as my back is turned, outcome even more rumours and lies spread by their busy body tongues. If they were truly sorry, they'd stop doing it. It is far too easy to speak the words ‘I'm sorry' and far too difficult to actually mean it and act upon those words."

Quaraun used his cane to pull himself back up.

His movements were stiff and jerky.

His hip pained him greatly and moving was difficult.

The crippled Elf limped back to his pile of pillows once again, and slowly inched his way back down on to them, once again wrapping himself up in the fluffy, soft, orange and grey fox furs.

"Come," Quaraun motioned his hand towards the furs. "Sit. Talk with me."

"About what?"

"Tell me about your evil sword. Do you know how to feed it souls?"

"Well, that's the thing. I had it for weeks and it did nothing and I thought maybe I got scammed. One night I hear a voice whisper ‘feed me' and a shadow comes out of the sword. Well, I didn't know how to feed it souls, so I decide to see what happens if you feed it something other than a soul."

"What did you feed it?"

"Anything I could find. Bread, Butter. Jelly."

"Jelly?" Quaraun looked up from lighting his pink glass encased votive candles. "You fed it jelly?"

"Yes, jelly. Is something wrong with that."

"I like jelly."

"What?"

"Continue. What else did you feed it."

"Also, corn. Carrots. Potatoes. Green beans. Blueberries."

"All things native to America."

"Yes."

"And did it eat them?"

"It did. At least I think it did."

"You don't know?"

"The food would vanish."

"That doesn't mean it ate it. I can make food vanish too. One wave of the wand and POOF! Gone forever."

"That's dark magic."

"It is. But isn't owning a soul eating sword, also illegal dark magic?"

"Yes. That's why I bought it."

"You trying to get on Finderu's bad side?"

"No. I was going to give the blade to Finderu, next Guild meeting."

"Why would you do that? If I know Finderu, he'll charge you with necromancy and have you executed."

"No. Finderu has asked Guild members to deliver to him any cursed blade we can recover."

"Ah. So our dear Finderu has taken to collecting cursed swords, has he?"

"No. Finderu has set out a search for The Elf Eater's cursed obsidian dagger."

"Ah!" Quaraun pulled a curved obsidian bladed dagger from his belt. The hilt dripped with several teardrop shaped pigeon blood star rubies. "You mean this?"

"Is that. . ." Ghirardelli stammered.

"It is."

"How did you get it?"

"You don't know?"

"No. Should I?"

"Well, I am a mage who is likewise a merchant of pink silk. World's most powerful wizard. World's longest hair. It should be rather obvious how I happened to acquire the obsidian dagger of The Elf Eater of Pepper Valley, now shouldn't it?"

"Should it?"

"Enough about me. Tell me about your sword. What was Finderu going to do with it once you presented it to him?"

"I'm going to have him remove the curse, of course."

"You assume he can?"

"He's a powerful sorcerer."

Quaraun scoffed.

"You think he's not?"

"Honey. I have more power in my little finger than Finderu will ever have in his entire lifetime."

"You really think you're that powerful?"

"I don't think it. I know it. Look at my hair. But that's beside the point. Tell me about the food that vanished."

"I don't know where it went."

"You are not very good at being a witch are you?"

"What?"

"A mage who knows enough about magic to become a member of Finderu's Guild, SHOULD, be competent enough, proficient enough, skilled enough, to figure out where things go when a magic sword makes them disappear."

"Are you calling me incompetent?" Ghirardelli asked.

"Yes. I am."

"I'll have you know I'm one of The Guild's best mages!"

"Indeed? Well then, times have changed. If you are the best The Guild has to offer, perhaps I should pay The Guild a visit, one meeting soon. Rid the world of every last one of you, all at once."

"Rid the world us? Are you a mage hunter?"

"No. I'm a wizard of The Di'Jinn Order who sells pink silk and has the world's longest hair. You don't get the joke."

"That was a joke?"

"Some would find it funny. Finish telling me about your sword."

"Anyway, the sword seemed satisfied with the regular food instead of souls. So, I have this sword for a few months, while I'm researching the history of it. Supposedly it belonged to a serial killer, who was a knife salesman, so nobody suspected that he was a serial killer for a really long time. And the knife salesman somehow got his soul messed up, sold it to a Necromancer or some such evil wizard and he ended up with his soul trapped inside of his own sword and the mage used the weapon to draw souls out of the living."

"Ah, well, then, perhaps you are in just the right tent, after all."

"What do you mean?"

"Souls are my specialty."

"Souls?"

"Souls and necromancy. Necromancy and souls."

"I thought pink silk was your specialty?"

"Yes. That too. Which would be why I am known as The Pink Necromancer."

"The Pink Nec. . . Wait. No. You're The Pink. . . No. You can't be."

"Oh, but I am. No one loves pink more than I. And no one knows necromancy better than me. And no one has a glorious head of hair like mine. Not even women possess hair as long as mine. I'm the world's most powerful wizard."

"Wait. You're. . . my god! You're Quaraun the Insane? The serial killer!"

"I am NOT insane."

"Isn't that your name? Quaraun the Insane? That's what everyone calls you."

"Everyone likes to spreads rumours and lies and gossip. I don't like that title. My name is Quaraun Swanzen. And I DID tell you I was the world's most powerful wizard. Look at my hair. And everything is pink. With hair like mine, did you really think I was anyone other than The Pink Necromancer, world's most powerful mage? How may I help you?"

"Wait. I just realized something."

"You should have realized a great number of some things by this point," the bad tempered little Elf chided her. "Considering you are the one who puts up my wanted posters in these parts. Anyone else didn't recognize me. I wouldn't have thought anything of it. But you?"

"Me?"

"Yes. You."

"Why me?"

"You are supposedly one of the justice mages hunting me, and here you are finding me, asleep and defenceless no less, and you don't even have sufficient sense to recognize me, even though you know well that The Pink Necromancer is also a merchant of pink silk, which he wears. You had a right winning chance to kill me in my sleep, and instead you woke me up."

"You are wanted dead or alive. Preferably dead. I SHOULD kill you."

"I am the world's most powerful wizard. Try to kill me now that I'm awake and I'll just evaporate you into a pile of ashes."

"Can you do that?" Ghirardelli asked.

"Yes," the old Elf answered. "I do it regularly, to dumb asses like yourself who annoy me too much."

"That's not possible. Magic doesn't do stuff like that. That's only fairy tales."

"And you are supposed to be the best The Guild offers these days? Ugh."

"Mages can't do stuff like that."

"No?"

"No!"

"What exactly is it mages DO, do, hmm?"

"They make healing salves and anointing oils and burn votive candles to petition intercessory prayers and mix up sachet powders and bath crystals for spiritual cleansing and. . ."

"Bah! Mages these days!" Quaraun waved his hands in a motion showing utter disgust. "You are all nothing but quacks and hacks. Hacks and quacks, every one of you. You don't know a thing about real magic."

"That IS real magic!"

"It's folk magic. Granny magic. Swamp magic. And it's NOT magic. It's called medicine and science and herbal remedies. That's apothecary. Green witchery. It's NOT magic."

"Are you saying that what we do isn't magic?"

"I just said as much, yes."

"It takes years to learn. . ."

"I KNOW it takes years to learn Hoodoo. I practice Hoodoo and I'm damned good at it too. But that's NOT magic. That's not snapping your fingers and POOF making things appear out of thin air."

As he said this, Quaraun tapped his gold plated fingertips on the table and a plate full of pastries appeared.

"THIS, my dear, is magic," Quaraun said pointing to the plate of glistening, honey coated confectionery. "What you are talking about is backwoods low country magic. Hoodoo. And while, yes, you NEED to learn it in order to learn the basics, it is not in and of itself magic. It is folk medicine. Learning it will help condition you for more advanced levels of learning. It takes great discipline to learn and master HooDoo RootWork, and yes, it's very valuable to learn. Every mage SHOULD learn it, but you shouldn't stop there. That's just the beginning, entry level stuff. You've not even uncovered the tip of the iceberg if all you know how to do is Hoodoo."

"How did you do that?" Ghirardelli stared bug eyed, gawking at the plate of food, Quaraun had made appear out of thin air.

"I harness the energy around me and change it's construction. Right now we are surrounded by air to breath. I simply focus on that air, change it's molecular structure to whatever I want it to become. And right now I was hungry for pink strawberry frosted, honey glazed doughnuts, and now here they are."

"That's not possible."

"Oh, but I assure you it is. I just did it and you just saw me."

"No. It's got to be a trick. Smoke and mirrors."

"Did you see any smoke? Or mirrors?"

"That's Dark Magic."

"No, Ghirardelli, it's not. It's just manipulating atoms."

"Manipulating what?"

"Atoms. . . I don't think you know about them yet."

"What do you mean yet?"

"Never mind that. The fact remains, what you Guild members do, it petty entry level stuff at best. Which is fine and dandy if that's all you want to do, but you can't parade around calling yourselves the best mages on the planet, when what you do isn't even remotely magical at all."

"What you do, involves summoning Demons, consorting with Familiars, and performing blood sacrifices."

"Yes."

"That's evil. It's. . ."

"It's REAL magic. NOT grinding up roots and herbs and curing a child's fever with tea. Anyone with basic knowledge of plants can do that. Only mages can wield ACTUAL magic."

"You're evil."

"You wouldn't know real magic if it came up and bit you in the ass."

"I'll have you know. . ."

"You'll have me know nothing," the annoyed little Moon Elf said in a huff, not letting the woman finish what she was going to say to him. "You're an idiot. Part of a group of bounty hunters, looking for a necromancer who wears pink, lives in a pink tent, and is a merchant of pink silk, and you don't recognize me, my dresses, my tent, or my pink silk when I'm sitting here staring you in the face. That tells me you are stupid. But tell me what exactly it is you think you have realized? Hmmm?"

"I realized this is Pepper Valley. Home of The Elf Eater. You're the Elf Eater's lover. He had male lovers. You just told me you had a male lover who was from Pepper Valley."

"Yes. I did. I said exactly that, and while sitting here dripping in pink, too."

"His lover was an Elf," Ghirardelli said, her voice now trembling with fear, as the realization of whose tent she was in settled in to her mind. "Just like you."

"Yes, exactly like me."

"He was soul bound to a Moon Elf. That's you!"

"It is." The albino Moon Elf nodded in agreement. "I used to be just the Last Moon Elf, now I'm the Last Elf."

"You're Quaraun the Insane!"

"We can teach you. How lovely. Would you like more tea?"

"Tea? No, I can't think of tea at a time like this."

"Ah, well, you have your minor revelation over there and I'll pour myself some more tea than."

Quaraun waved his wand and a vase full of fragrant sweet smelling purple lavender.

"That's not tea," Ghirardelli stated, pointing out the obvious.

"No, that's delightful blooms of colour to brighten the mood."