“And him? What is he, then?” Desperate now for some vindication of her little

girl dreams, Amy’s finger arrowed toward Mister Trutt.

”I am a dwarf, young miss. Please don’t ever say otherwise unless you want to

refer to my kind as H’Aghram. We are very numerous, and easily take offense.” He managed to make the word both a single syllable, and at the same time rolled it with a foreign burr that reminded Amy of sliding stones, and warm crackling fires.

“Oh,” she managed a gracefully contrite look, “and what does that mean?”

“Dwarf…” came the irritated answer from Curt, finally entering the fray, speaking from where his long lanky frame hunched over another antiquated jeweler’s bench across the room. “Actually the word for most people in their own language means ‘People’ or ‘Us’ and most of the time everyone else ignores the fact that each 'People’ has its own way of referring to itself, and makes up new names to call them.”

Curt reached up to rub his large hand across the short cropped stubble of what

little hair remained to the top of his head as he collected his thoughts.

“Well, polite people make the effort to call any person by their own preferred method.” Amy’s Southern drawl became stronger as she spoke of manners and customs. She knew it was a defense, learned at her mother’s and grandmothers’ knees. All “West End” ladies tried to teach good Southern Manners and Decorum to the children around them; and no matter the century, the Southern Drawl was part of the package. All good manners, and fine breeding showed in speech, and the more ceremonial and stilted, the more refined the speaker must, therefore, be. She hated that she did it, but Amy did it whenever she felt socially awkward or unbalanced.

These last few days must have seen Amy at the most unbalanced she had ever

been; at least recently. The most uncomfortable she had ever been was when that odd boy down the street had tried in high school to ask her out, and been struck mute as he struggled for a good way of reaching the topic. It was sweet, but sad. And having her friends around to witness it had made it even worse than she could have imagined. They had taunted her for the entire semester about the aborted attempt by the boy with the weird hair that stood up like wings on the sides of his head.

Looking up again from his work, simple busy work though it might be, Elgin’s left eyebrow bounced up to tag his messy bangs. “Do they? I doubt it. Or, let me say, I doubt it happens enough to judge it as decorum and good breeding.”

Near where Elgin sat, the new young man, Mister Tinker, she thought his name was, sat working on repairing a selection of chains. He looked to Elgin, and asked something with a tilt of his head and a light verbal patter she couldn’t quite follow. She thought it might have been something like Welsh. Amy had heard some recordings of Welsh, and this had that same water over rocks in a creek feel to it.

He adjusted himself in his seat, never letting go of the ring with which he had been fiddling. Looking solemnly at the younger man and the very tall Ellen beside him, Elgin simply said “Greece, and Rome, and ‘Barbar’ and the Caledonii.” Elgin’s very wide lips curled into a rueful smile.

Tinker’s hazel eyes widened, and he laughed-snorted loud enough to make everyone around him look.

“Here in the United States we call the folk along the Rhine, and around the Black Forest

‘Germans,’ not Deutchlanders. The people that call themselves Nippon, we call Japanese. Don’t get me wrong Miss Amy, I’m not talking of low speech from poorly raised persons,” his own voice taking on the honeyed tones of the almost forgotten Grand Southern Gentleman he might have been a mere century and a half or more now passed.

“I am speaking of folk of the well bred sort, who mean no disrespect when they

call a member of the Dogon tribe “black” or “colored,” or nowadays, an ‘Afamer.’ That last one might have a basic merit, the first an outright falsehood, I’ve never seen a human ‘black,’ and that other term rightly can be applied to anyone, even Mister Cole. He’s colored, quite brightly when he has a mind to be. You’re colored. I was born and grew up in Africa, near the Congo, in fact. Also…’colored.’” That last word, he put more emphasis on than she had expected.

Seeming to just now notice Cole’s presence, Elgin looked over to his now slightly green and yellow mottled friend, his skin picking up hues from both his surroundings and the muted tones of his simple clothing.

“Cole, would you be so kind as to find some breakfast, well, not breakfast, but a midmorning repast, for our guests? Something comforting, if you would. Please and thank you, Cole.”

Cole nodded, and was turning away as he gracefully disappeared through the door to Amy’s right before the last lingering word was even heard by the others.

He was, it seemed to Amy, gone no more than a long breath, before Cole reappeared from the door on the far side of the room bearing in one hand a tray of steaming mugs, and tall juice glasses, the other hand hoisted high and baring stacked plates, and a HUGE lidded platter. As he made his way past the odd little desks and random tool detritus of Mister Stark’s shop, Amy could see that clasped between right elbow and ribs were a bundle of forks, knives, and spoons all wrapped in napkins of fine emerald colored cotton, embroidered with small blue swirls.

How pretty…She thought. My momma would approve…so would my granny…

He hummed a song; deep rumbles escaped his generously lipped mouth, to roll about the group of jewelers and random refugees. Cole’s tones and notes making musical marbles bouncing around a hard tile floor. She knew the song Cole was working over as if he was trying to get everyone to forget how fast he reappeared with the food. Some pop song from a few years back. Something about a lover not being treated “no good no more.”

Amy was surprised he could manage the deeper bass parts of the song, having thought him an alto from his speaking voice, and found herself wondering what his voice, had he chosen

to fully commit to singing, might sound of; though, as she caught the smells from the tray, all musical thoughts vanished in a haze of immediate hunger.

She loved food. Food of any type, she loved it all. It didn’t show on her mostly boney figure. Though, Amy would admit, a kind person might call her things like svelte, willowy, lithe, or else whip thin; scrawny was how she always thought of herself. Ever hungry, gripped by great gnawing hunger, in point of fact; but eating bowl after bowl of ice cream had done nothing to make her fill out her clothes in any way she had wanted.

She did manage to gain a pair of hips early in her junior high school years, but no other curves, swerves, nor bumps of any sort had ever planted themselves on her narrow frame. Both her older and younger sisters had the same basic figures; but at least they had been allowed to add some extra poundage over the years. Those two ate bacon three meals a day, and while heavier than Amy, most people thought the sisters thin enough to be models.

The Lang girls all loved food, but now at the age of thirty-five Amy still had the general look of a rake-thin tomboy. She was constantly embarrassed when someone offered her food, thinking she was starving herself. Bulimic, they thought if they didn’t just jump to conclusions of anorexia.

They were only half right; she did binge on food; she was always starving. And when offered snacks, she always accepted. And to most people’s minds, it proved to them her affliction. An old flame had broken up their engagement because he could not accept that with the volume of food she would regularly buzz through, she didn’t purge herself when no one was looking.

That untrusting ASS! She immediately chastised herself for the brief twinge of anger and the uncharitable nature that had flared forth at the thought of Thomas.

The smell of the gravy was very strong from the little tureen on the platter next to the plate heaped with the biscuits as Cole now snaked through the work area, and from almost across the room Amy could just imagine the taste of the spicy sausage he had used. From the cinnamon scent, she knew a tureen of fried apples was waiting for her to dive face first onto the platter.

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When did I last eat? She had no real idea, it seemed so long ago. While at this point in her life Amy was used to feeling hungry, she suddenly felt as if her last meal was a VERY distant memory.

“I don’t mean to seem greedy,” Amy ventured while licking her lips, “but I would love to eat every bit of what I smell from under that platter’s lid.”

Young Mister Cole’s face lit with the praise, and his cheeks even started to blush like a forest fire. It was hard for Amy to place what was more disturbing. Was it having seen him rip the door from a car to hand to Curt who had simply used as she might use a giant flyswatter on the horrible people who had been attacking them; or seeing now his humble and embarrassed reaction to a compliment?

“Miss Amy, I doubt you will have ever had the pleasure of tasting such a feast as you are about to be presented. Cole here is a fine jeweler, but a better chef than any in the professional culinary world.” Curt had a little smile on his face as he eyed Cole’s cheeks, and he once again held up the laminated white square with a dot in the middle. “Elgin only keeps Cole around for his cooking. We’d get fat on his lunches if Elgin’d let us.”

All the regulars in the room chuckled, and smiled at the comments, as Curt replaced the square into his apron pocket. All but Cole, still blushing, but now looking slightly affronted as well.

As Cole sat out the place settings at the tables in the center of the room, Curt uncoiled himself from the chair at his bench to clear away the trays of finished jewelry that sat awaiting a final inspection before being sent out to the various stores for which they had been repaired.

It was almost comical to Amy to see the differences in the two “men.” Tall and cadaverously thin, Curt towered over the equally thin Cole. Where Curt had broad shoulders, rough tan skin, and giant hands like shovels; Cole was short, fair skinned enough to make her wonder if he burned in the sunlight rather than tanning, and narrow shouldered enough to pass through a picket fence at a full run. But both of them moved with a power and a certainty that other men she had seen around town had been universally lacking. It was more than self confidence, and not only a trained grace of a dancer. It was…pleasant. To Amy, at least.

The sound of car parts being torn by impossibly strong hands rattled through her

memory, taking a shiver along her spine along for the ride. Both Curt and Cole had amazing eyes, but where Curt’s eyes were hard amber lit from within, Cole’s soulfully dark, deeply set eyes made her heart beat just a little bit faster whenever he turned his gaze on her awkward, boney form.

“You’re going to make Cole blush again; you keep on like that, Miss Amy.” Elgin startled her by appearing suddenly from across the room to whisper at her shoulder. Her wide eyed expression whipped around to take in Mister Stark standing at once so close.

“And no, I’m no mind reader. I just observe people very well. I’ve been doing it a long time.” His slight grin almost made up for his not too well made face. He continued, “He is single, and can set a table better than any human fellow with whom you might ever find yourself. I don’t mean to be coarse, or forward, but I know you are always ravenous. No matter how much you eat, you will always leave a table needing more. Feeling… empty. And while I’m sorry to say it to you, this burden will never pass from you until you meet the right fellow...Actually, it won’t pass then, either. But the right partner could make it all more bearable. You are so much the image of your Granny, Miss Lang. I made her that serpent necklace she so loves to wear.”

Amy knew just the one he meant. The sprawling red-eyed monstrosity was the bane of her childhood. She had loved every visit to and from her dear Granny Lang, except the days she wore “the necklace.”

Her parents always spoke about how someday Granny would bequeath it to one of the girls, and Amy knew that her sisters and she lived in horror of such a gifting. Each scale on the beast was individually made and the body was as jointed and flexible as the animal it represented; from a distance a thing of beauty. But wrapped around the neck of her grandmother it took on a menacing life all its own. Ruby eyes become blood, scintillating gold and silver scales moving in eye watering patterns as you try to keep track of the hideous thing.

And Granny was different when she wore the thing, as well. Darker…more menacing… her smiles held hidden and uncomfortable meanings and truths. On one level she knew it was sad that the most treasured earthly possession her dear Granny had she wanted to pass on to one of her granddaughters, all of whom feared the bejeweled nightmare. But fear had nothing to do with rationality.

Trying to turn the topic away from that gilded horror, Ammy asked, “What are you saying, Mister Stark? What do you know about me, what kind of hunger do you think I have that is so obvious and horrible a burden? Are you some mythic beast as well, an Oracle perhaps, seeing dire futures for me? Are you a new Oracle at Delphi, just hiding here in Richmond, waiting for someone to build you a temple? I don’t think any small lifelike statues to you would lighten up any Temples.” Amy was shocked at how her whispering voice quavered with fear.

He’s just scaring me, that’s all there is to that. And I’m scared. It’s been a bad few days, and I’m all shaken up... And a small portion of her mind realized to her horror that she had just called her host an ugly little man; her mother would either faint at the notion, or swat Amy with a righteous passion.

His level stare stopped her thoughts. The deep sad eyes of Elgin Stark played over her face as he slowly began to answer her.

“Beast?” His voice was soft, and a note of inquiry touched its edges. “No. I might grant you that I am ‘Mythic’ though. I’m a human. I am one of the first thinking humans to walk this world, believe it or not.”

He said “not” as a long and drawn version of itself, almost a parody if not for his very serious demeanor. He pronounced the word like he would pronounce “naught.”

He shook his head sadly, every last drop of his earlier joviality drained from his features. “I’ve lived longer than almost any other thing in this world. Thankfully, as you point out so well, I’m not pretty by any standards; how tiresome would that be? The thought of being both immortal and handsome? I shudder at the very notion.”

His voice was verging on the hypnotic, with deeper tones playing over and under the words as he spoke them. Slow and low, he spoke to her so the others in the room could not hear him without coming closer. “I had to watch one of my, admittedly, many grandchildren run themselves down into their own grave last night. And there was nothing I could do about it. I was one of the first people to have said his name. His father and I taught him to hunt; though that was almost two millennia ago. And now he is gone to dust and memory, as is the way of all who walk this world.”

Amy shivered. And in her peripheral vision, she saw Ellen shiver, too. Beside her, his work forgotten in his lap, Mister Tinker was staring at Elgin with sorrow written large across his features.

“Are you saying the rest of us don’t think, Mister Stark? That you are the only man in ALL of humanity to ever cast a thought?”

Her anger was rising, getting both Tinker’s and Ellen’s attention, as she tried to rally her thoughts.

“No, my dear girl; but when I was born, there were only a few hundred humans who could think abstract thoughts. I didn’t say no one today thinks; I’ve just been around longer than anyone else now alive. There were older things about at the time of my birth. Great Old Ones who were able to reason, and dream about what tomorrow might bring. But not many. No, there were very few of those Ancient ones alive when I was awakened, and they’re all dead now. Most fell so long ago, there were not even cave paintings made of them. Most traces of them are gone now, too. It’s been so long. There are songs, poetry, and fragments of old religions, now called “myths” either about me, or in which I appear. I’m older than some species who think, those that can, of themselves as Old Races; in fact.”

The Ancient Man, and Amy was more than certain now that the term applied, looked like he had attended more funerals than anyone else, and maybe he had. Maybe that was truly his perspective on Amy and all of “her kind.”

“I saw,” He continued, “Many Peoples and many lands that will never be mentioned in your history classes. I’ve seen Gods and Goddesses come into being, and later I saw most of them die. Or murder each other. I saw this world before the events that People call the Great Flood of Noah, and it wasn’t that bad. It flooded essentially a single valley. But in those days, the People who survived that flood thought of it as the ‘Entire World.’ And to them, it was. I knew Nimrod as a friend; I even made him his first hunting bow. They call Saint Nicolas a jolly old elf, I knew him, and he was neither an elf, nor was he in any way jolly. He was a grumpy bastard who was only kind or generous when no one was looking. Got seasick as often as he went by sea. And HATED being around children.” Elgin laughed at that.

Several of the people in the room looked like they wanted to laugh at that, too.

The room became misty around the edges of her vision as he continued to speak, his voice now echoing slightly as he droned on. The smell of old tombs settled in around Miss Lang as beneath his voice she could hear the laughter, and the sighs, and the screams of thousands upon millions of generations of people. With each new sentence he spoke Empires rose

and teetered on the edges of many wars while Elgin spoke of an impossible epoch. And then another. The first stretching to a second, then a third, and so on. Centuries flying madly past to who knew when? From the first tools created to men on the moon, and finally to breakfast this morning. Icy winds whipped through the room around her as tribes at the corners of her reality crossed land bridges, and sailed seas no human could have remembered.

“When children today speak of the tales of Gilgamesh, Maui, Eahiocaid, Merlin

and Domhniall the Bane, they speak exaggerations of my life. When Vedic scholars

argue about the nature of the Etrie’s role in the Ragnarok, I’m the human the stories say

was that poor overworked dwarf. Greeks heard tales about my exploits, and created the myths of Prometheus. I have been imprisoned by gods, and goddesses for lesser crimes than the theft told of in that story. I was what the natives, once they became such, of this land called Coyote, and some others here called Raven. Hindus now speak of Hanuman, when once their ancestors’ ancestors’ grandparents spoke one of my names; and I have had more names than anyone you will ever meet. More than any one hundred people you will ever meet Miss Amy. Your dear Granny Albertina Lang has known me since she was a girl, and I’ve always looked to her kind, blue eyes as I look to your own blue eyes here and now.”

Elgin was holding Amy’s hands in his, and they both had tears rolling down their cheeks as he said to her, “And I will look this way to those children who one day might call you Granny.”