In the hundreds of imagined ways that this meeting with Taipan would go, this particular series of events was not even remotely on Ulric's radar.

He'd expected yelling, vehement denials from a sketchy perspective, and some pretty personal name-calling. None of that though. She'd offered nothing but a mea culpa. To an extent that Ulric would not have thought she owed. People make mistakes, and, yeah, hers were pretty bad all things considered. However, Ulric had never once, in that entire nightmare of a week, blamed her for his being there. If you can't take responsibility for where your own two feet land you, you are a child, no matter your age.

Clearly, Taipan didn't see things that way, and Ulric chalked it up in the growing pile of oddities labeled "Elf Shit". Personal tragedy, failure to live up to her own ideal of herself, failure to live up to her people's expectations, and, above all, a deep and abiding Pride that forbade her from continuing on as she had forced her to either change or be destroyed. Like metal fresh from a forge, it either quenches true or warps. The steel in her was good.

His eyes drifted magnetically to the intricate braid lying dead on the floor. He liked that braid. But he could see why it had to go. He almost smiled when a random thought flickered. Taking in Taipan, he held her emerald and bronze flecked eyes and said, with as little inflection as he could possibly muster "Just because I am bald, I do not expect you to also be bald."

Her eyebrows drew up in confusion, then downwards angrily. Her lips parted to explain to him that that was not the purpose, before it caught up to her that he was joking. The thin line of her compressed lips, her narrowed gaze, now that was her Mother Vedyr all over.

He couldn't stop the grin from sneaking across his face while her features flitted from one emotion to the next.

"You have the grace of a [Crimson Bull] and the shame of a Prosper spice merchant." She libelled him evenly.

Ahh, now he had her back, there's her fighting spirit. Ulric didn't think his reality could hold together if she didn't have that pepper to her. He did apologize though, she wasn't wrong.

"I apologize. It is a reflex born of almost crippling inability to deal with intimacy or empathic connections to people." He told her truthfully. She'd been honest with him, after all.

That seemed to catch her off guard. She had the cutest confused expressions, with that elegantly slim nose all scrunched up, thin eyebrows furrowed, and those lovely lips pursed like she'd bitten lemons.

Sighing out her resignation, she bent down to pull his battered [Forest Lord] fang knife from the floor, telling him with her mother hen alto "I had already learned this Ulric, but thank you for offering me trust. You must not tell other people about such weaknesses, Glade Chief. They would use this to manipulate you into compromising positions, to keep your balance uneven while they outflank you, or set entrapments. As I did. Frequently."

He took the offered knife, hiltless bone like polished ivory in his hand, though it now sported blackenings down its length, and patted the flat of the blade into his hand a couple of times while he considered her advice coupled to a confession. It was sound, but he didn't need her to tell him not to reveal flaws in his personality. Ulric was not what you might call an "open" person. More like a vault door with a self-destruct hidden inside its mechanisms.

Ulric tilted his chin to acknowledge her though, "You got it Taipan." he said, and that was sufficient to satisfy her. He didn't comment on the other bit, she'd clearly already reflected on it and he was willing to let bygones be bygones, if she had truly decided to try to be a better person.

Holding grudges was a lot of work and he'd prefer not to, a substantial divergence from his attitudes in the Before. Here, he'd just rather kill the offender and move on with life, also a divergence from the Before.

He endured a somewhat lengthy examination from her then. Was there fever? Where was the residual pain? Was he regaining flexibility and stamina? The sort of questioning he'd already lived through with Yessirree. He didn't interrupt her though. His was the role of consummate patience. Eventually, she ran out of invasive questions.

At the end of the interrogation, his Shadow stared at him with a hawk's focus.

"Strip." She ordered.

"Eh-Excuse me?" He stuttered.

"Strip. Remove your clothes. I would see you and know the extent of your recovery." Taipan commanded patiently as if speaking to a slow cadet.

"Oh. Oh, uhm, well alright, I guess." Ulric replied, slightly flustered. He wasn't sure why though; he'd been naked around her plenty and her him. Not a big deal.

He undid the ties on the robe and pulled himself out of it, laying the plushy thing on the bedside. He wasn't as chilled anymore as he had been when he was missing about half his hide. He had to admit, perhaps his reluctance was that, currently, he made for a fairly comical sight.

He'd lost the vast majority of his body hair, it had singed away to nothing, but that wasn't the rather amusing part.

Ulric was a three-tone zebra. Lashes of direct deep burning flame, the surrounding flash burns, and the, tragically rare, unburned flesh painted him in stripes and whorls. The regrown flesh was a bright pink, not yet having faded completely to his default lightly tan color. The secondary burns retained some hue from their angry red and were still moderately painful to the touch. His deep tan was mostly limited to parts of his face, and sections of his torso and thigh that had been facing away from the blast.

"Hmm…" Taipan considered him without apparent emotion.

After having him turn around a few times for her to examine him, she instructed him to rerobe. Ulric was willing to admit, he might have found her scrutiny entertaining under different circumstances. He could sense that the extent of the injuries was a sore spot for her though, and declined to crack wise. She was trying and his lingering misapprehension towards her was, while entirely warranted, not something he should allow to poison this attempt at a fresh start.

"The Eternal Gaze has truly blessed you, Glade Chief, in multiple ways." His Shadow said without sarcasm and Ulric choked back a startled "What!?" as she continued.

Taipan told him, disbelieving "When I found you, I did not think there was any hope, not after parts of you were coming away in my hands as I carried you to the Healer's branch."

Eew, gross. He couldn't keep from grimacing at that image. Ulric hid a breath of relief, for a second there he'd thought she was making a double entendre. That would have been a little awkward.

His mind flashed to the shadow that had blotted out light before he lost consciousness. There would have been more than a little irony to have expired in the shadow of his Shadow and he was glad Varda wasn't so poetic.

"Without your vitality and strength, you would have died immediately from such wounds. Without your optimized core you would have succumbed quickly thereafter. I have a hard time believing that you still live, yet you are nearly recovered." His reformed tormenter declared.

Ulric was about to butt in that he didn't feel so damned recovered but she plowed on, bit between her teeth.

"I had wondered, how it was that you managed to survive in the choking heaviness of the manafield found in the Sacred Grove. A field that dense would kill all but the hardiest, their bodies corroded by the excessive mana. Do not think the days spent on the plateau were easy on those who journeyed with you into your glade, we were all struggling under the weight of so much wild mana. This 'core saturation', it is miraculous. This past week, I have learned of similar traits, in Sano Adepts particularly, or in those with tier three cores who have mastered mana manipulation to an unthinkable degree, such as Mother Bathe. To pull in the raw mana around you and feed it into your flesh is an incredibly potent trait. No wonder Yes'ri relocated you so soon." She shook her head at his cheating ways, her cutoff hair flying freely now.

"You know, Ulric, this is the second time you have chosen not to kill me when you were justified." Taipan told him earnestly before quirking her mouth. "Many would see this as a vulnerability to be exploited, especially vultures like Lordling Morion that have reason to hold a grudge against me. There are…not a few I have left without reason to see me harmed, in some form or another. As you said to my Uncle, 'I am a [Blood Thorn] and everybody knows it.' That has not changed, even if I will try to exclude you from my sharper inclinations." the tall woman told him, her hand going to her missing braid, fluttering around in the bobbed remains of her hair.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Ulric suddenly realized that she was being way, way too talkative. Far more than he was accustomed to, far beyond her usually reserved self. Far more, even, than her new outlook justified.

Unable to hold the question he blurted it out, "Taipan, are you high?"

A widening of almond emeralds, and a sudden refusal to meet his gaze answered for her.

No way. Not once, not a single time, had Taipan showed any evidence of being anything less than at her full wits. Her armor had to remain impenetrable, adamantine against whatever perceived threat drove her to maintain her endless vigilance.

So why now? And what was her flavor? As a recent convert to the glory of Elven pharmacy, he was intensely curious about which substance should join the confounding nectar that had permitted him to come through the burn treatments sane in his pantheon of chemical bliss.

After a minute of measured delay, trying to put her altered state of mind and the previous half hour's behaviors into context, he decided that he didn't mind if she needed to be a little fucked up to face him. Under the circumstances, he'd have wanted to take a couple of shots of liquid courage to do the same.

"Taipan, I'm not angry. I just want to know if I've gone worms in the head." Ulric said seriously, revealing his lack of judgment.

Her eyes snapped back up and he saw her teeth flash in a flicker of the rare smile she hid with the devotion of a monk.

"You have." Taipan giggled. Giggled? He really had lost his shit. "But I am also high.” She confirmed.

“I found the toadstool in your belongings, along with the medicinal herb that we used to deaden your ruined flesh. I did not think you would mind if I used it, since you were probably going to die, or I would" She admitted with greater certainty in that statement than Ulric would have preferred.

"Forgive me my weakness Glade Chief, I have been unable to sleep or find rest since the attack and I was not sure I could keep my composure when you decided to kill me for failing you. Rather than shame myself further, I turned to the [Fruit of Paradise]. They are powerfully euphoric stimulants. I took one just before you woke. At first, it was merely calming, but now, it is accelerating aggressively. Would you like to try one? They are, technically, yours." His Shadow offered, pulling a tablet from one of her belt pouches.

It looked like dry dog food, a pale brown pellet with a grainy texture.

"The potency of the foliage in your glade is beyond what I have encountered before and I do not indulge in altered mind with frequency. This…was beyond my expectation. I find I cannot guard my tongue as I would like. Do you see? Even now my words run freely. I should have stopped speaking at least two thoughts ago. Now three. Oh no! It does not stop!" Taipan exclaimed, becoming slightly panicked as she realized the depth of her inebriation.

Ulric found himself unable to withhold an amused cast to his head. At least her words weren't slurring. Good to know that her initial apology was, mostly, untainted. Casting his mind backwards through the conversation he tried to pinpoint the moment when she started to really lose it but the entire encounter was too outside his experience to place it. If pressed though, he'd have bet she wouldn't have asked him to take off his clothes if she'd been completely sober. Actually, unless he missed his guess, the lass was well on her way to being proper blasted.

Reaching for the Pellet of Righteous Goodness, Ulric took it from her outstretched fingers delicately. He wasn't sure how wise it was to be getting smashed on Glade Coke. He was, after all, freshly indisposed from life-threatening injuries and a devastating tragedy. Which, on further inspection, was maybe the perfect time to call fuck-its and get hammered. Down the Hatch!

The pellet tasted like dog food. Or maybe like dried cow vomit, he wasn't sure, not having tried either but being nevertheless convinced the truth was somewhere between them.

He realized, at that moment, that he hadn't been eating very much the in this last week. Just small quantities of tasteless gruel, mostly; his system hadn't been able to tolerate much more than that.

Uh oh.

If Taipan was any indication, he was on the clock now. Well-reasoned thought was going to be in short supply in about thirty minutes if he was lucky.

"I'm not sure if now is the time for a status update but I have just realized that I may not have long before I join you in the Wild Ride. Can you tell me Taipan, what has transpired since my wounding? You spoke to me, just after, but I want to know what's happened after and Doc Yessirree won't tell me anything." Ulric asked.

Her flighty expression dimmed but she did not break and, soon, she was sunny again.

"I will not tell you anything until Healer Yes'ri has granted you permission to leave this place Glade Chief. He was explicit about this: you are not to be given undue stress. I judge it enough stimulation to have offered you my life this afternoon. Any more and you might grow too disturbed to be able to find rest. You need rest still Ulric, your wounds are well on the way to mending but pressing too hard will retard their full recovery. My responsibility to see you taken care of is not held lightly anymore Ulric, I am going to prove myself. You should eat more though, you have lost weight, your rump was flatter than normal. I should eat too, even if my bottom is not flat. We both should eat, I will get food." Babbled Taipan.

Rising abruptly, the Elf woman stood and started to stride away. In the typical fashion of one who makes the mistake of being in a sitting position while making the transition away from sobriety, she tripped and fell immediately. Clambering to her feet and patting herself off, like a cat that refuses to acknowledge when it has displayed a lack of grace, the proud Elf resumed a more studied amble up the Auditorium stairs in pursuit of grub.

That had to be one of the most ridiculous transformations of a person that Ulric had ever witnessed.

Was she always like that amongst friends?

He considered what little he actually knew of this conundrum, wrapped in a riddle, and dipped in broken glass. Not much, he realized. Everything he'd learned, both by association and in reference from her little brother, father, and others, said she was an overproud, single-minded devotee of the Iriel'en warrior cult, obsessed with her vendetta to the point of rejecting most of the rest of her people's usual norms, while also being an abject pain in the ass. The only time he'd seen any reason to think otherwise of her was the fondness of Brighteyes for his sister and her behavior back in Smith Uldin's workshop-abode. It was possible she didn't know herself, so wrapped up in all of the rest had she been. Tunnel vision was a hell of a thing. So was obsession. The two went hand in hand to hide a person from themselves. Personal experience, that one. He'd earned that little nugget from dying.

Wacky.

Ulric wasn't sure when, but he realized that he didn't feel any of the remaining burns. His body was sort of floaty but not with the detachment of the earlier drugs. In fact, his mind was considerably sharper, better focused than it had been since he'd been charbroiled. Holy shit, that was some aces stuff Taipan had brought. He laughed briefly, noticing that his shoulder and ribs didn't even twinge. The lingering tiredness from his forced exercise was gone. Yeppers, Ulric was going to start exporting Glade Cocaine. If there were enough people still alive after the war to sell it to, which reminded him, he needed to figure out who sent the assholes who'd attacked Irielhos and introduce them to his [Lightning Javalin].

Even that brief flash of morbidity couldn't penetrate his artificially heightened mood. Euphoric, indeed. He was definitely coming under the influence. He stood up from his bed, learning from the mistakes of his, normally, effortlessly graceful Taipan. Ulric wobbled briefly before his brain recalibrated to this new reality and he stabilized. Hah! He still had it.

Hard drugs had, mostly, been a thing of his twenties. Graduate school did that to you. There had been a brief period when he'd flirted with a few compounds designed to accelerate the mental acuities and attention but those had been too harsh on their come down for his liking. Intense psychedelics had proven too wild and disorienting; his trips normally ended up in some variation of him in a bathtub full of cooling water, wondering why the heat death of the universe was taking so long. Molly made him too fucking hot. Later on, of course, had come the booze of which he had certainly made a detrimental habit. This though, this hit a nice spot for him.

Now he understood Taipan's runaway mouth, his brain refused to stop rolling, one thing leading always to another.

He relived his entire life since Reforging in the twenty or so minutes in which his Shadow was gone. Waking up naked, charging the Giga Bear, scratching his way up the protohuman tech tree, meeting Brighteyes, journeying to Iriel with the lad, meeting Taipan, beating Taipan, his first night in Iriel, shenanigans with Bald'rt and the Iriels, days spent training and learning with the Elves, a duel at dinner, his return to the glade, and the tragedy that shortly followed thereafter. It had been some ten months. Not even a year. If all the seasons were as proportionally long as Winter, then around half a Vardan year.

Oh hell, it just hit him, these people were all way older than he thought. Earth years were twelve months. Vardan years were more like twenty months. Holy fuck. So…mental maths…Taipan was one hundred thirty-seven years old by twenty months over twelve months, which meant she was more like…um…two hundred twenty-eight and change? Sweet Watcher's Tits! She was fucking ancient!

When the door to the Arcaneum hall opened, Taipan the Elder came bearing gifts of the cornucopia. A dish of some grilled meat, real appropriate there Lady and sauced vegetables was cradled in one arm, the other holding a bowl of jam fruit and some blueberry-looking little apples. On her head was balanced a jug of some liquid. She sashayed down the stairs at near the speed of Ulric's full-speed walk, not a drop spilling, in an act of coordination that defied reason.

He really had not given Taipan enough credit for what a marvel she was. To do that while completely blitzed was a miracle of equilibrium.

She reached the bedside and Ulric took the dish containing the main course. A small side table, which recently had been occupied by a bucket containing ragged strips of silk with dangling bloody bits of him, now held dinner. The first real meal since Captain Firecracker had ruined his shit.

"Thank you Taipan for grabbing food, it smells great. You really should have told me how old you were when we first met though, even though you didn't have any way to know" Ulric said nonsensically.

"Ulric, what fresh madness is coming from your mouth?" She asked, which he deserved.

He explained to her the difference in their planet's orbits and the resulting age discrepancy.

She was quicker on the uptake than he was. "Oh! That is why your status reads two ages! Ulric you are much younger than you appear, you deceiving Valin you." She poked him in the shoulder, repeatedly as she delivered this statement with uncharacteristic mirth.

She was right! He quickly brought up his status and saw that the age had actually reverted to show only a single number, the lesser one. The fuck? It changed because he realized the one and the other were equivalent, and the unnecessary information got pruned? Fucking Akashic goofiness. Ulric was Twenty-seven years old. He was actually younger than Brighteyes!

Wait. Did that make Hal'et a pervert? No, Ulric, do not even go down that road. Different species, different rules, you are a grown-ass Human adult.

Taipan diverted him effectively, pulling two sporks out of a belt pouch, and handing one of them to him before starting to eat out of the pan containing the grilled dish. Ulric asked her where the plates were and she promptly informed him that she forgot them and she wasn't going back for them either so he could join her or watch her eat. Which was fair, really.

They cleaned the table rapidly. Had food ever been this good before?

He sat on his bed, his pale imitation of what true beds were, satisfied. A full body buzz lit him. The dense mana felt like a warm blanket, comforting.

This last seven days had been unthinkably unpleasant. But, just now, all was good. He locked away any consideration of the future, that demon would be slain when it arrived.

An itch down the back of his neck made him turn to see Taipan, who was scrutinizing him intensely.

Frowning, he checked himself for spilled sauce, or blood, or something.

Abruptly, her predatory observation was curtailed.

"What's up?" Ulric asked.

She sighed sadly, her hand waving back and forth to underline the tragedy.

"I owe Hal'et a sword from Uncle Uldin." Taipan said, her tone heavy with regret.

"Oh, wow. That smarts, what'd you do?" He inquired, curious about how they knew each other.

He was ruminating on that cheerful Elf's words of wisdom, which had implied that she had known Taipan well. His meandering was destroyed by a flash of movement.

Ulric barely tracked the missile of Elven beauty that hit him. Her face pressed against his, lips warm, her scent poured into his nostrils and eight hands ran over him while he lost track of most of the rest of the universe. He couldn't feel her weight on top of him, even if he felt most of the rest of her, and, gods, what a feeling.

He was trying to figure out how Elven belts worked when she shrugged out of her coat, somehow without breaking contact with his mouth. She was wearing nothing underneath, and his hands were lifted to the glories that rivaled the gods. They were everything he thought they would be.

***********

The auditorium door cracked open, Healer Yes'ri, investigating a wild claim from his lover and compatriot, Grendha, entered the heavy mana of the Arcaneum’s sanctum with heavy skepticism. Surely not, it was unthinkable. As his eyes scanned for the impossible source of the noise he'd heard outside, he froze, eyes wide. That…they should not be doing that. Yes’ri was a little impressed, the man had been mostly dead not long ago. Sounds carried clearly from the stage below and he heard, easily, the impressive range of his liege’s daughter, who was clearly in charge down there. Yes’ri backed out, slowly, trying to avoid catching attention, even though, he would later admit, he was certain that he could have marched a procession through the auditorium and they would not have been noticed. He nodded, allowing himself a small bit of pride. He'd done his finest work, on a near-hopeless case, and his services here were, unquestionably, no longer needed.