I had apparently liked Rowan well enough years ago, but I didn’t know him now and I wasn’t about to spring a strange guy from the middle of nowhere in the middle provinces on Dee without making sure she wouldn’t regret the meeting.
She was already doing me a huge favor, even if she was kind of eager to get to the bottom of things, and the last thing she needed was to be slapped in the face by a little casual racism or related ignorance for it.
That was why after I made sure she would be interested in probing Rowan’s memories of me but before I put them in a room together, I decided to give him a little briefing in my room.
“I thought your girlfriend might be here,” he said.
“I can introduce you, if you want,” I said.
“What? No!” he said. “I would never…”
“She would always,” I said. “It’s not a big deal, Rowan. Relax. You’ll meet everybody eventually, but… this complicated enough already. So, my friend Dee, the telepath… um, do you know who Delia Daella is?”
“Yeah… she made the news, too, once,” he said. “That was actually around when I first noticed you. I don’t think I would have remembered her name or where she was if she hadn’t been connected to you, you know? But a naked dark elf protester is kind of memorable. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen her around campus, but it’s hard to tell. She doesn’t usually show that much skin.”
“Okay, that’s the first thing I wanted to say,” I said. “Dee is not a dark elf. She’s an elf.”
“Hey, it’s okay! I’ve seen her naked, Mackenzie! I mean, pictures, and they were censored… I’ve heard you can get the uncensored ones, but I never… I mean, the point is I’m not going to freak out because she’s…”
“You’re not listening,” I said. “Okay. The problem is when we call some elves ‘dark elves’ as opposed to the elves who get to be Just Plain Elves, we’re setting up a default and saying that the other elves are… other. It’s insulting and alienating.”
“So what do I call her, to distinguish her from… the other group of elves?”
“Well, I mean, is there any reason in a conversation with just her that you’d need to distinguish her from another group of elves?” I said. “Subterranean elves is fine, and she doesn’t object to under-elves, either… I kind of thing it has negative implications in Pax, but they tend to go the other way around with higher/lower metaphors in hierarchies. The main thing is to make sure you mark surface elves in the same way, like calling them surface elves. I don’t always manage that, but I try, especially when talking to her. That’s all I’m asking.”
“Okay, I get all that,” he said. “But by the same token that I don’t need to call her anything in this conversation, why would you need to warn me not to?”
“Because of the off-chance that you’d be like, ‘Holy shit, you’re a dark elf!’ when you saw her.”
“Mackenzie, you know… oh, right.”
“You know what I don’t know,” I said.
“I know, but knowing and… really knowing, internalizing it, it’s different, you know?”
“We’re getting buried in knows here,” I said.
“Up to our noses in knowses,” he said, grinning a lopsided grin.
“Anyway, if it was just that one thing… that’s really part one of a basic primer on respect,” I said. “I call her Dee because I’m her friend. If you’re not comfortable claiming friendship with her… and since she’ll be in your head, I’d say don’t if you’re not sure you’ll mean it… then it’s very, very important you call her Delia Daella. The second part is her mother’s name.”
“I guess that’s important. They’re like matriarchal down there, right?”
“Yes, but it’s not just like kids taking their father’s last name, or even the Thylian-style patronymic thing. She’s in a line, which is a whole thing, and to her, her mother is part of who she is. Calling her by her given name alone is… well, culturally, it’s like killing her mother. And Dee… I mean, I’m not telling you a cultural thing here, but Dee personally, her mother is… she’s… I mean, everybody loves their mother, mostly, but… I get the feeling that her mother is…”
“Like yours was to you,” Rowan said. “Her world.”
“Yes,” I said. “And I don’t want to tell you her business, not even the bits of it I do know, but there’s a lot of complicated stuff there. Just, for all intents and purposes, her name is Delia Daella. Not just the first part. The whole thing. If you can’t handle that, it’s safer to call her Dee, even if you don’t mean it.”
“Wouldn’t that be presumptuous? I mean, she doesn’t know me.”
“I think there’s a culturally different understanding,” I said. “She puts it out there that she’s open to friendship, you take her up on it by acknowledging the offer. And it sort of incidentally gives people an out on the name thing. I have never… almost never heard her object to being called Dee by anybody, it’s only been in regards to people she knows enough to dislike.”
“Okay. You said ‘safer’… safer like… I mean, what are the consequences of me fucking this up?”
“You hurt her feelings and things are awkward between you when I need them not to be?” I said. I mean, don’t ask me to guarantee your physical or mental safety if you decide to really pick a fight with her. She’s got some for-serious warrior training, she’s a practicing cleric, and she’s psychic like whoa… I just doubt she’d do anything that would jeopardize her status as a student here or cause more trouble for us just because you can’t remember a manners lesson. ”
“Okay, but hurting her feelings… are they easy to hurt? I mean, I get that she’s your friend, but she’s your friend, and I’m sure it’s all bullshit, but just… there are stories, you know?”
“There are stories about half-demons, too,” I said. “I was starting to like you. Don’t get all…” I stopped, not quite sure what I wanted to say. Bigoted? Prejudiced? These might be accurate, but he was already on the defensive. I looked for a word that would fit but be less contentious. “Over-sensitive.”
“Look, I’m not trying to be an asshole, I’m just a bit outside my area,” he said. “You might have had a decade to grow into a sophisticated cosmpolite who hangs out with elves of all colors and descriptions, but I’m still a freshman.”
I couldn’t helping laughing at this, because if anything, I’d been more sheltered than Rowan when I first arrived. I dare say that it had taken me a lot less than a semester to find my footing in dealing respectfully with Dee, but then, I’d been dropped into an environment where there were more opportunities to learn.
“Okay, fine, point taken,” I said. “Next point, I guess: make sure you don’t say the d-word.”
“Isn’t that just another word for dark elf?”
“Yeah, a horribly insulting one,” I said. “You know, my mother taught me not to say that when I was like… I don’t know, five or six. I’m surprised you never learned it, if we hang out together all the time.”
“It never came up, to my recollection. I mean, how many times did you say it after she told you not to?”
“Fair point,” I said.
“And I didn’t have any reason to say it. The nearest thing to an elf around was Josie Summerdale.”
“…man, I haven’t thought about Josie in ages,” I said, though the name had immediately brought a picture to mind. Honey-blonde hair, stick-thin all over, without an ounce of baby fat except for in her face. That was also the only place where her skin seemed to show any color, which had given rise to her unfortunate nicknames: Josie Applecheeks, or sometimes Rosie Josie.
Or was it Josie Rosie?
Probably both.
“She was pretty cool,” Rowan said.
“I guess I didn’t know her that well.”
“…you weren’t tight like we were, I don’t think, outside of class, but you knew her pretty well,” he said. “You guys sat together most years, and was your partner in all the group stuff.”
“I remember she sat next to me,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t think it was deliberate on my part, and I definitely don’t think I had one study buddy or anything.”
“Don’t think, or don’t remember?”
“Okay, this is too weird for me,” I said, shaking my head not so much because I disagreed with him but because… well, basically, I wanted to say no to the whole premise. “I mean, I understand that my mind was very likely tampered with and I’ve taken it as a given that we knew each other and now I don’t know you, but… how much did I lose?”
“It sounds like just about everything,” he said.
“I don’t know what ‘everything’ is,” I said. “But I’d really like to learn. Okay, I think I’ve covered the important bases, so let’s get on with this. Dee, can you come in here?”
“Wait, she’s been listening the whole time?”
“In earshot, but not listening,” I said. “It would have been ruder to ask her to go somewhere that she couldn’t hear… and then we’d have to fetch her.”
Dee floated in through the door connecting our room to hers by way of the shared bathroom. When I say “floated”, I don’t mean the normal fluid, gliding stride typical of elves… she was actually levitating in a semi-seated position. I knew she was telekinetic, but I’d never seen her do this… or most things… casually, so I assumed it was something like a warm-up exercise.
She was wearing her priestess’s robe.
Her easily misunderstood propensity for occasional public nudity was because technically all her clothing were a priestess’s garments, but the fact that she was wearing her outer robe over the slip-like dress suggested that she saw what she was doing here as a worthy service… if it had been out of a sense of modesty with an unfamiliar boy, she would have put her cloak on over it.
“Good afternoon,” she said, nodding towards Rowan. “I am Delia Daella d’Wyr. Those who count themselves as my friends call me Dee. You are called Rowan Hartley?”
“Rowan’s fine,” he said. “Hi. Dee.”
“You understand what Mackenzie has proposed here?” she said.
“She wants you to sift through my memories, I guess to help her understand them?”
“In part… but as I can neither convey them directly to her, nor compare them to hers, my role as an intermediary must necessarily be limited,” she said.
“So, you can’t just pull my memories out, and put them in her?” he asked.
“I lack the skill necessary to do so safely,” she said.
“I thought you said she was the best around,” he said to me.
“Probably the best telepath in a hundred miles in any direction except down,” I said. “It’s only recently we stopped treating the subtle arts like witchcraft, but they treat them like they’re magic. It’s just…”
“There is a particular skill I lack,” Dee said. “Demons do not have any prey in my homeland, so we have no experience dealing with their minds.”
“Is it really so different?” Rowan asked.
“I have a… dangerous mind,” I said. “It’s part of why it made sense to me that your story would be bullshit, when you were talking about me being a mindreader. The way I understand it, contact between minds from different planes of existence is kind of iffy to begin with, and if one of those planes is infernal… well, it’s not something you mess around with.”
“Okay, yeah… I think you might have said something about that,” Rowan said. “So, then… what are we doing here?”
“I will, in essence, be vetting your memories,” Dee said. “Making certain that you believe what you say, and looking for evidence of tampering.”
“Okay, I understand where you’re coming from,” he said, looking at me before turning back to Dee. “But I’m pretty sure I’m not the one whose head has been fooled with.”
“Understand, I am not proceeding from the theory that either your memories have been tampered with or hers have,” Dee said. “I am investigating the possibility that they both may be false. But I do not penetrate another being’s thoughts lightly, and I would not do so to you under false pretenses. If you object, I will withdraw.”
“I… well, I might object in the sense of saying, ‘Hey! That’s not fair!’, but I’m not saying no,” he said. “I want to know what you say.”
“Let us have no half-measures here,” Dee said. “I must know that you are unequivocally in favor of this, as I have had reason to become aware that there is often a gap between what we believe ourselves to want in the abstract and what we find we want in the moment.”
“Well, you have my permission to read my mind and see that I mean it,” he said.
“I apologize, but it is not necessary… the strength of that sincerity spills forth beyond the confines of your mind,” Dee said. “I know that you mean it when you say you want to know, but… forgive me, but this is not my first language, nor is it as precise as the one to which I am accustomed…”
“Would telepathy be easier?”
“Only if you would understand thoughts in my language better than you would spoken words,” she said.
“Rowan, she’s saying that she’s afraid if she has bad news, you won’t take it well,” I said. “So she’s asking you to be super sure that you’re ready for anything she might tell you, kind of as a general cover-your-ass disclaimer thing.”
“…yes, that is an accurate summation,” Dee said.
“Oh, okay,” Rowan said. “Well, yeah… I just want to know the truth, okay? I’ve been carrying a mystery around with me for years, and when I thought I was going to find the answer, the rug just got yanked out from under me again. Nothing could feel as bad as… okay, maybe I shouldn’t make that kind of sweeping prediction if I’m trying to convince you I won’t kill the messenger. I’m willing to feel worse than I have, to get to the truth.”
“Very well put,” Dee said. “Eventually.”
“What do I have to do?”
“I would say to relax and open your mind, but I have found that giving this instruction to one untrained in the arts of the mind often results in a rather aggressive block being thrown up,” she said. “So do not attempt to open your mind, or do anything with your mind you are not accustomed to doing. Do, so far as you are able, relax. Think about Mackenzie and your childhood, the stories you have told her… I fill find the threads to follow from there.”
“Okay,” Rowan said. “How do I know when you’ve begun? Will I feel anything?”
“Do you?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
“Then you will not.”