Harbinger

14: ONCE MORE WITH FEELING

Oilcan wasn’t sure how he ended up taking all the kids at the enclave shopping.

It started out small. He wanted to buy two of everything for a little girl’s bedroom: bed, nightstand, dresser, bookcase, desk, and chair. Tinker would be persuaded by a furnished room faster than by an empty space and vague promises. Oilcan hoped that her sisters would be similarly inclined. There were also things his enclave still needed, especially if it was to seem like a home to children raised on Earth. His pickup wouldn’t be able to handle all the furniture he hoped to buy. He could swing past the salvage yard and pick up the flat bed, but that would leave his pickup on the other side of the city. A second driver would be the easiest way to get everything back to the enclave.

It had seemed simple to grab Blue Sky Montana and take him along. The little half-elf might look ten years old, but he was eighteen and thus legally old enough to drive. What’s more, his sekasha bloodline meant that if they got separated, none of the royal marines who were patrolling the city in droves would give him grief.

Blue Sky had been painting bedrooms on the second floor with a handful of kids. Some of them belonged to Oilcan. Some of them were just visiting.

One thing led to another and before Oilcan knew it, an entire herd of kids and the three dogs were spilling out onto the sidewalk on the South Side from three separate vehicles. All five of his kids came along, even Barley, who was rarely out of the kitchen. His kids had also brought along their elfhound, Repeat, who they thought had been killed in the oni attack. Since Repeat had mysteriously reappeared, the kids had refused to go anywhere without the puppy. Oilcan had also somehow picked up the half-oni Spot, a tengu girl named Rebecca Brotman, a random sekasha, Guy Kryskill, Andy Roach, and two of the Roach family elfhounds, Pete and Bruno.

The mini-circus had gotten started when everyone that wanted to come wouldn’t fit in Oilcan’s truck. Guy had been at Sacred Heart, helping Team Tinker install the new custom-built front gate. Guy volunteered his fiery red Ford pickup with a long bed, but apparently that required his cousin Andy and the dogs to come with him. (The truck was older than the boy, who turned sixteen in the spring. Oilcan and Tinker had spent part of the winter helping Roach refurbish the Ford what now seemed a lifetime ago.)

The other three additions — an elf, a tengu, and a half-oni — were a mystery. Oilcan hadn’t been aware that they’d picked up random spare people somewhere along the way until they unloaded in the South Side.

“Stay.” Andy pointed at the dogs and then sidewalk beside Guy’s Ford. “Guard.”

The bear-sized adult dogs sat down in the shade casted by the pickup. Repeat glanced between Andy and Baby Duck, but the little female was entranced by the flashing neon sign over the door. The puppy decided to obey its former master and join the other dogs. It made Oilcan happy since both pickups had rifles in their gunracks and the sekasha were stashing their bows, arrows, and other backup weapons into the weapons crate strapped to the back of the flatbed.

“Quiee,” Baby Duck quacked at the gaudy display. “What does it say?”

Blue Sky blushed, self-conscious that his Elvish was not as good as one expected for a half-elf. He liked being the voice of authority for the other children, so he fumbled through the translation. He’d spent enough time in Oilcan’s wake to know the reference. “Once More With Feeling. It’s something a…” He paused to consider how to translate “conductor” and settled for “…leader says to his musicians so that they’ll play the same song a second time but less mechanically. It’s because they sell used furniture and music…stuff. Instruments — and the paper with songs written on them…” Blue Sky stumbled to a halt and then switched topics by pointing to the store across the street. “See! That’s the ice cream shop I was talking about. It serves Reinhold’s ice cream and things like whipped cream and hot fudge to put on top.”

“Furniture first,” Oilcan said loudly as all the kids except Merry and Rustle surged toward the curb. He didn’t want the group splitting up. “We’ll get the ice cream afterward.”

The kids swarmed into Once More With Feeling.

The shop was currently the biggest furniture store in Pittsburgh. The title of “biggest” used to be held by its sister store, Once Upon A Mattress. Located in Market Square, with big storefront windows, Once Upon A Mattress had handled only new merchandise, which it leased at insane prices to off-world personnel: UN peacekeeping forces, embassy employees, and private corporation employees. Locals would window-shop the displays of matched furniture sets but never actually buy anything. They knew that off-worlders rarely stayed on Elfhome. After a year or two, most workers would finish their duty and rotate back to Earth. Once Upon A Mattress would collect the leased furniture to sell at Once More With Feeling for pennies on the dollar.

Once Upon A Mattress, though, had gone down in a blaze of glory when someone shot several thousand bullets through it. Six forty-foot-long walking electric catfish, a police car, and the store’s entire inventory had been reduced to Swiss cheese by the gunfire.

Once More With Feeling was a thrift store in theory. It was, however, very expensive compared to the others of its kind due to the quality of its stock. Oilcan hadn’t been able to afford it, not with the amount of furniture that he needed for his enclave. He had avoided the store while he’d scoured the city for tables and chairs for his enclave’s dining room.

He’s picked clean all the nearby abandoned buildings and cheap thrift stores and still needed a lot more furniture for his enclave. It was one of the many reasons Oilcan had decided to become Beholden to the Wind Clan. With backing from Tinker, he could simply do a massive purchase of everything he needed.

The front door of Once More With Feeling opened to a football-field-sized showroom. His kids stood for a full minute staring openmouthed in awe.

Blue Sky broke the silence. “It’s just a furniture store, not the Grand Canyon.”

“Elves custom-make all their furniture to last for centuries.” Guy Kryskill’s brother apprenticed under one the elf furniture makers, so he could speak with authority. “They don’t have stores like this, not even in their big cities.”

“So…” Blue Sky mimed “mind blown” while looking meaningfully at the stunned elves around him.

“Yup.” Guy started toward the back corner of the showroom. “The cooking stuff is all back in the corner. Gas ranges. Grills. Pots and pans. It’s all hit or miss but sometimes you get lucky.”

Guy triggered a sudden scattering of kids, each pursuing their own interest. Barley followed Guy and Andy to the cookware department, deep in a discussion about smoking meat. Merry and Rustle headed to the opposite corner for a wall display of guitars. Cattail Reeds and the tengu girl, Rebecca, beelined upstairs where bridal wear and vintage dresses were sold, talking about Earth fashion trends. Baby Duck started to critique all the overstuffed couches lining the store’s center aisle in a twisted elf version of Goldilocks.

“Too black. Too ugly. Too black.” Baby Duck ticked quickly down the row. “Quiee! This one is beautiful! Let’s get this one!”

Her choice was a small pink French country love seat with wood accents. It was very cute but very small.

“We need lots of seating.” Oilcan pointed at the largest piece on the floor, a huge U-shaped leather sectional. They didn’t have a family-only communal space at the enclave yet. If he could get Jewel Tear moved to the second floor, though, they could use her current room. The American ideal of family was one who gathered in a living room on a couch. The twins might find comfort in that familiar arrangement.

Baby Duck eyed the sectional doubtfully. “It’s too black.”

Again? It took Oilcan a moment to realize that she meant Stone Clan Black. The kids had spent their whole life identifying themselves with the color — only to have their clan betray them. Baby Duck was wearing a man’s chambray work shirt in Wind Clan Blue as a dress with rainbow leggings. Under a very thin veneer of “I’m fine,” the kids were still traumatized.

Blue Sky and Spot closed ranks with Baby Duck to lend their support. The three were the youngest and had become fast friends over the last week.

“Too smelly,” Spot whispered in English. It was the first time Oilcan had ever heard Spot talk; he’d been wondering if the half-oni wasn’t able to speak. The boy looked as if his father had been a Labrador retriever instead of an oni. Spot had big amber eyes, long floppy ears, dark fur, and a wedge-shaped black nose. According to Tommy Chang, the boy had spent his entire life hidden away because of his appearance. It might have made him too shy to talk, or maybe he didn’t follow Elvish, since the other half-oni kids seemed to know only English, Chinese, and Oni.

Spot wrinkled his black nose and whispered, “Cat peed on it.”

Oilcan smelled nothing but a lavender-based cleaning product that the store apparently used by the gallon. “Are you sure?”

Spot cringed back behind Blue Sky, nodding.

“You don’t want an ugly, black, peed-on couch.” Blue Sky championed both Baby Duck and Spot.

“This one is big!” Baby Duck dashed over to a long white couch that looked like stitched-together clouds. She flopped down and the massive puffy pillows swallowed her. “Quiee! Too soft! Too soft!”

Spot and Blue Sky rescued her from the couch.

“What about this one?” Oilcan moved to a half-moon sectional behind the first row of couches. It wasn’t his style. The tufted cushions and curved sections seemed too pretentiousness to him, but it was a misty blue color in a soft micro-suede fabric.

“Oh, that one is just right!” Baby Duck cried. She and Spot tumbled onto the couch to test it out.

Blue Sky went into alert mode as the other sekasha drifted closer. Oilcan recognized the hard look on the boy’s face; they were seconds away from Blue Sky launching himself at the interloper.

“We’re getting this couch!” Oilcan announced, catching Blue by the shoulder. He turned the boy around and pushed him toward the distant service counter. “You three go find an employee. I want to start the process of getting this stuff loaded.”

Blue resisted enough for Oilcan to know that he wasn’t going willingly. “He’s looking at Spot weird. No one invited him. He just added himself. He doesn’t have any right to be here. He’s not one of us.”

Not one of us?

Oilcan had been aware that they’d picked up a second armed guard just as everyone piled out of the vehicles outside of the store. Oilcan had assumed it was one of Forge’s people; they’d provided backup to Thorne on previous shopping trips. Who exactly had they picked up? Oilcan glanced at the male sekasha drifting toward them.

“Shit,” Oilcan breathed in English. The sekasha was a complete stranger. “I’ll deal with it.” Oilcan gave Blue Sky another nudge. “Trust me.”

Blue Sky was a good kid. He’d spent most his life trusting Oilcan and Tinker. He gave Oilcan an unhappy look but he obeyed. The boy caught Baby Duck and Spot by the hand and dragged them off.

It was hard to tell with elves, but the sekasha seemed “teenage” young. The male was shorter than the warriors in Tinker’s Hand, but so were all of Forge’s. His armor and tattoos were Stone Clan Black but the ribbon in his braid was an emerald green. He was watching the children, just as Blue Sky claimed. He had his face set in the emotionally neutral “warrior’s mask” that the sekasha had perfected; there was no way to tell what the male was thinking.

Whatever his interest in the kids was, it was derailed by a La-Z-Boy recliner with its footrest raised. The warrior squatted to closely eye the mechanical pieces of the chair.

“Who is that?” Oilcan whispered to Thorne Scratch, pointing discretely at the sekasha.

He didn’t understand any of the words that she used as a reply. He really wasn’t as fluent in Elvish as he thought.

“I don’t know what those words mean,” he whispered.

“I’ll try to break his name down to more common words,” Thorne said, then paused to think it through. “On certain nights, when the moon is bright, there appears to be two smaller lights that bracket it. It’s been determined that they’re reflections of the moonlight off of thin wispy clouds. I’m not sure if you can see them in Pittsburgh; the conditions must be right for them to appear. I have yet to see them here in the Westernlands.”

“Paraselene.” Oilcan gave the scientific name, which meant “beside the moon.” The elves had determined the true nature of the optical illusion, although he wasn’t sure how. It was a very specific refraction of moonlight through ice crystals found in cirrus clouds that were shaped like hexagonal plates.

Thorne Scratch gave an uncertain nod, probably because she didn’t know Latin. “His full name means ‘the ghost white gleams to either side of a full moon when it is nearest to Elfhome in its elliptic orbit, and thus its brightest, in the middle of winter over foreign mountains.’”

Her original phrase had been much shorter. Oilcan didn’t know the Elvish for “supermoon” or “paraselene” or whatever “foreign mountains” denoted. They needed an idiom that they both easily understood.

“We sometimes call the illusion ‘moon dog’ instead of paraselene,” Oilcan said.

Thorne looked slightly surprised. “We use that phrase too. In old legends, the moon dog was thought to be the greyhound of Huunou. It is believed that it was rare to catch sight of the dog in the sky because Huunou often gifts it to those who have his favor.”

Oilcan had heard of Huunou’s greyhound. The dog was a weirdly seasonal mythological creature, like Santa’s reindeer, if his reindeer tortured anyone who didn’t put out cookies. The elves made a big production of “feeding sky’s greyhound” around Winter Solstice by putting out brightly decorated suet, much to the delight of the local bird population.

Moon Dog’s name, however, really didn’t explain who he was, and more specifically, what he was doing with Oilcan’s little group of shoppers. Thorne Scratch sounded like she knew the young male, but he hadn’t been part of Earth Son’s or Jewel Tear’s households. “Where did he come from?”

Thorne shook her head to indicate that she didn’t know. “He was not on the list that Little Horse gave to me, yet the last time I saw him was at Cold Mountain Temple. It is possible that he is not here officially, much the way he was not at Cold Mountain Temple formally. Most of his life has been shaped by his dangerously odd name. Perhaps, once again, he’s let it take him on a wild hunt.”

Huunou was the god of a weird collection of things, starting with everything in the sky and working down to laundry. The moon was often referred to his palace where he slept and the sun was his blazing red horse. He was the “Santa” of the winter solstice celebration. The weeklong festival was like Christmas for the elves, but with little weird hints of Halloween thrown in. It made for a bright, joyous, but a little creepy celebration. All the elves he knew looked forward to it. None of what Oilcan knew would indicate “dangerously odd.”

He had to be missing something in the translation. “What is so odd about his name?”

Thorne gave him a strange look, as if he’d asked, “What’s odd about the sky being polka dot?”

“Until this summer, I was friends with only a handful of elves.” Oilcan ticked them off on his fingers as he gave their full Elvish names. Briar Rose. Snapdragon. Windchime. Misty. Owl. Raindrop. Their real names were long and complicated; it was one of the reasons that humans gave their elf friends English nicknames.

“Ah, I see.” Thorne pursed her lips together. “How to explain? When a child is born, it’s taken to a priestess to be named. She will see the shape of its future and give the child a name to guide it on that path. For example, I was given the name of Thorne Scratch, which suggests that I will bring harm to anyone that gets too close to me. Some would point at Earth Son’s death as proof that the priestess was correct with her warning. I would argue, though, that I did not have many choices as to who I could become Beholden to, since most heeded the warning of my name. One’s name is a double-edged sword, especially if it is filled with bad omens. It gives you direction but at the same time, it can hamper you at every step.”

“Moon Dog in winter over foreign mountains is a bad-omen name?” Oilcan guessed.

“It is filled with portents. It is believed the earthquakes and volcano eruptions happen most often when the moon is large in the night sky. The phrase ‘foreign mountains’ is an ancient term for a mountainous area that is unmapped and unknown and home to a powerful enemy. Lastly, winter is when Huunou decides if the souls he’s gathered are fit to be reborn into our world again. He is the god of death. That is why we burn our dead, so their souls are free to join Huunou in the sky. His hounds are said to escort souls to his palace for judgement.”

That would explain the “Halloween” part of the midwinter festival.

“His dogs are said to be divine and noble but ruthless,” Thorne Scratch continued. “They will ignore all pleas of the dying to carry out their mission. In the past, they were given to heroes to help them fight demonic beasts, change the course of rivers, throw down mountains, and slay evil gods. To be given such a name is to say that the course of your life will be legendary. You will be given an impossible task and will be expected to succeed. He has worked hard to live up to it. At the age of seventy, he decided to leave the temple he was born in and walk completely across the South Plateau and the Hill Region — three full mei—to study under Tempered Steel.”

Cold Mountain Temple was rumored to be in the same region as the Himalayan Plateau, which made a three-thousand-mile trek even more impressive.

“You will have to talk to him alone,” Thorne said. “To offer and accept — that is a very private thing that no one should come between. Not even as your First can I interfere.”

Oilcan stared at her, trying to understand what she meant until the light went on. “You think he came with us because he’s thinking of offering to me?”

Thorne’s mouth quirked into a frown that was instantly smoothed away. She was too on-edge to be natural; she was hiding behind a warrior mask. “I don’t know him well; he arrived at Cold Mountain Temple after I won my sword and left. He was there when I returned to the temple a few years ago; I was too wrapped up in my own concerns with Earth Son to give him proper notice. People like to talk, though, of the odd and mysterious. From what they told me, I thought nothing could pry him away from Tempered Steel’s side. He was driven to learn all that Tempered Steel could teach.”

In other words: I doubt he will offer to you, but I can’t think of any other reason for him to be here.

The holy warrior in question was sitting in a burgundy La-Z-Boy recliner, raising and lowering the leg rest.

After such a monumental effort to get to Cold Mountain Temple, why would Moon Dog leave? Why travel halfway around the world? It was possible that if Thorne had difficulty finding someone to take her because of her name, Moon Dog might be having the same problem. Did he hope to become Beholden to Oilcan?

The Harbingers had arrived while Tinker was playing hide-and-seek with Chloe Polanski, just hours after Forge transformed Oilcan into a full domana elf. Last week, Oilcan had been human with some residual domana powers. Last month, no one knew that the Dufaes had been originally elves. Last spring, only a handful of Wind Clan elves even knew that Oilcan existed.

The young warrior hadn’t traveled to Pittsburgh to seek out Oilcan.

Moon Dog could have possibly planned to offer to the three domana initially sent by the Stone Clan. He would have arrived a day or two ago to find Earth Son dead, Forest Moss clinically insane, and Jewel Tear captured by the oni. He probably didn’t know that Forest Moss had recovered enough to rejoin the war effort. He might not have heard that Jewel Tear had been rescued, depending on how long he’d been at Sacred Heart before joining the shopping trip. It was possible that Moon Dog didn’t realize that Oilcan had joined forces with the Wind Clan. It only happened yesterday. There had been no formal declaration beyond Oilcan painting his door blue.

The young warrior might not have gotten as far as Sacred Heart’s front door, considering everything that was going on outside.

That was a lot of “maybe” and “possibly” and “probably.” It made Oilcan uneasy. There was no clear, logical chain of events that would lead Moon Dog to the thrift store. Oilcan took a deep breath and flexed his hands. If it came to a fight, he should be ready. Still, his stomach was roiling as he moved toward Mood Dog.

The warrior seemed fixated on the chair, but as Oilcan closed on him, he said, “Kau, I was ikudae confused by this place. I thought it was a garorou but where is the chaviyau? And I always thought that a chair was a chair unless it was boudu or daeni. I never imagined that you could make chairs in so many assorted ways. These baviali move! Is that not waya?”

Moon Dog had an accent thicker than any elf Oilcan had ever met. He had heard echoes of it in Forge and at times Thorne and the kids, but nothing like this. Oilcan wasn’t totally sure what the warrior had said.

“This is a furniture store,” Oilcan said cautiously. “We’re here to purchase chairs and beds and such for my enclave. These children — most of these children — are part of my household.” He was careful to be exact because it could be considered lying if he made a mistake. He made a motion to indicate the kids scattered throughout the building. “Those that are not my Beholden are my domi’s Beholden and some of my close friends. Why did you come with us?”

Moon Dog paused, obviously thinking hard, before saying in what might have been English, “Size king?”

“What?”

“The frozen milk with sweets and fruit.” Moon Dog pointed toward the ice cream store.

“Ice cream?” That still didn’t explain why he was half a world away from his home, or what he was doing in the furniture store.

“Sebeyou made it sound very good. I wanted to try it. I have coin.”

“Sebeyou?” Oilcan echoed.

Thorne must have decided that Oilcan was in over his head. She drifted in to the conversation. “Sebeyou is what we call the warriors at the temple who have not yet earned their sword. He means Blue Sky.”

“Boo sky.” Moon Dog mangled the English. “What does it mean? No one could tell me.”

Oilcan translated it into Elvish, not bothering with Blue Sky’s last name of Montana as it would be too difficult to explain.

“That’s it? Nothing else? No indication of time of day? The color of the morning sky is not the same as the late afternoon. Morning is full of bright expectations while the evening is somber with failure. Did the priestess not say?”

“I believe he was named by his mother; she is a human.” Oilcan had never met the woman; she’d gotten sick and left for Earth before Oilcan came to Elfhome. John Montana wasn’t the type to pick fancy names — his pets were called Stray Mama Cat, Gray Kitten, and Guppy Fish.

“Waya!” Moon Dog said. “It is an inios name. ‘The color of the sky without clouds.’ There are no omens there. It is a name that is at peace with itself.”

Blue Sky was returning with an extremely old man. The store manager was bent with age. His white puff of thin hair looked like the head of a dandelion about to go to seed.

The manager glanced briefly at Oilcan and the seated Moon Dog before focusing on Thorne in the more reassuring Wind Clan Blue. Judging by the widening of his eyes and his step backward, the man recognized that Thorne Scratch was a sekasha. “I don’t speak Elvish,” he said to Blue Sky. “Do they know that I don’t take elf coins? Our books aren’t set up to deal with it. Up one day. Down the next. You never know the real value of the gold coins.”

“I’m—” Oilcan caught himself before he claimed that he was really a human, at least in his own head. He needed to stop feeling the need to explain to others about the complications in his life. What was, was. Others didn’t need to understand or sympathize. “I’m the one buying the furniture. I speak English and I have American currency.”

Oilcan took out the bills that he’d gotten yesterday after Tinker bankrolled him. “I want this blue sectional and the pink French country love seat to start.” Baby Duck only had a mattress in her room. The twins probably could use a love seat as they might want their room to be a refuge from all the strangers. He scanned the couches selection for a second small piece. “And that other tufted white settee.”

The old man blew out his breath. “I don’t have anyone right now to load these pieces. My stock boys are off playing spy or hero or something. It’s all hush-hush and code words stupidity. All I know is their ‘cell leader’ called them about an hour ago about a ‘recon mission’ and they took off.”

“We’ll handle it,” Oilcan said. They’d come with enough people to move anything. “How much for the three?”

“Hold on, let me tally it.” The store manager took out a paper waiter’s pad that looked nearly as old as the man. He flipped a grubby cover over, took a stub of pencil out, and started to scratch out numbers. “Three and five and three is eleven. Carry the one.”

Oilcan glanced at Blue Sky to find the boy glaring at Moon Dog. Luckily the young warrior was fixated on the store manager.

“What’s wrong with him?” Moon Dog asked in Elvish.

Wrong? Oilcan eyed the man again. Then it dawned on him. “Oh, he’s just very old.”

“Old?” Moon Dog echoed. He clearly had never seen any living being that could classify as “old” before. Even the elfhounds lived ten times longer than an Earth dog.

“Yes,” Oilcan said.

“Waya!” Moon Dog breathed softly.

Oilcan still didn’t know why Moon Dog was in Pittsburgh, but it was obvious that everything in the city was new and amazing to the young sekasha. Hopefully it would mean that the holy warrior wouldn’t be dangerous to anyone. Still, the faster that they got done, the sooner they could gracefully scrape off the male.

Oilcan switched to English to tell the manager, “We need a bunch of beds too. The whole package: headboards, mattresses, sheets, and such.”

The manager paused to wave toward the far wall. “Bed frames, headboards, linens, and the rest are over there. None of our mattresses are new, but they’re cleaned and verified that they don’t have bedbugs or lice or whatnot. We’re not allowed to sell them during Shutdown, but that hasn’t been an issue for a month or so.”

“Go find a bed that you like,” Oilcan said in Elvish. He pointed at Baby Duck but included Spot and Blue Sky with a wiggle of his finger. He switched back to English for Spot’s sake. “Explain to her ‘twin-size.’ We really can’t handle a lot of big beds for everyone.”

“Yes, sama!” Baby Duck skipped off, the picture of sunshine and happiness. Of all the kids, she was rebounding the best, but it could be because she had literally wiped the memories of everything from her mind — who she was, where she was from, why she had come to Pittsburgh, along with all the torture that the oni had inflicted on her.

Blue Sky nodded like a commando given orders and followed Baby Duck. Spot looked puzzled but trailed after them. Perhaps the half-oni boy was too young to know the difference in bed sizes, or maybe the half-oni living situation didn’t afford the children separate beds. Oilcan really should find out since the half-oni were now his responsibility in name. It begged the question as to how he could fix any problems they had without stepping on Tommy Chang’s toes.

The manager eyed the cash in Oilcan’s hand. “I’ll tag these as sold and keep a running tally of what you want.”

Tagging the pieces apparently involved getting supplies from somewhere else in the store, as the old man headed off at a slow shuffle.

Oilcan considered the overstuffed chairs. Should he get more for his other kids? The oni had taken everything that the kids had brought with them to Pittsburgh. Other than their mattresses, the kids’ bedrooms were empty.

They’d painted the rooms in cheerful colors that the kids had picked out. Cattail Reeds was making bright curtains for the tall windows. Oilcan had provided paintings to scatter through the building; each kid had chosen a favorite from his collection to hang in their room. It seemed too little, especially since Oilcan planned to fill up the twins’ bedroom with furniture.

He should check to see if the others wanted a chair.

“I’d like a worktable, if we can find one.” Cattail Reeds had been trying on clothes with Rebecca. They both wore long, flowing bohemian dresses in shades of red. “As wide and long as possible so I can lay out pieces of any outfits I’m working on. Also, if we can, a rack like one of these.” She gestured to the metal display rack holding the dresses on hangers. “And some better lights. It’s hard to sew with just the elf shines.”

The two musicians had tucked themselves into the corner with all the instruments and sheet music and couldn’t be budged.

“No. No chairs!” Merry said. The two had found drumsticks and were taking turns testing them out on a practice pad. “I like having the space to work on my instrument. A worktable, maybe, and some lights. Humans have good lights.”

Rustle twirled his drumstick with his left hand. His right arm was still broken. “Me too. If we want to sit, we can use the common room. I’m glad for the space, though, to get away. The dormitories we had at Court were tiny and crowded. It always felt like we were stacked like pickled herrings.”

“I would love more of these dishes.” Barley held out a sleek, modern soup bowl in a cobalt blue with a gold-plated rim. “We need at least a hundred sets to run an enclave. This would be perfect for us, but there’s just this one.”

Andy and Guy had been helping Barley root through the mismatched dishes. For some reason, Andy had a pot on his head like a helmet. With Andy it was hard to tell if he was fooling around or he had put the pot in the one place where he couldn’t misplace it. Probably the latter. Guy seemed to be working in earnest despite the fact he was listening to the radio. One earbud dangled on his chest, broadcasting Marti Wulfow’s afternoon show on WESA. The other was firmly in his ear.

Barley picked up a white square plate. “There’s thirty sets of this. I like the simplicity of it but I do wish it had a little more decoration — a band of gold or blue or something to offset the stark white. It will work for now. China never lasts more than a hundred years at an enclave no matter how careful you are with it. Thirty is too few but it is a start.”

“There are some Wind Clan potters here in town,” Guy said. “They make good quality dishes. They normally sell to five-star restaurants on Earth.”

“Five-star?” Barley echoed the English words planted squarely in the otherwise all-Elvish sentence.

“It means that they’re…” Guy glanced to Oilcan for help with his Elvish.

“Of the highest quality,” Oilcan said. “They’re very refined.”

“The potters can make you something to your exact specification.” Guy took out his phone and paged through photos he had stored. “I know when I open up my own restaurant, I’ll have to make do with whatever I can afford but I would love to have my own line of dishes. Something like these.”

He held out his phone showing a picture of a bold, black, square plate with a crescent design along one rim that looked almost like golden brown bark.

“That’s beautiful,” Oilcan said.

“Oh, I have never seen such wonderful plates!” Barley said. “Are they expensive?”

Guy shrugged. “I found the photo on Earth’s internet late at night during Shutdown. Startup happened before I could figure out how much they cost. I kept a picture for reference.”

“They look expensive,” Barley said.

“Something to dream on,” Guy said. “My mom says that to get anywhere, you need to know what direction to head. This picture is a road sign.”

Oilcan wished he had a picture of his future. Lately he seemed to be roaring down a pitch-black road without any signs.