070 – Lunch And Griping

Rox and Steven continued their previous conversation as Caspian ate. Behind them a carriage arrived. The footman at the back looked around and then walked around the café side of the coach and opened the door. An older female elf extracted herself and her skirts from within the coach and alighted to the cobbles of the sidewalk. She briefly rustled the skirts to resettle them and then strode across the café to the only table occupied by non-elves.

“Good morrow to you.” She spoke in the formal dialect of the language of the kingdoms Steven and Roxanne had hitherto traveled through.

Caspian turned and sat up slightly straighter. Rox turned and looked up at a female that reminded her of her mother, when Rox had been younger. Steven looked up at a tall female who would command respect from anyone sensitive to any level of social propriety.

Head and shoulders taller than Steven, she was comparatively lightly built, with features well within the local norms and comparative middle age, though her gray streaked mohawk was short trimmed with longer sides gathered into a jeweled hair piece and tail. Her gown was of local cut and color and flattered her. The only other jewelry was a multi-strand necklace of assorted cut and polished stones. She used a walking stick, though whether for age or status was indeterminate by her stance. The one feature that got the attention of all was her eyes, the same shape and color as Roxanne’s. On further examination Steven could see other faint familial similarities in the face structure.

Caspian started to answer but had to swallow first, and Roxanne beat him to the point, reverting to the manors she had drilled into her at Veradale.

“My Lady. Will you please sit and join us?” Rox motioned to the open seats between herself and Caspian.

“Thank you, I will.”  Gracefully she pulled the stool out and swept her skirts around it and sat. She set her stick against the rim of the table and proceeded to help herself to the arrayed platters, making her self a sandwich wrapping her food in a large leaf instead of a roll.

“You may call me Sharlot.”

The waiter approached and put a cup down for her, and as she made no action to order, he departed.

Steven took charge. “Sharlot, I am Steven Caplan. This is my wife, Roxanne Caplan. I gather you know Caspian the Mage.”

“Yes. I am familiar with him. For myself: I am probably, as you would call it, your aunt, young lady. Your progenitor, Rodira, was my younger sister. I suppose she and her beloved are since passed?” Sharlot maintained an intense propriety as she folded her sandwich into a square and took a bite.

Rox answered. “Yes, Grandma Rhoda and Grandpa Charles died not long after I was born. Their daughter Esmeralda, called Merilyn, married Hugh Frost. Now in their eighth decade, both are still in fine health and living on a farm.

“Their daughter, my mother, Margo married Michael Winslow. She is a jurist doctor specializing in business contracts, he is an engineer.

“I teach children to defend themselves, and rebuild motor vehicles as a hobby. Steven and I have two children, Diana who is ten, and Alex who is eight.”

Steven picked up the strand as Rox proverbially handed it to him. “I am a retired Marine, and make bags for equipment.”

Sharlot took her turn. “I am currently the representative of my grand-sire’s line on our Clan Council. Like your mother, I am educated in contracts. I have nineteen children by my mate, half of which have left this city and its environs to escape my parents, as my sister and several other siblings did.”

Sharlot took a bite and when finished turned to Caspian, and business.

“Mage, you did an excellent job in telling off that pompous windbag.” She turned to the table as a whole.

“I am come to tell you that despite his personal desires to dictate to you what will happen, the majority of us will provide for whatever re-outfitting you desire, and see to whatever further training we can help with. To this end, you are all invited to a meeting the morning of the day after tomorrow. At that meeting those of us who want to help you will have it out with those who want to order you around. We wish all of you there, to both argue your case and hopefully make a bit of a scene whereby that pompous windbag and his allies will be squelched in their desires to command you and instead fall in line with those who want to help you.”

Sharlot continued. “Whatever happens, the current requested schedule is for you, Roxanne, to return to the tailors, this afternoon and tomorrow, for proper attire to present yourself before the Council.”

She turned to Steven and continued. “Steven is to be met and evaluated by a ‘specialist’ here in your suite this afternoon. The report from that will guide in what help is further offered on that front. It is expected that tomorrow, you will also go to a tailor and be properly outfitted for the meeting.”

Caspian snorted slightly. “And what interference will there be by those who would just as soon order people around?”

Sharlot washed a bite of her sandwich down and answered. “Little to none, so long as they keep being offensive enough to keep the rest united against them. The council and then the mages want to evaluate you and then offer the appropriate help, contingent on your choosing to accept. Our clan mages wish to test you, Roxanne. One has suggested getting a Psi to put the knowledge directly into your head and help you sort it out.”

Rox sat back a bit at this, but was piqued in curiosity. Steven was ready to defend and support Rox, whatever she chose.

“What kind of help can we expect?” Steven asked.

Sharlot consulted a mental list. “Evaluation and further training in magic for Roxanne. Also there are hints that some of what you have before you in retrieving your children may require some local equipment. Some want to reoutfit you completely in our own type of equipment. Lastly, there are some currently investigating in further depth the monarchs that ordered the kidnapping of your children, and information surrounding them. Once they report, we can better move to help you.”

Steven vented some irritation as Sharlot ate a bit more. “So you are saying that not all the relevant information is currently put together, but you have people working on it. Then once it is all together, we can all act more assuredly. I suppose that because of the personal opinions of some, not all this information was previously considered important, but with the current situation that opinion has been rendered invalid and the information is now important. Now we are playing catch-up.”

Sharlot politely nodded. “Essentially so.”

Rox answered before Steven could go further. “Very well. We have been playing catch up for the duration so far. I suppose a little longer won’t hurt. How shall we know the ‘specialist’ that will evaluate Steven?”

“You have met him at least once already. You may address him as Verigan.”

Things apparently having run their course, and no further questions coming at the moment, Sharlot stood to leave. “I will return and report to the Council and start things in motion. I expect your messengers will be by shortly. I will see you the morning after tomorrow.”

Were they taller, the Caplan’s would have stood as she left. Caspian, for his part made no effort toward higher politeness., and merely nodded at her departure.

That evening Roxanne was wearing a new white dress, vaguely toga like, with her left shoulder bare. The line crossing the curve of her bust line and going under her left arm, neatly forming a décolletage. It clung tight to her bust and ribs, the rest hanging like loose drapes, following her every upper curve, and obscured everything below.

Steven was watching her pace up and down the suite. Her exposed muscles flexed and worked in a mesmerizing manor. A full length sleeve bloused and ruffled down her right arm, ending at the heal of her hand with a thumb loop, and one over her middle finger. Her right side was hidden under the gathers of the off-white dress, with a knot going through an ornamental ring on her shoulder. The cut was alternately skin tight and falling-off loose, depending on how she moved, exposing her toned physique, particularly accenting her shoulders and back, while only hinting at the rest of her. The bright-off-white particularly suited her. The light played through her white mohawk, seeming to streak parts of it with a light blue. The braids on either side moved in time with the rest of her.

“I’m really beginning to wonder…” Rox rambled as she paced.

“About what,” Steven replied.

“It seams that these elves can only make two types of clothes. Gowns made of large drapes of fabric with so many folds, gathers, and layers that I feel like I’m wearing a tent; and skin tight, like wearing a grape skin wrapped in plastic. They have had at me with a set of tailors all afternoon. ‘Try this color, and that. Try this fabric, and that, and this other'.”

Every time Rox quoted the elves, she effected a haughty accent.

“Is this all a bad thing? You always seemed to enjoy shopping before.”

“Yes, for mechanical things, and when I knew what I was in for. What I was after. Here? I have no idea what is wanted of me, or how to go about it.”

“What have they done so far?”

“First it was underwear. Here I am among people I have never met, and they are politely insisting that I strip to my skin. ‘To start with proper foundation.’ Every place I go in this stupid world, they start by stripping me naked. Then they spend hours with me standing right there while they talk right past me. Without letting me leave or cover up. Not to mention measuring me in just about every way imaginable. I don’t think you have ever been that thorough.

“Finally, after nine different bolts each of six kinds of fabric, a little old woman, who stood a head taller than me, comes tottering out with a stack of small, tissue wrapped bundles. They made me six thongs right there, while I stood waiting. The things barely have anything to them, except that they reeked of fresh magic. I’ve used panty liners with more material to them.”

Steven had to bite hard on his tongue. He was half way between asking her to strip, and laughing. If she could gripe about what she usually called ‘feminine supplies,’ not that she used them, and call them specifically by name, she would be fine once her volcano stopped erupting. For now, he just had to listen.

“They all but lifted me up like a child in putting a pair on me. Then they pull a second one out and show me the magic pouches that are in the front and back panels. The things are barely larger than postage stamps, and they are stuffing the five I’m not wearing into the back pouch of the one I am. It was humiliating.”

Roxanne only paced if she had no other outlet for her agitation. Not having her garage or a gym convenient, she had no other outlet right now. The silk dress undulated as she moved, shimmering in the afternoon light, and alternately concealing and revealing her figure.

“Then they just began to throw more fabric all over me. Some was so course I could use it for sandpaper. Some so soft, I was afraid that if I moved it would pull apart like a cobweb. I’d try to say something, and the stuffy elves would just look at me as if I had turned into a fish.”

 “They may as well have taken a mold of me for all the measuring and wrapping they did. And another thing. I don’t think there is one woman on the planet that owns a proper bra, let alone knows what one is. Everything they wrapped me in either outlined me, or otherwise exposed me in some way.”

Steven knew that he was about to put her foot in his mouth, but he had to respond. “Well, I don’t mind that in private. I’ve always said that anything and nothing looked good on you. And that you could out-glamor Garbo, and out-cheesecake Marilyn.”

He stood either to dodge easier, or to wrap her in comfort. “Is a little temporary loss of dignity to big a sacrifice on the altar of aesthetics?” He was calling her bluff, as she rarely went on at length over anything so trivial as clothes or tailors. Nor was she given to high kicks. But Steven blocked this one just off his right shoulder as she pivoted on her left foot, the dress trailing like shimmering clouds.

Steven stepped in and wrapped her in his arms as she regained her footing. “It’ll be all right. Everything will work out.”

Her tears soaked his shoulder, as he held her to him.

As she settled down. Steven started rambling about his own afternoon.

“The ‘specialist’ Verigan came. We sparred. With my sword, I felt like the comparative novice I am, never mind that guy was almost half again my height.”  Steven rubbed her back, the way she liked.

“I took him apart with just my hands, would have made my D.I. proud; but then having his kidneys at my level was almost not fair. I could not really read him, to see whether he was impressed in anything, though.” His left hand still ached from a solid contact where he had slapped the elf’s arm to the floor.

“He looked over my coat and things. His only comment was that I apparently don’t have any armor.” Steven had remembered the first few times in the Marines when his effects had been inspected, and down checked as not yet up to snuff.

“Just before he left, he suggested that the formal from Veradale was tacky, and that I should get a better suit for the meeting day after tomorrow. At least about the suit we agreed.”

This stripped Rox’s emotional gears and struck her sense of humor.

Steven had one last shot. “Caspian said I could use his, and he would go in his skivvies.”

Rox’s tears were overtaken by her laughter as Steven continued to hold her.