Chise got quite a surprise the first time she saw Elias naked.

It was perfectly innocent. Their relationship, complicated and confusing and mostly unexamined as it was, was nowhere near the point of being naked together yet, let alone anything further—even if he had already seen her naked, hell, had stripped her naked himself, and washed her, even if it hadn't been sexual, hadn't been anything more to him than cleaning a new pet. And she supposed that, technically speaking, she had seen him naked too, since his four- and six-legged forms didn't bother with any clothing beyond his ubiquitous veil.

But this was the first time she had seen his daily, humanoid form bare. It was rather startling, to say the least. They occasionally slept together, in the non-colloquial sense; she shared his soft, roomy bed sometimes, sleeping soundly safe beside him.

She'd walked in on him changing into his pyjamas, his discarded clothes of the day neatly laid on the end of the bed, his pyjama bottoms dangling from his hands, one foot raised, about to step into them.

Naked.

Well, bare, anyways.

Unclothed. Decidedly unclothed.

It all made more sense afterwards, when they sat together in bed talking. But when she opened the door to the bedroom, and he looked up at her, pausing his motion, all she saw at first, really, was purple. Just an impression of his large form, purply-grey mauve, and his blue-and-white striped pyjamas, and she realized what she had just done. That he was getting changed. That he was naked.

"Ah! Sorry, Elias!" Chise blushed furiously, a hand coming up to shield her eyes—don't look there don'tlookthere!—and started to back out again. "I—I just forgot to ask..." She trailed off as he put his foot back down, his arms relaxing slightly, from what she could see from the corner of her eye. What—what is with his foot?

"Do not trouble yourself, Chise," he assured her, moving to step into the bottoms again. "Nakedness does not bother me around you."

"No, but..." She couldn't stop staring at his foot. She'd wondered, of course, what he looked like beneath his impeccable gentleman's clothing. Did he have claws on his toes? His hands and forearms were somewhat scaly, but his neck wasn't, and his fingernails seemed to vary between slightly long and tapered, and short and blunt, changing based on some still-unknown criteria.

But while she'd considered all kinds of possible variations—hoofed, clawed, out-and-out paws—she honestly hadn't remotely considered the possibility that they were—were just... blank. Feet—but in the loosest sense of the word. The things he stood upon at the end of his legs, so they must be feet—but without form, without definition. Without toes.

"Elias? What on earth..?" Unconsciously she moved a little closer, her arm dropping, as she stared at them.

His feet looked like nothing so much as lavender putty that had been formed to fit the insides of his shoes. Basically rectangular. Slightly pointed at the end.

His shoes must fit perfectly.

And the rest of him... She raised her eyes to his, baffled. He felt firm, even stiff sometimes, when he embraced her, when she sat on his lap. She had envisioned muscle. Lean, to be sure, given that there was no indication of bulging definition when he moved, no flex to his biceps when he lifted her. But he was decidedly strong, far stronger than a human, even a man of his size, would be. Surely there would be muscle.

Elias looked, from the neck down, rather like the more stylized sort of store mannequin. His arms and legs were merely cylinders, appropriately tapered and hinged. Even his ungloved hands were simplified. These gloves fit human hands, therefore, the shape that will fill them must be a human hand.

She had a sudden flash of a distant art class, and a teacher explaining, with a few simple strokes upon a chalk board, how to turn a stick figure into a person, how the limbs had thickness, were tapered like this, how their shape guided the way the clothes would hang. Naked, Elias was that rough sketch come to life, a form quickly outlined but not detailed, there to ensure the clothes hung properly.

Chise suddenly realized that her eyebrows were all over the place, one moment all but disappearing beneath her bangs; the next, frowning in confusion. Her mouth kept opening and closing like a gasping fish. She was being unforgivably (if, she hoped, understandably!) rude.

Giving herself a shake, she bowed in abject apology. "I am sorry, Elias! I—I did not mean to stare." She squeezed her eyes shut, letting her hair fall forward to hide her face. What would he think of her now?! Her reaction was inexcusable. She had seen many, many stranger things in her life! She had seen him in many, many stranger forms.

But—what?!

She heard him softly step closer, and took a quick peek. His pyjamas were on now, thank goodness. Tendons—what appeared to be tendons—flexed along the tops of his toes as he stood barefoot before her. His hand, still ungloved, but his normal, fully-formed, scaly hand gently tilted her chin up to meet his eyes.

"My apologies, Chise," he said softly, giving her a gentle nuzzle. "That must have been alarming."

"Well, startling, certainly," she wryly smiled. "Elias, what—why..."

"As you know, this is not my natural form," he replied calmly, stepping back and gathering his discarded clothing. "It requires a certain level of concentration, of effort, to maintain it. So if parts are unseen, why bother?" His clothes set aside, he pulled aside the bedclothes, piling pillows against the headboard.

Chise considered this for a moment. "Ruth did say something about your innards... Is that related?"

"Yes." He climbed into bed, and opened his arms to her. "Why bother, if there's no need?"

Elias certainly was a very unique and unusual type of creature, she mused, as she climbed onto his waiting lap. He was obviously there, a physical presence in the human world, since ordinary humans could see and feel him; but there was also obviously more to him—less to him?—than that. Did fae not have innards, then? Guts? She couldn't remember seeing a dismembered fairy offhand, thankfully. Perhaps he was more spirit than fae—she had a sudden, upsetting flash of an old friend, bitten almost in half, what should have been raw meat and organs an undifferentiated, formless mass inside him, and suppressed a shudder. She didn't want Elias to think she was reacting to him, and didn't want to explain, to remember it again.

Was this what the neighbours meant when they called him unfinished? Half-baked? What had Renfred called him, that one time? A shell of a being, a spirit cloaked in stolen flesh?

This was all getting to be a bit too much for one evening! And to think it had started just with her seeing his feet!

—Ah, yes, feet!

"Elias," she said, pushing herself upright to meet his eyes, "Before I forget again..."

"Ah, yes. You had something you wished to ask me?"

"Yes. When we next are in London, can we get me some new shoes? I think I've grown; they're beginning to pinch my feet."

The End

A/N: I was looking over a reference page (from one of the MTNY art books) of animation notes for Elias again (well, the drawings, anyways; I can't read Japanese, alas!), which show the correct proportions and shapes for him, and I realized something: He is really, really undefined. Like, they say specifically that giving his arms and legs obvious muscle or definition is incorrect; his arms and legs (and clothes) are very straight. And we all know how flat and square his butt is!

And in a moment of silliness I posited that perhaps he just didn't have any definition, like, at all-that he was essentially a stick figure, formed to make the clothes hang right. Because why bother, if no one's going to see it anyways? :P

And then my hand slipped. XD