The trouble with earlier writings on the subject is their blanket treatment of drow. Drow, as with other folk, are not a modron collective. Even when we concentrate on the drow of the surface, and further still on the worshippers of the Masked Lady, the experience of carrying on a relationship – long-term or nightlong – with a true Assimilationist is quite different from the experience with an old-guard Eilistraeen or, Sharess forbid, a Vhaeraunite.

(One of my esteemed colleagues insists it is possible to have a pleasurable, consensual, attempted-murder-free and relatively deception-free relationship with this last. His view on the subject will be forthcoming in a few pages, once I have covered less hazardous prospects)

- Excerpt from The Sensate's Guide to Racial Relations, authored by a committee of Sharessin under pseudonyms, 1569 DR

LARISSA

(Red kiss, cat's head)

This bathroom was decked out with marble tile and the third-biggest home tub she had ever seen. If there was a similarly-sized cabinet behind the wide mirror set over the counter Larissa could have gone to bed in it with room for a partner. Instead, after dressing and taking her nara pill, she used it to reexamine the slit pupil of each eye. Once she'd determined there were no changes, she put on some makeup and jewelry, finishing with her sunglasses. Again she promised herself she'd see an eye doctor. Again she declined to set a deadline for it.

He was sitting on the bed when she came out. She lifted a hand, noticing the sunrise now in full swing out the window. "So, good morning."

"Morning." He stood, taking in her state of dress. "Going already?"

"Oh, I didn't want to impose or anything."

"Oh – you're not. Really."

She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. "You're a dear. But you see I didn't pack my toothbrush."

He half-smiled. "Do you ever?"

"Well, no."

"So, um, I was wondering." She wondered if the sunlight was draining his confidence. He'd had much more bravado when he was dancing in the bar last night (very early this morning?). "Er. Your number?"

"Oh, sure. Pen?"

There was a pen on the nightstand, atop a small page-a-day calendar. He handed it over, and after a slightly awkward pause gave her the calendar as well, interrupting her impulse to write it on his skin in lieu of other available surfaces. She scrawled across the page for the first of Mirtul, added Larissa Fariha in case he needed a reminder, then tore it off to reveal the current day and returned the lot. She was surprised at first when he started writing on the second of Mirtul, but she understood by the time he handed over his own number. "So, uh, see you later?"

Larissa shrugged, slipping the page into her purse. "Sure." No deadlines there, either.

"Vesper," said Sannara, jabbing a finger at her. Sannara had started calling her by her last name years ago, before she'd had it changed, preferring the sound of it to her first name, and Larissa had never quite figured out how to ask her to stop or if she even really wanted it to stop. "See a doctor." Larissa giggled. "Yeah, yeah. Really, if I didn't say something about it and you went blind, it'd haunt me the rest of my life – and that's more than three times as long as you'd be blind, so I've got a bit of an interest in this."

"Actually," said Larissa, flopping back on the couch, "they've never been better. Speaking of blind, up for Blind Run?"

Sannara stared at her another moment before laughing. The very first time Larissa had been challenged to Blind Run she'd been six, hadn't learned about comparative anatomy, and couldn't figure out why Tylek the kobold always seemed to make it across the cluttered room first. When she figured it out and decided to challenge others in turn, she'd had an advantage over the purely human kids. A while after she first met Sannara it had come up in conversation, and Sannara had confessed to pulling the same trick when she was a kid. She'd been foiled when, instead of turning off the lights, someone proposed blindfolds.

"Anyhow." Larissa stretched into a familiar position. "How about your message?"

"Oh yeah, the message! See, yesterday I was out leafleting for Living Skullport, and I found this whole class full of bladesingers, from down south. Guess who was in with them?"

She rounded her mouth. "Oh! Not – um –" Though she was familiar with the concept of bladesingers, a suitably prominent one for a mock guess eluded her. She decided to go for straight-out absurd. "– not Dare!"

"Oh no," said Sannara, "not Dare. He's still going in for cloak-and-dagger. Oh yeah, and he's got your dress ready. Forgot to tell you. Anyhow. It was a mixed bunch. Teacher trying to balance maybe. Ethnic representation and that. They'd a couple of halfers, and a fey'ri, and –" Larissa could swear she managed to affect a genuine twinkle in the red of her eye. "– a drow."

"Oh! You didn't get in-character, did you?"

"Only a little bit." She waved an arm above her head. "He jumped about yea high."

"He did not."

"All right, he didn't, but still. Looked like he'd come face-to-eyeball with a yoch."

Larissa recalled what she'd absorbed of drow slang and smiled, trying to look sly as she picked at her fingernails. "You're saying he didn't?"

Sannara guffawed. "Well, all right, maybe he did, but me, I'm a stealth-yoch. Clean off the wax drippings and everything. Got an undercover torrid affair with an Assimilationist."

"Now what did you just say about 'torrid?'"

Dare Vrinn stood in the doorway to the bedroom, one arm holding a spill of dark fabric and the other keeping a hanger with a familiar deep red dress aloft. "Come on," he continued. "Who's your lucky parzo? Or are you saying we're torrid? What dictionary're you using there, Sannara?"

Sannara jumped up from her chair, hurrying over. "Did you do for the pwaf, then?"

"The piwafwi," he announced, holding out his arms, "has been adjusted."

Shimmering black and deep purple cascaded into Sannara's grip, which she readjusted as she lifted it and gravity went about unfolding. It resolved into a hooded mantle shot through with threads that glittered in the sunlight from the windows. She let out a delighted cry. "Be right back!"

As she hurried out, Dare held his other project a bit higher. "So how's this?"

Larissa stepped forward to claim it. "It's great." After Sannara invited her to the Living Skullport party, the three of them had gone through books of period costume for a suitably historical dress. Dare's reproduction wasn't straight out of the illustration, but it had everything about it Larissa had admired. "Okay, how much?"

His eyes went wide. "Are you purple? I can't sell it."

"You can if you used real velvet for this thing. And Sune, is that – must have set you back months, all of this, plus the other stuff you would've had to turn down –"

"I'm very efficient," said Dare, "and not in that much demand. Least I can do for Sannara's friend, yeah?"

"Yeah," she said, reluctant to further question this windfall in case he did decide to charge. "Sure. If you like. Guess I'd better put this on. Have a panker with Sannara while I'm at it."

Dare's eyes went wide again for an instant, but it had been a while since the period where Sannara was the only connection between them and he got it in the next instant. "Why, you never said you were one of us!"

Larissa took the dress. "You never asked."

"Say, seriously now, are you really? You never did mention."

It was a good question. The typical image of an Assimilationist was a drow, as was Dare, but Larissa knew they might also be "faerie" elves and half-elves like herself. And she never had mentioned, she didn't think. "Sorry, no. Never really thought about that. And now I really need to go –"

Sannara emerged from the bedroom, wearing everything but the scourge and still adjusting the clasp on the mantle.

"Oh no," said Dare. "Too late."

"Too late for what?" Sannara crossed her arms, smiling. "Don't tell me you've been having a panker on the couch with Vesper or else I'll show you real yoch, you hear me?" She snatched at the mantle as it threatened to slip off her shoulders.

"All right," said Larissa. "We won't tell you about our panker on the couch."

She was having more success with the clasp now. "Say, Dare, why don't you put on yours too? Finish the set?"

Dare assented, and minutes later they reassembled in the living room. Sannara had retrieved her scourge; in contrast to her clothes, the openmouthed snakes were blatantly plastic, though of course she didn't have the money to shell out on robotic snakes or the like. She'd compensated by painting intricate runes on the shiny black handle that she'd clamped over their tails. The other main challenges to verisimilitude were her short hair and her easy expression. She gestured at Larissa and said, as she often did, "Wish we could swap off for the night."

Larissa put a hand under her hair, as long and black as Sannara's was short and white, and gave it a flip. "And let you have all the fun with it while I'm stuck with all the care? I don't think so." Larissa didn't carry any weapons, decorative or otherwise; they weren't in particular keeping with her chosen persona and she was pretty sure her unarmed self-defense and the can of pepper spray in her purse would be up to snuff.

Dare wore a sword with a black-edged blade, blunt but genuine metal, which he belted at his waist; he kept moving his black cloak to alternately reveal and conceal it, while his other hand had a pair of half-masks. He waved them. "Which one do you think?"

"Upper," said Larissa.

"Yeah, upper," said Sannara. "It's got more historical precedent and won't get in the way of the soup. Or the kissing."

"Maybe that's the point," said Dare. "Getting in the way. No spider kissing for this fellow."

"Oh?" Sannara folded her arms again, thrusting herself forward to display the spiders on her dress (which Larissa had seen Dare embroider by hand). "Are you sure about that?"

"How about you wear the upper this time?" Dare peeled the mask with eyeholes off from its rectangular counterpart and flapped the former at Sannara. "About time you admit it."

"Admit what?"

Larissa reseated herself on the couch and leaned back, idly going through her hair with her fingers.

"Honestly, isn't it time we cut the dramatic tension and outed you already? I think we've had enough of the 'when are they going to stab each other already,' don't you?"

"Hey. It's Skullport. Who says there's got to be stabbing?"

"Half the Society maybe?"

"Since when did you give a shit about the Society?"

"I don't know, since I joined it?" Almost ready to jump in, Larissa recognized that the light touch remained.

"Fine," said Sannara, waving her scourge. "Tell them I'm undercover if they ask again."

Larissa piped up "And are you?"

Sannara drew herself up to her full five feet and rimed her voice with easily-melted frost. "Now what manner of foolish question is that? The day will draw nigh when I slice out his heart, yes indeed."

Dare shrugged, staying out of character. "Just don't drop it."

Sannara grabbed him, pulled him to her, and only broke the kiss to say, "How's that for torrid, parzo?"

"So about those bladesingers," said Larissa. "Did you leaflet them? Did they say yes?"

"Yes and yes."

Dare finally drew back somewhat and started to tie on the upper half-mask. "Isn't it a bit cruel asking them to dredge up costumes with this notice?"

"Two words," said Sannara. "Elven formalwear. Enough out of fashion to pass for costumes."

Larissa giggled. "Planning to set up duels or what?"

"A duel?" She faked her scandal as she faked her frost. "Now why would you say that of little old me? It's a party! Can't very well have a proper party when there's blood on the floor."

After that, with the sun firmly established in the sky, she dropped in on Ralien and Dareyne, petted their cats, showed off her eyes, collected more admonitions to see a doctor, called up a few more of her friends, and picked up what she was pretty sure comprised a whole breakfast along the way. On the street and the bus a few people looked askance; from experience she knew they'd be looking at her short dress from last night and her still-wild hair (or maybe today some of them saw through the sunglasses). She tossed her hair, in between dragging her fingers through it some more, and smiled back at them until they looked away.

Her eyes were the same in her own bathroom, though why would they have changed back? Then again, why would they have changed to begin with?

She rubbed at them, standing before her own mirror with her folded sunglasses on the counter next to the sink. In the mirror she could see Dare's dress hung up on the door behind her, ready to wear. She absently ran the cold water and splashed some on, followed by the warm, as if the slit pupils in what now seemed like immense green expanses were painted on and would just wash off, showing proper ones inexplicably hidden behind them. She remembered trying that before and wasn't particularly sorry when it didn't work again.

Other people would be unnerved, she was sure, but she wasn't those people – though she still wore the sunglasses in deference to them. Larissa imagined what it would be like to forget the sunglasses. Would theoretical secret organizations with labs in the middle of nowhere and eyes across Faerun really care about one girl whose eyes were a bit off?