Tarlyn's hand jumped across the page, and he wrote a few more lines, then returned to the larger shape. "What were Dusty's people like?" he asked. "Was he like them?" He was still having trouble imagining this enchanting wolf-man, much less an entire race of them. It was an interesting, if unsettling, image.

Tali chuckled softly and shrugged slightly. "As much alike as any family is, I guess," she said thoughtfully. "I met some of his children. He didn't really have a family, beyond that. If you mean like other wolves…" She tilted her head to one side and considered it for a moment, then said slowly, "Well, to all external appearance, I suppose he was. The same way someone could look at you, or me, and say 'Drow', they could look at him, or anyone who was like him, and say 'wolf'."

As Tarlyn tried to picture it, he glanced up at Tali. If this Dusty was in all ways a wolff, and was the goddess' husband… A particularly bestial image came to mind, and wide-eyed, he shook it away. It wasn't precisely upsetting, but it wasn't something he wanted to think about, especially while she was looking at him that way. He coughed discreetly, then, grinning, asked, "What about him drew your attention at first, and then what about him made him so special?"

Tali's cheeks flushed, and she bit her lower lip in a mildly embarrassed grin. "In the beginning… well. It was pretty shallow, I guess," she confessed. "I thought he was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. The silver fur, the hair, the eyes… and oh, he has this smile…" Wistfully, she sighed. "Over time, though, I got to know him. He was decent, and kind, and brilliant. He had so much in his heart, so much love, so much desire to make the world better for others… He was as beautiful inside as he was outside."

Intrigued, Tarlyn blinked. So the wolf, it seemed, truly was much more than a wolf, at least in her eyes. "And you already felt that way… you must have been drawn to one another."

"We were," Tali said with a nod and a smile. "I know that now." Her eyes saddened again, and she laughed faintly. "But it took us eight years to figure it out. I didn't think he wanted me." She folded her arms across her chest and hugged herself, remembering her despair. "Other things happened in between that made me even more convinced of that. I died to save another friend I cared very much about, and I thought there was no way Dusty could ever accept the monster I'd become."

Tarlyn nodded understandingly as he wrote, then stopped and shook his head. He wasn't quite certain he'd heard that correctly. "You died?" he asked, and blinked up at her. "Did you ascend to the planes?" A demon goddess who had transcended death, then become the savior of her people… this was becoming a much more incredible story than he'd counted on.

Still hugging herself, Tali shook her head. She was silent for a moment, then took a deep breath and released it in a heavy sigh. "No," she said, finally. "I died, or I suppose I should say that my body did, but I went on. I mentioned the city of the undead… For a few centuries, I lived there. Would you like to see what I was, before I became what I am?"

Tarlyn found himself startled once more, but forced himself to keep writing. "You were undead?" he asked, blue eyes wide. He remembered the warmth of her hand, and the softness of her leg when she laid his head there after she'd healed him. "But…" he began, confused, "You're not anymore, are you? You felt so alive…"

"I was," Tali confirmed. "I had to save someone I cared for, and that was the price I paid for it." She shook her head emphatically as she continued. "Now, no. Now, I just am. What I am, I'm not completely sure yet, but I am, and I don't have to live the way I used to."

She caught Tarlyn's gaze and looked deeply into his eyes as she changed yet again. Her ebony skin paled to a soft ashen grey, and her eyes darkened to a dull red gleam. She parted her lips and traced the tip of her tongue over small but prominent fangs. "It's pretty, or so people told me…" she murmured, "…but, truth told, I despised having to live on the blood of others." For a moment, she held the form, staring at him silently, then changed back. "I like being alive again."

Shivering, Tarlyn blinked into her eyes. "Don't move…" he whispered as she changed. He flipped the page and scribbled frantically, then as she changed back, smiled. "There. I think I captured it well." He tilted the book toward her. On the page was a quick, rough, but recognizable sketch of her vampiric form. "You became…" He shivered again. "…a vampire, then. And you did it for someone you loved… Alton, or Dusty, or someone else?"

Tali reached out and touched the sketch with a fingertip, then smiled softly. "You're quite the artist," she commented. "It's beautiful. Thank you."

"Not much of one," Tarlyn protested, blushing faintly. "I did field sketches on the road, a little, to remember what I saw."

Tali brushed her fingertip over the hand that held the pen as she withdrew, and then sighed softly. "I like it," she murmured, then shrugged. "But your question… it was someone else. Just a friend, then, but one I loved dearly." She chuckled and admitted, "We were lovers, later, but that's not really important now." She stared down at her hands for a moment, then continued. "He was undead himself, a shade, a being of shadows. The only name anyone ever called him was Trenchcoat." She smiled fondly. "I was the only one who ever knew his real name…"

Tarlyn marveled silently as he began to write again. "You've known a lot of love over the years," he said with a smile. "I guess when you move around that much, it's better if you love who you find yourself with." He paused, looked up, and asked, "You said Dusty is still with you. Did he follow you to Menzoberranzan?"

He did," Tali said with a grin, nodding happily. "They all three did. I hope you'll stay long enough to meet them all, sometime." She idly toyed with a fold of her dress as she spoke, laughing a little. "They all stay busy nowadays." Her voice softened again, and she smiled warmly. "I've been lucky. I've known some wonderful people, and I've learned to love in ways that I don't think most of our people have ever understood." She turned to glance out over the city again, and finished hopefully, "…but maybe someday they will."

He raised an eyebrow, and turned over the page, jotting notes in tiny, focused rows of print flush to the upper edge of the new page. "How do you keep your males from competing for you?" He blinked. "The surface people form families in pairs, to solve that problem. Wouldn't things look like the Spider War all over again, if your males have to contend among themselves for your attention?"

Tali shook her head and smiled quietly. "There's no need for them to compete. What I share with each of them is completely different. I don't love one any less, or give one any less, because of the others. Losing one wouldn't increase what I share with the others... neither would loving another diminish it."

She shrugged. "It's not about greed, or about someone else taking 'your share'... it's about caring, and understanding, and sharing. You can love and admire many different things in many different people. Limits on who and how much you love are... artifical."


Tarlyn copied the words carefully, brow furrowing a little in thought. His was silent for a few moments, staring down at the page, and his pen hovering an inch above the surface. His breath rose and fell quietly. "Is it really so easy as that?" he finally asked.

Tali thought about it for a moment, gathering the right words. "I wouldn't say easy," she said finally. "There's a degree of understanding that a lot of people don't possess. Jealousy is an ingrained reaction. The surface people are taught from birth that you can only love certain people, and you can only express it in certain ways. Our people..." She shrugged and frowned distastefully. "Our people are taught from birth that love doesn't even really exist. There is only desire, and control, and those were kept subject to the whims of the women."

His pen moved slowly, the words heavy on his mind. "What is love, then?" he asked.

Smiling faintly, Tali looked off into the distance. "As I see it..." she began, "...love is a connection. It's the deepest kind of empathy. It's truly understanding someone." She tilted her head to one side. "It's both sharing a very deep bond that ties you closely to someone, and freedom to be yourselves separately." She thought a moment longer, then added, "It's a lot of things. Mainly, though, it's about common ground and caring about each other's happiness."

He nodded slowly, the words beginning to flow from the pen again. "A far cry from ssin'ssrigg." he said. "Tell me, where did you find this love? Did you always know it, or were you shown it by someone?"

Her smile became warm and happy again as she nodded, slowly. "I guess you'd have to say I first learned from watching the people on the surface. It was a beautiful thing to see people together, without the games of power and dominance that you and I grew up with. They cared for one another without expecting anything in return."

She closed her eyes and sighed. "Oh, there was still possessiveness, mind you, and I accepted that this was just the way it was." She laughed softly and shrugged. "I came to understand family love, but the other kinds of love... I believed it was only right to love one person. I could never share what I shared with one, with someone else. And then, there was Dusty..."

Tarlyn nodded as he wrote. "He showed you that love?" He smiled. He was more and more intrigued by this mysterious wolf as he recorded her words. "How did he show you this love? What made him different from the other people you saw, the love of the surface people that you saw around you?

Tali tapped a fingertip on the arm of the chair. "He taught me something very important. You see, it's true that the love you have for one person, you can't share with another person. The way you love, and the reasons you love, are unique to the two of you." She opened her eyes again and smiled at him. "But that's no reason to stop loving. You can still love others just as much... and it will always be in a completely different way, each unique to itself. You'll only make yourselves miserable, and probably miss out on something beautiful, if you deny its expression."

She tapped her finger against the chair more emphatically as she made her point. "He had no limits. No jealousy. No greed. He showed me that as long as there were no lies, no games, as long as everyone involved was honest and accepting, then there was not one good reason not to show love as freely as we felt it." She shrugged. "There's the fallacy, you see. It's not that people don't love... it's that they've been taught not to express it."

"Hold still," he said, and lifted the book against his chest, eyes rapidly flickering between Tali and the page below. "I had to draw you. If only you could see...well, I suppose you can." He turned the book in his hands, and there on the page, scribbly and hasty in wild ink tangents, was her face, mid-speech, eyes and mouth glowing. He shrugged a little, grinned, and resumed writing, finishing the paragraph. "Wow." He said after a few moments. "Is this part of being a wolf? It is something we 'greater races' have perhaps lost over the millennia?"

Tali moved in her chair and leaned toward him to see. The ends of her hair brushed the back of his hand as she looked at the page. "Do I really look like that?" she mused. "You make me look so pretty..." Blushing again, she bowed her head, then sat back in her chair once more. "I don't think it's a wolf thing, really," she said. "I've met others of his kind who behaved like all the rest of the surface people. I've met some who behaved like us. I think it's just an understanding that people have to reach on their own. You can point the way to someone, but they have to grasp it for themselves."

Tarlyn's ears pinkened a little. "That's what I see." he said. "I don't suppose any one person could tell you what you look like, and be completely right. But yes. You are pretty. I...." He chuckled as the words failed him. "I can't believe this is a surprise to you."

He nodded again, resuming his writing, jotting a note or two beneath the picture first. "I'm guessing, from what you've said, that he showed this to you by example. How did it first come up in your life?"

Tali shrugged and grinned crookedly. "I look in the mirror, and I see just me. I see the same old Tali I've seen for centuries. It's never been anything special, really, to me..." She glanced up at him, ears pink, and murmured, "...but I'm really glad you think so."

She watched him write for a moment and collected her thoughts. "I met people he loved," she explained. "I watched him with them. Friends that were important to him... some that were lovers... In truth, I expected to be upset. I expected to be jealous. But I wasn't. It was beautiful. He was happy, he was making others happy, and never once did he love me any differently or any less than he always had."

"I do." Tarlyn said softly, the beginning of the sentence more tentative than the end. "Very much so." He blinked, and nodded, writing without lowering his eyes to the page again. "Was there ever jealousy? Competition? Perhaps not with you, perhaps...er, among the others? What came of it?"

Tali bit her lip and blushed even more for a moment, then grinned and tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear. "I'm sure, on some level, there may have been a little jealousy. I never saw it, though. He's always very straightforward about who he is and how he lives, and he would never be interested in someone who couldn't accept that." She shrugs. "Love is accepting someone for who and what they are, not what you want them to be."

He blinked, and nodded slowly. "You make it sound so simple." he said. "It sounds like things I've heard of from the Great Mountain, and the Endless Plains, but can ordinary people really live that way?" He shook his head slowly. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to contradict you, it's just that...even things that are beautiful for a while, people have a way of ruining, losing sight of. People get greedy, or jealous, or argue, or fight. Friendship, families, homes get torn apart by it every day." He blinked up at her, his brow furrowed a little. "And I'd think that someone who loved many people that deeply would be even more likely to see it than someone who didn't."

Softly, and a little sadly, Tali nodded. "It sounds so easy, doesn't it? I wish it were..." She gestured toward the city. "I wish I could just tell all of them, 'See this beautiful thing? If you would just understand, you could see it, you could have it...' But it's not like that. People are taught so many false limits, and they're taught that need and desire and possession are the same thing as love... and it's not the same thing at all."

She shook her head. "People... hearts... aren't property, but they're taught to treat each other that way. So much of what we see as 'the way things are' is really just what we're told it's supposed to be."

He blinked, and looked down over the city, pausing to sketch the skyline. "It's been so long. I'd almost forgotten how beautiful it was." He blinked, chuckled once to himself, and nodded again. "And you're showing them, through your own life, through your words. But they still don't listen." He blinked, thoughtfully. "If it really is all false, why do people hold onto it so tightly in the face of truth?"

Tali watched him sketch, with a curious little smile, and said softly, "It's not easy to change something that's so fundamental a part of an entire culture. People see, but it's easier not to believe." She shrugs. "It's easier to keep teaching your children the same old things, that the old way is the right way because that's how it's always been, than it is to think about it for a moment, and you know why?" She paused for a beat, then answered her own question. "Because that means admitting that you might have been wrong."

He listened to that, and considered it before he replied. "...and it means having to stand up and defend your views without help, alone." he said. "It means standing against the tide." He began to speak, then chuckled, remembering she'd surely seen the tide and didn't need an explanation of the metaphor. "It means being alone, and being the enemy of those who see difference as a threat."

She nodded a little. "That's a difficult thing to do. It takes courage to be different, because being different often means you're alone... and being alone can be pretty frightening." She shook her head, then, and said quietly, "Even with all the love I've had, I've always been alone. There's no one like me, as far as I know, anywhere, so I guess I'm used to it."

She shrugged. "But I'm not going to force my views on anyone. That's not what I am, you know? Hell, I never thought I'd end up leading... but if I have to, I'm going to lead by example. I don't want people to just accept what I say. I want people to watch, and learn, and understand."

He finished the sentence, blinked down at the filling page, and nodded again, softly. "I have to meet your family someday." he said, and grinned crookedly. That, he thought, would likely be another book in itself. He looked up at her for a moment, nodded again, and turned back to the page. "What made you decide to return when you did?"

"It was time…" Tali replied quietly.

[You know it. More on the way.]