Disclaimer: see some other chapter
Notes: I was originally going to split this chapter in two, but I decided to make it longer instead. After all, Zel admitting what he wants out of life isn't much of a cliffhanger, since everyone already knows what it is.
Please review!
^w^ ^w^ ^w^ ^w^
Holiday
by Nightfall Rising
part six
^w^ ^w^ ^w^ ^w^
"Zel," Xellos frowned at him earnestly, "do you love my brother?"
Zel gave him a funny look. "Of course I do." What kind of question was that?
"He's so intense, and driven."
"He certainly is."
"It makes him vulnerable. To--well, things. It's very important that he should marry the right person."
Zel smiled, perplexed. "Well, that's important for everyone, isn't it?"
"No," he continued to frown, "it's more important for Val." He suddenly fixed Zel with a piercing, assessing stare. "You're an odd duck, Greyweir, you know that, don't you? Where have you been?"
"Oh, traveling. I've been on the road since I--well, this," he grimaced, gesturing at himself and moving away. Lina and Sylphiel had helped him to learn to live with his skin affliction. He didn't obsess over it twenty- four-seven anymore, but it still made him uncomfortable when he thought about it--especially when the subject came up while he had to look at normal-looking people. "Taking any work I could get, studying at any library that'd let me in." He found himself in front of the covered easel, and asked, "Does Val paint?"
"Oh, no," Xellos warned, scrambling between him and the object of his curiosity. "There lies Xellos the cartographer. Don't disturb the ashes."
"You were that bad?"
Xellos shrugged, uncomfortable with giving an answer. "Only according to traditional theory."
Blinking, he confessed, "Sorry, I'm not up on cartological tradition."
"Well, there are two ways of making maps. You can draw them in geological or political proportion."
"And your father's of the other school?"
"Well, I'm sorry," he groused, "but the fact is that Sailoon is a big city, and this is actually quite a small island. Just don't expose the canvas; I'm afraid it'll fall apart if the air hits it. It's awfully brittle; it, uh, got a little scorched."
Zel looked at him. He wanted to ask, did you ever try another one? But the answer was obvious. The map was enshrined in the heart of the house. Who would bring a treasure into the world just to be be killed or become a lie? Instead he asked, "Where have you been?" But Xellos was just looking blankly at the drape over the easel, with a face utterly clean of emotion. "Hey," Zel said, touching his sleeve. "Don't I get to ask questions, too?"
"Oh." With a slow blink, he shook himself mutedly, and pulled himself out of it. "Well... here."
"No, really."
He got a slanted, puzzled smile for his efforts. "You really want to know?"
"Sure."
"Well--those." He gestured with a weak smile at the numerous stacks of manuscript on the shelves. "Father won't hear of my publishing them, of course, but it's nice to do good work, even if nobody's going to see it. And I thought--well, before Mother died I thought I might become a chef-- what?"
"Nothing," Zel sniggered.
"I'll have you know that Master Gio at Madame Anne's Institute of Culinary Education thought I showed great promise," Xellos said, caught between a haughty sniff and a rueful sigh. "But then I got pulled out. Then there were a number of," he coughed, and twisted his mouth wryly, "humorous episodes. I nearly got arrested in a demonstration for Greenpeace in Sailoon, once."
"Nearly? How'd you get out of it?"
"Hah," he said. "As though I wanted to. In retrospect, it was my own carelessness. I really should have checked first to make sure the whaling company in question wasn't one of Father's."
"Oh."
"Oh," he repeated mockingly. "Just don't ask me about the little incident with the Sequoias."
"Not on a first date," Zel assured him solemnly, and he laughed.
"He did let me be a counselor at this magic and nature camp in Sairaag for a few years," Xellos allowed, "until he said I was getting too old for it. I suppose my mistake was always letting him distract me. I've never been sure, you see, whether I wanted to be a philosopher, a taxidermist, a master-chef, a tactician or an historian."
"An evil historian?"
He chuckled evilly. "An evil gossiping historian? Sure, that could be fun. Either way, he's used that. He says a mazoku should be out fighting, and I don't mind that, I would have been a Sun Tzu for him, I would be, but he won't let me come!"
"Fed up?" he asked sympathetically. Xellos just sighed expressively, and dove into the sofa, burying his head under the cushions. It looked rather peculiar with the rest of his beautifully tailored self hanging out limply, like a panting dog's tongue.
"At least you have some compensation," Zel offered, looking around the room. "They do say that even if money can't buy happiness--"
"It does make misery comfortable? Pinkeye," Xellos's dry voice came, filtering muffled out of the pillows, "I haven't been able to get my hands on any lithium for the last five years, and since then I've been quietly developing a mild case of domatophobia**, just like a good little wolf-boy should. Compared to the life I lead, the last man in a chain-gang thoroughly enjoys himself."
"You should take a vacation." When Xellos choked disbelievingly, he fumbled, "you know, from what you've been doing day-in-day-out."
"Days in, please," Xellos groaned, slithering bonelessly onto the floor and sprawling there like a rag doll with no regard for his nice clothes, "years out." He lifted his lolling head to fix Zel with a lazy, speculative look. "How do your skeletons hang, Greyweir? Do the roses smell pretty where you live?"
"They can," he hedged. He was thinking of Lina and Sylphiel and the adventures they had had, but also of long nights standing watch in the middle of nowhere in the freezing dead hours, and of hotel receptionists and librarians who insisted on seeing his face and then screamed and denied him entrance, and of not being able to swim anymore, or ice skate (Mipross had proven that), or cut his hair properly, and bathing with heavy-grade sandpaper and of beds and chairs called 'solid' that collapsed out from under him if he moved carelessly.
"But they don't?"
"It's no kind of a life," he bit off, touching the lumpy grey rocks where he'd never wanted a beard, or even had the chance to shave one away.
"And what will you do about 'it', O man of action?"
Zel shot him a glance, but although the words were goading, he was just sitting there, hugging a pillow with his eyes closed and looking interested--even sympathetic. He dropped down next to him, sprawling across the floor in front of the sofa, making a sudden decision to test his intentions out on Xellos. After all, if Xellos was able to understand him, than the marvelous creature that was his Val would, too.
Well, of course Val would. Naturally. But it would be nice to see what Xellos thought, regardless. "I've got an expedition coming back from the Kataart Mountains. I've had a pigeon from them with a message--you know it sounds when somebody's refusing to tell you what your birthday present is?"
"I know how I sound," Xellos commented, hooking his chin over the pillow. "Nobody in this family really appreciates the value of a good surprise. Not even Zelas. It's no fun at all."
"Well, it read like that."
"And what do you think they've brought you?" he grinned, drumming his fingers on the floor in anticipation.
"A way to get back to normal," he said fervently. "To be full-human again."
Xellos was frowning--thoughtfully, not in condemnation. "I've been wondering about that," he said. "How did you end up such a mess in the first place?"
"You know how in the movies, every so often you come across somebody's who's a really sweet old geezer in ordinary life, but when you put them in the same room with a test tube they leave all notions of sanity and morality at the door?"
"Yeah?"
"That's my grandfather."
"Oh." He chuckled sympathetically.
"He's pretty harmless, most of the time--he's one of the best healers around, actually, one of the leading names in magical sensory and limb replacement and body augmentation--but when he gets going with one of his experiments, he has difficulty telling the difference between the guinea pig and his lab assistant."
"Ouch," Xellos winced, chuckling again.
"In fairness, he is blind. Sometimes he really does just point at the wrong side of the room. I had wings for a while, back when I was a kid," Zel offered, smiling. "That was fun, although they got in the way, and all they really did was add some control to my Levitation spells. This is less fun, and I want it gone."
"What will you do?"
"I don't know yet," he shrugged, leaning against the couch and letting his smile widen into an expectant grin. "Just about any magic-lab would be glad to have me, I think--or any thief's guild." Xellos grinned back at him, wickedly. "Gods know I've had to learn to walk quietly, for one thing. Or if I found out I wanted a quiet life, I might open a coffee shop. I've got connections from here to Zefilia, the way I drink the stuff. And if I got tired of that, well, I used to be damn good on a guitar, before I started ripping the strings."
"But what if you get tired of being human?"
"Hah!"
"No, really, safeguards are good things. What if?"
He shrugged. "Grandfather never takes notes."
"Oh, dear.."
"He lets his lab assistants do it."
"Oh. And that's you."
"And I'm meticulous. In that highly unlikely event, he could do it again. Anyway, it's what I was born to, I have to give it a shot. I don't mind losing the extra protection; I never traveled by choice, only to get rid of it, anyway. And I got so bitter about it the first few years, I forgot who I am. I'm better now, but... I want to see people reacting to me, not this artificial armor. I want to be known, the real me, and to get to know myself again, who I am now, who I can be. Does that make sense?"
"A lot of sense," Xellos said, unhesitating, his crossed arms supporting his head on the sofa cushions, smiling at him affectionately. "Does Valgaav know?"
"Nah," he shrugged. "I don't want to raise his hopes until I know it's going to work out. I've got to know I can contribute my share, afterwards."
"Well, you know he's got resources enough for the both of you," Xellos started.
Zel shook a negating hand in the air. "No, I want to contribute, I don't want to live off him--oh, I'll tell you something funny," he smiled. "This morning I thought I was going to end up supporting all of you."
Xellos chuckled obligingly. "But you wouldn't let him do it?"
"Why, when I can?"
He shrugged impishly. "Might be fun. Might make sense, too, until you're sure you have your feet."
"Yeah, but... no."
"That's pride," Xellos cautioned him, lifting a warning finger. Lowering it, though, and stretching out the hand for Zel to shake, he nodded approvingly. "You're all right, though, Greyweir. You're not hooked yet."
"Hooked?" he asked blankly.
"Bitten," he elaborated, "by the Domination Disorder."
"The what?" he snerked.
"The Mastery Malady! The Control Cupidity. In a word or five, Master Greyweir, the addiction which is powah." He waggled his eyebrows, something between menace and naughty suggestion.
Zel burst out laughing. Briefly. When he was done, he waved a hand and said, "No, no, no, no thank you. That's what got me into this mess."
"Oh, yeah?"
He started to explain what his grandfather had been researching, but in the middle of it, the door opened.
Zelas Rubyeye strode in angrily, swinging her hips like James T. Kirk on a busy day. She planted her fists on them, possibly just to improve the impression, and demanded, "Who took that bottle of ale out of my wardrobe?"
"I don't know," Xellos said, uninterested, and scrabbled up to perch on the arm of the sofa. "What happened in church?"
"It was that good blue kind, from the Crossover Shop, and you know what they charge. I hadn't even opened it yet, and there was a full quart there! Are you sure you don't know who took it? It was in my dom boots."
Zel staring at her, felt the heat rise in his cheeks.
"Oh, Zelly, shut up," Xellos sighed, embarrassed for her. "No one wants to hear about your hobbies. Come on, did Val tell father?"
"Hah!" she barked softly, apparently distracted, and began to peer around with interest, drawn into the room. "I haven't been in here in ages."
"What did Father say?" her brother demanded, out of patience.
"Huh? Oh, I left him talking to Mr. Rodimus after church."
"He's my backer for that expedition I was telling you about," Zel explained.
Zelas turned to look at him. Her eyes were less sulfurous than amber, now that she was sober, and her resemblance to Val was clearer. "Oh, is this the cat, then?"
"And he's a good kitty, yes he is." This sentence began as a stout avowal, and ended in baby talk as Xellos wrapped himself around Zel's shoulders and started to scratch him behind the ears. It was a good trick, the more so since his gloves weren't in tatters afterwards.
"Get off, you," he said without heat or any effect, and stood to offer his hand. "I'm Zel Greyweir."
"Zelas Rubyeye," she said, shaking it absently, and let go just as absently to wander off. "Gad, it's creepy in here. How can you stand it, Xel? I could get some redecorators in."
"Only if you want me to take them outside," Xellos returned amiably.
"Whatever." She was rustling through the set of drawers behind the couch, and came out holding a fife. "Hey, does this still work?"
"I polish it up and charge it and clean the spiders out every year or so," Xellos said. "I thought you might like to pull Fuzzface or Scaly out of retirement someday."
"Sure," she scoffed, "Why not." She opened another drawer, pulled out a speakerphone, and pressed a button. "Zoemelguster, send Jormungand**--no, wait, we have a visitor, don't we? Send Fuzzface to the crypt."
^w^ ^w^ ^w^ ^w^
[end part six]
**Domatophobia: the fear of being in a house [www .phobialist. com]
**Jormungand: better known as the Midgard Serpent of Norse Mythology. One of the children of Loki the trickster god, along with Hela, who looks after the unfortunate dead who don't make it to Valhalla, and Fenris, the great wolf who has a good deal to do with the apocalypse Ragnarok.
FragileReflection, you're so good for my ego! Don't worry, there's still most of the movie to go. Kyra2. if you read more carefully, you'll notice that I never said he looked *perfectly* human, only that he did the best impression Zel had ever seen, and I haven't even mentioned his eyes yet. As for his teeth, I don't know where you're getting this from. He's almost the only Slayer who never, ever sprouts fangs, even around Filia. Perhaps you're making the mistake of confusing their back teeth for pointy canines? I used to do that. It's not hard to do.
Important Notes: This story is not only based but riveted into the cement of an absolutely marvelous movie called 'Holiday,' starring Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, played respectively in this fic by Xellos Metallium and Zelgadis Greywhatever. If you haven't seen it (and most of you probably haven't; it's not even as well known as 'Philadelphia Story, gloom), please, please, make an effort to! This is a black and white movie! It's from the time when movies were about the acting and the scripts, and not about disguising the lack of either with splashy special effects! Go see it, go!
Notes: I was originally going to split this chapter in two, but I decided to make it longer instead. After all, Zel admitting what he wants out of life isn't much of a cliffhanger, since everyone already knows what it is.
Please review!
^w^ ^w^ ^w^ ^w^
Holiday
by Nightfall Rising
part six
^w^ ^w^ ^w^ ^w^
"Zel," Xellos frowned at him earnestly, "do you love my brother?"
Zel gave him a funny look. "Of course I do." What kind of question was that?
"He's so intense, and driven."
"He certainly is."
"It makes him vulnerable. To--well, things. It's very important that he should marry the right person."
Zel smiled, perplexed. "Well, that's important for everyone, isn't it?"
"No," he continued to frown, "it's more important for Val." He suddenly fixed Zel with a piercing, assessing stare. "You're an odd duck, Greyweir, you know that, don't you? Where have you been?"
"Oh, traveling. I've been on the road since I--well, this," he grimaced, gesturing at himself and moving away. Lina and Sylphiel had helped him to learn to live with his skin affliction. He didn't obsess over it twenty- four-seven anymore, but it still made him uncomfortable when he thought about it--especially when the subject came up while he had to look at normal-looking people. "Taking any work I could get, studying at any library that'd let me in." He found himself in front of the covered easel, and asked, "Does Val paint?"
"Oh, no," Xellos warned, scrambling between him and the object of his curiosity. "There lies Xellos the cartographer. Don't disturb the ashes."
"You were that bad?"
Xellos shrugged, uncomfortable with giving an answer. "Only according to traditional theory."
Blinking, he confessed, "Sorry, I'm not up on cartological tradition."
"Well, there are two ways of making maps. You can draw them in geological or political proportion."
"And your father's of the other school?"
"Well, I'm sorry," he groused, "but the fact is that Sailoon is a big city, and this is actually quite a small island. Just don't expose the canvas; I'm afraid it'll fall apart if the air hits it. It's awfully brittle; it, uh, got a little scorched."
Zel looked at him. He wanted to ask, did you ever try another one? But the answer was obvious. The map was enshrined in the heart of the house. Who would bring a treasure into the world just to be be killed or become a lie? Instead he asked, "Where have you been?" But Xellos was just looking blankly at the drape over the easel, with a face utterly clean of emotion. "Hey," Zel said, touching his sleeve. "Don't I get to ask questions, too?"
"Oh." With a slow blink, he shook himself mutedly, and pulled himself out of it. "Well... here."
"No, really."
He got a slanted, puzzled smile for his efforts. "You really want to know?"
"Sure."
"Well--those." He gestured with a weak smile at the numerous stacks of manuscript on the shelves. "Father won't hear of my publishing them, of course, but it's nice to do good work, even if nobody's going to see it. And I thought--well, before Mother died I thought I might become a chef-- what?"
"Nothing," Zel sniggered.
"I'll have you know that Master Gio at Madame Anne's Institute of Culinary Education thought I showed great promise," Xellos said, caught between a haughty sniff and a rueful sigh. "But then I got pulled out. Then there were a number of," he coughed, and twisted his mouth wryly, "humorous episodes. I nearly got arrested in a demonstration for Greenpeace in Sailoon, once."
"Nearly? How'd you get out of it?"
"Hah," he said. "As though I wanted to. In retrospect, it was my own carelessness. I really should have checked first to make sure the whaling company in question wasn't one of Father's."
"Oh."
"Oh," he repeated mockingly. "Just don't ask me about the little incident with the Sequoias."
"Not on a first date," Zel assured him solemnly, and he laughed.
"He did let me be a counselor at this magic and nature camp in Sairaag for a few years," Xellos allowed, "until he said I was getting too old for it. I suppose my mistake was always letting him distract me. I've never been sure, you see, whether I wanted to be a philosopher, a taxidermist, a master-chef, a tactician or an historian."
"An evil historian?"
He chuckled evilly. "An evil gossiping historian? Sure, that could be fun. Either way, he's used that. He says a mazoku should be out fighting, and I don't mind that, I would have been a Sun Tzu for him, I would be, but he won't let me come!"
"Fed up?" he asked sympathetically. Xellos just sighed expressively, and dove into the sofa, burying his head under the cushions. It looked rather peculiar with the rest of his beautifully tailored self hanging out limply, like a panting dog's tongue.
"At least you have some compensation," Zel offered, looking around the room. "They do say that even if money can't buy happiness--"
"It does make misery comfortable? Pinkeye," Xellos's dry voice came, filtering muffled out of the pillows, "I haven't been able to get my hands on any lithium for the last five years, and since then I've been quietly developing a mild case of domatophobia**, just like a good little wolf-boy should. Compared to the life I lead, the last man in a chain-gang thoroughly enjoys himself."
"You should take a vacation." When Xellos choked disbelievingly, he fumbled, "you know, from what you've been doing day-in-day-out."
"Days in, please," Xellos groaned, slithering bonelessly onto the floor and sprawling there like a rag doll with no regard for his nice clothes, "years out." He lifted his lolling head to fix Zel with a lazy, speculative look. "How do your skeletons hang, Greyweir? Do the roses smell pretty where you live?"
"They can," he hedged. He was thinking of Lina and Sylphiel and the adventures they had had, but also of long nights standing watch in the middle of nowhere in the freezing dead hours, and of hotel receptionists and librarians who insisted on seeing his face and then screamed and denied him entrance, and of not being able to swim anymore, or ice skate (Mipross had proven that), or cut his hair properly, and bathing with heavy-grade sandpaper and of beds and chairs called 'solid' that collapsed out from under him if he moved carelessly.
"But they don't?"
"It's no kind of a life," he bit off, touching the lumpy grey rocks where he'd never wanted a beard, or even had the chance to shave one away.
"And what will you do about 'it', O man of action?"
Zel shot him a glance, but although the words were goading, he was just sitting there, hugging a pillow with his eyes closed and looking interested--even sympathetic. He dropped down next to him, sprawling across the floor in front of the sofa, making a sudden decision to test his intentions out on Xellos. After all, if Xellos was able to understand him, than the marvelous creature that was his Val would, too.
Well, of course Val would. Naturally. But it would be nice to see what Xellos thought, regardless. "I've got an expedition coming back from the Kataart Mountains. I've had a pigeon from them with a message--you know it sounds when somebody's refusing to tell you what your birthday present is?"
"I know how I sound," Xellos commented, hooking his chin over the pillow. "Nobody in this family really appreciates the value of a good surprise. Not even Zelas. It's no fun at all."
"Well, it read like that."
"And what do you think they've brought you?" he grinned, drumming his fingers on the floor in anticipation.
"A way to get back to normal," he said fervently. "To be full-human again."
Xellos was frowning--thoughtfully, not in condemnation. "I've been wondering about that," he said. "How did you end up such a mess in the first place?"
"You know how in the movies, every so often you come across somebody's who's a really sweet old geezer in ordinary life, but when you put them in the same room with a test tube they leave all notions of sanity and morality at the door?"
"Yeah?"
"That's my grandfather."
"Oh." He chuckled sympathetically.
"He's pretty harmless, most of the time--he's one of the best healers around, actually, one of the leading names in magical sensory and limb replacement and body augmentation--but when he gets going with one of his experiments, he has difficulty telling the difference between the guinea pig and his lab assistant."
"Ouch," Xellos winced, chuckling again.
"In fairness, he is blind. Sometimes he really does just point at the wrong side of the room. I had wings for a while, back when I was a kid," Zel offered, smiling. "That was fun, although they got in the way, and all they really did was add some control to my Levitation spells. This is less fun, and I want it gone."
"What will you do?"
"I don't know yet," he shrugged, leaning against the couch and letting his smile widen into an expectant grin. "Just about any magic-lab would be glad to have me, I think--or any thief's guild." Xellos grinned back at him, wickedly. "Gods know I've had to learn to walk quietly, for one thing. Or if I found out I wanted a quiet life, I might open a coffee shop. I've got connections from here to Zefilia, the way I drink the stuff. And if I got tired of that, well, I used to be damn good on a guitar, before I started ripping the strings."
"But what if you get tired of being human?"
"Hah!"
"No, really, safeguards are good things. What if?"
He shrugged. "Grandfather never takes notes."
"Oh, dear.."
"He lets his lab assistants do it."
"Oh. And that's you."
"And I'm meticulous. In that highly unlikely event, he could do it again. Anyway, it's what I was born to, I have to give it a shot. I don't mind losing the extra protection; I never traveled by choice, only to get rid of it, anyway. And I got so bitter about it the first few years, I forgot who I am. I'm better now, but... I want to see people reacting to me, not this artificial armor. I want to be known, the real me, and to get to know myself again, who I am now, who I can be. Does that make sense?"
"A lot of sense," Xellos said, unhesitating, his crossed arms supporting his head on the sofa cushions, smiling at him affectionately. "Does Valgaav know?"
"Nah," he shrugged. "I don't want to raise his hopes until I know it's going to work out. I've got to know I can contribute my share, afterwards."
"Well, you know he's got resources enough for the both of you," Xellos started.
Zel shook a negating hand in the air. "No, I want to contribute, I don't want to live off him--oh, I'll tell you something funny," he smiled. "This morning I thought I was going to end up supporting all of you."
Xellos chuckled obligingly. "But you wouldn't let him do it?"
"Why, when I can?"
He shrugged impishly. "Might be fun. Might make sense, too, until you're sure you have your feet."
"Yeah, but... no."
"That's pride," Xellos cautioned him, lifting a warning finger. Lowering it, though, and stretching out the hand for Zel to shake, he nodded approvingly. "You're all right, though, Greyweir. You're not hooked yet."
"Hooked?" he asked blankly.
"Bitten," he elaborated, "by the Domination Disorder."
"The what?" he snerked.
"The Mastery Malady! The Control Cupidity. In a word or five, Master Greyweir, the addiction which is powah." He waggled his eyebrows, something between menace and naughty suggestion.
Zel burst out laughing. Briefly. When he was done, he waved a hand and said, "No, no, no, no thank you. That's what got me into this mess."
"Oh, yeah?"
He started to explain what his grandfather had been researching, but in the middle of it, the door opened.
Zelas Rubyeye strode in angrily, swinging her hips like James T. Kirk on a busy day. She planted her fists on them, possibly just to improve the impression, and demanded, "Who took that bottle of ale out of my wardrobe?"
"I don't know," Xellos said, uninterested, and scrabbled up to perch on the arm of the sofa. "What happened in church?"
"It was that good blue kind, from the Crossover Shop, and you know what they charge. I hadn't even opened it yet, and there was a full quart there! Are you sure you don't know who took it? It was in my dom boots."
Zel staring at her, felt the heat rise in his cheeks.
"Oh, Zelly, shut up," Xellos sighed, embarrassed for her. "No one wants to hear about your hobbies. Come on, did Val tell father?"
"Hah!" she barked softly, apparently distracted, and began to peer around with interest, drawn into the room. "I haven't been in here in ages."
"What did Father say?" her brother demanded, out of patience.
"Huh? Oh, I left him talking to Mr. Rodimus after church."
"He's my backer for that expedition I was telling you about," Zel explained.
Zelas turned to look at him. Her eyes were less sulfurous than amber, now that she was sober, and her resemblance to Val was clearer. "Oh, is this the cat, then?"
"And he's a good kitty, yes he is." This sentence began as a stout avowal, and ended in baby talk as Xellos wrapped himself around Zel's shoulders and started to scratch him behind the ears. It was a good trick, the more so since his gloves weren't in tatters afterwards.
"Get off, you," he said without heat or any effect, and stood to offer his hand. "I'm Zel Greyweir."
"Zelas Rubyeye," she said, shaking it absently, and let go just as absently to wander off. "Gad, it's creepy in here. How can you stand it, Xel? I could get some redecorators in."
"Only if you want me to take them outside," Xellos returned amiably.
"Whatever." She was rustling through the set of drawers behind the couch, and came out holding a fife. "Hey, does this still work?"
"I polish it up and charge it and clean the spiders out every year or so," Xellos said. "I thought you might like to pull Fuzzface or Scaly out of retirement someday."
"Sure," she scoffed, "Why not." She opened another drawer, pulled out a speakerphone, and pressed a button. "Zoemelguster, send Jormungand**--no, wait, we have a visitor, don't we? Send Fuzzface to the crypt."
^w^ ^w^ ^w^ ^w^
[end part six]
**Domatophobia: the fear of being in a house [www .phobialist. com]
**Jormungand: better known as the Midgard Serpent of Norse Mythology. One of the children of Loki the trickster god, along with Hela, who looks after the unfortunate dead who don't make it to Valhalla, and Fenris, the great wolf who has a good deal to do with the apocalypse Ragnarok.
FragileReflection, you're so good for my ego! Don't worry, there's still most of the movie to go. Kyra2. if you read more carefully, you'll notice that I never said he looked *perfectly* human, only that he did the best impression Zel had ever seen, and I haven't even mentioned his eyes yet. As for his teeth, I don't know where you're getting this from. He's almost the only Slayer who never, ever sprouts fangs, even around Filia. Perhaps you're making the mistake of confusing their back teeth for pointy canines? I used to do that. It's not hard to do.
Important Notes: This story is not only based but riveted into the cement of an absolutely marvelous movie called 'Holiday,' starring Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, played respectively in this fic by Xellos Metallium and Zelgadis Greywhatever. If you haven't seen it (and most of you probably haven't; it's not even as well known as 'Philadelphia Story, gloom), please, please, make an effort to! This is a black and white movie! It's from the time when movies were about the acting and the scripts, and not about disguising the lack of either with splashy special effects! Go see it, go!