What falls and what grows,
What reaps and what sows,
Cares nothing for beauty or bane;
In changing field,
The flower must yield,
And the weed will grow in again.
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The three of them just stared at each other for a few moments, Draal's shoulders tensing as Blinky ogled at the felines.
"They, erm…like me," he muttered, scratching the back of his neck.
"Oh my God…"
He looked bad, but better than when she'd kicked him out. The arm and eye she'd turned to stone during their duel were almost completely healed, to the point where he only had a few stiff fingertips. His torn nose hadn't finished, but that hadn't stopped him from putting a bent piece of rebar through the damaged tissue anyway. When he stood he stood tall, without any stoop or limp, and Alex was actually relieved to see him well. Filthy, but well.
He'd made efforts to keep himself clean, but he was in the human underground, not the troll tunnels, and sometimes mere effort just wasn't enough.
"You realize where you've been living," she asked. A bit of damp grime unattached itself from the ceiling and splattered on her shoulder.
"I do have a sense of smell, Trollhunter."
"Yes, and so do we. Come on, let's get you cleaned up. We can't stay here long."
Draal followed behind her and a bemused, somewhat unhappy Blinky with little complaint. Honestly, he just looked happy to see someone who wasn't a cat.
"I doubt I would receive a hearty welcome home, Trollhunter," Draal murmured as they walked, his strays trailing behind him like a parade. "Take care to remember that I was banished."
"It was more like unofficially ostracized. There was no actual banishment or casting-out," Alex said. She took point, looking around each corner before going forward as Draal pointed out which tunnels to take.
"It is tradition."
"It was implied. You can come back at any time."
"They will not be happy about this," Draal murmured mournfully.
"I have a big sword," Alexandra replied. Blinky, at her side, looked mildly worried.
"He does have a point, Master Alexandra," he said quietly, turning to her to try and block Draal out.
"No matter his state, he was dishonored, and thus is unable to return without having earned it."
Alexandra snarled at him in demonstration.
"I also have pointy teeth."
"And they are very menacing, yes, but you can't just start swinging fist and foot at all who disagree with you! You are a part of our Heartstone now, a member of our collective tribes, which means that you have to follow the rules that our society dictates! Just because you are the Trollhunter does not give you the right to go gallivanting about, doing whatever you want!"
His tirade stopped when he noticed her grinning.
"And what, precisely, has you so amused!"
Alex laughed, the sound echoing in the damp tunnels.
"I was wondering when you would start yelling at me again," she said, to his astonishment. Up ahead of them, the tunnel brightened.
"You've been tiptoeing ever since the whole 'Changeling' misunderstanding. I forgave you for that a while ago – I was just waiting for you to accept it."
Blinky sputtered and blushed, as she knew he would, when they stepped through the torn grate and out of the tunnel.
Alexandra went first, watching the underside of the bridge for any unpleasant visitors. She hated this place now.
Mid-afternoon was raging above them, the noise of cars and their radios echoing inside the canal. Traversing the canal in broad daylight was a fantastically bad idea, given the likelihood of being seen by the humans on the bridge, but they were running out of options. Sunset was hours away, and the sewers were completely unsafe.
Several of the cats that trailed behind Draal spread out, wandering around the edges of the canal.
"Hold on," said Draal to Blinky, behind her. "You knew she was a Changeling too?"
"I was grossly mistaken," whispered Blinky morosely. "I accused her of such in front of the entire market, to my eternal embarrassment and shame. She proved me both a liar and a fool and wait just one blasted minute, what do you mean 'too'?! You thought she was a Changeling?"
Alexandra's hair stood up, but she couldn't tell if it was from the conversation or if she felt someone watching them. The underside of the bridge looked empty, but she knew Bular to be adept at keeping himself unseen. There were also goblins and other Changelings to worry about. She didn't like the feel of this.
I hate this fucking bridge.
"Is she not?"
"Of course not!" Blinky fervently hissed. "I made a humiliating miscalculation, and she proved it with a gaggletack, even! But if you suspected the same thing, why did you not come forward?"
Alexandra didn't hear an answer, meaning that Draal must have merely gestured. She wanted to focus on the conversation but couldn't, and she turned around with a last, suspicious glance.
"I've got a bad feeling," she said, interrupting the two. "Do you want to risk it, or head back?"
"I would like to get out of this blasted tunnel sometime today," said Blinky. "This is an…uneasy place, however."
"I cannot go back," said Draal, gesturing to the other end of the bridge. Alexandra smacked him on the arm, and then wiped her hand on her vest.
"You can stay by the staircase until I can sneak you in," she said, "But I'm not just going to leave you here."
Draal looked mildly stunned, but Blinky was smiling.
"I can take care of myself, Trollhunter," said the larger troll.
"But my being Trollhunter means that you don't have to," she replied quietly. Draal shifted uncomfortably.
Softy, from the darker end of the tunnel, the faintest, slowest "Waka chaka…" echoed from the gloom.
All three of them stiffened. Alexandra grabbed their arms with her four, and gently pushed them out of the grate.
The goblin down the tunnel looked to be alone, so far, and was watching her curiously. She kept eye contact with it as she backed through the bent bars, not looking away until the others caught her, preventing her from walking backwards into a ray of sunlight.
The shadow of the bridge bowed somewhat from the movement of the sun, and they walked completely silently along the darkened line. Perhaps, if they could get to the other side without triggering the goblins' ire, they might make it without a fight. They just needed to stay quiet and slow.
All of the cats scattered suddenly, every one of them bolting away from the group and out of the canal, and Alexandra knew…
…'By the pricking of my thumbs'…
…that they were about to get their asses beat.
"RUN!"
Draal caught the horngazel as she pushed it into his hands.
"You're the fastest, get that portal open NOW!"
He loped away, leaving her and Blinky to trail after him with their stupidly short legs.
Above them, laughter rang.
"Do you just hang around there all day, waiting for someone to come out?"
Bular landed on the concrete with a resounding CRACK, the ground sending up little shards. Alex summoned her sword and chipped off a piece of his arm before he could draw his own weapon, and then booked it as fast as she could away from him, teleporting just a few feet ahead.
Better prepared as she was, she still didn't want to risk Blinky and Draal's lives by engaging and possibly dying in a fight.
Bular easily caught up with her, however fast she ran, and he slammed his head into her side, chucking her a good fifteen feet across the shadow. Glow from the armor trailed after her but she could feel the puncture from his horns, and it bled alarmingly across the concrete. Her bottom left shoulder wrenched as she landed badly, and only Draal's alarmed bellow saved her from getting her head caved in when Bular tried to jump her. She twisted her sword up at the last second and he fell heavily upon it, the blade piercing his hip.
It was odd, how sunstaining smelled. It was slow, like burning dust in an old heater, but although it lacked the decay of flesh it still smelled dead.
The leathers Bular wore protected him from being sliced in half, but his scream of anguish echoed across the canal, and as he fell to the ground his right leg and half his hip and tail turned to stone. Alexandra was too busy trying to stop her own bleeding to celebrate the hit. The adrenalin and pain were making things too fast and too shaky. She smelled blood and it made her heart race sickeningly.
"Trollhunter! Here," Draal yelled, a bright blue light behind him indicating the opening of the portal. Flashes of green and rough, deep shrieks told her more than she needed to know about how many goblins there really were, and all of them were trying to get through the door.
Bular twisted and grabbed her foot as she tried to run, pulling her over his jagged body to slam against the ground on his other side. She pushed her foot against his face and got a foot full of screaming teeth for her effort, even if she was able to push herself away. Bular levered himself to standing, using one of his swords as a cane, the other no less deadly for the shaking hand that held it.
Alexandra scrambled to her feet and watched his eyes.
At the end of the canal, a flash of blue caught her gaze and she pulled off her helmet, throwing it as hard as she could at Draal, who was coming to help her. It caught him on the collarbone and she held out a hand.
"Don't," she said quietly, knowing that Draal would hear her.
"You're still injured and I need you to go home," she hissed. "Please keep the portal open, and don't let anything else in!"
Out of her periphery, the blue mass that was Draal backed up and kicked an invading goblin into the wall, leaving a smear of green. He and Blinky settled firmly against the open portal, slapping away goblins, and she turned all three eyes back on Bular.
The shadow of the bridge had lengthened with the late sun to where she could not dart around Bular without him reaching her, even with his injury.
Six feet to the left, sunlight shimmered with heat.
If I tackle him, I can get him into the sun, she thought, shifting her feet uneasily as Bular carefully watched her movements. He was being curiously and disturbingly silent.
Blinky know I've got the Leoht Stone, it'll be fine, it'll be fine, it'll be fine! Maximum effort!
Alexandra ground her feet into the concrete and launched herself at the son of Gunmar, slashing at his face so that he was forced to lean backward and unbalance himself. She tackled him around the middle and the weight of her threw him across the shadow. She thought that she was succeeding, until his arms grabbed her around the middle and suddenly they weren't so much being pushed by her tackle as falling, directly down onto the concrete. He used her momentum to fling her over his head, and she desperately dug her sword into the ground to keep from rolling backward. She skid to a jolting stop just inside of the shadow.
Bular flipped onto his stomach and pushed himself up with a snarl. He began to lever himself up again, and then stopped, his eyes focused on her right leg. She glanced back at it with a single eye.
The heel was in the sun. And Bular didn't know about the stone!
With a panicked yell Alexandra summoned her sword and threw it at Bular's face, rolling toward him in time to catch the hilt as he knocked it away with a shake of his horned head. He grabbed her by her own horns and slammed her face into the concrete. The smells of cement and aggregate and flood residue mixed with stinging blood in her nose and the sudden welling of tears, the sense curiously heightened as the ground eight inches in front of her face blurred dizzingly.
Bular leaned down, using the side of her head to balance himself, and the acrid smell of old blood and digested flesh spread over her face in a warm, close gust.
"I. Saw," he whispered in her ear.
Utterly immobilized beneath his immense weight, her helmet shivered and screeched as Bular's claws dug into it.
"I'm half tempted to let you go, just to watch you die by those you're sworn to protect."
"How chivalrous," Alex muttered, the words muffled with half her mouth ground into the dirty concrete. Out of the corner of one eye, Blinky and Draal were occupied with the invading horde of goblins.
Hell with it.
She half-transformed her head and body. Bular was thrown off balance by the sudden lack of horns beneath his hand and he fell for half a second, and that was all she needed. Body made smaller for a critical instant, she pulled her legs over her stomach and shoved them into his abdomen, turning back fully and levering his body off of her.
But even half stone-turned and slower he was massive, and he lashed out with one foot as she tried to scramble away from him.
The heel connected with her injured side, and in a panic Alexandra teleported.
She landed ten feet in the wrong direction, and sunlight blinded her.
Whoops-a-fucking-daisy was the only thought that crossed through her mind.
The sunlight beat down on her troll skin for the first time in years. Her body was warring with her, it knew that despite its immunity it shouldn't be in the sun, and she fought the instinctive urge to turn to her human form, but –
- Blinky and Draal were just in the shadows, staring at her with open mouths, and never had the heat of the sun felt so cold. She was well aware that Blinky knew about the Leoht Stone, but…still. She knew the stone was a lie, even if he didn't, and never had she intended him or anyone to see her like this.
Back in the shadow, Bular chuckled. Alexandra trembled as he murmured the word she had always hated; the word she trained herself not to flinch at; that motherfucking word that she had not been called by anyone still alive in over fifty years:
"Impure."
She almost threw up with the beating of her heart so hard in her throat, but as Bular laughed she drew herself up, brushed off her armor, shouldered her sword, and walked calmly in the sunlight away from his stricken form. He made no effort to follow her; the sound of his laughter was enough to dog her footsteps. But where she walked he could not follow, and his eyes burned as they watched her. She'd injured him the worse, but he'd won this fight.
Blinky and Draal both drew away from her when she re-entered the shadow, as if they were expecting her to turn to stone then and there. Alexandra winked at Blinky and stepped through the portal, and was shut back into safety.
Her skin was still warm from the sun. Blood and pain were still pulsing from the wounds on her side and face and bitten foot, and she slid down the wall with a groan.
"I love Sigrid the Shadowless," she murmured to her knees. "Good work with the goblins, gentlemen."
"A most fortuitous choice of gem," said Blinky faintly. When Alex looked she saw that he was actually a bit pale, on the bits that weren't smeared with green gore.
Alex laughed and nodded.
"I'm not quite ready to spend eternity with those ghostly assholes," she said, clutching at her side as she banished the armor. Draal knelt beside her and poked at her abdomen.
"We need to take you to Vendel," he said. "Although…does he know?"
Alexandra, who suddenly found herself having difficulty staying awake, forced herself to rouse.
"Hmm? Know 'bout what?"
"That you are a Changeling, Trollhunter. Are we really not talking about this?"
Alex pushed herself up with a groan.
"Draal, I'm not a Changeling," she said firmly, banishing the armor and unlocking the back of the amulet. Her fingers fumbled as she pried the Leoht Stone out of the casing but she managed to shove it underneath Draal's ridiculous rebar hoop.
"This stone belonged to the Trollhunter Sigrid the Shadowless, and it grants the user the ability to walk in daylight. I'd say it was pretty useful. Help me up."
Alex pushed her arm against Draal's chest, forcing him to grab it and pull her to her feet, where she actually swayed.
Blinky swooped into action, activating the crystal staircase and hopping down them as quickly as he could.
"Draal is correct that you need medical attention, Master Alexandra. Wait right there, please, I shall fetch AAARRRGGHH…"
Alex ignored him and started down the stairs, leaving smears of blood on the glowing crystals.
A trickle of blood tickled the back of her throat and she coughed. Damn, her nose was broken again.
The loud echo seemed to loosen Draal's tongue, at least. Alex had wondered vaguely how long he could stay quiet.
"Why did you lie to Blinky," Draal said as he helped her over the wider gaps in the stairs. She hopped a little on her unbitten foot and glared at him.
"I didn't lie," she said calmly. "I'm not a Changeling."
"I once had an understanding with an Impure," he returned. "I recognized your scent, eventually, and your habits."
Alexandra stopped, and so did he, and he backed up when she turned to him with glowing eyes.
She wanted to throw Draal against the wall and threaten to remove a limb, for calling her that – but it would do no good. Her heart wasn't into threatening someone she finally would admit to considering a friend, and she knew that being as monstrous and violent as possible, although it was significantly easier, was not a better alternative to actually being open and honest for once.
Her fists clenched, but she did not draw her sword.
"Don't call us that again," she said quietly. "I honestly don't care what you think of Changelings, personally or in general, but don't call us that again. There is nothing about me that is impure."
She grabbed Draal's filthy arm again to see what he would do, and when he didn't flinch or back away further she leaned on him again.
"Why didn't you tell Blinky," she whispered.
"I…I spent many long days pondering what to do, when I realized what you are. You were chosen by the same amulet that chose my father, and which had refused me. You spared my life, and saved it again today. Whatever you may be I believe you have earned your right to be here, and to have your secrets."
Alex nearly wanted to cry.
"Damn straight I have," she murmured furiously. "I guess this means I won't have to threaten you with decapitation?"
The giant blue idiot's laughter shook the crystal stairs, just as AAARRRGGHH and Blinky reached the bottom and began to climb.
"If it would make you feel better, Trollhunter," he said. Alex let go of his arm and allowed AAARRRGGHH to pick her up like some blood-smeared, eight-foot baby.
What an asshole.
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Vendel was not amused to have a bleeding Trollhunter brought inside the Heartstone, and even less amused to hear about the Bridge. Blinky filled him and AAARRRGGHH in on what had happened as AAARRRGGHH placed Alexandra down on a stone table.
Vendel moved aside a few odd-looking bits of his work and held an old eyeglass up to Alexandra's side, peeling back the edges of her blood-sodden vest to see the puncture. After a brief glance he set his staff against the table and moved forward for a closer look.
"Were you even wearing your armor," he mumbled grumpily. Alexandra hissed as he poked at the hole.
"As a matter of fact I was, but Bular decided that my stomach was a good spot to smash his face into."
"Hmph. I am waiting for the day I hear that you have gone the same way as poor Unkar the Unfortunate. You certainly seem to encounter Bular enough to make it a distinct possibility. Disrobe."
"What can I say," Alexandra croaked, sitting up with difficulty and trying to get her wrenched arm out of her vest. "I've always had a thing for tall, dark, and murderous."
Vendel put a massive hand to her back to balance her, and rolled his eyes.
"Deya save us from a Trollhunter with a sense of humor," he said. Alex dropped her vest on the floor and he lay her back down.
He worked in silence from that point, save for the occasional mumble, and Alexandra did not dare relax. Finally laying down was tricking her brain into thinking that it was time to actually sleep for once, and she needed to be alert for the right moment to make her escape. Getting medical attention from someone who knew what he was doing, instead of buying a poultice or a healing crystal at a stall and hoping that it would be enough, was great, but not when Vendel was suddenly perfectly in place to see how quickly troll medicines worked on her Changed physiology. She couldn't relax, not now. Draal was still waiting at the portal entrance, and she needed to get out before Vendel wondered why her skin was healing so much faster than it was supposed to.
He made sure that her shoulder wasn't dislocated and set her nose back to its usual crooked place, but otherwise paid closest attention to the puncture on her side. After an agonizingly long time, Vendel declared the wound too shallow to have missed anything more than muscle and fatty tissue, and he slathered something tingly over it.
"How long have I got. Be honest."
The old troll snorted as he wiped his hands.
"With any luck, several centuries more," he said, surprisingly softly. "With each battle you make you seem to strike a crippling blow. Perhaps next time you'll actually kill the vicious brute."
"'Thought you didn't ask me to kill Bular," Alex murmured. Vendel shook his head and walked over to the side of the cavern.
"It seems that I do not need to, Trollhunter," he said. "By yourself you've come closer to it than most of your predecessors."
He put a hand to the wall of the Heartstone and bent his head. After a moment of silence, a tiny chuck of yellow crystal broke off of the wall to his left, and he deftly caught it.
Alexandra stared with wide eyes as he walked back to her and pressed the crystal shard, as wide as her hand was long, against her side.
"What did you just do," she asked. Vendel used his staff to pick her filthy vest off of the floor.
"The Heartstone shares its essence with us," he said, "and on occasion will also share pieces of itself to hasten a troll's recovery from sickness or injury. Keep that on your side, and hopefully I will not have to see you in here anytime soon."
Alex was just glad that she was allowed to leave so soon, but he stopped her with a sharp tap on the shin.
"Don't move," he said grumpily. "There are a few medicines I have to give you, and I'll have AAARRRGGHH take you back to your chambers. The less you move, the better."
Alexandra innocently languished on the stone table while he slowly stomped away, and when he was finished packing her a medicine bag she swung her legs over the table and hopped off, failing to bite back an anguished yelp but managing to snatch the bag from Vendel's hand and book it to the exit.
"Trollhunter, get back here!"
Alex gimped away as fast as she could.
"Thanks, I feel great!"
She heard Vendel mutter something angrily, his staff thunking against the floor, but he did not pursue her.
"Then I will heavily advise you to not walk until tomorrow morning, at the earliest, for all that I expect you will listen to me."
"Of course, but I've still got to go fetch Draal," she said, the door closing behind her just as she heard a startled yelp.
"What?!"
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Alexandra could have said a lot about the troll equivalent of twiddling their thumbs, when she laboriously climbed up the stairs to find Draal balancing bits of rocks and crystals into little stacks, but for the lost look on his face she said nothing except an order to carry her back down.
The market wasn't as empty as she would have liked when they entered, and enough trolls were out and about to notice Draal the Destroyer's homecoming. She'd made Draal put her down, not wanting to be carried in plain sight for the second time that night, and her slow, painful pace hampered their progress.
"What is he doing here," said a one-eyed troll. Alexandra shooed Draal past him and elbowed aside another who was in their way.
"He's here because I asked him to come back, and you don't actually need to be assholes about it," she said firmly, making a few members of the crowd tut disapprovingly.
"Everybody have a good evening," Alexandra yelled, glaring at the trolls in their way until they backed down. She slowly led Draal through the marketplace and into the residential quarters, where he picked her up again without her needing to ask.
Her rooms smelled better, at least, since she'd gotten the gnome to start taking out the mess that the cats made. He still lived in a hole in the wall of her bathroom, but enjoyed the wrappings of whatever foods she'd bought over the day, and the cats had learned not to try any play with him lest they get a tiny, painful bite on whatever offending foot tried to bat at him. She saw him skitter back into his hole as Draal set her down and closed the door.
"Just stay here," she said, gently shooing two cats away with her foot. The felines clearly recognized Draal as the person who had brought them to Alexandra, and they crowded around him. "Your old place was taken over, I already asked. Unless you'd like to stay in your father's rooms?"
Draal, knuckling a happy cat on the head, murmured a negative.
"I have not visited those rooms in years," he said quietly. "It would not feel right, even now that he is gone."
Your father sucked as a dad, Alex thought, resolving to bring some of her cats over to Kanjigar's place just so that they could shit on his floor.
"I'll take his room," she said instead. "Everyone will be expecting you to stay there, not here. I'm still picking through his library, anyway."
"You are bleeding on my floor, then, Trollhunter," said Draal with a faint smile. Alex picked up her bitten foot, examining the tiny smear of blood that came from the toes.
"It adds to the décor," she said. Draal snorted and lightly shoved her; the strength of the blow sent her tumbling roughly onto the nest. She kicked Draal in the leg when he sat next to her and grabbed her coddled-together medical kit from the floor. The brief, vaguely fond exchange was almost too friendly for Alexandra's comfort, too close, too familiar – but in all honesty she didn't have the energy or the heart to keep more of a distance.
Bloodied vest and pants were added to the pile of leathers on the nest, and he dabbed a sweet-smelling tincture over the ragged puncture in her side. The fragment of Heartstone that Vendel had given her was applied to the wound.
"Hold it there."
Alexandra patiently held still as he tended to her wounds, feeling the aches in her body slowly build up as she allowed her muscles to finally relax. The tension that seemed to hold her upright fled, and every hit and bruise made itself known.
Alex almost fell asleep while Draal was wrapping up her foot; she awoke to find herself slathered in poultices and ointments, with a fluffy black cat curling up between her left horn and her cheek and Draal settling in behind her.
"Should call yourself 'Draal the Cuddlebug'," she mumbled sleepily. A crystal-laden arm slid under her back and pulled her onto her side, just as the other one crawled over her torso and pushed her back against his chest.
"No. No. You have your own bed now, let me go."
Something that felt like a face pushed into the back of her head, and she summoned her helmet just to spite him, moving her head so that her back horns poked him in the cheek.
"Get your goddamn rebar out of my fucking hair, you jackass."
"You are welcome to leave, Trollhunter," Draal murmured. His arms loosened enough that she could wiggle out without difficulty.
"I don't want to exacerbate my injuries," Alex said. She was seriously enjoying the warmth that he gave off, especially since she was still undressed and chilly from the poultices.
"Good excuse."
"Shut up and go to sleep."
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A/N: Bitch you thought. I thought. We all thought. I've got the original chapter where she really did admit to being a Changeling stored and I'll post it after a bit as a 'what-if' chapter, but after much deliberation it would have complicated the story too much at this time of the telling. Usurna and the Tribunal would have been alerted and Alex doesn't have enough support within Trollmarket for that kind of reveal yet. Also, making her trust Blinky and Draal with something so close to the chest after she's only just started to open up didn't really rub me right for her character. She's been secretive and reticent about getting that close to people for decades and she's not going to change that in just a month or so without some serious character development and friend-making.
AHHAH HAH YAASS I LOVE fight scenes and I've been hoarding this scene for months.
What Blinky doesn't know, and wasn't around to witness first-hand, was that the stone of Sigrid the Shadowless doesn't make a troll immune to sunlight, but turns them human temporarily (in my headcanon). Vendel knows this, at least, but fortunately he wasn't around for this fight.
I don't think that the Gumm-Gumms in the actual armies had much to do with the Changeling spies, so after so many centuries I doubt that AAARRRGGHH would have recognized her scent. But Draal damn dated a Changeling, so he'd recognize her scent after a while, especially since he was living with her after their fight. I'll also make mention that she doesn't smell exactly like a Changeling anymore, and you'll see why in the next chapters. She's funky smelling if you really concentrate, mostly troll but with a little Changeling mixed in.
For Deya's origins I looked up the Welsh legends of Changelings and edited a little bit. It's actually quite fascinating. And did you know that there's a place in Cornwall called Mên-an-Tol that has a circular rock and a legend of getting your real baby back if you passed the Changeling kid through the hole? I'm not kidding.
And we're back to grumpy cuddles. This will not be an Alex/Draal fic, I think, it's just platonic cuddles. Alex would probably jump him if he asked, but she's got enough on her plate without worrying about a whole relationship on top of everything else. Both of these assholes are a bit starved for physical affection at the moment and will get a little cuddly and close, but I'm not really feeling a whole relationship here. I'm not making nudity a bit problem for Alex; she's never been shy about her body and I don't think she connects completely with her troll form yet.