Part 507 – How Fey Get A Girlfriend (Or Not)

Ambrose heard the front door open.

He got up and left his room.

Robin’s voice carried from the front door. “Look. I’m just sayin’, people don’t like bein’ stared at like that. It creeps them out.”

Ambrose smiled and retreated to his room.

***

Isellta shrugged. “I can’t help it. I like watching people interact. It’s intriguing.”

Robin entered the kitchen and poured himself a cup of iced tea. “It’s creepy. Trust me on this one. You can get yourself busted doin’ stuff like that.” He took a sip. “Makes me wonder how you fey interact. Do you just float about in your own space bubbles or what?”

“No. We just…aren’t so…so noisy about everything. You humans. You think loud. You talk loud. You walk loud. You don’t do anything quietly. It’s irritating, but intriguing. I can’t comprehend being filled with so much noise.”

Robin shook his head. “Never use that as a pick up line, because that is so fail.”

Pick up line? Pick up? Line? How do those three words go together? What does that even mean when you combine them like that?

“Oh. Let me guess. You fey don’t do pick up lines. You just…” He frowned as his imagination apparently failed him. “How do you fey go about pickin’ up chicks?”

Pick up line? Picking up chicks?? What?

“You know, how do you get a girlfriend? Do you just—” He moved his hands in vague, confused gestures. “What?”

“Oh.” Is that what he means? Why didn’t he just say so? “The Fey Queen picks her mates out of the population and forms a harem. She has certain—”

“Wait. I ain’t innerested in what the Queen does. I’m askin’ about the lowly, workin’ class fey with his sparkly rainbow painted plow or whatever it is you guys do. How does that schlub get a girl?”

“The Queen chooses him to be her mate.”

Robin stared at him in disbelief.

“She will occasionally let her harem members intermingle with the lower denominations to keep the genetic lines—”

“What the heck. What. The. Heck.”

Isellta tilted his head. “What?”

“That’s my freakin’ question. What?”

“I don’t understand what the problem is. That is how things are for us. How it has always been.”

“So. There ain’t never been illicit love affairs? No hot and steamy—”

“We are Fey.”

“Oh, of course. What was I thinkin’? You fey are all the same. Heartless, soulless wonders.” Robin chugged down the rest of his iced tea. “Dawn’s comin’. I’m goin’ to bed.” He headed for the kitchen door.

“Robin.”

He stopped.

“Do you think I’m heartless?”

Robin didn’t reply.

“Do you?”

He looked back at the fey. “Are you?”

Isellta had no answer.

Robin left the kitchen.

Isellta sat at the kitchen table and stared thoughtfully at the last bit of iced tea in Robin’s glass.

Am I?

Am I heartless?

What does that even mean?

Fey have hearts. Yet…I think the word heartless means something more, something bigger than simply missing a heart.

I think it’s an emotional thing.

I should have asked him.

But he would have become angry. I don’t understand why, though. How can I understand things if my questions are not answered? If no one will tell me this is how things are, this is how things work, this is what I mean, how will I know?

He sighed.

Robin doesn’t understand any of that.

Why would he?

He’s just another human.