This time, when Pepperidge opens the door, Lilli immediately and unobtrusively slides a foot past the doorframe to prevent its closing, distracting from the gesture with a prestidigitator's flourish.
"This is a passable honeyed wine from my homeland," she says brightly.
"Do you know what hour of the night it is?"
"Well, no...." Lilli frowns, touches the back of her free hand to her nose. She may have had a little too much schnapps to properly consider this. "But I see you're still awake...."
"A state I shall shortly rectify," Pepperidge claims frostily, and tries to close the door. "Oh, excuse me!"
"I should like to come in, if you please," Lilli tells her firmly, foot wedged between door and jamb. "I've delayed your bedtime on previous occasions through conversation on interesting topics; I thought I might do so again."
"I think not," the Professor says, knife-eyed.
"I might also apologise for whatever I've done to anger you," Lilli coaxes.
"I'm sure you've done nothing to warrant an apology."
"Well, then, you can apologise for being angry without cause," she says sweetly. Oh, Taelin's a bad influence. Taelin or the schnapps.
Both.
It takes a breath for Pepperidge to recover speech. "Take your foot out of my door this instant."
"Oh." Lilli looks down at it, meek. "You might have to stop leaning on it quite so hard." Clearly the Professor had no siblings or cousins or — well, any playmates at all, growing up, because she simply does. Lilli, on the other hand, had plenty, and slithers smartly through the gap.
"Good evening," she says cheerily, and closes the door by leaning back on it within the outraged circumference of the Professor's arms.
"I don't recall inviting you in!"
"Oh, but that's because I'm a bee and you're a wolf," Lilli informs her, drawing herself as tall as possible and managing to look just slightly downward into Pepperidge's eyes with the full weight of her presence.
The thing that humans call glamour isn't magic. Not quite. And they talk ever so much nonsense about what it does; which, really, is just to make one exquisitely immune to being ignored.
The Professor takes a step back.
Lilli takes a step forward.
"I've been studying your people's stories for a long time, until I can taste them, until I dream them, and I missed a shamefully simple thing."
Step, step, step.
"No matter how clever cousin Taelin thinks he is, it's not wolves. It's not spatial metaphors. No, I've looked and looked, and there's ever so many kings, queens, princes, merchants, peasants, charming rogues, talking animals...not a sniff or a hint that sometimes a human lass takes a tumble with someone without the kit to put a baby in her."
Step, step, abrupt collision with the Professor's bookcase.
"But that's the thing, isn't it? Cultures are like people. They keep secrets, and they lie."
"Please stop using your glamour on me," Pepperidge croaks.
"Oh, please. I took your class. I've spent countless hours in this very room talking rubbish. I've looked at you across the table every mealtime. Your eyes, the way your hair curls. The strength in your shoulders, those ears. The ink on your sleeves, the calluses on your," Lilli swallows, "hands. Your hips, your lips...you want to scold me for being an eyeful? It is to laugh, Amaranth."
The professor makes a noise something like a whimper.
"So here's a spatial metaphor for that lovely steel-trap human mind: I'm a foreign city under siege, my defences are breached, and I'm ripe for a bloody thorough pillaging."
They stand nose to nose. The professor swallows hard, several times.
"Unless I've just made a terrible faux pas," Lilli adds, rather more subdued. "In which case, I'll just be leaving for ever — "
The grab Pepperidge makes for the front of her robes is reassuringly vehement. "I thought — "
Lilli waits, watching the troubled crease between her brows ebb and flow, until the professor finally adds in a small voice, "Did I hear you say he's your cousin?"
"He's my cousin." She waits a beat. "You were jealous? Really?"
Pepperidge's grip tightens on her robe; the professor hangs her head. Lilli reaches out to gently stroke her shoulders.
"Amaranth," she says softly. "I am dying for you to kiss me. Don't make me beg you."
The dawn light wakes Lilli. She lies motionless, basking, with a heartbeat under her cheek.
"You're thinking too hard," she says eventually.
"Good morning," Pepperidge replies softly, and kisses the top of her head.
Lilli smiles sleepily and presses closer. "Still thinking. Shhhh."
"It's fine." A callused hand stokes the elf's back.
"I think you're worrying." She opens one eye, peers up at the other woman. "I think you're worrying...how did I measure up to those other lovers, those glamour-spangled, magical elven ones?"
Pepperidge finds something of interest to look at in the ceiling.
"I wouldn't know, Amaranth. I saved myself for someone perfect." She smiles serenely at the professor's wide eyes and stumbling attempts to speak.
"I'm honoured, Lilli," she says finally.
"Oh, you don't fool me. You're some kind of incognito sex goddess." Lilli stretches and purrs. "Go back to sleep."
And, eventually, when Pepperidge has, she softly adds, "I love you," then slips out of the bed, sneaks away, and catches the professor's morning class before they get too restive.
"Good morning! The Professor is indisposed for reasons of health." They are instantly cheered by the prospect of early escape. "However, I remember my friend's lectures well enough — sit, sit — so I shall simply instruct you in her stead."
Pepperidge pokes a wide-eyed, incredulous head in when Lilli is three nested diversions deep, somehow talking about the differing conceptions, between the Highlands and Plains elves, of honour. Lilli points her out, swiftly and flustered.
"Ah, see! The Professor's health is recovered. I leave you in more capable hands!"
She gestures piteously for assistance.
Pepperidge strides to the front of the hall, eyes never straying from Lilli. Reaching the elf, she places a hand on her arm and murmurs, "What mayhem is this?"
"I knew you'd not want them to miss instruction, but I couldn't possibly wake you." Lilli presses her hands together and widens her eyes. "You slept so peacefully. I thought I'd simply repeat your lessons to them, but — " she gestures. "They are a wolfpack."
"And you're a poor defenceless bumblebee," the professor murmurs, pats her arm, and turns to face the class. "What had you covered so far?"
"I hardly know," Lilli admits glumly. "They asked questions. I was waylaid."
"Well, perhaps we simply won't worry about today's intended lesson. I was, after all, very late." Pepperidge gives her a long, sideways look, and seats herself deliberately at her desk before the class. She gestures politely at them. "Do continue."
Lilli, hot and cold and trembling from the Professor's regard and the sound of the word "bumblebee" on her lips, looks at the students, at their teacher, back at the students. She only knows that she was talking about honour.
"So in conclusion," she ventures, "Plains elves are perverse degenerates, while only my countryfolk are capable of honour. Whereas a Plains elf, were they here, would tell you that Highland elves are hidebound reactionaries observing only empty ritual in the name of the word, and that only their countryfolk genuinely live in honourable spirit. Therein lies a lesson." A longish pause, under expectant eyes, in interrupted as the door opens again. "Oh, Captain Taelin!" she cries gratefully. "We were just talking about elven culture; what do you think is important for these scholars to understand?"
He swaggers down to the front, preening under the attention, all dress uniform and shiny hair and glittering smile. Taelin is a showoff.
"Ah, first we'll need to talk about the place of trees in elven sensibilities," he starts, and Lilli unobtrusively sidles behind the desk with the Professor.
"I'm sorry," she murmurs. "I didn't want you to miss your class; I didn't want to wake you...this seemed a better idea than it was."
Pepperidge smiles wryly. "Lilli, it is first thing in the morning, and half the students are hung over. This is perhaps the most they will ever listen to one of my lectures."
With cheerful disregard for propriety, Taelin's rangers pitch their conical tents on the university grounds, by the river. They spend the term singing, fishing, growing an unauthorised herb garden, and teaching interested students archery, tracking, and advanced elvish swearing.
Taelin eventually mentions, in passing, why they are there.
He has invited himself into the dining hall for breakfast, usurping the tardy geometry professor's seat at the high table. "Say, poet," he says, studiously buttering a fourth slice of toast, "when we head homeward, do you think you might impress on these folks our peoples' dire need for their marmalade recipe?"
Lilli had suspected so much, of course, but still finds herself laying down the spoon next to her boiled egg, and fiddling with it, a lump settling in the back of her throat.
Across the table, Pepperidge sets down her teacup rather excessively firmly. "I had no idea your research was nearing completion," the professor says, in a precisely steady voice.
"Not at all!" Lilli says in the direction of her cutlery. Her voice is high, and wavers slightly. She does not look at the professor. "I rather thought I might be allowed to finish," she adds, slightly more in Taelin's direction.
He pauses in piling marmalade on his toast, eyes flicking back and forth between them. "Oh, I should think so," he says carefully. "You're not ordered home or anything of the sort, poet. Just — you need to visit, you see."
"Need?" Lilli is feeling a very pressing, painful need, in the core of her ribcage, as if she is already far away, not a tablecloth's width from the Professor.
Taelin sighs, sets down his toast, and steeples his fingers. For a moment, his glamour slips; he is no longer a jolly clown, amusing the humans with japes and foolery. He is something lean and soldierly and silent, eyes guarded and watchful.
"All I know is that the Ecclesiarch wants the family home," he says softly. "I'm a ranger; ask me not about omens."
"Omens?"
He smiles, a jolly buffoon with a child's appetites for breakfast. "I must needs visit home, poet. And so must you."
Lilli stares at her breakfast a long time, then abruptly stands. "Excuse me, Professor Pepperidge, might you — I would have your assistance with a, a something, in a — somewhere else. Please."
"Are you quite all right?" Pepperidge sounds alarmed.
Lilli can feel the ashen pale in her own cheeks. She raises her face to Pepperidge, not even pretending a smile. "Excuse us, Captain Taelin," she says, staring into kind, concerned eyes, and turns, and flees the room in as controlled and polite a way as she can manage.
Pepperidge catches her not far outside, pulling her from the corridor into a disused classroom. "What is all this?" she demands, and Lilli can only answer by flinging herself into the Professor's arms and sobbing breathlessly.
"Lilli, Lilli, talk to me," Pepperidge entreats, when her crying finally seems abated. She holds her tightly, rocking her like the sway of trees in wind; Lilli is burrowed deep into her neck, exhausted and cold from misery.
The elf shivers. "Don't be angry with me," she pleads. "Nor Taelin," she adds after a second. "I know you'll think he should have told me sooner, and perhaps so — but he's not spent the time among your people I have. Elf time runs to neither clock nor calendar; things happen as they happen, as fruit ripens or the weather changes, you see? He told me when he told me. It is as it is."
"I'm not angry." Pepperidge strokes her back. "I'm frightened half to death — you looked so wild and sad."
Lilli leans back a little to look at the Professor's face, and her lip trembles to see the tracks of tears beneath her eyes, too. "My family," she begins, and lets out a shuddering sigh. "My family has a ghost, Amaranth. You've heard of families with such? And they appear for births, sometimes, or deaths. Events, you see? Events of omen."
"Your family's ghost has appeared?" Pepperidge bites her lip. "You think, perhaps, a death in the family?"
"Ah, no." Lilli shakes her head. "Our ghost is...very old. Not very personally concerned. It omens larger things, Amaranth; the birth of wars, the death of empires.... I must go. I am not finished here, but I fear that whatever is omened, it is not a small thing. I may — " her voice cracks. "I may be waylaid, will or no, beyond the span of your life before I can return."
"Oh," says Pepperidge, as if someone has taken a fist and driven it somewhere soft and vulnerable.
"I'm sorry, Amaranth," Lilli says, tears welling hot and fresh. "I thought there would be time...."
Pepperidge draws a breath, holds it deep, lets it out slow. Then she takes another.
"I could accompany you," she blurts.
They stare at each other; hard to say whether the Professor is any less astonished at her words than Lilli is.
"I could show you Hightop," Lilli murmurs finally. "I could take you to the Old Glen. You could meet my family...ah! What am I saying! This is your home and your people, and your university, and your studies — "
"So tell me, bumblebee. If your omen is right, and a war is born, or an empire falls, or so on...am I safe here? Pepperidge lifts a challenging brow. "Will my home, my people, my university be untouched? Will my studies continue?"
"Who can say?" Lilli says uneasily.
"So you see? I might as well come with you." The Professor gives her a warm, glorious smile. "You can show me Hightop."
"But you might never see your home again," Lilli murmurs.
"No," Pepperidge allows gravely. "And I shall miss it, Lilli, of course I shall. But if I never return, I can at least see yours."
"You are too sweet," Lilli protests. "I shall die from it, I swear." She presses herself to Pepperidge. "Please," she adds quietly. "Nothing would make me happier, Amaranth, but take time to be sure. Promise me nothing now. Think on it."
"Oh? And what of elf time, in which my answer comes when it comes?"
It surprises a small laugh from her. "Oh, that mind, that human mind! You terrible, wonderful wolf!" She shakes her head, reaches up to the Professor's face. "All I ask is that you do nothing to make you regret me," she whispers against her lips.
"Impossible," the Professor whispers back, and overwhelms her with kisses.
