Beyond the city's gates one will find, nestled in upon the homely cottages dolloped over the serene, grassy slopes; across the reed-and-mud banks of streams and shallows and only miles from the jam of the city's innards, some of the very best taverns in this realm or any other. The sweetness of these taphouse ales are bested only by their potency; the hospitality of their hosts bested only by the generous hands of the he or the she or the it that may be seated on the stool to one's left. The uncommon courtesy of the country is derived from nothing but the simplicity of its residents: warm are they; genuine are they; not agile of mind, but impossibly flexible in heart are they. It is for any one of these reasons, if not all, that he chose not to venture beyond the city's gates to drink among them.

Within the gates where the structures are stone and broad plank; where the streets are cobble and scribbled upon by a great many strain of old, dead blood; where the child, the sister, the mother and the father don rags and the wretched flesh of poverty, one will find The Inns. From gems of a peculiar matter; the sleek, prepared, opaline flesh of inner-thigh; the purveyor of flesh itself and the life that once dwelled within, one would be challenged to issue a want that could not be secured by one or many within The Inns. Hospitality is defined differently in The Inns, or rather is represented by those of a more eccentric moral range: To say they who deal in rare goods; they who deal in the skin of the owned woman (and often man or etcetera); they who accept coin in exchange for blood are "worse" or, moreso, "less good" than the smiling kin in the country is of course a matter of the eye and the mouth that asks, but they all, regardless, offer hospitalities of certain and more precise tastes. It was not because these great many perversions were for sale in The Inns that he chose not to drink within them (at least not when he could help it), but instead was the reason their owners chose to sell them, and that reason was, as he saw it, the flat margins of coin profit and that alone.

Modernization in The City begins as it maybe does in all things: Smoothing: The stones in the road are flattened into soft, sleek tarmac; the coarse angles of the broad plank houses and pantries are supplemented for the curvature of concrete and steel; the finity of long, masking, hiding walls are replaced by the impeccable transparency of glasspane. No longer secure in their rows, in their uniformity, every structure races faster than its neighbor towards the sky, becoming best in all eyes save its own, for there it pauses; loses. Neither flesh nor gem nor blood is sold here; nothing is sold at all; everything is consumed. Here drink is shared at all places and at all times and at all occasions, for, and best of all in his eyes, every moment is a continuing occasion here, and all occasions are in celebration of the minutes spent here. What glassy corner or crystalline-tiled room he drank in mattered not in this place"this day it was a handsomely decorated restaurant with black walls that had clever little lamps that shone acute, triangular beams upwards, a mirrored ceiling, and a black marble-topped bar with titanium rungs spliced into the stone reared by four impressive tiers of high-priced liquor. The name over the door beamed, Ignus, in cursive neon light; someone with whom Val neither sat with nor cared to hear informed him the establishment was named for a heinous fire-god of curious and wrathful origins, as were they all, he'd discovered in his too-many years here. He did not sit alone. Their corner was quiet: this was not paid for, but rather a consequence of the time of day, which was the hour preceding noon, for the many lords with whom Val not only associated with but enjoyed associating with: even they were required to be in-place from time-to-time. The silence of their corner was shattered by his counterpart, a slender woman with skin light and maybe hued moderately grey"not human, but not obscene; not distracting"with hair long and straight and dark, blue hued on the fringes maybe, with eyes as white and bright and as perfect as freshly forged haloes, still glowing from the coals. A martini glass raised just-so between three fingers, two of which were ringed, and not cheaply, the woman smiled at Val before she spoke: "Lurs Ignus ge uermas hotora?"Our Ignus burns the path?"In case you were interested. In the God's motto, I mean."

Val swirled the rocks around in the syrupy brandy; his pinky indicated a portly man in a suit laughing at the bar. "I'm sure he was getting to that."

"I know, I know," she said in a patronizingly soothing, mother-like voice before sipping through a smile. "Life is so. . . disastrous; so cruel, Mr. Val. Strangers speaking to you, all without invitation. Would you like I tell everyone in here to stop staring when you brood your way to the bar, lest you'll throw a fit?"

"Raise in it for you."

"You don't pay me anymore," she said. Once more she sipped, full lips of wet crimson singing in cruel harmony against the bright, strange skin, "And even when you did it was hardly enough to keep a girl of certain tastes clothed. You know, in only a week as your secretary I think I came to find you just the most sour, insipid, cruel bastard I ever met."

"But."

The woman in black laughed as she stood. She showed Val her palm. "Money."

The rangy corpse in black leaned back in his seat, and he did so to wed gaudy, zealous posture with a face piqued, offended and, rarest of all, amused. "Money' How many months have I been going at this"what makes you think I still piss gold?"

"The hotel. The cars you claim to hate. The clothes"you think I believe that since you no longer retain any stock in RDC you're broke?"

Val sighed; his broad shoulders deflated; his left hand sunk into the side-pocket of his overcoat. "Our definitions of "broke" vary," he said as he passed over several folded bills.

"And how so?"

"No fluid income is broke, Risa. Every cent I've spent since my departure has been in error. Without income I do nothing but borrow from a pool I cannot replenish."

"If the pool is deep, there is no error," the woman said. "Not even I could spend all you have, I'd wager." She bent over the table. Softly: "Should you find yourself a gambling man in the future?"

Val waved her off. "Go," he said. "Get the drinks, devil."

And so she did: a second martini for herself and a third rocks brandy for her counterpart. Upon her return Risa set the drinks appropriately then gathered the empty glassware and ferried it back to the counter, where she was met with a shocked but thankful nod from the man behind the bar. Half-way across the floor towards their table, Risa paused to watch Val rise and mend the creased edges of his overcoat collar; he snapped his head towards the door commandingly before exiting. After pulling herself into the grey peacoat that she'd hung on one of the pegs right of the door upon their earlier entry, she obeyed. She found him left of the entrance with his back against the glass and his right hand out in offer, the lid of his silver cigarette case ajar. Risa carefully slipped one free of the band and let the filter sink into the plush, malleable flesh of her bottom lip. To her silence, Val replied, "You're welcome," and as acknowledgment, Risa bent a mild curtsy.

Silence was not a game for a girl such as she: While the man smoked quietly, Risa toyed with her phone. And when her toying failed to encourage even a flinched brow from the man she stood with, she snapped her tongue, sighed and let the phone fall back into her pocket. "Must you?" she asked. "Must I" What?" "Must you be so loud with your silence" Of all the silences in all the world, yours, Mr. Val, is the most obnoxious and voluminous of all. I can not hear you from miles away." Flesh in the man's right cheek creased a bit as his lips stretched amusedly. The hand that held his cigarette raised over his head; he snapped a long ash off its tip. "All of us have talents," Val said. "Perhaps one day you'll find yours. Aside from being a glaring caricature of downtown money: We both know better, mm?"

"Saying your pet-project is a failure?" asked Risa. "Am I not what you tailored me to be?"

"Too-much-so," Val said. "I was hoping a bit of dolling and charity would perhaps produce the first-ever downtown individual, but. . . alas."

Risa laughed, agreed with a nod and repeated, "Alas."

The day's hours ran away from them. Val had always been a man who enjoyed his drink, but was not, nor had he ever claimed to be, a man who could hold it. But against the light that was a lifetime of being weak-livered, the shadow cast this afternoon was one of uncanny tolerance, and with, most abnormal of all, consideration paid to a quantity deemed above-average as light against the figure of a normal drinking day. The consequences of his consumption were most-always slobbishness, inverted speaking functions, broken balance and rancor, but this day he became instead afflicted with interest and talkativeness. Risa became aware of this irregular intoxicated state early when he performed an intentional gesture of contact: It was subtle and neutral; safe space, nothing she saw as a platform for motive, nothing but the brush of four fingertips across the knuckles of her right hand. He was speaking while he did it, quickly and imperatively at times, but despite the uncorking of his tongue his voice never lost the bleak, spanning monotone, upon which words that were often bleak and draining were drawn, for which he was known. No, his voice did not hurry from its unworried, unquestionable, beating, hammering meter, instead it was the eyes, eyes that were now sometimes wide when he spoke when always they were skinny, squinting, asking. And although she pleaded-not for refrain (for parts of her found his flowing whimsy very much amusing) she made certain, with expert flair and diversion, the man consumed no more alcohol for the duration of their stay, which was not more than an hour after the personal declaration of prevention in his interests. At this time, when the field was clear of conversation, Risa stood and buttoned herself into the grey peacoat; Val was on his feet not shortly after, and by the time the last button on her coat was fastened he'd have the door ajar, himself behind it. Their walk was one mostly in silence, with Val's mind freshly fogged and muddled, and hers unwilling to bend to accommodate his rambling, which was a choice not made in spite but rather in lethargy. The walk took them south of the bar down a grand, four-lane boulevard. Risa accompanied Val toward the empty hotel in which he resided: It was a hike, three miles minimum, where hers was but a short hop from Ignus but in the opposite direction. Whether a sense of care about his wellbeing and ability to navigate home without incident existed within her was wholly unknown to him, but it was a fact that would be hardly disputable as she ventured further-and-further from her own apartment. Several blocks left, Val took a seat on a bench upon a twisty-little parkgreen that was little-more than a nice, civic slice of grass, a cobblestone path and two benches. He crossed his arms and looked up to Risa, who was of course already looking back, and slanted a smile. He said, "Sorry. All the liquor that was trapped in my head started running around my body as we walked. Just need a moment. Maybe several."

"Sure," she said. "You're all bone as it is. You made it farther than I thought you would. And in the daylight no less."

"What does that have to do with it?"

Risa took a seat on Val's left and crossed her legs. She reclined and gazed upwards thinly. "The girl who worked the desk downstairs, as well as several of the interns, had a bet going: Just what are you? Vampire was an easy first pick, even though you seemed to do well in sunlight. Guess it was your skin and sunny attitude."

"Was that your pick?" Val asked.

Risa shook her head. She said, "No. Because I worked for you directly I tried to stay away from the betting as long as possible"not because you scared me, I'm sorry to say, but because it was unprofessional"my involvement was limited to slaying strange theories. I told them I didn't believe you were a Vamp. I told them in-fact that I didn't believe you were anything contemporary in the least. I actually thought there was a possibility that you were a man and nothing more, but strange stories kept surfacing. Then your sister showed and everything changed."

"I can imagine. She refer to any of you as, "Brides??"

"Yes, yes," Risa said, nodding; grinning. "Elaborate on that?"

"Too long a story to tell, and by the time I finished I'd have divulged my origins. I'm curious if you had any strange theories yourself."

"Of course I did. I thought you were undead."

"Undead?"

"Like a zombie," she said. "An animated corpse."

"Mm. Smell that bad, did I."

"Not in the least," Risa said. "It was the?" She indicated her neck and chest with motions of hand. ?"what-have-you: the black bruises and eaten skin you'd occasionally show up with. But, I promise it wasn't an unflattering assumption. My idea was more of a"King. Like, The Lord of Necropolis, something just-so. Understand?"

"So, King of The Dead, mm?" As he spoke the silver cigarette case was produced and raided; Risa declined by presenting her palm. While flame ate the tip of the cigarette; mumbling around it, he said, "You're not too far off."

Risa clapped a single time in excitement. "Two-hundred," she cried. "The jackpot! I'm going to stop by the old building and collect on my way home."

""Similar" does not mean "correct"," he said. "Seems you scamps erected pretty lax betting guidelines. I've played games of cards with men so rich and fickle they had rules, niches, guidelines and rituals for everything. People of Extremes. A little bit of compromising can go a far, far way: a good way. But knocking people off their platforms is impossible because we've yet to find any other way to do it. Because you can't help or ease people off their platforms," he said, taking a slouched but ready and excited pose, both of his hands in front of him, fingertips nearly touching as if they held an orb or ball smoked or inflated by the irrevocable sin bundled-up in his sermon. "Because then it's patronization or humiliation by way of the procedure and not the opposing point or ideal: The procedure. How idiotic. To refuse sense or teaching because the method of transition does not do brutal-enough-justice to the defensible point. All guilty. All, me especially, guilty. The number of times I've put myself at risk of bodily harm because I was too stubborn to happily accept opposition is unacceptable: I, like so many others, prefer to be beaten off my points so that I can pay homage to my paper constitution with memories of anguish and, when really lucky, scars."

""Really lucky"," she repeated in a deep, teasing voice. "You're drunk, Mr. Val. Mostly an idiot, though. You know that?"

"I don't," he said. "Doesn't mean I haven't been told that more times than I care to admit, though."

"And by your theory," she said. "not very lucky. Only the one scar, right' So many precious points done injustice."

"Tell me then," he said while straightening himself out, that cigarette still burning, unaided by hand, in the corner of his mouth. "Your scars"they don't bring forth a sense of pride" That you endured the pain; that you go on rather well?"

Risa stood. "A sense of pride," she cried. "In what! "Go on?" There was no lesson."

"I didn't?"

"We're not all the same," she interrupted. "Just because you talk yourself to exhaustion and talk prettily doesn't mean it's all that. Do you want to know what these taught me?" Risa turned her head sidelong, presenting her right cheek and the snuffed ear with its even, wrinkled slice. She began to curl a tassel of hair behind the lobe. "This taught me that getting your ears cut-off hurts like fucking hell, Val. I was eleven, I wasn't standing up for anything or anyone or even myself. I was in the way of wrath and it threw me on the ground and mutilated me. Tell me, how many times have you been the wrath' How many times have you been the affront without pause or care or purpose: How many have died or been maimed in your name?"

He said, "A few."

Swiftly and angrily the woman fell back down to the bench. She kept her eyes trained ahead and between the pair a silence was nursed. Val smoked. When the ember crawled into the filter an immediate replacement was produced, but the minute the fresh pin was lit between his lips Risa snatched it away and stole several quick, powerful pulls. Chest rising, nose venting dual streaks: The woman repeated this intake-and-release until around her now-messy hair, vacant-eyes, painted mouth and clipped ears persisted a smog, the cigarette halved in maybe a minute's time. When she passed the cigarette back Val stared a moment before accepting it. There was a moment when both his fingers and hers were wrapped around the cigarette as it moved from she to he, and during that moment Val's mouth opened. Risa's tongue was quicker, however: "Outbursts aren't really my thing. I'm sorry, they make me look ugly. I was lying too, because my viewpoint of the world was shaped that day, so there was a lesson of course. I learned that day, while the young hunter's knee was jammed in my chest and his paring knife, one he'd probably used to skin innumerable beasts, was harshly severing the pretty tips of my elven ears, that there really isn't a reason for anything in this world. He was a boy not much older than me, maybe by two or three years. And what really hurts the most is that he didn't even want to do it. It was for no reason. It's not some "practice" or "ritual" to slice the tips off of eachother's ears where I'm from"it was a heinous act that the men this boy was with thought-up on the spot. I remember the pain of it. I remember the sunlight cracked between the canopy, as I was attacked in the forest outside my village, but most of all I remember the stupid, weak, scared face of the boy as he cut me. I remember that it was an expression so pathetic and absent that, while his knife was hooked in my flesh and I could feel the traces of blood on my cheek by the heat alone, I actually felt bad or sorry for him. That stuck with me. For years I thought about it, about how absurd and random it was. Sometimes I would think, "I must've felt bad for him because I'm such a great person". Sometimes I hated myself for feeling it. I'm not the brightest bulb, Mr. Val, so I couldn't come up with some outstanding philosophical contemporary to balance my anguish with value. I'm a simple girl so I can only take things at face-value: I was beaten and thrown to the ground by a young man who was egged-on by three of his elders then scarred by the same boy because he sought to impress them. Wrath ran into me, nothing more. It's not always wrath, though," she said while rising. A little bit of straightening got her hair and clothes in order and in a minute's time she looked as she had when first they'd entered the bar they'd left almost an hour ago. One last time she settled her haloes over the man. She said, "Sometimes something wonderful runs into us. The shame is we treat the good and bad the same. We ponder on why bad things happen to us and curse the world for allowing it, and we ponder on the good and curse ourselves for accepting it knowing we deserve none of it."

"You're leaving me here?" Val asked through a half-lit, mostly drowned and drowsed grin.

"Have to," Risa said. "Bringing this all up has reminded me that I don't know if it's the wrath or the wonderful with you. I need to go home and decide whether to curse the world for you or curse myself for having you."