He pushed me back gently and held me by the shoulders at arm’s length. His fervor cooled and mine along with it, but it was still there, and I knew he wanted me to kiss him again, and I tried to do it. He held me in place. “Hey. Hey. You still in there? Ariah, you in there?”

Slowly, I came back to myself. He was naked, and I was down to my underclothes.

“This don’t seem right,” he said. “You were about to bolt. Maybe we should talk this through?”

I was myself again, and I was confused and scared. I couldn’t talk about it; I had no words for it besides slurs. I bolted. I pulled on my pants and boots, grabbed his shirt instead of mine because it was closer, and ran out the door without a word. I was drenched in anxious, clammy sweat. I felt like everyone on the street who saw me could read everything, knew everything, and I was drowning in shame. In my pocket, mercifully, was the slip of paper Dirva had given me. I could not face his family, but the second address listed seemed promising, and I headed into the West Quarter.

The address took me to the West Quarter’s edge where the blue elves lived. I thought I was lost, but a street vendor confirmed I was going in the right direction. Really, the only thing I knew about the blue elves was that many of them were pirates. The men in their gardens looked forbidding, dangerous, to me. The City is a loud place, but the neighborhood of the blue elves has a thick quietness in it. It feels very separate from everything else there. The browns of sand and stone give way to green. The air is different. The blue elves watched me from their gardens, curious about the outsider. The house I came to was the only one on the street with an empty garden. The small house sat on a plot of empty land. I knocked on the front door, and Dirva answered. I had never been so happy to see anyone. “What’s wrong? What happened?” he asked.

“May I come in?”

“Yes, of course.” He ushered me inside. Speaking Semadran stabilized me somewhat. He pointed at a threadbare couch on the other side of the room. “Take a seat; I will get you a glass of water.”