"There," I said, after tightening the st screw. "It should be w again now, Uncle."

  "Ah, thank you, Joseph," Uncle Frederick said, as he levered himself into his wheelchair. "Such a sweet young d... Mmm, yes, that is much better. Such a smart young d, too."

  "I'll take the pliment, but holy, this was one of the simplest things a maist could do," I said, rubbing the bay head. "I just had to repce a cheap pot metal bushing with a proper bushing made of brass. I'll admit I did go a touch overboard with the grease port, but... well, no sense being sloppy... Also, I got bored and started addiures."

  Uncle Frederick simply ughed. He was a half-elf, and at 500 years old, he was iwilight of his life, his body slowly but surely failing him. But... well, that's why I was born. My father had been unwilling t a child into this world, ever since we lost the War Of The Roses, but when Frederisisted that his brother have a child before he died, my dad gave in, and I was born some three years ter.

  It was usually hard to distinguish a half-elf from a human, going purely by visual cues; half-elves typically didn't have the pointed ears of full-blooded elves, and those were the only thing you could clusively point to as a telltale differeween humans and elves. As such, to a human who wasn't terribly familiar with elves, Frederick might not have looked like a half-elf, but just an old man, whose pale skin had gone wrinkly, and whose hair had goark white. Hell, the fact he articurly skinny didn't even distinguish him that much; humaypically lost weight in their old age, as the muscles of their prime began to atrophy. Of course, if you were familiar with elves, you'd reize the distinctly elven cast to his features- the sharpness of his nose and , the shape of his eyes, that sort of thing- but those features could occur in ordinary humans, so...

  The actual most obvious sign he was a half elf, funnily enough, was ohat could quite easily be applied to a human man: he was wearing a High Elven house robe, structed from long pieces of fabric that were only a foot and a half wide, and had beeogether at the edges to form the garment. In this day of meization, that fabric hadn't been woven by hand, but it still had the traditionally elven patterns of leaf and flower motifs, which I'd always thought were pretty, but not quite to my own tastes.

  "So," Uncle Frederick said, already fishing around in his pocket. "How much mae-time was that? And what are the going rates for brass, these days?"

  "Oh, I stole the brass from the sae shop," I said easily. "Sped through the actual assig so I'd have time to make that bushing before I had to leave. But if yoing to insist on pensating me, Uncle... How about satisfying my curiosity, and telling me one more story about Grandpa?"

  "There aren't that many stories left to tell," Frederick admitted, as he wheeled himself to the shelf, where he kept his hand-written colle of his father's stories. "But... you and I both know you mean the big story. The story of how he met my mother, and saved the world. The story you've waited so patiently to hear... Well, Joseph, you're eighteen, now. By human reing, you're a man, not a boy. And I think you're finally ready."

  I sat down like I was six years old again, eagerly listening to my uncle as he prepared to tell me aory about the Brave Mage-Knight, Artorias Wind-Caller.

  "Get back up, Joseph," Frederick said, shaking his head. "Sit down on the couch. This story is unfortable."

  "...Oh."

  "We've talked before about how Elven Mage-Knights rode unis, and how a Mage-Knight's uni was his partner, closer than anyone else," Frederick said. "And we've talked about how, to ride a uni, you have to be a virgin."

  "I think I see where this is going," I said quietly.

  "Yrandfather, Artorias Wind-Caller, became very familiar with the boundaries of what did and did not t as far as virginity was ed," Frederick said. "And unfortunately, due to both the Primal magics wielded by a Mage-Knight and the Occult magics wielded by my mother, Terpsichore Iro- the woman who gave myself and your father our st names- a lot of those escapades are directly relevant to the story at hand."

  "So that's why you wouldn't tell me this story when I was seven," I said.

  "Elves are, as a people, less afraid of sex than humans are, but that doesn't mean we're going to tell a story about mystically-signifit blowjobs to a literal child," Frederick said. "But, well. You're a man, now. And it's time you learhe truth."

  The story, in brief, retty simple: Terpsichore Iro was a member of the Bard's Guild, and she had, through happenstance, ended up orail of a demonic cult, and tracked them into the wilderness... which she was not terribly prepared for, as a Bard is a creature of civilization, and Occult magics are nearly useless in the absence of other people. Thankfully, she was found before she could suffer any real harm by a patrolling Mage-Knight, Artorias Wind-Caller. Now, as it so happeerpsichore Iro was quite beautiful, and had the traditional Bardic ck of sexual inhibitions; after 'thanking' her rescuer, she found it very easy to vince him to join her on her hunt.

  There were a number of skirmishes with various cultists along the way, but the most notable enter was with a Succubus named Volex. Succubi were beings of Occult magic, the magic of ideas and narratives and the strange quirks of how people thought, and they were empowered by the tropes and narratives they pyed into. Ordinarily, a Succubus set upon an Elven Mage-Knight would seize upon a narrative of corruption aation.

  Unfortunately for whoever summoned Volex to deal with the Mage-Knight hounding their cult, Volex had to deal with Terpsichore Iro, who presented an alternative narrative that Volex found pelling. I am not going to go into detail, but suffice to say that Terpsichore Iro tricked a Succubus into peting for the lusts of a horny young man, and then she won.

  Well, after that, Volex was bound into an occult reliquary, which was used for o teically-not-sex ritual to finally track down the demon cult to their true ir, where the cultists were on the cusp of finally summoning Demon King Paimon into the mortal realm, and Artorias and Terpsichore stopped them just in the nick of time.

  After haviermihe Cult of Demon King Paimon, Artorias Wind-Caller announced his retirement from the knighthood; he had done enough, and it was now time to produce the geion of Mage-Knights. And as it so happened, his fiana Bckthorn took an immediate liking to Terpsichore as well.

  A year after Artorias' retirement, Frederick Iro was born, and seven years ter- did you know that an elven woman ovutes once every ten years?- Napoleon Iro, my father, was born.

  Elven households with multiple mothers, and/or multiple fathers, weren't that unusual, at least among the elites of elven society. There were established s and rituals in pce, and as it so happens, for the son of Artorias Wind-Caller and Ena Bckthorn to be given the name of Iro was a sign of the immeeem and affe that Terpsichore was held in by Ena. To Frederick's recolle, the two loved each other dearly, and Ena had been insoble for years upon Terpsichore's death.

  "I wish you could've met them," Frederick said, with a sigh. "Such wonderful people, ead every one of them. My mother was the happiest woman I'd ever known, and whenever she wasn't pying an instrument, she was always singing something. Even... even on her deathbed... with her st breath..."

  I nodded slowly, wiping a tear from my eye. At least Terpsichore died in peace.

  When I was seven years old, my parents rewarded me for my diligend good behavior with a pet rat, teag me the important skills involved in taking care of a pet, so that I could be further rewarded by the unditional love and affe of a little furry animal that was so smart and so clever and so full of personality. And then, when I was ten years old, I learned more about death, as I buried my dearest friend Arthur in a flowerpot, and my father told me the story of how Artorias and Ena died in the War Of The Roses.

  As I grew older, and learned more and more about the history of my people, I no lohought it a special tragedy that my grandparents died in the War Of The Roses. These days, I thought it a wohat there were any elves older than three huill alive.

  "...Thank you, Uncle," I said, pg a f hand over his. "I wish I could've met them too."

  We simply sat there, for a while. This wasn't the first time I'd heard of Terpsichore Iro; Uncle Frederick had told me stories about his mother before. This was just... the first time I knew precisely how she became his mother.

  Maybe I'm just not being enough of a mature adult about the subject, but why did Frederiow that maails about Grandpa's sexcapades?

  "...So, graduation is ing up, I hear?" Uncle Frederick said, ging the subject. "What's your pn for afterwards, my boy?"

  "I'm gonna try my luck with the Mage's Guild," I said. "If they 't get Mom, maybe they'll be willing to settle for me."

  "And... if they decide they don't want an elven wizard among their ranks?"

  I shrugged. "Well, I'm on track to graduate with Novice certifications as a wizard and a maist. If I 't get a det job with that, then I'm not really trying, am I?"

  "Fair enough, my boy, fair enough," Uncle Frederick said. "Well, I wish you the best of luck, and I hope I live long enough to see you make something of yourself."

  "You're not... dying soon, are you?" I asked. "Or... How long do you think you have left?"

  "Oh, at least twenty years," Uncle Frederick said, waving his hand dismissively. "I am not so old and feeble, Joseph. If you hurry, you still introduce me to your children. Maybe with that alia girl?"

  "Possibly," I said, shrugging. Talia was... a plicated subject, for me. On the one hand, we were close friends, who'd known each other our whole lives, growing up door to each other in a tiny little elven encve in a big human city. She was very pretty, and seemed to like me an awful lot, if the fact she kissed me every day was any indication.

  Oher hand... well, I'd grown up on stories of Elven Mage-Knights, mounted on unis, and I never could bring myself to accept that I'd never get to ride a uni. Every so often, there were sightings of wood elves on unis, out on the frontier, and... well, I had this idea in my head that, one day, I'd finally get out there, meet a uni, earrust, and re-ighe legend of the Elven Mage-Knight.

  And it turns out that a longshot aspiration that hinges on remaining a virgin for a long time isn't very patible with having a girlfriend.

  But, well. Talia and I were both full-blooded elves. We'd both live forever. She herself had said she could afford to wait.

  "I'll let you know what happens, Uncle," I said. "Right now, though... I should probably be studying for my exams."

  "Go study, boy. Don't let an old man keep you any longer; I'll still be here when you're done."

  "Love you, Uncle."

  "I love you too, my boy. Good luck."