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For a moment Lyr couldn't distinguish the rustling of the trees from the actual sounds of human voices. It was hard for him, accustomed as he was to regular blocks of city building and symmetrical brickwork, to discover the "pods" which Ken referred to with such ease. Only when humanoid shapes began cascading out from the enormous growth of the tree itself did the vagaran finally make out that, in fact, his younger traveling companion hadn't been joking around. These elves really did live in trees!
Bewildered, Lyr shook his head and craned his neck upwards. Where were the doors? Where were the windows? Where were the chimneys?... Before Lyr could assess the answers to all of these practical questions, his eye caught sight once again of the elves who had come running at the approach of one of their own. Elves, it would appear, just like Ken - but then... not like Ken, too.
"Feth." Lyr spoke under his breath, and probably a good thing too; anybody who looked at Lyr looking at the elven girl who had first come running up to Ken couldn't have mistaken the cast of his glance. She was pretty - Borthanas, she was beautiful - in a way that Lyr, personally, had never imagined elves could be. He'd always been a human sort of human himself: he liked curves; he liked a judicious amount of colour... or a lot of colour, in places; he liked hips that a giant couldn't have described as 'slim'. Maybe it was the length of his stay on a ship crowded exclusively with males (and Rose, of course, who didn't figure into this particular calculation), or maybe it was the elven context that suddenly made elven beauty make sense to the human: but Lyr found himself all of a sudden wondering what was hidden behind that discreet gown.
Watching her eyes widen and her mouth curve into all sorts of pretty positions as she noticed the presence of the sleeping baby, Lyr felt his own face spread into an answering grin. He didn't understand what she said, but the human could follow the gist of it: she must be some sort of relative. Sister perhaps? She didn't look old... though one could never tell with these elves. At least relatively speaking the other, male elf who had come down from the tree as well looked somewhat older than Ken, to judge by his bearing and lack of gangly awkwardness.
They all seemed to think that Rose was Ken's, though - and something about exquisite taste. Lyr realized that the unknown male elf was looking at him as he spoke, but he still didn't quite get the purport of the speech. Woman? Carmelya's blessing? Why exquisite taste...? Lyr didn't get it, clearly, but he knew he didn't like being looked over like a block of wood or a piece of furniture. Pansy elves, with their noses stuck in the air... though that's one pretty nose she has...
"Lyr Tlansson." The Vagaran wasn't waiting for Ken to make the introductions. Kenkuroi's pretty sister (if it was, in fact, his sister) had asked him who he was, anyway, and he felt like answering her. "And that's my daughter, Rose, though I'm coming to think it would be better if she'd have been part elf - if that meant looking so pretty when she'll be all grown up!" Lyr smiled, pleased with his own quickness in forming complements: what a boon baby Rose was, though, when she wasn't either pooping or screaming!
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