“Bin, take these plates and set them on the table, will you? In the garden, please. With this many people it’ll be a little cramp for all of us to sit together inside,” Eik called from the kitchen where he was rubbing spices into a large chunk of dirt duck rump he had gone to Gimleh specifically to purchase from his favorite butcher.

  “Okay!”

  “Thanks. And Goo, you just keep an eye on that loaf of bread. You’re doing so well.” The boy looked up and clenched his fist with the determination of a warrior going into battle.

  “Dad,” Bin’s voice came from the garden.

  “Yeah?”

  “The big table is standing in the shade. Can you help me move it out into the sun?”

  “I’ve got my hands in a dough right now, hon. Can you ask someone else with super powers? Unless my eyes betray me, Grandpa Chop is lounging in the couch reading some twelve year old magazine. I’m sure you can convince him to get his ass outside.”

  Bin ran in and stood in the door. “Please, Grandpa Chop.”

  “All right, but only because it’s you, little Bin,” the X-ranker said before the air suddenly seemed to implode and be sucked out through the door like a vacuum.

  Eik glanced out into the garden and saw that the table now stood perfectly in the sun. That old geezer had his uses after all. “Hey, Ihasu, what’s the time?” he yelled, hoping his voice would reach her wherever she was. He usually kept his extremely polished senses suppressed at home out of respect for Ihasu and the kids. They didn’t need him to know what they were doing at all times.

  “It’s time for everybody to arrive soon,” came the answer.

  “That’s not what I meant but okay,” he muttered under his breath as he kneaded and formed twenty little balls of dough which he would fill with chocolate cream and whipped cream in equal measure once they were baked to perfection.

  “Uncle Andi! Aunty Molanda!” Bin called happily and Eik saw the two majestic elves stroll through the garden, Molanda laughing as Bin flung herself into her arms.

  “Your sister really loves people, huh?” Eik said with a side eye on Goo. “You’re not interested?” he asked.

  The boy sat up and threw a glance out the window, his expression unchanging as he watched the goings on in the garden. After a couple of seconds, he went back to his duty of making the sure the loaf of fresh bread didn’t get up and run off, shrugging noncommittally at his father’s question.

  “Waah! What did you bring, Aunty Molanda?” Bin’s gleeful question came, her voice traveling clearly through the window. At this, Goo finally perked up, his nostrils flaring energetically as his ears flicked forward in a comically feline manner as he listened intensely for the next words.

  “Oh, nothing too grand, I’m afraid, sweetheart,” Molanda said. “I simply brought a few bottles of freshly squeezed juice from some of the different fruits and berries we grow in the gardens on the estate.”

  Eik chuckled at his daughter’s squeal of mirth. “Oh, you like juice too, don’t you, G—” Before he could get the whole sentence out, his son had already jumped off the table with a ferocious howl of juice-fuelled thirst and rushed into the garden, leaping for one of the bottles of tangy, fruity liquid.

  “Not yet,” Molanda sang as she expertly maneuvered all of the bottles out of the boy’s reach. “And hello to you too, Goo. How very nice it is to see you. And as far as this is concerned,” she said, holding up a bottle. “you can have some when we’re all sitting down for lunch.”

  “Sorry for the little beast, Molanda,” Ihasu said as she came around the side of the house.

  “Don’t mention it,” Molanda chuckled. “He’s always so rowdy and cute. He kind of reminds me of my daughter Thalandi when she was a little girl.”

  “Is she coming?”

  “She’s just behind us. And bringing her former maid, current girlfriend,” the mother said with a smirk. “Uja loves architecture and wanted to take a look at the way the people of Earth build.”

  “Sorry to say, but she’s not going to get a very good impression then. We’re barely ten years past the biggest disaster in human history and we’re still very much building for efficiency and protection,” Eik shouted from inside. “But if she’s interested, I have a stack of old magazines at the press conference. There are plenty of building shots in those—both interior and exterior.”

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  “Press conference?” Molanda asked Ihasu.

  “That’s what he calls the toilet for some reason. He likes to read when he’s in there. It sometimes takes him an hour to come back out,” the fracture specialist answered with an eye roll.

  “My husband knits in there. His record is an hour and thirty three minutes.”

  “You said you wouldn’t tell anyone!” the S-ranked elf gasped.

  “Oh, come on, Andihar,” his wife said. “It’s cute!”

  Thalandi and Uja arrived fifteen minutes later together with Clan Leader Gul and Eik’s father Rasmus whom they had met on the way. A Living Manifestation many times more powerful than both women put together shoved a stack of magazines into Uja’s arms and melted into the ground in the next moment.

  Eik came out carrying a large bowl filled to the brim with fruit salad. “Welcome. Uja, I heard you were interested in Earth architecture. Forest can’t offer much on that front but take a look in those. They’re filled with pictures of buildings built in an age where nobody knew of the Unified Mass, monsters, super powers, or any of that stuff.”

  With stars for eyes, she took a seat at the table and started riffling through the pages, ooh’ing and aah’ing at the many pictures. Thanks to the translation skill commonly used to ease inter-civilizational communication, she could even read the articles. Thalandi, in a fashion very unlike her usual demeanor, nodded gratefully to him.

  Following his advice to just come out and tell her parents about her formerly secret relationship with Uja had led to the best result she could have hoped for—enthusiastic acceptance. Something that had been weighing on her shoulders for years had suddenly turned and become a source of joy. Ever since then, she almost never got mad at him anymore.

  “Thank you for the lovely invitation, Ihasu,” Molanda said. “What’s the occasion?”

  Ihasu laughed awkwardly. “Well, in the beginning it was just because Bin was asking to have everybody over for lunch. Then she mentioned a boy from her school—a boy she… likes,” she whispered. “And Eik is not so happy about that.”

  “Ah,” Molanda said with a nod of understanding. “I see the trouble. Although it turned out differently in the end, Thalandi did have a brief period where she was interested in boys. I had to drag Andihar home from his spy missions at least a handful of times when she went out with friends back then. I once had to drag him out of a bush from which he had been watching her sit on a bench and eating snacks with a boy. He was in full armor.”

  Ihasu couldn’t help but laugh at that mental image. “I’ll be happy if that’s all Eik does. He was already muttering nonsense under his breath while cutting meat to roast earlier.”

  Unfortunately, neither Robert nor Olivia had time to come by today. Olivia was busy dealing with the million plus tasks to be handled in Forest where she had taken up position as the de facto leader—at least temporarily until a proper council could be elected.

  Robert was on a date.

  When finally Philip arrived with his mom and dad, Eik almost managed to get two massive Living Manifestations stationed on either side of their little garden fence gate before Ihasu made him drop the idea.

  “Hi, Philip!” Bin called from the table where she was sneaking a taste of the fruit salad, Goo already on his way over to do the same. “Let’s see if we can find my cat!”

  “You never said you have a cat!” the boy exclaimed and made to run after her, but his mother grabbed him by the wrist before he could disappear with Bin.

  “You will greet our hosts first, young man. And you will thank them for inviting us for such a lovely lunch,” she said.

  Keeping his head down as much as he could while still meeting Eik and Ihasu’s eyes, the boy spoke very quietly. “Thank you for inviting me over, Mr. and Mrs…” his eyes flickered quickly around as he tried to think of the right way to address them. “Mr. and Mrs. Bin’s mom and dad…?”

  Okay, that was pretty funny, Eik had to admit, but he wasn’t about to show it on his face in front of this little shit.

  “You’re very welcome, Philip,” Ihasu said, the boy appearing to get lost in her bright, orange eyes for a moment. “Bin has told us that you’re a very good friend to her.”

  “Woah, your eyes are so sick, Bin’s mom!” Philip breathed, all signs of the timidity from moments before seemingly evaporated.

  “Sick?” Ihasu asked, glancing at Eik for answers.

  “Uuh, sorry, he means cool,” Philips father hurried to correct nervously.

  “Why is Bin green but you guys aren’t?”

  “Philip!” his mother gasped. “I’m so sorry. I forgot my son was apparently raised by cavemen.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Ihasu said with a knowing smile. “I have plenty of experience dealing with cavemen,” she chuckled with an elbow in Eik’s ribs. Philip’s mother grinned. “And, Philip, we are not Bin’s biological parents. She came to us some years ago and we’ve grown into a real family since.”

  The boy just shrugged. “That’s normal. A bunch of kids in our class are like that.” That struck Eik like a blow to the stomach. But he knew the statistics well—a horrific number of children had been orphaned over the years.

  One of the greatest demonstrations of human love and compassion was the fact that most of them were taken in by other families and raised as their own. It was an amazing thing to witness among the many terrible things in the world.

  But not all kids had someone to take them in, and that was why Eik considered one of his greatest achievements to be the establishment of multiple, well-equipped and well-staffed orphanages all over Forest. And if ever they should be insufficient to handle the number of orphans, Eik already had a standing order in place to build whatever was necessary.

  “Can I go now, mom?” Philip asked.

  “Yeah, go on, honey,” his mother said and he ran off. “Anyway, I think I’ve forgotten to introduce myself. I’m Philip’s mother, Rebecca.” She shook Ihasu’s hand and then Eik’s.

  “And I’m Philip,” said his father, shaking hands as well.

  “I’m Bin’s mom, Ihasu. Excuse me but did you say your name is Philip as well? Is that an Earth custom?”

  “Yes, it’s not uncommon for the son to take his father’s name.”

  “Very interesting,” Andihar said, coming up behind them along with the other guests to greet the newcomers. “I’d love to hear a bit more about this, if you don’t mind.”

  “I’d be happy to,” Philip Senior said with a smile, his eyes clearly going to the S-ranker’s pointed elf ears with badly concealed curiosity. “May I ask your name?”

  “Ah, how rude of me!” Eik exclaimed, stepping in. “Let me introduce everybody properly.”

  Ihasu sent him a look daring him to do what he was about to.

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