About one and a half weeks later, I was staring at my underused wardrobe facing a dilemma.

  I had only three options to dress myself, really: my standard, simple black dress, the slightly tattered black dress I use for travelling, or the black stola with golden embroideries I only wear during the Winter Ball. The first might be too bland, the second too ratty, and the last too formal.

  Like I said, it was a dilemma.

  I sighed and resigned myself to dressing in my standard black dress, however I cast a quick spell to braid my hair in a loose braid, that I hung over my shoulder. A compromise born from the fact that I was, for the first time in millennia, running late.

  I returned to my living room, where I’d made Fluminix wait for me. The infant dragon was really getting big as she was approaching the size of a large dog. It made me fear that I’d need to enlarge my doors soon enough. Not just my own, but several doors all over the school…

  That might be a bit of a problem.

  Not one I needed to solve today, nor right at this moment, so I ushered Fluminix to follow me and left my chambers.

  And entered those across the hall without knocking.

  “Watch over her for me, will you?” I sort of asked, but really just told Eweleanor to.

  The interrupted sheepkin in question looked up from her couch with a confused look. “Why?”

  “I, uh, have a thing,” I confusingly answered, as I made an equally confusing face. Truth be told, I didn’t even quite know what it was I was going on in a moment. I had never done anything like it before, and it wasn’t like we named it as anything.

  It was a rather confusing, and admittedly nerve-inducing, thing I was going on.

  How exciting it was.

  “A thing?” she asked with a frown, before she got up and tried to stare me down. Which, obviously, failed miserably.

  “Yeah, a thing,” I said with a shrug, and ushered Fluminix farther into Eweleanor’s living room. “Anyway, I’m running late. I’ll pick her up in the morning.”

  With a heavy sigh she accepted the inevitable, and I left the sheepkin’s chambers, before making my way down to the main courtyard where we had agreed to meet up.

  Already waiting there for me, wearing simple, but rather elegant, dark green dress, was Seren. Her wavy, auburn hair had been wrangled into a messy bun that quite suited her, I found.

  “Sorry for being a bit late,” I said in lieu of a greeting.

  She timidly shook her head. “Oh, no, I didn’t wait long.”

  I nodded slowly. “Good.”

  We proceeded to just stand there looking at each other but not quite looking at each other. I supposed it was one of those awkward things people did where they weren’t quite sure what to do and how to proceed, but also didn’t want the other to quite know that they were looking at the other.

  It was how I felt, at least.

  I softly cleared my throat.

  “So, um, shall we?” I asked, as I held out my elbow out in offer.

  She startled out her own state.

  “Ah, yeah, we shall,” she said, as she hesitantly locked her elbow into my offered one, before we set off towards the school’s main gate.

  “So, um, you look lovely,” I said awkwardly, which I immediately scolded myself for. I’m two thousand years old, for Vespera’s sake, why was I being so awkward about all of this?

  “Thank you,” Seren answered with a blush I almost failed to see. “You too.”

  I chuckled softly. “Even though, I basically look the same as normal?”

  Her face was suddenly almost matched the colour of her hair, and she could only mutter, “Maybe you just always look good?”

  I half choked on my chuckle and would have blushed if such responses were still automated for me, and I still had blood. “Right…”

  An awkward, but not uncomfortable silence fell over us, as we made our way down the hill towards the bridge over the Fides River to the village.

  “You know what’s kind of troubling me?” I asked as we crossed the bridge.

  “No?” she answered, unsurely.

  “I’m actually on the tall side for my generation,” I said, as I looked up at her. She was about half a head taller than me, which actually kind of peeved me. Well, maybe not really her height, but the fact that I was, nowadays, considered small.

  Time was a cruel mistress. Or maybe mister. I didn’t know how time self-identified.

  Seren tittered apologetically. “Sorry, there’s little I can do about it. I could walk with my knees bend, maybe? Like most mammals do.”

  I laughed softly. “While that would be fun to see, I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable on my behalf. I’ve survived worse than a bit of height troubles.”

  “What kind of things have you survived?” she asked, as she opened the door to one of the two taverns the village had.

  Both taverns offered essential the same and looked practically identical, so there was no real distinction between them. This one was simply a few paces closer, and I overheard some people at the school mention it was a good place to go to have a meal and a drink. I’d never been there myself, though I do believe it was the older one of the two.

  Once we had seated ourselves in a bit of a secluded spot that offered a view of the river through a nearby window.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “Oh, just some family drama,” I settled on saying.

  I couldn’t very well unload all of it on our first… meeting? Date? Was this a date? What even was a date? They did really exist yet back when I last… engaged with someone like this. We just called it courting. I suspected they were more or less the same thing; you’d start off keeping things light and simple to get to know one another.

  “Ah,” Seren said, whilst looking a little disappointed. “I guess isn’t something that’s easy to talk about.”

  I mulled my past over for a bit.

  “No,” I said honestly with a shake of my head. “No, not really. It’s… a lot.”

  She nodded and seemed to accept it, before a waiter came to take our orders. He was a bit surprised to see me here, and ordering food and drinks for myself, at that. Okay, he was more than a bit surprised, he looked like the heavens would come crashing down, or that his favoured deity would descend any moment, or something. I couldn’t be bothered with deciphering his expression.

  “So, how about your own family?” I asked as the waiter had left.

  “Hm?” she asked, looking a bit lost, before her eyes widened. “Oh, my family is rather normal, I suppose. A long line of farmers that have lived on the same farm. Youngest of three. Always went to church each Sunday. You know, normal family stuff.”

  I suppressed the desire to wince at the mention of the Church. It wasn’t news to me, as I already knew that she’d gone to the mass at the school on Luminous Day.

  “Sounds nice,” I said after a beat to make sure I’d sound believable.

  Another awkward, but not uncomfortable, silence filled the air between us, as neither of us knew where to steer the conversation next. Though this one didn’t last as long.

  “There’s something about you that reminds me of my late husband,” I mused aloud, as the waiter brought us both a glass and placed a bottle of red wine between us after filling both glasses.

  “I do?” Seren asked as she blinked her eyes. “How so?”

  I hummed thoughtfully, as I picked up my glass. “I’m not quite sure yet. You just have something… disarming about you, much like he had.”

  Her mouth opened in an O, before she shyly sipped on her wine. “How long ago did you lose him?”

  I sipped my own wine, as I mulled over how to frame it.

  “A while now,” I settled on, as I lowered my glass and placed it back on the table.

  “I see…” she said, as she cradled her glass and frowned at it, before looking up at me with a questing look. “Was he your… only one?”

  “Only one, what? I asked, feeling confused.

  She took a rather big sip of her wine, before she expanded on her question, “Your only ex?”

  I sucked in a breath, as this was not an easy question for me to answer. Not with today’s views on sexuality and romance.

  “Sexual or romantic?” I asked, regardless.

  She blinked in surprise at me. “There’s a difference?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t rightly know. I just know there is for me, and for some asexuals, so presumably so.”

  She fidgeted with her wineglass for a moment, before taking a deep breath. “Both…?”

  I nodded and sat up a bit straighter, not that I wasn’t already sitting with perfect posture.

  “Only two, romantically. A servant girl in my teens, and my late husband. Sexually…” I started, before becoming hesitant to continue. “I haven’t actually kept count.”

  “Oh…” she practically sighed, as she deflated in her seat.

  “I, uh, went to quite a few orgies back then,” I explained further, for some reason, as my chair suddenly felt rather uncomfortable. It was weird, as I wasn’t exactly ashamed of my sexual past. It was just… “But it has been a while since I’ve been to any. In fact, I have actually, you know, been with anyone since my husband died.”

  My words seemed to have an improving effect on her, as she sat a bit straighter and put her glass down to lean forward on the table. “Did he know? Your husband, I mean?”

  “About the orgies?” I asked, before continuing at her nod. “Oh, yeah, he partook as well. I think we actually met at one, if I recall correctly… Well, the first meeting, at least, not our official meeting. My memories of those orgies are a bit… hazy, to be honest. Lots of, uh, substances going around during those. Great stress relievers, though.”

  She giggled a little and seemed to actually be growing interested in my sexual past. “And this continued through your marriage?”

  “Oh, yeah, we went to one, or organised one ourselves, about once or twice a week,” I continued, even though the waiter delivered our food right at that moment. “I made sure all of my children were his, though. It wasn’t right, or proper, for me to have children with some stranger.”

  “Really?” she asked, not even looking at the food that was placed before her. “How did you manage that?”

  I shrugged and stuck my fork in the piece of pork? Honestly, I didn’t even know what I’d ordered. “The morning-after spell is one of the oldest spells for a reason. I just used it after, to kill anything in my uterus.”

  She snorted so hard, some spittle actually landed on my plate. Not that I acted like I’d noticed it.

  “I’ve never heard anyone acknowledge it so bluntly before,” she said, as she finally let her attention drift towards the food on her plate. “But, yeah, it definitely would ensure your kids would be his. Did he have any, you know, bastards himself?”

  I snorted in amusement in between bites. “Oh, definitely. He had about a dozen to two dozen, or so, of them. Not a clue as to what happened to them after his passing.”

  She raised an eyebrow as she put a piece of potato in her mouth. “You don’t care about them?”

  I swallowed my bite of what was definitely pork and shrugged slightly. “Not really. They weren’t mine.”

  “Cold,” she said with a teasing smirk, before taking a sip of the wineglass she’d placed against her lips.

  I huffed and smirked right back. Two can play at that game, and this one I was quite experienced in. Just rusted.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say I’m cold,” I said calmly. “Merely dedicated to what’s mine.”

  “And what do you consider to be yours?” she probed, though I could see that her confidence in her ability to tease me was crumbling.

  “Paideia. The school. The faculty. The students, whilst they are in the care of the school. Fluminix, for as long as she wishes to remain with me,” I listed, before I calmly took a few bites.

  “All of the faculty?” she asked with an exaggerated flutter of her eyelashes.

  I chuckled, before I shrugged slightly. “Some perhaps more than others.”

  She leaned forward. “And whom amongst them do you care about more?”

  I placed my fork and knife down, before I leaned forward on my elbows and folded my hands under my chin. “Eweleanor.”

  I could see the disappointment form on her face, and it made me smirk in amusement. “And perhaps you.”

  Her face lit up and her cheeks reddened, as she sat back upright in a vain attempt to feigned ignorance. “I–I see. And here I was hoping you considered the animals to be yours as well.”

  “Oh, I do, don’t worry,” I said in between a victorious laugh. “I don’t take kindly to people violating the sanctuary of the forest.”

  “I’m glad,” she said with a relieved sigh. Though, her cheeked remained rather reddened. Now that I thought about it, they’d been that way pretty much her first sip of wine.

  “You don’t drink that often, do you?” I inquired with a raised eyebrow.

  Her cheeks reddened further. “No, not really. I’m fine, though. Just a little warm.”

  I scrutinized her with a thoughtful hum. “Alright. Just don’t feel like you have to match me in drinking. Alcohol doesn't affect me, unless I want it to.”

  “How do you mean?” she asked with a confused look, and I realised I’d slipped up a little.

  “I’m magically removing its effect, whilst I’m drinking,” I said in an attempt to smooth my mistake over. Not that it was an outright lie. I mean, as a lich I can turn bodily functions off, or on, whenever I wanted to. And I had no desire to get drunk, so alcohol isn’t affecting my body because I don’t let it enter my body.

  “Hmm, if you say so,” she said in a sing-song tone, not really believing me.

  “So, we’ve talked about me and my exes, what about yours?” I asked to steer the conversation away from me and any topics I might not want to discuss. It was, after all, nice to spend time with someone who didn’t see me as a dangerous lich, or worse, saw my claimed past in me.

  She proceeded to tell me about how she’d never been with anyone before, that she’d never really been interested in anyone, before she talked on end about ever single animal her family had and used to have. There were a lot of them.

  Still, it was a pleasant conversation with pleasant company over a pleasant dinner.

  By the time we walked back to the school, she was slightly drunk and leaning on me to steady herself. So, I walked her to her chambers behind the school, before I returned to my own.

  It was only when I’d step inside and had been sitting in a daze on my couch for, I don’t know how long, that I noticed that I was feeling awfully bloated. In fact, my stomach was bulging quite a bit, which confused me as I hadn’t eaten that much.

  It was only then that I remembered I needed to activate my digestive tract, something I didn’t have a need for in the past two millennia.

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