The Inexpressible Story [18+]

Chapter Three

Our group, now slightly more in tune with the better wave, headed back to the round door through which they passed in the overcrowded marketplace. It was hard to tell if this door was the only one in the long wall, or perhaps it was brimming with magical powers, perhaps the new elven acquaintance had enlisted the magic abilities he possessed. Either way, an entirely different nature appeared before the human's eyes. Instead of deciduous trees, massive conifers the color of fallen leaves - yellow, red, orange, brown (though I've heard that brown doesn't actually exist, it's just orange with less saturation), caramel-colored shiny grass. Autumn from magazine. The sky still azure blue, no sign of the end of the day in sight, a bird flitting somewhere in the heights and a strangely winged lizard that made friends rub their eyes when they saw it. They could not believe what they were seeing. Of course they all regretted it immediately, shadow and mascara plastered on their hands, eyes like pandas. The most they could do was wipe themselves on their clothes, which no one wanted to do. And so they threw mocking grins at each other, each feeling slightly embarrassed inside. On some of the arboris specimens grew purple acorns, hazelnuts, you would have looked in vain for pine cones. Once again, everyone's minds were working at full speed, the group's independent thinking about the local world was interrupted by about an hour of tiring marching in new wannabe boots, surprisingly quite comfortable and as a big plus I should mention that they did not form blisters, Thella's stomach, which gave a loud speech about its existence. It was a pitiful ode indeed and made all present sympathize from the bottom of their hearts. T-Elk had planned to walk a much longer stretch before the first stop, but in the end, he himself acknowledged that it would be appropriate to settle down for a while, perhaps eliciting some information from the glorious ladies. He would like to learn a little about them before their paths parted, and that was to happen in a few days. If only the poor fellow knew that plans for a quiet and speedy journey would be thwarted-oh, I would almost give away the future plot! Pardon my profanity, it's (not) going to happen anymore. The expedition camped, but not literally, by two uprooted logs with no branches. Ez slowly sat down first with a sigh, Thellasia's ass tossed right next to her. Lily dusted off the perfectly clean bark out of habit, inspected her palm, and sat down as well with great distrust.
"I'm hungry. Give me something," Thella said in annoyance, her friends' lips pressed into a straight line. "And don't you dare touch me, or I'll break a few of your fingers..."T-Elk raised his eyebrows in surprise, fished in his own bag, and carefully handed the sandwiches to the women. Immediately afterwards, he pulled out glass canteens of water and placed them at their ankles. They all gave embarrassed thanks, Thella digging into her food as if she hadn't eaten in a week, and she fasted quite regularly at home. Ez chewed the croissant-shaped pastry in her hands for a moment, waiting to see what would happen to her friend after swallowing the first bite. If she'd get poisoned, throw up, or maybe...
"M-may I ask what's in that sandwich?" the blonde blurted out. She didn't want to be ungrateful, but being in a strange world wasn't a reason to suddenly deviate from years of habit and moral values either."Oh sure, lettuce, tomato-"Thella stopped chewing and looked in horror at the almost-eaten morsel. "Tomato?" She hated tomatoes. If there was only one food in the world and that was these red balls, she'd rather starve to death unless they could be turned into passata or tomato soup, she wouldn't be able to devour the sauce either. But here she didn't detect any tomato aftertaste. Maybe because the local tomatoes tasted completely different, but I can't tell you how, as the flavour is not comparable to anything that grows on Mother Earth."Yes. And also cucumber, cheese, salami and mayonnaise, I think maybe some spices.""Sorry, I don't think I'll have any," she handed the frenchy-roll back to the elf."Not hungry?"
"Well, not to be picky or ungrateful, but I don't eat meat."T-Elk stared in incomprehension for a moment before a green light went off in his head."But we don't consume meat either. In the entire country, well, other countries, in fact the entire continent, eating carrion is strictly forbidden. After all, it's life-threatening, we'd get poisoned. Everything you see here is purely vegetable. Even this cheese, animal cheese, might not suit you."Vegan paradise, Lily thought, and with disbelief, she ate the roll, sorry, croissant, after much persuasion. What if he was lying? On the other hand, why would he lie? He might as well let her starve, he might take pleasure in watching a man do what was against his will. It didn't really taste like classic salami. It didn't even smell, she had time to inspect and sniff all the items it contained before swallowing."Didn't you say," Ez spoke up, "that our stomachs aren't suited to your food?""I give you only what your predecessors have ingested without subsequent difficulty."But he had no idea how susceptible Ezra's intestines were to the slightest change in diet. Even with the constant monotonous diet, they were nauseous. Because they could and wanted to."Well, if you've finished eating, you could tell me a little about yourself. I've never met a human woman before."No one knew what to say. What exactly could he possibly be so interested in? Any information on physiology? Or just superficial anatomy? Surely not, surely elves and humans look the same, breed the same, the only difference being the length of the ear cartilage and the ability to cast magic. Only in some individuals, of course. Yet none possessed the necessary amount of relevant information to be able to give an elf the most boring interpretation in his who knows how long life.
"How come you've never met a woman? I mean, human? Does Iris only let men in here?" Ez asked."Not exactly. One woman made it to our world and hasn't come back home yet.""Is she alive?" Thella jumped into the elf's speech."Of course she is. According to the news I received a while ago, she is doing exceedingly well.""And where is she? How come you haven't met her yet? Didn't she want to herself? I mean, she must have been rotting here for at least 30 years?" Thella spouted more and more questions. T-Elk sat nervously, preferring to drop the topic of "Chosen One" altogether, at least for now. He sighed."An opportunity presented itself to spend the day together. For personal reasons, I declined. But let's not talk about something so boring now.""I wonder what all you've heard about us? I'm sure the gentlemen present have regaled you with many interesting tidbits," with Lily uttering the last word as ironically as she could.
"You're right. From the information we have received, we know that for a long time you had almost no rights, and your only job was to produce offspring and take care of the household, i.e. to clean and cook. You are also said to be incapable in all sports, mostly because you are smaller and weaker. One gentleman even tried to suggest to us that you have smaller skulls, hence much smaller brains, and so you must, logically, be much stupider, which no one with even a modicum of intellect could believe. On the other hand, we know that the human species itself is not particularly intelligent. You are also not adapted to driving carriages, such an activity is supposed to be too complicated for your brains to comprehend, you are only interested in clothes and various decorations, you like to accumulate piles of unnecessary things and refuse to give them up, even if they take up space in your home unnecessarily. Also, you are not looking for a partner based on character traits, but on the volume of assets. Animals of the animal kingdom behave the same way, so we probably never found anything strange about this finding." He just put us humans on the same level as the animals. But the latter should be a class above, because they don't destroy the habitats of their own and other species for no reason. They don't try to exterminate everything living and non-living for a few silly pieces of paper with some sort of value. "Oh yes, communicating with you is difficult, no man is able to find out what you want because you refuse to discuss it. If a problem arises, you say there is none, but then you get angry and nasty, shouting at men for being incompetent and stupid. On the other hand, you like to prattle on for hours about boring and uninteresting topics like other people and their problems. But despite all that, you are fragile and tender, you like to take care of others. And yourself, but we see nothing wrong with too much personal hygiene.  And you also eat strangely, you follow so-called diets and exercise to be constantly thin and look like a thirteen-year-old."
Lily, being a proper feminist who hates all the men in the world, both human and now non-human, stood up angrily, her face as red as the aforementioned dark-haired woman's very favorite fruit, and started screaming at the elf for being just like everyone else, a misogynist, an ignoramus, she also incorporated fatphobia and general appearance into this, because a woman doesn't necessarily take care of herself, i.e., slather on ten 20k lotions, shave her legs and armpits, if there was room, she would also get on the subject of proper gender pronouns and intolerance with the inability to accept and use them appropriately in practice.