Eslar startled when he opened the door; clearly she was not the person he’d been expecting. “Josephina?”
“May I come in?” she asked outright. She was practically ready to force her way in if she had to, and judging from Eslar’s expression, the fact was likely written across her face.
“Is everything all right with the wish?” He held firm, blocking her entry and taking up nearly all available space in the door so that Jo could barely get a glimpse of his room.
“Yeah, I just had a few questions to ask. It may take a minute though. So, may I come in?” Jo repeated, continuing to attempt to stare him down.
“All right, then,” he said finally, as though they’d had a conversation without her realizing it.
The elf stepped aside, and Jo stepped in past his tall, lithe frame.
“Have a seat, should it please you,” Eslar murmured, gliding past her.
Jo’s eyes followed his path through the room, but not the man himself. She was too distracted by everything around Eslar to give him too much attention.
The room was a perfect circle. The roof was supported by thick columns on the outer edge, belling out at the bottom and tapering at the top. Between the two behind her was a wall, attached to what, from this side, appeared to be a grand palace. It stretched on in either direction from the door to Eslar’s room, windows breaking its surface, offering glimpses of places you couldn’t get to and the movement of people who didn’t exist.
Sheer, multicolored fabrics hung from between the columns, wafting in a light breeze. The wind picked up, unhindered over the large pool of water surrounding the room. The circular area where she now stood was surrounded by large lily pads that were lazily floating by, flashes of emerald catching sunlight for an instant before winking out of sight. The pool was contained by a low wall, and beyond that, a forest of crystalline trees shimmered happily in the daylight.
Eslar sat down in one of two circular, recessed areas. The shimmering crystal inlays of the floor sunk into pillows and blankets of equally vibrant colors. One was clearly for sleeping; Jo moved to the other one, albeit slowly. She was still taking in the chimes singing from the ceiling, hung at different intervals, and the ornate table far opposite her.
The fantastical, grandiose lavishness of it all was almost enough to make her forget her purpose for being there.Almost.
“What is it that you wanted to ask, Josephina?”
“Oh, right. . .” She debated where to start. Jo quickly decided it was best to dip her toes in, test the waters between them, before diving right in to questions about the Society. The smell of smoke and a dead computer lingered in her nose, offering a potential avenue to begin. “Well, first, quick question. . . Have you, or any other member of the team that you know of, ever had the recreation room. . . not work? Like something inside it maybe acted funny or malfunctioned or something?”
Eslar merely stared at her, contemplative. The look prompted Jo to elaborate with a quick clearing of her throat.
“One of my monitors stopped working for some reason,” she said, delicately keeping out the part about it sparking and imploding the moment she’d touched it. “Has something like that ever happened before?”
“Things are high stress right now,” he said finally, voice calming in its certainty, even if Jo didn’t quite believe him. “Perhaps the room was simply reacting to your current mental state?”
“I think my mental state is fine.”
“Do you? Given the nature of this wish? And so soon after Nico?”
The mere mention of Nico had Jo looking away. His name was like an open wound she’d been trying to ignore. There had been no time for grief, though the memory of their dear friend haunted them all like a ghost.
“I think it’s fine. . .” Jo insisted, picking at the floor. The crystal inlays here were so perfectly flush that there wasn’t even a groove for her nail to catch in. She used it as an opportunity to change the topic, not wanting to allow either of them to linger on Nico’s memory. “Your room is beautiful, by the way.”
“I suppose it is rather . . . unique,” he said without even lifting his head from the book he’d propped open on his lap. “Especially for someone from the Age of Man.”
“Age of Man?”
He gave her a quizzical look. “You came from it and you don’t know?”
“Oh.” Just that much and Jo could put it together. Still, he explained.
“The Age of Man followed the Age of Magic. It was an apt name for a time when magic no longer ruled.”
Eslar’s eyes scanned the pages of his massive tome. It was as though she hadn’t come into his room at all. He was completely lost, engrossed, escaped to the world between the pages because the reality he was faced with was too much to bear.
“Was this common, in the Age of Magic? A room like this?”
Eslar said nothing, flipping the page. In fact, he flipped several pages. Jo waited, not moving, not saying anything else. He had another thing coming if he genuinely thought he could avoid her. She wasn’t about to allow herself to be relegated back to hours of fruitless research without at least getting a new lead from him.
Finally, a blank page showed up, breaking the lines of elvish runes—a new chapter, she guessed. With a hefty sigh and no more words left to conveniently hide between, he finally answered her question. “It’s reminiscent of the elvish summer palaces by the sea. We would go there on springtide to re-attune our magics with the greater cosmos.”
