AVIS IN BETWEEN (Lesbian)

Part 20 AVIS IS A WELCOME EAR

The blue planet in all her full beauty is outdazzling all stars and galaxy arms in northern hour. It is perilously close as if about to fall from the skys.

The portal door was opened not far from the center, according to the guard. He nicely explained to me how to get there, but I keep on standing and watching parading crowds of lovely dressed people even late at night, but rarest of all are the birds everywhere. I let my eyes linger in the sky staring at two flying martins, and I almost missed a lanky mage in a blue tunic.

"I beg your pardon, Mage!" He nods absently.

"I'm sorry," I bleat meekly, watching his body explode into sparkling pieces and collect into a blackbird.

He was so bashful when I asked him to transform, and she was so pissed about it! It's personal; it's intimate... Balls! He just didn't want to "underneath" in front of me and his marigold girlfriend, and she was angry because she didn't like me giving orders to her boyfriend and watching him showing off! I was so blind! There's nothing special about shifting, only for overemotional and sensitive village sillies. I ought to have more friends among adults here! Balls! Balls! Balls!

Brooding sorrowfully, I decide to take the line of least resistance and follow blindly some passers-by who are joyfully walking to the center.

Soon enough, all roads lead to the street with hot spots and eateries. I overheard one mage girl saying to her swain that she "awfully want to visit Duck 'n Duke Tavern!"

On the opposite side of the road there is a two-storey building. The ground floor is a tavern with a numerous lattice windows on both sides of the massive door and a swinging wooden sign in a shape of a duck is hanging above; it is so faded and old that it could be an amoeba as well.

I let my feet move.

When I enter it, I feel like a foreigner who is coming into some western movie saloon full of cowboys. And then there is a typical awful silence: people are staring at me and my black ball dress, but a moment passes away, and they all start minding their mugs with foamy beer and ale, roasted ribs, fried mushrooms of strange forms, and round potatoes decorated with onion stems and parsley.

"I can't believe my own eyes!" cried out a massive man behind the bar. "I thought you were as dead as a coffin nail, a food for some nasty sentinels!" Someone knocks on the wood and spits three times. "Little Avi in my humble and most dishonorable establishment!" he roars with laughter, running to me with all elephant grace. I can't breathe when he traps me in his bear embrace. The man in a greyish linen shirt, that used to be white, is even bigger when he is not behind the bar counter.

"Stop rubbing this sissy and bring me my ale!" cries someone from behind the wooden balk.

"I will rub your ribs with my fists and a club if you don't stop yelling, Kip!" The tavern keeper cries back with the same vigor, winking at me. "Let me look at you, baby girl!" He is turning me with his big arms like a wheel. "You are so thin! Were you fed? Did dark mages keep you in prison all this time? You need a big plateful of a pork chop and a large mug of dark beer. Ohh, little bird. I'm so, so sorry about your foster parents! They were good birdpeople, such a loss! You've just come and take it: two dead parents at once! First your real parents, then your foster sister and..." He sheds a quite tear, petting my head with his shovel palm.

"Jazav!!!"

"I'm coming, you son of a bitch!" his voice is like the trumpet call of Jericho. "I'll come to you later, baby bird! Feel like home and order some food... Where is that rascal, my helper?! Why the hell nobody is serving that table?" he leaves me as faster as he came, giving a thick ear to some boy with a heap of dirty plates in his suntanned hands.