"SHEA!" She hollered his name, stretched it out into one long, desperate note.

"What was that," Shea asked, abruptly nonplussed.

He was suddenly sheepish about the acts he had committed beneath Telor's feet, as good as he had felt in the throes of that experience. It was all so deviant, and so raw.

"That sounds like my. . ."

"Yes, it is. Of course it is." Telor replied dryly, every word blunt and heavy. The elf sighed. "What a nuisance."

Telor rose and whirled. He walked swiftly to the front of the tent to pull its flaps closed.

Shea straightened, his body sore all over from how the elf had sat atop him; his face ached from the attention the man's feet had paid him—their alluring scent lingered on his flesh.

There was salt, still, on Shea's lips.

The youth's thoughts whirled. "I should go. I can take mother home, and come back when—"

"No."

"But I—"

In the auburn gloom, Telor's face snapped toward Shea. His starry eyes locked on the boy; they burned with an unearthly glow. Flickering firelight picked out the hard lines of the elf's angular visage.

The Master appeared wolfish in that wash of illumination; demonic; beautiful.

Telor strode over to the fire and grabbed the rabbit on its spit. He brandished the rod toward Shea—aimed its other end at Shea's neck like a sword point.

"Eat."

Shea's mind raced on and on, but his body was stiff. Mechanically he lifted the hot spit by its cooler ends, and blew smoke from the charred rabbit.

A part of Shea was glad to have something to do other than worry as his mother approached. Go away! his mind cried. Another part of his fraught core wanted to charge out there to shoo his mother away from this holy space he shared with the elf, which was pregnant with discoveries that fed Shea's very soul.

Yet Shea could not chance Telor's anger. If he fell from the gorgeous man's grace, Shea knew that he would not go on.

He also could not repress the angry, painful pit that had formed from the emptiness in his stomach.

A bit of rabbit was torn off between his teeth; gratefully he chewed the sweet, crisp meat. His eyes flickered between Telor—who loomed beside the entrance of the tent like a spider that waited on its web—and to that narrow slit between the tent's drawn flaps, where Shea could just barely peer out into the hissing drizzle.

As the boy swallowed his meal and took another bite, a shape—a blurry shadow—moved through the haze. 

The shape grew larger. Mia neared the tent.

No!

The boy perked up and opened his mouth to warn the elf, but one glare from the man silenced him. Thoughts dashed, Shea bit into the rabbit again. He chewed with a steady automatic rhythm and watched impotently as his mother continued along her path of doom.

It was as if Shea was not there at all—that his eyes floated in space without any body.

Mia called out. Her hesitation as to the tent's occupancy was clear in her voice. She paused; she crept forward in the slick flurry, no doubt determined to take at least a peek. She would check for her son no matter how slim the chance that he might be inside the mysterious structure, and no matter what danger awaited her.

Shea glanced at Telor. His trepidation peaked as Mia pushed her way in through the tent's flaps.

His mother was drenched, and her face was haggard, but when her eyes fell upon Shea she instantly relaxed. It was as if a ghost that had haunted her finally let her be, and she raced forward to embrace her son.

Shea held the spit off to the side and cried out, unsure of what to say or do as Telor's twinkling gaze regarded him. The elf had not moved from his shadowed corner behind Mia.

"Oh, Shea! Why did you run off without saying anything? Where are we? What is all this?" Mia's mind, freed from its exhaustion, quickly caught up with her words. She pulled away from her son; she fixed Shea with a sharp look. "The elf. Oh no. Shea. Please don't tell me... We must leave at once!"

"Mother," Shea began, but his dried-out throat forced him to swallow. He could not say another word: he was torn between his new loyalty to Telor, and his care for his mother.

So he shut down.

Shea froze.

Mia tugged at Shea; she tried to remove the spit from his hands, but he would not let it go. The woman appraised him with shock, appeared as wounded as she might had he slapped her.

"Why are you acting like this," Mia asked in a panic. "Shea?"

His mother's voice, face, her entire being was shaken by fear; teary brown eyes searched his.

"Please," she whispered, "please, we have to go!"

"Leave me!" Shea cried as his own eyes teared up.

Mia gasped.

She had not detected Telor as he crept across the room. All at once the lithe being—over a head taller than either human—had a hand on Shea's chest and pushed him away from his mother with a triumphant chortle.

"You're not going anywhere," the elf proclaimed, deep and sardonic.

But Telor leered viciously down toward Mia, not Shea.

Mia threw her hands up in front of her face and shrieked—the sound was new and terrible to Shea.

Telor shoved her; with a quick hop onto one foot, he brought his other leg up to kick Mia in her side.

Bone snapped in a clear report of the damage done. The small woman crumpled to the ground in a heap and wept.

Telor laughed and walked across Mia. He purposefully trampled her prone form with his large feet as he moved to retrieve something from the other side of the tent: a flamboyantly dyed pouch tied closed with a prismatic ribbon.

"Mother!" Shea called as he rose. He clutched the spit as if it might protect him, or Mia—as if he was afraid to lose Telor's offering to him.

Telor turned; "Down, pet!" he barked. The elf hurried across the space and loomed over Shea. "This fool needs to learn what happens to rebellious creatures."

"Please, don't hurt her," Shea cried.

"Oh, I will hurt her," Telor hissed. "And if you get in my way, I'll hurt you, too!"

Shea shrank back; Telor leaned in.

"You can't stop what I do, little one. You can only serve me and hope that I don't do the same to you." The elf's sing-song voice dropped into a wicked baritone: "Do you want me to hurt you? Humans need to be taught their place, doll, just as you did. And here I thought you were doing so well. Do you falter, now? Am I your Master?"

Shea's meek little face bobbed.

"Good." Telor placed a hand on the top of Shea's head. "Then eat. . ."

His hand slid down Shea's cheek, his chin.

"And watch. . ."

Telor's strong fingers seized Shea's slender neck and he glared down his nose at him.

"And learn!"

The elf released Shea, and turned away.

Teeth tore into the rabbit's fat thigh, chewed. Lips and throat muscles suppressed any rogue whimpers as Shea watched his mother writhe, incapacitated by Telor's brutal strike. She cradled her snapped ribs; she wore wide-eyed surprise.

Telor hovered over her. He placed a foot on Mia's shoulder and forced her to lie flat beneath him.

"Meddle in my affairs, will you?"

Telor loosened the shimmering bow on the pouch he carried, dipped his fingers into its depths.

"Get between me and my new toy?"

The elf stooped and held up his hand, poised as if to blow a kiss; brilliant sparkles winked from the ends of his fingertips, like miniature fires—pinprick sprites that danced across his flesh.

"So be it. You can join my games, woman."

Telor scattered the sparks with his breath. They flew from his fingertips in a twinkling cloud, like lit granules of pollen. The embers drifted downward onto Mia's worried face and disappeared soon after they touched her flesh.

The woman's expression changed in the moments that followed. She appeared increasingly distressed; she moaned in discomfort and shook her head in a wild fashion.

"What have you done? What is this? Shea! Shea, help me! Oh! It stings! Do something!"

Shea continued to chomp and chomp. How he wanted to aid his mother, but Telor's threats and his own perverse fascination rooted him to his spot.

And the rabbit: its taste was divine. Its flavor clouded his mind, like a drug, and the meal soothed the horrid pain in his stomach.

As his mother's moans became pained cries, however, Shea's jaw slowed, for something horrible happened to her body.

On her back, Mia was only be able to move her head. Like a turtle flipped over onto its shell, her head awkwardly swiveled as she stretched to peer around herself, as if she might spy what held her down.

"I can't move," Mia murmured, shocked into breathlessness. "I can't move a single muscle!"

"Yes," Telor observed, droll.

The elf's long, elegant feet patrolled the outline of Mia's form, patiently, before he strutted back toward Shea. Telor's smile was haughty as he spun in front of Shea and lifted a leg. The looming man pressed one of his warm, soft soles right into the squatting youth's face.

The elf's mood was much improved; his air was almost genial. Despite how Mia lied there disabled in the middle of the tent, Shea could not help but be relieved by the change in Telor's demeanor.

"Oh, pet," Telor murmured giddily; he grabbed Shea by his hair and mashed the human's face into the flesh of his sole. "Pet, pet, pet. I know you're scared and confused. Horrified, perhaps. But this is all part of this wretched thing's instruction. Kiss. Breathe."

Shea pressed his lips to the bottom of the irresistible foot. He happily inhaled the scents of its folds and furrows. Like a heady tonic the peculiar, alluring aroma of Telor's sole put Shea at ease—put him in his place.

His terror over his mother's condition steadily dissolved: Shea was excited for what might happen to Mia, because Telor was clearly excited for what he had planned. All at once the boy was sick in his gut, haunted by the devious pleasure that called to him, and by his desire to surrender to that call, and to Telor's seductive machinations.

The comforting warmth was ripped away from him, and the elf once more strode along in an orbit around Mia.

"She wants to keep us apart. That's all she's ever wanted, pet—don't you see? To keep you here with her, forever. Trapped! I'll make sure she can't do that." Telor stopped mid-march to gaze over his shoulder at Shea. "After all, you want to be with me, don't you?"

"Yes, Master," Shea answered with rushed breath.

He licked his lips and tried to pick through the taste of rabbit for Telor's flavor in the absence of the elf's sole. Shea's eyelids quivered with strain as he fought to take in the sight of his fallen mother: to embrace what happened to her as right.

This was what Telor willed.

Shea steeled himself for what might come next.

His desire to please Telor overwhelmed him so much that he ached; the human was eager to claim the role that Telor dangled before him.

"Hahhh," Mia sighed softly. Her mouth was slack and her tongue limp as the paralysis which worked on the rest of her body seized her throat.

"Shall I begin this disgusting beast's education, slave?"

"Yes, Master," Shea whispered, full of wonder to be included in Telor's power. "Just do as Master says," the boy murmured tearfully to Mia. These last words were driven out of him with forceful anger, and his gaze grew cold and cruel, even as fresh fear welled across Mia's slow-forming expression.

The elf grinned wildly at his human, who crouched in the corner. Hot rabbit sap dripped from the point of Shea's chin as if he was an uncouth hound.

Telor's eyes were electric.

Shea was pulled keenly, then, by the energy in that tent: he was minion to his Master.

He had given himself, and now this beautiful being owned him.

Telor's scintillating eyes dropped away from Shea's. He put his hands on his hips and considered Mia's horror-struck countenance with a pleasant expression of his own.

"You heard my pet," the elf announced. Gracefully one leg lifted; Telor placed his lengthy sole onto Mia's incapacitated face. "Silence!"

With fascination Shea watched how Telor's foot covered Mia's features—how the elf's flesh twisted back and forth and smeared Mia's visage, smothered her incoherent hissing. Even still, clipped pleas escaped from her lips as she blubbered.

"Why, I don't think she's going to listen to me."

Shade spread over Telor's smirk; he draped his forearms across his raised leg and leaned forward, which added weight to his foot. What must have been Mia's nose creaked dangerously—cartilage pop-pop-popped, bone snapped.

When Telor's sole lifted off of her face, the woman's eyes swam—her appearance was especially pained, even while numbed. A thin trickle ran from Mia's nostril; it drew a red line around one corner of her lips.

Blood.

Telor had hurt Mia, just as he promised he would.

The elf did not leave her be: the sinister being pressed his foot onto her head and forced it sideways; Mia's wounded face gazed pleadingly at her son.

"Tell her pet. Tell this yapping welp to be still at once!"

Shea gazed at Mia from behind the gnawed rabbit, now just a carcass. His hands shook, shook the spit that he clutched. Tears poured down his cheeks, and each pull through his nostrils was wet and loud.

Yet there was a mad grin on his face—its sharp points dug painfully into his cheeks.

"Please. Please, mother, just do as Master says. Please." Shea whispered the words, but his frenetic ire grew and grew. With morbid fascination he took in the cherry-like nub of his mother's bruised nose as she bled.

"Just be still, creature!" Shea hissed, and glanced up eagerly at Telor, whose smile was small, but it was there—the elf appeared especially beautiful and towering; as tall as Shea's trees.

"She isn't being quiet. She just won't STOP, pet!"

Hands still on his hips, Telor wore a mask of agitated disdain and mashed the side of Mia's face roughly with his foot.

His perfect foot, Shea was powerless to think, even as his mother squirmed beneath Telor's sole.

Telor let Mia's face be with an angry huff.

"If you continue on as a dumb animal"—the elf stooped over and grabbed at the simple frock Mia wore; he bunched the material at her chest within his fist—"then I will treat you like a dumb animal!"