Professor Scale Tongue was home or near it most of the days. But, of course, just the day I forgot my copy of the key to her house she would be having a meeting at the University. How else?

And just on this day I had finally gotten hold of Valentina and we had set a meeting for later in the afternoon. Yet the professor had told me she intended to go directly from her own work to a ballet lesson and then maybe still have a late night drink with a friend. So, if I intended to get to my bed before one o'clock in the morning, I needed to get her keys from the university.

I climbed a set of stairs to the third landing and pushed open a glass door to a wide corridor. She wouldn't be in her office yet, but she had instructed me to wait on a chair in the corridor until her meeting ended and she could see me.

There weren't many people at the university during the summer period and all other corridors I had passed had been almost empty. But here, by a collection of armchairs and tables, a lonely student sat, apparently doodling on a small pad. Beside him, on another chair, he had laid a fabric bag.

I did consider taking a seat as far from him as I possibly could, but he was facing the door through which I had just entered and lifted his gaze from the tablet as I approached.

After that it didn't seem polite to walk past him.

I seated myself opposite him.

I had thought to ask him what he had been about to do, but found myself suddenly unbalanced by his facial features. He was beautiful. The skin was smooth. There were no signs of any cuts, or moles, or impurities. The dark hair seemed slightly tousled, maybe modeled with gel. He was clad in a stylish turtleneck shirt, and sported an elegant wooden watch on his right wrist.

The face was perfectly balanced. I couldn't tear my eyes off it. I was used to thinking about peoples' faces as I modeled and animated game characters for a living. The Lagopus studios had never aimed for realism, but I knew a face was supposed to have irregularities, unevenness, for convincing characterization. I had worked there for two years trying to achieve that look.

But he had none. This man in front of me was clean, devoid of any humanizing unperfectioness.

"Are you a student?" he asked.

It took me a moment to process the question. I was still almost shocked by his face, that was not unpleasant to look at.

"Ah. Ermm.. No. No, I am not. I just live... I forgot my keys. I am waiting for Professor Scale Tongue to give me hers. I live with her. As a tenant."

I found myself blushing.

"Really? Well. I am waiting for her myself. I think she is having a meeting right now. My name is Plume."

He extended for me a delicate, long fingered hand. I took it. It felt almost cool in my touch. It was a warm summer's day. My own palm was slick with sweat.

"I am Mimosa."

"It's a beautiful name, Mimosa. If you are Rosemary's tenant, have you maybe just moved to Breasinghae?"

"Kind of?"

I withdrew my hand.

He was very beautiful. Not wide shouldered or muscular in any sense, but lean, and somehow sophisticated. He had a pleasant voice that wasn't grumbling low but deep. But once I was past the initial shock of the perfect face, I also suddenly sensed something familiar about him that I didn't seem to be able to place.

"I have actually lived most of my life here, in Breasinghae. But then I worked a few years in Dale. So, if anything, I have returned. For the time being."

He smiled a warm dazzling smile. An innocent smile that didn't seem too smooth or fake.

"And how is Dale compared to our dear old Capital?"

"It's slow," I told him. "The bars here are better. I really love one called Facade. You know it?"

He shook his head. "I am not a great connoisseur of the bars here. Maybe you can take me to see it one of these evenings?"

Oh wow, was that an invitation to take me out?

But the smile was so innocent! Naive.

"Sure, if you'd like," I found myself saying.

"I would absolutely love it, if you would show it to me. Nothing like a new secret corner of the City. I know a good tearoom in exchange, if you are interested."

"A tearoom?" I asked, somewhat surprised.

"Yes. An absolutely lovely tearoom called the Fair Marquise."

"The fair marquise?"

I tasted the words. There was something familiar about that name...

Wait. That was where I was supposed to meet with Valentina in an hour, wasn't it?

"Well. That's a coincidence..."

"What is?"

"I am actually heading there today, to meet with an old friend. You say it is a beautiful place then?"

"Oh, it is the best."

He rose. To my mild disappointment I found out he wasn't as tall as he had seemed seated.

"I have to go now. What do you do over the weekend?"

Oh, that smile again.

Before I realized it, I had agreed to meet up with him in the Facade on Sunday afternoon.

He went to the doors behind my back. I listened to the hard clicking of his shoes against the stone floor tiles and opened my phone to check the time. The door closed and opened behind my back. Then it seemed like he returned. The same kind of clicking came closer. I lifted my face from the screen and turned to ask if he had forgotten something.

For a mad second my reality split.

Plume had returned. He was still wearing the same dark turtle neck as before, and held the same kind of a bag. But his hair had grown longer and started graying.

Then my reality righted itself. My brain made the right connections and I rose to greet Professor Scale Tongue who handed me the keys.

On slightly wobbly, confused legs I left the grand university building and mingled back with the rest of the city. Only once I had walked a few blocks did I finally realize I had agreed to go on a maybe-date with a total stranger I had known for two minutes.

Sure, it had been a smartly dressed stranger, but this was not like me at all. All my previous dates had been friends of friends, and I had only agreed on a date after a few dozen meetings with a group of us.

And he probably wasn't in faith. Which had been a major criteria for all my dates and friends alike.

I stopped in the middle of the street and looked up in thought.

Then again, these days, I wasn't sure I was in Faith either. Actually, if some of my friends in Dale would have wanted to meet up with me, I wasn't sure I would have accepted. I had kind of agreed to come back to Breasinghae against the will of God. There was something about this mystery of Little One that was unholy. That much had been clear from my dreams and visions.

So maybe it was only fitting to go on a date with a handsome stranger then.

And meet a gay friend.

What was I becoming? And was this Little One, a simple contact in my phone, really worth this change?

The Fair Marquise had a glass facade to a popular street in the very heart of the city's center. When I opened the shop door I was greeted by subtle fragrances, a clear sounding bell, and an absolutely huge golden retriever. The animal walked to me and then toppled over to reveal a silky belly for casual petting.

For a short moment, I forgot about all my worries and reservations and simply scratched the silky blond hair.

"Well, hello there," I talked to the dog. "You are a pleasant surprise. What might be your name, dear?"

"She is called Marquise. Belongs to the owner."

I lifted my face to a freckled young woman carrying a tray.

"Please take a seat. I'll be serving you in a second."

I did exactly that. The Fair Marquise was a somewhat bohemian on the inside. All the tables were different, so were the chairs around them. And when the girl returned with a duck patterned mug and an elegant porcelain plate to serve me, I understood that there wasn't a single cup inside that looked like any other.

She put in front of me two cups actually, though the other (a white mug with a dragon on it) she set opposite me, out of my reach. On the plate was a piece of mud cake.

"Enjoy," she said.

"But I didn't order?"

"You want something else? Did I get it wrong? Hellebore did leave me clear instructions, but maybe I got the numbers wrong... It happens sometimes. Just not often. You are not here with Valentina?"

"I... What?"

We looked at each other. She brushed her ginger hair behind an ear and chewed her lower lip.

"You are here for the first time."

I nodded.

"OK. Well, dear, The Fair Marquise is a bit of an extraordinary place. You don't need to order here, the owner always serves what you want. We do take complaints, I guess. You have a complaint?"

"So, I can't consult a menu and then order?" I asked, stunned.

"I don't think we have a menu. Hellebore orders different things every morning."

"Who's Hellebore?"

"The owner."

She then indicated a huge oil painting in a gilded frame in which a young man was seated in a chair and petted the dog that had just greeted me, or its mother. The man was dressed old-fashionedly and wore a blindfold.

"That's the owner?" I asked.

"Yep. That's Hellebore. But he is out now, so I am serving the tables. Sorry for it. He explains it all so much better. But you are here to see Valentina? I got that right, didn't I?"

"Yeah, sure..." I was still staring at the painting. What was the year, marked at the corner? I should maybe get my eyes checked. It had been some time since last I had gotten a new pair of glasses.

I turned to the young waitress again, to inquire about the age of the painting, but she had gone to collect glasses from a vacated table to my right.

I looked down at my plate and the mud cake with the cream topping dripping down on the porcelain.

Well. I was here on an open mind, was I not?

But dear God, was my day becoming bizarre. A date and a tearoom without a menu. And I was about to meet with a woman I had had sex with who was my only clue to deciphering inexplicable messages on my phone. And that was only a clue based on a dream I had had.

Why had I quit my job and come here?