“Can I get you something while you wait?” 

The elf working the bar was willowy, but kind of built at the same time. In the half light of the bar, [Jeff] could not help but notice that she was covered from head to toe in arcing tattoos that shined with a brilliant purple light. The glow was strong enough to faintly show through her t-shirt.

As she stepped under one of the overhead lights, he felt himself gulp involuntarily. He had never seen an elf with even close to the same skin tone, it was like her flesh was sandstone from the way the ruddy red sparkled. She had to be part fire drake or maybe even some kind of demon to have that kind of complexion. 

Affixing him with eyes that glowed the same purple color as her tattoos, the elf raised a pale blue eyebrow. “Well? Want a drink, or were you just going to drink me?”

“Oh, sorry! Um…” He scratched at his recently trimmed beard. “What do you have on tap?”

She turned and looked down the bar at the handles screwed onto the taps. “I’ve got Dogshead Pale Ale, Dogshead Black, Wild Griffin’s Summer Brew, Fire and Spice, and...Ellerift Twilight is still on from last month since there is a little left.”

He ordered a glass of Ellerift and handed her more than enough. A moment later he was sipping foam over the curved lip of the glass. Across the rim, he saw Basa walking towards him with a smile on his long, pointed face.

A self-proclaimed genetic mutt, Basa was mostly human with a couple other things mixed in. There was no way to know where his pointed ears came from. So many of the mystic races had that trait. His deep brown skin shimmered with a touch of silver that pretty much confirmed some Shadowkin in his background. 

The small, dish-like antlers were probably the biggest outlier to all of it. While one had been snapped off because of an accident in his youth and only the stump remained, the other held up a brilliant golden halo. Jeff was not sure if the ring of light was real or just an accessory. Asking seemed rude, but there was a certain excitement about his partner potentially being the son of an angel.

When the conversation turned to Basa’s appearance on their first date, he had joked about being an orc in the sheets. Jeff had not understood. After getting to second base last time, Jeff now had a pretty good idea what that meant. His date was hung, very, very hung.