Wednesday's workday was uneventful, thank goodness. I wished I could go to bed when Lauren did, but Abbott was supposed to arrive shortly after I got home.
I'd been thinking that we'd had several fires in the battlefield in the past from icky things, and Abbott had never shown up before. So why now?
I didn't think he knew about me hunting and fighting, so my guess was he knew Aaron would be called in and he wanted to watch him handle it, or perhaps just wanted an excuse for a conversation that might involve his learning something else about me?
I had let Lauren and Xiaolan know this morning that I was expecting company this evening and would need the family room. I'd rather entertain in the formal living room, but it was at the base of the stairs and they'd be able to hear our conversation from upstairs. So, it was in our very eclectic and casual family room that I'd be entertaining this ancient vampire who reeked of aristocracy.
He arrived around ten minutes after seven, and I walked him through the downstairs, to the back of the house, and into the family room.
I love my house. It's a fairly large house with four bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms. Or rather, it's large compared to most homes. Just not his.
My huge kitchen is light and airy, with a large round glass table capable of seating ten. My formal dining room is richly decorated in a Tuscan style, with a table capable of easily seating sixteen people, though we've fit more than twenty around it for Thanksgiving.
However, my family room is designed for comfort and leisure. Half of it's set up as a home office — my desk has three monitors, and Lauren and Xiaolan's desks each have a single twenty-four inch monitor.
The rest of the room is a grouping of two sofas and a couple of chairs facing a flat screen, eighty inch television built into the far wall. The room is done in earth tones, with a nice homey feel. It isn't a fancy room, but it would have to do.
As we arrived in the family room I said, "I'd ask if I can get you anything to drink, but since I'm not offering what you really want, perhaps I should just offer some water or perhaps some hot tea?"
"I have already fed tonight, my darling, so no worries about my being hungry. I do not need anything."
I grimaced, both at his formal speech and his possessive terminology. I hadn't given myself to him, and it annoyed me when he spoke as if he'd claimed me. "There you go, saying I'm your darling again. If you haven't noticed, the idea of you claiming me as anything tends to annoy me. Let me grab my ginger tea from the kitchen, and then I have a few hundred questions for you. Please, have a seat, I'll be right back."
I likely didn't actually have several hundred questions, but I wanted to make the point there was much I needed to know about him.
He chose to sit on one of the sofas, situated so he could see something coming to him from the French doors leading to the back yard as well as the door going to the garage. It was also my favorite place to sit, and I wondered if he could smell the gun in the hidden safe about ten inches from his right hand.
I retrieved my tea from the kitchen and sat on the other end of the same sofa, sideways with my legs under me, facing him.
"The front rooms of your house are beautifully decorated," he said, "but this is the true heart of the house, isn't it? I imagine you've put just as much thought into decorating it, but you did so with more thought to family, camaraderie, warmth."
"You're probably right. I'd have preferred to entertain in the living room, but the girls could hear our conversation from the top of the steps, and I can easily imagine Xiaolan and Lauren sitting in the upstairs foyer hoping to hear me talk to what they are assuming is a new boyfriend. So, our conversation is safer in here."
"You don't consider me your new boyfriend?"
"I'm guessing you're at least a thousand years old, and a vampire. The term boyfriend is the last word I'd use to describe you, but it brings me to my first question. Just how old are you?"
"I don't know, exactly. I am somewhere around thirty eight hundred years old, give or take a few hundred years. Based on what is known in the written historical records, and what I can remember happening in my lifetime, I believe I was born around eighteen hundred years before the Common Era."
Nearly four thousand years old? Stunned, I asked the first question that popped into my head. "What do you remember happening that's recorded in prehistory?" I knew it was a stupid way to ask the question as soon as the words left my mouth, but hoped he'd understand what I wanted to know.
He shook his head as if he wasn't going to answer, but said, "Events in Troy, as well as what was going on with the Minoans. Also, when certain metals came into use."
"The Bronze Age," I said, flabbergasted. "You remember the Bronze Age, and yet here you sit in my living room with a smart phone in your pocket. No wonder you know what Aaron is, you were alive when the dragons were."
"Aaron is much older than I, but you know this so I thought you would be okay with my age." He spoke cautiously, and I realized he was dismayed by my reaction.
"I'm not freaked out by it," I assured him, "I'm just processing it."
Okay, so maybe I was a little freaked. For reasons I couldn't explain without more thought, a four thousand year old vampire freaked me out a helluva lot more than a nine thousand year old weredragon.
I decided it was time to move on, so I smiled and said, "Okay, from Ancient Greece to modern day Chattanooga. How long have you been a Master Vampire? How long have you held the entire southeastern U.S.
territory? And why are you in Chattanooga?"
I learned a lot over the next thirty or so minutes — he passed through Chattanooga early in the eighteen hundreds and noted it was someplace he might like to settle down, so it was on his list of places. He generally moves every ten to fifteen years, and has a group of vampires and other supernaturals who usually move with him. He needs around thirty ounces of liquid a day, though only six to ten ounces must be blood and the rest can be water, unless he's injured or uses a lot of energy, in which case he needs more blood.
As Master Vampire he keeps what is indelicately known as a flock, instead of a human companion. His human flock feeds him as well as anyone else blood bound to him who is in need. His flock lives with him of their own free will, and are well compensated for their contributions. Most are college students, a few have graduated and have good jobs but continue to live with him, and most consider the flock their family. He had an affectionate look on his face when he spoke of them, and I had the feeling he cared for them as people, not just his food source. I'd want to know more about how this worked, but later. For now, I had too many other subjects to cover.
He "dies at dawn" but usually awakens several hours before sunset.
His home on the mountain is his private residence, and the one on the golf course belongs to the local coterie of vampires, set up as a corporation with him listed as CEO. He is Master to all vampires under him, they must do as he says, though he wouldn't tell me what happens if they refused an order.
He is very fast (he moved at the Waffle house, didn't disappear and reappear), he can fly, he is extraordinarily strong, he has exceptional hearing, excellent night vision, and an incredible sense of smell. He informed me that with his sense of smell and hearing he could tell exactly what I was feeling, because fear, anger, passion, jealousy, and every other emotion each have their own scent. He told me he can't read my mind outright, but if I wished to project thoughts into his head I could do so.
"So, when I tested you at the coffee house, to see if you were reading my mind or smelling my scent…?" I knew the answer, based on what he just said, but needed to verify.
His smile was playful as he asked, "Can you deep throat in reality as well as you can imagine it?"
I chose to ignore his question and asked another of my own. "Does it work both ways, could you project into my head as well?"
You tell me, can I?
I heard it in my head, but it took me a few seconds to realize he hadn't said it aloud.
"Whoa, you did, didn't you? Okay, stop with the cocky smile and give me a chance to get acclimated."
I tried to project to him. When is the last time you were in love? The kind of love where you love someone more than life itself.
About two hundred and fifty years ago.
Human or vampire?
Neither.
I switched back to voice, hearing him in my head was a bit disconcerting and I needed to get used to it. "I'd be interested in hearing the story if you're comfortable telling it, but I won't push. Do we have to be close to each other to talk that way, or can we do it from a distance?"
"I don't know, usually I have to be near a human unless they're in some way bound to me metaphysically, and most have a hard time figuring out how to project to me on purpose. But you're a bit of an anomaly, so we'll have to play around with it and see what the limits are."
"An anomaly." I smiled and gave a half-chuckle. "What a nice way of putting it. Can I block you from projecting to me by shielding?"
"Put up your shields and let's find out."
I strengthened my aura, put an extra layer of protection around me, locked my brainwaves down, and told him to try it. He looked at me expectantly and I told him to go ahead.
"If you didn't hear me, you successfully blocked me," he said, a thoughtful look on his face.
I launched into more questions, and he answered nearly all of them.
Holy items didn't bother him — he could walk into a church if he wanted, and he's been known to wear crosses to prove to people he isn't evil, or in previous centuries to dispel rumors of his being a vampire. Silver, however, is very bad. He reflects in a mirror, and you can take pictures of him, though he can vibrate at a higher speed and make himself blurry on both film and digital images if he chooses.
He can fly, and if he had to he could fly all night, but it would be very tiring and would require a lot of blood. He normally goes no longer than about ten minutes, and he can cover around twenty-five miles in that amount of time. He usually drives, though, because he likes to keep his ability to fly known to as few people as possible. His vampires know, as do most of the long-lived in town, but few others do.
He doesn't need an invitation to enter a home, and he has no problems with running water. He doesn't sleep in a coffin, but in a bed, and his bedroom is in a basement without windows. He doesn't like garlic or the smell of it, but it won't hurt him. He doesn't burst into flames in the sun, but he gets a severe sunburn in around five seconds, and within about a minute most vampires are injured enough they need to go underground into the bare earth and sleep for months, maybe a year, in order to heal. Tie a vampire out in the sun all day and it would take hundreds of years for most to heal, so to a human's mind they'd be dead. There are vampires who've played around with sunblock and have developed a spray-on version that allows them in the sun on cloudy days for short periods of time, enough to get from one building to another, or from a house into a light-tight trunk, but they still can't go out in the full sun. He hasn't tried it and doesn't intend to.
He wouldn't tell me how to kill him, nor would he share the full extent of his mental powers. I know he can erase and replace memories, and he can talk mind to mind, but he wasn't willing to discuss the extent of these abilities, much less whatever else he might be able to do.
He also wouldn't talk about whether he can shift into an animal form or not, and his refusal to answer this question bothered me more than the other questions he'd avoided.
He can drink unsweetened tea with no ill effects, and though he loves the smell of coffee, he can't consume more than about a teaspoonful without feeling ill. He can drink most hard liquors, his body is fine with them since they're basically the same in a drunk person's blood as they are in pure form. He can get a buzz off of a lot of alcohol, but it's very hard for him to actually get drunk.
Out of the blue, he said, "I apologize for showing myself as a monster last night. Is this why you're acting distant, today?"
"No need to apologize, I appreciate seeing your other side." I shrugged and gave him what was probably a sheepish smile. "I figure if we start kissing I won't get any answers. I'm sitting over here so you can't distract me."
His smile was one of relief, but he asked, "It didn't make you afraid of me?"
"Are you planning to hurt me?"
"No."
"Then I have no reason to be afraid, do I?"
"But I could kill you right now, if I wanted."
"Yeah, and I could kill you right now if I wanted, also. It doesn't mean I'm going to do it."
"I doubt you could kill me."
He didn't say it hateful, or with humor. Just matter of fact.
I paused before reacting, tempted to show him I could. However, I'd already demonstrated all I intended, so I said, "I would've thought you've lived long enough to know it can be dangerous to be so certain someone isn't a threat."
"Please don't take offense, but you're human, and humans are no match for me. Everything about me was designed to make me the perfect predator. I don't take advantage of it on a daily basis, but I haven't feared a single human armed with only a gun for millennia."
Again, not said arrogantly, just as a statement of fact, and I decided not to argue the point. Perhaps it was better for him to wrongfully believe I wasn't a threat, as it gave me the element of surprise, should I need it.
"Okay," I said with a shrug, "but the idea that you don't want me to see all of you bothers me. I need to see the nice parts and the scary parts in order to know who you are. I've learned to look inside of people to decide what I think about them. I know some perfectly nice looking people who are really monsters at heart, and some horribly monstrous looking people with a heart of gold. I won't judge you on your looks, but on your words and actions, and where you choose to put your energies."
With that, it was apparently his turn to ask questions. "You used to be a ballerina?"
"Yes, I have seventeen years of formal training, and I was fortunate enough to be able to spend a few years dancing professionally before an injury took me out of the dancing world. I managed to squeeze classes in between performances, so my dancing paid for my college, for the most part."
"And then you were a professional juggler?"
"You have done your homework. Yes, once I could walk again I created a juggling act and incorporated what little bit of dancing I could still do into my act. There were only a few male jugglers better than me, and no females who could come close. I had a lot of fun with it, and it gave me a great excuse to travel."
I grinned, happy to be sharing more than I usually could. "There are some who think I have supernatural reflexes. They want to put my reflexes into the same box as my metaphysical skills, but I could react nearly instantaneously long before I started meditating and going off to try to find myself."
"You needed to find yourself?"
"After my injury I was told I'd never walk again without a brace. My dancing career was over, and suddenly I was left with only two friends. All of my other friends had been from the dancing part of my life, and when I wasn't seeing them for performances and practice several times a week, we no longer had anything in common. I've always been an avid reader, so I started reading, and went through more than four hundred books in the course of a year. I studied most of the major religions and some of the smaller ones. I read about aliens, out of body experiences, theoretical physics, healing with energies, reincarnation and past lives, Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce, even Shirley MacLaine. You name it, I probably read about it.
Some of it was bunk, some of it wasn't, and I needed to figure out which was which."
I paused, but he didn't say anything, so took a sip of my tea and continued. "When I decided it was time to stop reading and start doing, I went to workshops where I learned better meditation practices and some cool visualizations. I even did the whole past life regression thing. I learned to heal simple things like headaches by manipulating someone's energy field, and eventually managed to mostly heal my foot, at least enough so I could walk again. I was part of a meditation group for a couple of years, and we managed to do some interesting things with our energies. It wouldn't be interesting to you, but to us humans it was proof there is more to this reality than science would have us believe. I met someone at a new age fair who asked me to stick around and talk to him and his wife when the fair was over. I did, and they took a liking to me and kind of took me under their wings to teach me. I went to their home a few weeks later for the weekend, and went with them to a Native American ceremony. Words can't explain what that experience did for me. I spent a few years immersed in the culture, and it was incredible."
"Native American ceremony didn't teach you how to shoot a laser out of your hand."
I laughed to cover my discomfort at realizing what he really wanted to know. However, he hadn't answered all of my questions, so I wouldn't feel bad about refusing to answer some of his.
"No, it didn't. I guess what I wanted to share is that my journey took me from shallow and materialistic, to being a deeply spiritual person. I'm not the same woman I was in my early twenties."
"How does being a sexual submissive fit in with your spirituality?"
I hadn't expected him to go there just yet, but I had no problems with the question and was kind of glad he'd asked. "That's an easy one. Sex isn't bad or good, it just is. Some religions have tried to convince us it's bad, but it's natural in all of its forms — as long as it's consensual, of course. My pain and pleasure centers get a bit confused sometimes, but in the end it's all sensation." I shrugged. "The whole power exchange aspect on top of the pain? There's no logic, it's just works for me and there's nothing wrong with it, it's simply part of who I am. Nothing says being sexually anything means you can't be a spiritual person. In fact, I think denying part of yourself would inhibit your spirituality, not help it along."
I took another sip of my tea and added, "You've been around since before Christianity. I'm not up for it tonight, but I'd love to have some marathon sessions where we talk about how religion has evolved. Or, perhaps devolved."
"Can you tell me about the arrangement you have with James Arrington?"
Apparently, he was giving me a taste of my own medicine by asking questions without commenting on the previous answer.
I set my tea back on the table and told him, "We see each other for a single four-hour session each week. Sometimes it's an hour-long scene and the rest is talking, sometimes three hours of it's scene and there's only time for aftercare and not much talking. He's my friend, trainer, and mentor, and we speak on the phone in between our Monday sessions. Occasionally we go hiking together, maybe a half-dozen times a year. He's very dear to me, but there's no romantic love. I don't have a crush on him or anything."
"Do you have sex with him?"
"No. I've never seen him in any form of undress. I've never even seen him with his shirt off, and I've never touched him sexually in any way.
Though, he's of course touched me in every way sexually you can possibly imagine, and then some." I answered as matter-of-factly as I could, without any embarrassment or unease. Abbott was a Dom, and was asking questions he needed to know if he and I were to scene together. I didn't know if we would, but part of me very much hoped.
"What does he get out of it?" Abbott asked.
Good question. I shrugged and said, "There's a small list of things off-limits for me to talk to him about or ask, and that's one of them. He offered to train me a really long time ago, and we both seem happy with the arrangement."
"Why have you never married?"
"I've never found a man I could stand to live with who could also make me happy in the bedroom. In recent years I've met two men I'd have married in a heartbeat if they hadn't been vanilla, but it wouldn't have been fair to me or them to make a lifelong commitment under those circumstances. And, the truth is, I love my life and don't need a man to be happy. If the right person comes along I'll be thrilled, but if not then I'm still making a good life for myself."
"You mentioned past life regressions, do you remember any past lives?"
Yes, but this was another question I didn't want to answer. I opted to deflect instead of refusing, though. "Do you believe humans reincarnate?"
"Yes."
"Have you met humans you recognized from one of their past lives?
Someone you knew before?"
"Yes, I believe so."
"Do you think you recognize me? Is that the attraction?"
"While something seems familiar about you, I do not at this time recognize you as someone from my past. I find myself pulled to the essence of who you are. Do not attempt to cheapen my attraction to you." It was an order, but I let it go.
"And..." I hesitated, as I wasn't sure I wanted to bring this up, but then decided I needed to see his reaction. "I'm someone you can't control with your vampire powers, which I assume has your curiosity up? Makes me different? A challenge?"
"Tell me about the past lives you remember."
Now he was trying to deflect instead of answer, and I reached for my tea again as I considered how to respond. I took a few sips, met his gaze, and said, "No. If you think you recognize me then tell me and we'll compare notes. Or if you don't want to influence my brain by putting suggestions in, then ask me where I was during a certain time period.
Actually, I'll do that for one time-frame now. Where were you around five hundred BC?"
"I don't know dates that far back so much as I know what was going on in the cities when I was there. What was happening during this period?"
"Let me do some research and I'll get back to you. I only know for sure what happened in one city, and I'd prefer not to divulge that just yet."
"Would you be interested in doing a scene with me?"
The question seemed to come out of the blue and I was momentarily speechless. I knew nothing of his BDSM tastes, and being that he was nearly four thousand years old, somehow I doubted he put as much importance into the whole "Safe, Sane, Consensual" mantra as most modern day people in the lifestyle.
"Ummm, I don't think so. Not yet, anyway."
"You've played at play parties with people you've just met, correct?"
I pulled my legs under me, put a pillow in my lap, and fiddled with it.
As soon as I realized I was fidgeting, I set it to the side and composed myself.
"Well, yes. But that's different. I mean, people I know and trust vouched for them, plus some people I knew and trusted were watching.
Also, there was no sex and often not even any touching of genitals — just flogging and spanking and clips and candle wax and that kind of thing. I don't know anything about you or your history, I've never seen you at a club or play party and wouldn't want to risk outing you by asking if anyone can vouch for you. Also, as old as you are, somehow I doubt you give as much weight to the whole safe, sane, and consensual creed as I, and on top of everything else, you're a vampire with special healing abilities, and if you're used to playing with vampires then playing with me could be detrimental to my health. Plus..." I hesitated and then rushed to get it out.
"There's another reason I have to be careful about partners."
Damn, I was blushing. I hated having to talk about it, and I couldn't believe I was telling him this now. I only told people I'd decided to scene with — was my subconscious trying to tell me something by blurting it out?
"Another reason?" he asked.
"Yeah, but I shouldn't have mentioned it. If we decide to go forward at some later date then we can talk about it... Oh, don't look at me like that. I shouldn't have mentioned it, but I did, so I guess I should explain."
I took a deep breath and talked fast. "My body makes really good endorphins, and I go exceptionally deep into subspace. Once you get me there, I can't be depended on to safeword, even if damage is happening. I'll beg for more, long past when my body's had enough. The Top has to be especially careful once I'm flying, and that's a lot of responsibility, so most don't take me deep into subspace for the first eight or ten times we play — not until they know what I can and can't take when I'm in my right mind, and not until they're aware of what it takes to cause dangerous bruising."
He nodded, let me know he understood, and segued into his next question without making me feel like a freak. "Speaking of bruising, I smell a good deal of damage to you right now. When did you last play?"
He smelled it? I pulled the throw pillow back into my lap and said, "It's been a few days, and James gave me a pretty extreme session. I'm not always bruised as much as I am right now. This was one of those times he took me just beyond what I'm actually capable of handling, and he didn't let me drop completely off into subspace to do it. He doesn't make a habit of it, but does it enough to stretch my limits, so I can take a whole lot more now than I could handle nine or ten years ago when I first came under his care. I have to say it's a bit disconcerting that you can smell bruising."
He gave me a gentle smile. "To answer your concerns, I've been involved in the scene in other cities by other names, but my persona in Chattanooga isn't suited for me to be publicly in the lifestyle. As I told you earlier, I need to move every so often or people notice I'm not aging, so I can't give you references. I can tell you I'm well versed in the idea of being safe, sane, and consensual to start a relationship, though I prefer moving towards something closer to the idea of risk-aware-consensual-kink once trust is formed. I prefer the stoplight safewords, but if someone comes to me with their own safeword I honor it as well. I've had human companions who were twenty-four/seven slaves, and I've had others in my life who were sexual submissives but not slaves. I'm accustomed to scening with humans, and with my exceptional auditory and olfactory senses I have more ways than a normal Top to discern when a bottom may be in trouble. I pay attention to heartbeat, respiration, broken capillaries…I can perceive things a human Top isn't capable of monitoring."
Damn, that pretty much blew all my reasoning out of the water.
However, as much as I wanted a scene with him, my instincts wanted me to wait, so I tried changing the subject again, "How does one get turned into a vampire?"
He raised an eyebrow, but answered without remarking on my change of topic. "It takes at least three bites on three consecutive days, though it's considered much safer if one goes for at least ten days with a bite each day.
On the final day the person is drained to the point just before death, and then they awaken a vampire a day or two later. If they haven't risen on the night of the third sunset then they won't. The maker generally drains the person, but it isn't necessary. There are reports of human companions who get into car accidents and lose a lot of blood who awaken as vampires."
"Is biting erotic for you?"
"It can be, yes."
"It can be, or it usually is?"
"Depends on the vampire. In my case, it can be. Other vampires will give a different answer."
"Is it intimate?"
"You have a knack for knowing which questions to ask," he said with a gentle smile. "Yes, I much prefer my feedings to be intimate."
I hesitated, making sure of my next words before I said them. I liked him, but I needed to take this slow. There were too many unknowns for me to just rush in. I looked up, met his gaze, and asked, "Can you humor me a little? Go on some dates, talk on the phone, get to know each other? Maybe kiss and make out a little? And then talk about whether we want to take things to the next level?"
The next thing I knew, I was cradled in his arms, his mouth on mine, his lips firm with a soft touch, and his tongue divine — both commanding and gentle as he took possession of my mouth.
I tilted my head and he slanted his more. I knew he could hear my heart racing, and probably the blood pulsing through my veins, but I didn't care. He'd earned my body's response and I saw no need to hide it from him.
I hadn't submitted yet, and I didn't know what the rules might be if we entered into a formal agreement, so I took the opportunity to run my hands through his thick, silky hair. Thousands of years of practice had made Abbott a very good kisser, and I got lost in the sensations. When he finally pulled back, one of my hands was on his shoulder, the other still on the side of his head. His arms were both wrapped around my torso, but I wouldn't have minded had he let them drift. God, I wanted him in that moment. If he could do this to me with a kiss, he might kill me with full body contact.
I leaned up and touched my lips to his again, taking in the fact his lips and tongue were cooler than mine, which felt odd. They weren't cold, but not ninety-eight point six degrees, either. I tried to regain my composure as we pulled back, but soon realized it was going to take more than a few deep breaths.
Still a little lost, I lifted my hand to my mouth as I raised my gaze to meet his, and suddenly I wanted to jump him, wanted him to take me. I checked my shields to see if this was a vampire trick, but I couldn't sense him in my head. Unsure of what was happening, I closed my eyes, rested my head against his chest, and relaxed into him. I could hear his heartbeat and realized it was beating exactly in time to mine. Interesting.
After a few moments I asked, "I take it this means you agree to the kissing and making out a little. Are you agreeable to the rest?"
His chest moved against my face as he laughed. "Yes, my darling, I'm agreeable to the rest. I have all the time in the world. We will proceed when you're comfortable doing so, and not before."
I decided not to argue against the "my darling" this time. Kind of hard to protest when I was relaxed in his arms. Instead I pulled back and said, "It's been an enjoyable and enlightening evening, but I didn't get much sleep last night and I should get myself into bed. Lauren has been invited to a slumber party Saturday night, if you'd like to ask me out on a date."
I stood, took a few steps towards the front of the house, and he took the hint and came with me, holding my hand as we walked. "I was hoping for Friday night," he said, "but Saturday could work."
"Well then, I'll look forward to seeing you Saturday evening. Feel free to call if you'd like to talk between now and then, and please either call or email me where we're going, or at the very least the kind of dress appropriate for wherever it is you're taking me."
"And will you have safe calls set up?"
"Nope. I trust Aaron with my life and he tells me I'm safe around you." Never mind I refused to have a scene with him. I wasn't operating entirely on logic and was glad he didn't point out my inconsistencies.
"Good to know," he said as he gave me a gentle peck on the cheek and walked out the front door. "Pleasant dreams, my darling."