## Chapter 250 — What Came Home The first object Thomas packed for the return to Hobart was a plaster Isha no longer required. It had detached from her palm during the night and adhered itself to the inside of the sheet, where a small rectangle of medical concern waited among the evidence that neither of them had slept with particular discipline. Thomas found it while stripping the bed and held it between two fingers. Isha looked over from the kitchen table, where she was cutting an apple into pieces with the cabin’s least inadequate knife. The scrape beneath her thumb had closed into a dry pink line. Her knee remained impressively coloured and functionally irrelevant. “You may dispose of the relic,” she said. “It belongs in the rubbish rather than the luggage.” Thomas carried it toward the bin, granting the object no ceremonial status merely because it had survived the peninsula. “That is a less romantic classification.” Thomas put it in the bin. The decision completed the medical aftermath of the peninsula more effectively than another inspection would have done. Their packs stood open beside the door, no longer shaped for carrying a home through forest. The tent had dried overnight across two chairs and the deck railing. Sand remained in one seam of the groundsheet despite shaking, brushing and Thomas’s initial confidence that the task was complete. Australia had admitted them only after they declared clean camping equipment. Leaving with part of a Tasmanian beach concealed in the stitching seemed discourteous even when no border form demanded an apology in that direction. Thomas spread the groundsheet across the bathroom floor. Ordinary wiping removed most of what remained. When the cabin was locked, the curtains closed and Isha had checked the small windows, he used Cleanse over the fabric, boots, pegs and the outer surfaces of both packs. The familiar pressure gathered behind his eyes for several seconds. Dust, salt and the last grains of sand lifted without repairing scuffs or erasing the mark where a granite edge had scraped one pack cover. The equipment became clean rather than new. Isha ran her fingers along the worn section. “The route remains visible.” “It should.” Thomas folded the groundsheet. “Cleanse has not developed authority over evidence merely because the evidence is inconvenient to pack.” She watched him place it inside the rucksack. “Saitō would approve of the limitation.” “Saitō would ask whether I had cleaned beneath the buckle.” Thomas had. He checked anyway. Breakfast required no stove and no decision more ambitious than whether the yoghurt should be divided before or after the remaining fruit. They ate on the deck while the trees moved in mild morning wind. Several birds crossed between branches. Isha recognised none by name and no longer treated that as an omission requiring immediate repair. Their transfer arrived shortly before ten. Claire was not driving this time; a younger man named Ben loaded the packs and asked whether they had left anything behind. Thomas looked through the cabin once more. Charger, passports, phone, photographs, tent, boots, first-aid kit, no food in cupboards, no clothing in the washing machine. The bed carried only newly exposed sheets and no medically significant adhesive. “Nothing intentional,” he said. Ben accepted the answer as belonging to travellers rather than philosophers. The road toward Hobart carried them back through dry hills, pasture and long stands of eucalyptus. Thomas expected the journey to feel like retreat over ground already understood. Instead, the landscape had changed because they had walked inside one part of it. Distant granite no longer represented scenery alone. Each exposed face implied texture, weather and a way down that might become less reliable after rain. Isha sat beside the window without studying every verge. A wallaby shape on a warning sign passed. She noticed it, then returned to the actual paddocks beyond the road. Their next hotel was near Hobart’s waterfront, close enough that they could leave the larger packs in the room and walk most of the following day. The receptionist stored the luggage before check-in and marked a map with the pickup point for their afternoon transport. Thomas looked at the route. “The sanctuary is north of the city. We have returned south in order to travel north.” Isha folded the map. “The road has become administrative.” They ate sandwiches near the waterfront before the shuttle arrived. Fishing boats moved beyond the glass, practical and brightly marked. The mountain rose behind the city under a scatter of cloud, large enough to dominate the horizon without making another ascent necessary. The driver introduced herself as Mel and asked whether they had visited an Australian wildlife sanctuary before. Thomas answered no. Isha added that most of the animals would also be new to them, which Mel regarded as the correct condition for visiting. The city loosened into suburbs, open land and lower buildings. Half an hour later, they turned beneath a sign bearing the sanctuary’s name and entered a place that smelled of dry grass, animal feed and warm earth. The first thing Isha read was not a list of species. A board near the entrance explained that the sanctuary operated a rescue service, cared for injured, orphaned and displaced native animals, and returned those capable of release to the wild. The animals visible to visitors were survivors, temporary patients, breeding-conservation animals or residents whose condition made release unsuitable. Isha read the English slowly enough to preserve each distinction. “They do not define success as keeping them.” “No.” Thomas stood beside her. “The place needs visitors in order to fund the work, but the best outcome is often an animal we never meet again.” She looked through the entrance toward enclosures and low hills beyond. “That is a difficult form of hospitality.” The remark required no explanation between them. They joined a guided tour led by a keeper named Anna, a sun-browned woman with a broad hat, scuffed boots and the habit of speaking to children without lowering either vocabulary or respect. She began by explaining that an animal might remain hidden if it preferred shelter, and that no scheduled appearance overruled its behaviour. Isha’s attention sharpened at the rule. Thomas saw it and did not point it out. The first visible resident was an echidna moving through leaf litter with an improbable combination of blunt purpose and intricate defence. Its spines caught the light; its long snout remained close to the ground as it investigated a log. Anna explained how the animal searched for ants and termites, then warned that photographs should be taken without reaching through barriers or interrupting its path. The echidna turned, showed them one side and disappeared beneath low cover before several people had prepared their phones. A boy near the front complained that it had left. “It has completed the part of the tour it agreed to,” Isha said quietly in English. The boy looked at her, considered the authority created by her height and accepted this as plausible sanctuary policy. Thomas lowered his head to hide a smile. The wombat was less subtle. It emerged from a shaded shelter with the compact mass of an animal whose outline understated how much of it was body. Its fur was coarse brown-grey, its legs short and powerful, and its broad head moved without the delicacy expected from the name Thomas had known since childhood. Isha crouched near the outer rail. “It is built like a stoneworker’s first draft of a bear.” Thomas considered the square body and serious movement. “Kelda would object to the assumption that a first draft requires short legs.” “She would approve of the centre of gravity.” Anna, passing close enough to hear only the last sentence, agreed that wombats were extraordinarily strong diggers. She explained that their bodies were adapted for burrowing and that their rear ends formed part of their defence underground. Thomas translated the more difficult phrasing after the group moved. Isha looked back at the wombat entering its shelter. “It blocks the tunnel with itself.” Thomas confirmed the interpretation. Isha watched the broad rear of the wombat disappear into shadow and concluded that the defence was both effective and socially final. They had booked no private encounter. Isha appeared relieved. The animal remained close enough to observe without being required to absorb touch from another pair of visitors. Kangaroos occupied a larger open area where sanctuary residents approached or ignored people according to appetite and confidence. Small bags of approved feed were included with entry. Anna demonstrated a flat palm, quiet movement and the importance of allowing an animal to leave without following it. Isha held the feed correctly on the first attempt. A Forester kangaroo approached her with less caution than Thomas expected, perhaps because her stillness made no claim and her height became less relevant once she crouched. It lowered its head and took the pellets with soft, efficient movements. Its forepaws rested briefly against the ground between them. The tail extended behind as a third structural fact rather than an ornament. Isha watched its mouth, shoulders and weight transfers. Her other hand remained at her side. She did not attempt to touch it merely because proximity made touch possible. The kangaroo finished, lifted its head and looked past her toward another visitor carrying food. “It has assessed the relationship accurately,” Thomas said. “I am a temporary feeding surface.” The description might also have applied to Thomas in the kitchen, though his service was less standardised and involved stronger expectations concerning gratitude. Isha turned her face toward him while the kangaroo moved away. The private implication reached her before the humour, warming her expression without changing the public scene. “Your service is less standardised.” Thomas photographed her with another kangaroo several minutes later, after asking. The image showed Isha kneeling with one palm extended while the animal remained just beyond contact, both attentive and neither arranged around affection. The Tasmanian devils were smaller than their name and more difficult to mistake for harmlessness. One moved along the edge of its enclosure with a low, muscular gait, black fur interrupted by pale markings across the chest and rump. Its head seemed disproportionately broad. The animal paused to smell the air, turned sharply and continued its route with the restless concentration of something adapted to find what had died before larger competitors did. During the keeper talk, food brought a change in sound. The devil’s growls, snarls and harsh cries carried farther than its body should have permitted. Several children stepped back. Isha did not, though her stance shifted by habit to a more stable position before she recognised that the barrier and keeper made the reflex unnecessary. Anna explained that the noise was part of communication and feeding behaviour, not proof of supernatural hostility. She spoke about facial tumour disease, conservation work and the pressure roads placed upon wildlife across Tasmania. The information changed the enclosure from display into a small surviving edge of a larger problem. Isha watched the devil bite through food with the same close respect she gave a difficult animal in the fantasy world, but no hand moved toward a bow that did not exist. “It is honest,” she said after the group dispersed. Thomas looked at the animal. “About what?” “About wanting the food, disliking competition and possessing teeth. Its name is theatrical. The animal is not.” They remained until it moved into shade. The sanctuary took longer than the minimum hour because neither of them wanted to convert unfamiliar animals into a completed list. They saw quolls active in an enclosure despite the afternoon light, birds that watched visitors with varying degrees of contempt, reptiles whose stillness depended upon heat rather than passivity, and an emu that regarded Thomas’s hair as less interesting than the fence post beside him. Near the rescue information area, photographs and simple instructions showed what members of the public should do after finding injured wildlife. The material emphasised telephone numbers, safe containment when appropriate, avoiding food or water without guidance and reducing road risk. Thomas read the procedural steps automatically. Isha read the reasons beneath them. “The first help is often not touching,” she said. “Or calling someone whose competence matches the animal.” Neither statement was new to them. The sanctuary gave it another body. At the shop, they bought a small illustrated guide to Tasmanian wildlife, postcards for Matsuda and Kanno, and a soft wombat no longer than Thomas’s hand. Isha held the toy by its middle, assessing the construction. “For Mugi?” Thomas asked. “For 202. Mugi does not own property merely because she sits on it.” “She may revise that doctrine.” Isha compressed the toy once, judged the stitching and announced that the wombat was structurally prepared. Its rear end contained no visible defensive adaptation, but Thomas allowed the claim. On the shuttle back, Isha fell asleep against him before they reached the city. Her body had crossed the peninsula more easily than his and still accepted two days of walking, one day of recovery and several hours of standing as cumulative work. Thomas adjusted her seat belt where it pressed near her neck and watched dry hills become suburbs through the window. He did not wake her when the first buildings of Hobart returned. --- The following morning, Thomas’s hip bruise had entered the stage where colour increased while pain declined. Isha inspected it once in the hotel mirror because its outer edge had become yellow-green. She pressed beside rather than upon it, received no meaningful reaction and declared the injury to be pursuing visual drama after losing physical authority. Thomas accepted this while buttoning his shirt. “It has learned from your knee.” “My knee remains the superior composition.” The two bruises were not compared further. They left the large packs in the hotel room and walked toward the museum carrying only water, phones, a light layer and the small guidebook Isha had read through breakfast. Hobart was compact enough that streets repeatedly opened toward water or the mountain. Sandstone buildings stood beside modern glass without the city appearing to have solved the relationship between them. The museum occupied several connected historic buildings near the waterfront. Entry was free. A sign at the threshold acknowledged the Aboriginal custodians of the island and warned that some displays included names, images and voices of people who had died. Isha stopped long enough to read it fully. Inside, the natural-history galleries first supplied the simpler pleasure of recognition. Animals from the sanctuary appeared in diagrams, specimens and records that placed their bodies inside ecosystems rather than enclosures. The field guide in Isha’s bag became less necessary with each label and more valuable because she could compare the living movement with the preserved shape. The thylacine gallery interrupted that progress. Thomas had known the Tasmanian tiger as an extinct animal from photographs: striped hindquarters, long stiff tail, canine face and a history condensed into one famous film of a captive individual pacing behind wire. The gallery refused the convenience of mystery alone. Skins, specimens, records, bounties, photographs and public uses of the animal’s image showed a species transformed from threat into absence and then into symbol. Isha stood before a skeleton and looked at the proportions long enough that other visitors passed around her. “It was alive within the memory of people whose children may still be alive,” she said. “Yes.” Thomas kept his voice low. “And it became valuable after no one could protect the living animal from the value assigned to killing it.” Thomas read another panel rather than answering too quickly. Fear of livestock losses, government bounty schemes, habitat pressure, disease and captivity formed a history with more than one cause and no shortage of responsibility. “People rarely need one reason to finish something they have already decided is inconvenient.” Isha looked at the mounted body behind glass. It was preserved well enough to show shape and badly enough to make life more obvious by its absence. She did not compare it with elves, demons, extinct fantasy creatures or any people she had known. The animal’s history did not require borrowing significance from another world. They moved on when she was ready. The exhibition on Aboriginal people and colonists required more time and less speech. Objects, written accounts and films described invasion, resistance, forced movement, killings and the period called the Black War. The island whose coast they had admired contained names older than the maps they had used. Its parks, towns and museums occupied land whose history had not begun when British records became detailed. Thomas understood enough of the broad history to know how easily a visitor could substitute recognition for knowledge. Isha understood conflict, dispossession and official language well enough to distrust every simple analogy available to her. They stood before one account of people being told to leave their own country and said nothing for several minutes. A museum group entered behind them. The guide spoke about truth-telling, surviving community and the limits of older displays that had treated Aboriginal people as a vanished subject rather than living custodians. Isha listened to the English without asking Thomas to simplify it. When one phrase escaped her, she held it until the group moved on, then asked quietly. Thomas explained the grammar rather than the history. She had understood the history. Later, in a quieter passage between galleries, Isha said in Common, “The sign at Hazards Beach told us not to damage what remained. It did not tell us how remaining became the category.” “No.” Thomas replied in the same language, careful of approaching footsteps. “The route information was written for the action visitors could take that day. It was not enough for the place.” “Necessary and insufficient.” “Yes.” The words remained between them without becoming a verdict upon people whose lives they had encountered only through selected records. They ate lunch in the museum café and returned for the southern-ocean galleries. Antarctica began there not as a blank white end of the map but through currents, animals, scientific work, ships, weather and people who travelled south from Tasmania into a place that resisted ordinary habitation. Isha studied the scale of the southern ocean. Freycinet had already felt far from Sendai. Antarctica lay beyond it with no city waiting at the centre, only stations maintained through supply, cooperation and repeated human work. “We came south to escape winter,” she said before a display of polar equipment. “They continue south until summer remains ice.” Thomas looked at a garment designed for cold more serious than any coat in their hotel room. “The principle has been extended beyond its original purpose.” “Humans do that.” “You have crossed mountains because someone suggested a road might exist on the other side.” “I did not claim exclusion.” The museum’s closing announcement reached them before they had exhausted the building. That felt appropriate. A place containing an island’s natural history, colonisation, art, extinction and a route toward Antarctica should not be completable in one afternoon. They walked along the waterfront afterward. Fishing boats, ferries, restaurants and old warehouses held the edge of the city. Wind off the River Derwent cooled the day without resembling Sendai winter. Isha bought no more souvenirs until they reached a small shop selling work by local makers. There she chose a narrow woven bookmark for Kanno, a postcard showing granite and sea for Matsuda, and a plain tea towel printed with several Tasmanian animals for Saitō. Thomas looked at the last item. “She may object to a devil being used to dry plates.” “She will object to the fabric quality first. The animal will survive secondary criticism.” “For ourselves?” Isha considered the displays around them. “We have photographs. The guidebook. The wombat.” Thomas added a small packet of postcards showing the southern sky. None contained soil, seeds, untreated wood or food capable of creating another declaration problem. Dinner was at a restaurant near the harbour where the menu changed according to produce and the server explained several dishes without converting the explanation into performance. Thomas chose lamb with vegetables grown close enough to be named by region. Isha chose fish again, not because she had lacked alternatives but because the previous day’s museum had made the surrounding water feel less like background. They shared both meals without formal exchange. The fish came with peas, herbs and a broth Thomas tasted twice before identifying what he liked about it. The lamb carried smoke without tasting burnt and a sauce darkened by fruit rather than sugar. He did not reconstruct either dish aloud. Isha waited until dessert before noting the restraint. “You have passed an entire meal without proposing a correction.” “The kitchen has not requested one.” “The request has not always been required for internal work.” Thomas looked at the dessert between them: berries, a soft cream, crisp oat biscuit and an ice whose flavour shifted between apple and herb. It was precise without pretending to know them. “I am considering how the textures were balanced. That is appreciation rather than intervention.” Isha took the next spoonful. “The distinction benefits everyone.” They finished slowly. The bill cost more than several nights of camping and less than the value of not carrying dinner on their backs. Back at the hotel, they packed for the flight. The tent and boots entered protective covers. Dirty clothing had become clean clothing; clean clothing became compressed shapes that would look unreasonable when opened in Sendai. The toy wombat travelled in Isha’s cabin bag because she did not trust checked baggage to preserve its centre of gravity. Thomas lay on the bed after the final zip closed. Isha stretched beside him, one arm above her head and one bare foot resting against his ankle. “Eight days,” she said. “Approximately. International travel makes calendar ownership less clear.” “Three nights outdoors. Two cities. More animals than I can name.” Thomas turned his head toward her. “Do you need a conclusion?” “No.” Isha looked at the ceiling. “I was testing whether the trip had become small enough to list. It has not.” He reached across and took her hand. The scrape had become a line barely rougher than the skin around it. They slept before the room’s last hour could become another event. --- At Hobart Airport, Isha no longer watched the aircraft as if disbelief might reveal a concealed spell. She watched the baggage handlers. The packs moved through belts, carts and loading equipment beneath procedures invisible to passengers once the tags disappeared beyond the counter. Their tent joined suitcases, pushchairs and boxes carried for reasons no flight display recorded. “Ordinary systems again?” Thomas asked. “They are placing our shelter inside a machine that will cross the sea.” Isha followed one cart until it vanished behind a vehicle. “Ordinary remains a broad claim.” The first flight carried them to Melbourne. Tasmania receded beneath the wing as coast, hills and cloud. Isha had the window seat again. She took no photograph during takeoff. The view required no proof that she had seen it. On the longer flight north, they sorted the trip’s images. Thomas had taken too many photographs of bark and not enough of people according to Isha, though the total contained several images of her she had not remembered agreeing to until he showed the preceding conversation. Isha had taken fewer photographs, but hers repeatedly caught Thomas during ordinary work: tightening a strap, pouring water, reading a route sign, sitting exhausted against his pack with the bay behind him. They deleted blurred duplicates, accidental images of fingers and one photograph in which a kangaroo had become only a tail departing the frame. They kept the imperfect first New Year-style images of the trip—the ones where attention had moved away from the camera before the shutter. Matsuda received the requested proof of Australian summer: Thomas and Isha in light clothing beside Wineglass Bay, both carrying packs and neither looking entirely fresh. His reply arrived while the aircraft crossed ocean. **This proves hiking. Summer remains disputed because you both appear to be wearing long sleeves.** Kanno received the kangaroo photograph and answered Isha directly. **You look happy. The kangaroo looks professionally neutral.** Saitō received no photograph until Thomas found one of the restaurant fish. Her response was immediate despite the time difference. **Good skin. Sauce uncertain. Come home before criticising it from the air.** Thomas had not criticised it. Isha pointed out that Saitō was acting preventatively. They slept through part of the route north. Isha’s head found Thomas’s shoulder more easily than on the outward flight. His wrist rested beneath her hand without being checked, counted or assigned any meaning beyond comfort. Narita returned them to winter. The airport windows showed a pale northern afternoon. Coats emerged from cabin bags. The first exterior air beyond the terminal doors made Tasmania feel not distant but seasonally impossible. Isha pulled her scarf higher. “We have travelled from summer into this in one day.” Thomas adjusted his own coat. “The equator has not negotiated continuity for passengers.” “It could at least provide a changing room.” “The airport provided several.” “They did not contain a season.” At baggage claim, both rucksacks arrived. The tent remained inside. No strap had broken. Isha lifted her pack from the belt before Thomas reached it, then took his as well and placed both on the trolley. He did not object. His hip had almost stopped hurting, and the trolley made strength irrelevant. Isha enjoyed the lift. Both facts could remain ordinary. The Narita Express carried them to Tokyo Station, and the final Tōhoku Shinkansen to Sendai was quiet enough that neither needed to make the journey another event. Snow remained on the western mountains. The city beyond the train windows appeared denser than when they had left and more familiar because their eyes knew where to look for river, station and the broad direction of home. They reached 202 after dark. The building entrance decoration had been removed while they were away. The glass door reflected coats, luggage and Isha’s pale hair made less perfect by aircraft air and two countries’ heating systems. The corridor smelled faintly of someone’s dinner and the building’s winter warmth. Saitō’s door opened before they reached their own. She looked first at Thomas, then Isha, then the luggage and finally the number of limbs visible between them. “You have returned with the same arrangement,” she said. “Minor colour changes only,” Isha replied. Saitō’s gaze dropped toward the knee hidden beneath her trousers and Thomas’s hip hidden beneath his coat. “Keep them hidden. I have soup.” She handed Thomas a covered container large enough for two bowls. The tea towel Isha had bought remained packed, so gratitude could not yet become exchange. “We ate during the journey,” Thomas said. “Then you will eat later. Aircraft meals are not a legal defence.” Saitō stepped back into 203. “Mugi has inspected your door twice today. She found your absence poorly managed.” The door closed before either could ask how the cat had expressed the judgement. Inside 202, the air felt drier and warmer than the cabin near Coles Bay. The LDK held exactly what they had left: cyclamen by the window, serving boards, album on the shelf, the cabinet containing Kelda’s page and their empty place in the ordinary sequence of rooms. Thomas set the passports in their drawer. Isha placed the toy wombat on the low shelf beside the photo album. They unpacked only what required immediate attention. Coats hung. Toiletries returned to the bathroom. The soup entered the refrigerator. The rucksacks remained near the genkan, still carrying the shape of travel despite being too light to require division. Thomas checked the passage count in the notebook after plugging in his phone. Eight days remained before their earliest estimate of another opening. The number did not alter the room. No reply could arrive that night. No preparation needed beginning after midnight. The page they had sent was still travelling only in the sense that uncertainty continued after arrival. He closed the notebook. Isha had opened the balcony curtain. Sendai winter occupied the glass: dark sky, scattered windows, bare branches and air cold enough to gather faintly at the frame. She stood in socks and the soft clothes worn for the final train, looking outward without comparing the view aloud with Tasmania. Thomas moved behind her and rested his hands at her waist. “Home?” he asked. “Yes.” She leaned back against him. “Not because it is the largest place we saw.” He kissed the side of her head. Her hair smelled of ordinary shampoo, aircraft, scarf and the faint remaining clean trace of the hotel shower. No Cleanse was required merely because travel had left evidence. A soft impact sounded at the front door. Then another. Isha turned first. Thomas followed her into the hall. When she opened the door, Mugi sat on the landing with her tail arranged around her feet and the expression of a resident official who had arrived after several failed appointments. The cat looked at Isha, then Thomas, then past both toward the luggage. “You were informed that we would return,” Isha said. Mugi entered without answering. She inspected the rucksacks thoroughly. Tasmania remained inaccessible to her nose after cleaning, aircraft holds and winter corridors, but unfamiliar materials and many human contacts had left enough information to sustain interest. She pressed her face against one strap, smelled Thomas’s boot cover and moved into the LDK. The toy wombat lasted less than a minute on the shelf. Mugi stopped below it, looked upward and then at Isha. No request had been made. No demonstration was required. The cat rose onto her hind legs, placed both forepaws against the shelf edge and pulled the toy down by one short leg. It struck the floor, rolled onto its side and remained structurally prepared. Mugi smelled it from every direction. She pushed it once with her nose, carried it by the middle to the rug and sat beside it rather than upon it. Thomas looked at Isha. “Property doctrine has entered review.” “She has not claimed it. She has moved it into consultation.” Mugi placed one paw over the wombat’s back. The consultation appeared decisive. They ate Saitō’s soup later at the low table. It contained chicken, root vegetables and noodles soft enough to have waited without punishment. Thomas did not improve it. Isha showed him the wildlife photographs on the larger screen while Mugi remained beside the wombat, occasionally touching it to ensure no unauthorised movement had occurred. The trip’s images did not form a complete account. No photograph held the exact instant Thomas’s foot slipped, Isha’s hand caught him or the museum made an attractive island more difficult to consume. The omissions did not make the record false. They left room for the parts carried in bodies, choices and private language. Before bed, Isha selected one photograph for the album. Not the lookout, the kangaroo or the carefully framed bay. She chose the image Thomas had taken on the ridge after she agreed he could keep it: Isha beneath the southern sky, pack heavy on her back, facing a coast beyond the route while unaware of the camera. Thomas printed it. The small machine worked through the image in stages, bringing pale hair, stone, blue distance and the dark shape of the pack into the room. Isha wrote beneath it in Japanese: **Our first remembered journey beyond Japan.** She paused, then added no destination, distance or lesson. The photograph joined the album after the New Year image. Tasmania became one page in a home that had existed before the trip and remained after it. When they went to bed, Mugi had left the wombat outside the bedroom door. Whether the placement was a gift, guard position or abandonment could not be established. Isha moved it clear of the threshold so no one would step upon it in the night. Thomas switched off the light. Winter darkness settled over 202, ordinary and known. Beyond the walls, the city continued without eucalyptus, devils, granite beaches or southern stars. Those things had not followed them home as magic, duty or another world requiring rescue. They had come back as memory, photographs, a small animal made of cloth and the widened knowledge that Earth continued far beyond every life they had already learned to love.