## Chapter 371 (tbc) — The Gift

The house had changed by accumulation. Not much of its structure had needed changing. Kelda had objected to two joints after the first winter, replaced one threshold because she had been correct about the drainage beneath it, and added a covered rack against the workshop wall after discovering that apparently owning a house did not prevent tools from multiplying until they became architecture. The bench was the largest difference.

It stood beneath the workshop window, broad, scarred and properly heavy, its legs braced in a way the first one had not been. Kelda had wanted a better workbench when Thomas and Isha first found their impossible little road back to her. By now it was simply her bench. The novelty had worn away beneath hammer marks, charcoal measurements, oil, stone dust and a shallow cut near the left edge where a chisel had slipped because someone from the east-road crew had been explaining a drainage problem while she worked. The someone had subsequently learned not to explain drainage problems while Kelda held sharp tools.

A folded contract lay beneath a stone weight at one end. Two crew notes sat beside it in different handwriting. A third sheet carried figures from the clerk who had attached himself to Kelda's work after discovering that she would otherwise treat written accounts as something performed angrily at the end of each month. The east road had needed less rebuilding lately and more maintenance, which Kelda considered proof that some work could improve the world without requiring anybody to die first.

Outside, late light crossed the old charcoal shelf. Porridge was somewhere beyond the fence, cropping grass with the deliberate injustice of an animal who had been fed already. Smoke from Larchmeet sat faintly above the trees three miles away. Across the shared yard stood the other house. Thomas and Isha's door remained closed. It also remained unlocked. Kelda no longer looked at it every time she crossed the yard. That had taken longer than she would ever admit in a letter.

Their pages came. Slowly, impossibly, badly timed and never containing enough space. Thomas had acquired work whose exact purpose Kelda understood only after several explanations involving a very large school and people arriving from distant places. Isha worked in a building where humans climbed constructed walls for pleasure and paid other humans to stop them falling incorrectly. They had a cat that belonged to nobody, friends Kelda had never met, small injuries, illnesses, arguments, food, work, photographs and an alarming quantity of administrative procedure. They were alive. That fact had eventually stopped being an emergency. Kelda was fitting a new ash handle to an old mason's hammer when someone knocked on her door. She stopped.

People from Larchmeet generally called from the yard. Workers coming about contracts went to the workshop. Anyone who knew her well enough to approach the house knew that knocking while she was visibly in the workshop was a good way to receive an opinion about eyesight. The knock came again. Not loud. Kelda set the hammer head down and looked through the workshop window first. A man stood at her door. Human, apparently. He was around Thomas's height, though heavier through the body, with a short beard and hair cut close at the sides and back while the top of his head was bald. Nothing about his face belonged to anyone she recognised.

Everything else was wrong. Black trousers made from some dense blue-black cloth with seams unlike local workwear. A black short-sleeved shirt that left his forearms bare despite the cooling air. Black boots, heavy and high enough to resemble military footwear without belonging to any soldier Kelda had ever seen. No cloak. No visible pack. No bedroll. No road dust worth mentioning. No horse. No obvious weapon. That last observation did not improve matters. Kelda took the small working hammer beside the vice and crossed the house. She opened the door only as far as her own shoulder.

The stranger looked even more impossible at close range. Not glowing. Not marked. No ancient-system light under his skin. No black glass. No demonic smell. No visible magic. Just a middle-aged human man dressed as though the road had forgotten to finish putting him into the world. Kelda said nothing. The man spoke. The language should have been wrong. Instead, Common reached her cleanly, carrying the shape of a foreign voice without requiring translation or effort.

“Kelda Flintvein of Green Road. I'm Ian. The same Ian Thomas and Isha have mentioned. I'm here to ask for your help in giving them a unique, and hopefully, cherished marriage present.”

For several seconds Kelda did not move. The name found the page before it found the man. An Earth traveller. An English man. Someone who claimed he could see Thomas and Isha through something like a written account. Someone connected to the wooden bird, the ribbon, Sereth's bowl. Tessa's arrow. Kelda's eyes dropped once to his boots, travelled back over the impossible clothes and stopped on his face. The door opened another handspan. Not in welcome. It gave her right arm room.

“You.”

The word came out flat. Kelda stared at him with the concentration she normally reserved for a cracked support whose failure had not yet decided whether to kill anyone. Then her expression changed. Not recognition. There was nothing to recognise. Connection.

“The man from their page. The one whose words were left where Tessa's arrow used to be.”

Silence stretched across the threshold. Somewhere behind the house, Porridge tore grass from the ground with an audible rip. Kelda did not invite Ian inside.

“Before you ask me for anything, you are going to explain how you are standing at my door.”

“That,” Ian said, “is a little complicated. I'm here, but also—”

He waved his hands around him.

“—outside of here. This reality, and the one Thomas and Isha inhabit, exist because of my imagination, and a... machine... that creates reality. Rarely exactly as I want, and generally without direct steering.”

Kelda's eyes followed the movement of his hands. The hammer did not. Ian paused.

“That is not a very good explanation. I'm not a god, or a demon. I'm a man, but not *this* man. But I'm also this man. I'm also... somewhere else... writing this down for the machine to turn into reality.”

His expression tightened.

“This is quite difficult to explain.”

“Yes,” Kelda said.

The single word occupied several seconds. She looked past him into the yard. Nothing had changed. Porridge remained beyond the fence. Smoke still hung over Larchmeet. Thomas and Isha's house remained empty in exactly the ordinary way it had been empty before someone claiming responsibility for reality appeared at her door. Then she looked back at Ian.

“You are bad at it.”

There was no humour in the judgement.

“Thomas and Isha's page said you claimed something like this. A written account. Something outside their world that sometimes makes what you suggest happen. They also said they did not know if you were telling the truth.” Her gaze sharpened. “And now you are here.”

Kelda considered that evidence with visible reluctance.

“You say you imagine us. Then something takes what you write and makes it real. Poorly.”

The last word had the tone of a craftswoman identifying a dangerous tolerance.

“Not under your full control. So either you are lying in a way I do not yet understand, or you are describing the worst workshop arrangement I have ever heard.”

The hammer lowered slightly. Not put away. Merely no longer held ready for immediate use. Kelda leaned one shoulder against the doorframe.

“If the thing does not do exactly what you intend, then Tessa's arrow makes more sense. That does not make me less angry about it.”

She let that remain between them before returning to the larger problem.

“You said this place exists because you imagine it.” Her eyes fixed on him. “Then answer something before we speak about presents.”

Kelda's voice had lost even the faint possibility of dry humour.

“When Thomas chose not to stay in Crownholt, did he choose? When I refused people who wanted to make my work into debt, did I choose? When I went with Green Road because I wanted the road, when I built this house, when I stopped waiting at their door—”

Her jaw tightened briefly at the last words, but she did not withdraw them.

“Were those mine? Or did you write them because you wanted me to do them?”

“I have chosen... the big things. Not the small things. Sometimes I've chosen a big thing because the machine has generated reality and I see something on the horizon. Thomas was always destined to be the Hero. That's why he was brought here. He was always going to do heroic things, and that comes with pain, and challenge, and victory, and cost.”

Kelda's face changed at *destined*. Not dramatically. Her mouth simply flattened, and whatever cautious space had opened around the conversation narrowed again.

“I apologised to Isha many times. It didn't help. I offered to let her punch me. Three times. She refused.”

Ian glanced at the hammer.

“I might offer here, but I'm a bit more nervous as to what happens if you hit me when it's not really me.”

Kelda looked down at the tool in her hand.

“And, if it proves anything, I agree with your dangerous-tolerance thought...”

For a while she said nothing. Then she stepped backwards into the house. The movement might have been an invitation except that she immediately pointed at a chair just inside the room.

“Sit.”

She shut the door behind him and put the hammer on the table. Not far away.

“You have already said one thing I dislike enough that I want to understand whether you mean it. Thomas was *destined* to be the Hero.”

The words sounded worse in her voice.

“I watched him refuse that shape for years. Kings wanted it. Systems wanted it. People who were frightened wanted it. People who were grateful wanted it. He kept telling them that being able to do something did not make him theirs.”

She pulled out the chair opposite Ian but did not sit immediately.

“And you are standing in his house saying that, above all of them, he actually belonged to the shape after all.”

Kelda finally sat.

“That is not a small question.”

Outside, something knocked lightly against the workshop wall in the wind. Kelda ignored it.

“You say you chose big things. Pain. Challenge. Victory. Cost. Those are clean words from this side of them.” She rubbed her thumb once against an old scar across the heel of her palm. “I died. Isha died. More than once. Thomas died. His family buried him while he was alive. I watched him stand in places where everyone around him had an argument for why he ought to spend himself.”

Kelda leaned back slightly.

“So I do not especially care whether I am allowed to hit you. If I hit that body and the wrong person feels it, then I have only made another problem because I was angry. I have had enough practice with that sort of stupidity.”

The hammer remained untouched.

“What I care about is whether Thomas's refusals mattered to you. You could choose the mountain in front of him. Fine. Perhaps I can understand that much. Roads have mountains. But when he reached the mountain and said, *I will save people, but I will not belong to this*, did you choose that too? When I chose to stand beside him instead of behind him—was that yours? And Isha?”

Kelda's voice lowered.

“You apologised to her. That means you believe there was something you did that required apology.”

She looked toward the closed door of Thomas and Isha's empty house, visible through the side window.

“What did you do to her?”

“As the story, the journey progressed, I became closer to Thomas, and then Isha, and eventually more to her. I felt like crying at some points. My heart raced and I read faster at others.”

Ian sighed.

“Joining a story and talking to the characters, I...”

He stopped.

“I felt ashamed of what I'd done to their lives. Your lives. It probably started with the final victory here and why I wanted them to have a happy future, free from demons, Heroes and Systems.”

His gaze moved around the room.

“Here, I am indirectly all-powerful and yet a normal, flawed, slightly Thomas-like man who has no real power in my world. I have poured too much emotion into this and I want to not be...”

His voice failed. His eyes had begun to fill.

“...I don't want her, him... or you to hate me.”

Kelda watched him. The anger did not disappear. Neither did she reach for the hammer. For several seconds the only movement in the room came from Ian wiping beneath one eye and the faint shifting of branches beyond the window. Kelda eventually looked away.

“That sounds like something Thomas would say.”

It was not entirely a compliment.

“He had a habit of wanting the person he had hurt to tell him quickly that he was still good.”

Kelda ran one thumb along the table's edge.

“He improved.”

Her eyes returned to Ian.

“I do not hate you. I also do not know you.”

She let that settle.

“I know an arrow disappeared. I know Thomas and Isha say you frightened them, confused them and gave them things they never expected to see again. I know Isha apparently decided not to punch you despite repeated opportunities.”

A small crease appeared between Kelda's brows.

“I do not know whether that was mercy or judgement.”

The faintest possibility of dry humour passed and was gone.

“You crying does not make what happened smaller. And wanting us not to hate you does not give you a claim on what we feel.”

Kelda leaned forward, forearms resting on the table.

“But it tells me something useful. You care what they think. Perhaps too much.”

She glanced toward Thomas and Isha's house beyond the window.

“If this marriage present is really for them, then there is a question you should answer before I hear what it is. If doing what is best for Thomas and Isha makes them like you no more than they do now—perhaps makes them angry with you again—will you still do it?”

Ian considered her question for a while.

“If I knew for a fact they would hate me, I wouldn't do it. I think the gift will be emotional, but I hope that it will bring them more joy than sadness.”

Then he reached down. There had been nothing beside his chair. Kelda knew there had been nothing beside his chair because she had put him there, and because people who had spent enough time around Thomas learned to keep track of objects that appeared where objects had not been before. Ian's hands came back holding a small pot. He placed it on the table between them.

Steam rose from dark-gold barley thickened around pale root, pieces of mushroom and a thin sheen of smoked fat. The smell reached Kelda before the full shape of the dish did: grain, earth, salt, smoke, the patient depth that came from letting the pot become ready instead of forcing it to become fast. Kelda stopped breathing for one beat.

“Every time I've done something like this I think I'm doing something nice, or good, and it goes wrong.” Ian sighed.

Kelda stared at the pot. Her chair moved backwards an inch before she caught herself. She looked offended in a much more complicated way than fear. Her eyes went from the barley to Ian, then back to the barley. The smell was right. Not her mother's. Nothing could make it that. Memory had too many other ingredients in it: mountain air caught in wool, somebody complaining about first watch, the particular scrape of a spoon against the pot they had owned when she was young. But this knew the same door. Exactly as Thomas's had. Kelda's hand settled flat on the table beside the pot. She did not touch it.

“Thomas made this.”

Her voice was quiet. Not a question. She looked at the steam again, and another memory joined the first: a northern camp, Thomas apologising to food, Isha laughing because he had accidentally done something impossible while attempting lunch. Kelda's jaw tightened.

“You saw that.”

The conclusion carried more weight than accusation. Ian's strange account of reading, writing, imagining and machinery had just stopped being an abstract insult to causality. This was something private. Not secret in the manner of Revive or Homegate. No oath had protected it. No king would have cared. Private because it had happened among three people on a road, and none of them had imagined a fourth person watching from somewhere beyond the sky.

“You know things because you watched them live,” Kelda said. “And now you can reach into what you watched and put it on my table.”

She touched one finger to the pot's rim, testing the heat almost automatically. Her hand withdrew. Kelda sat with that for several breaths, then picked up the spoon. She did not eat yet. She moved the barley once, exposing mushroom and root beneath the surface, examining it as if physical construction might reveal where the offence ended and the kindness began. Ian said, “I do not normally start my Dwarven maiden courtship ritual with summoning previously private meals.” Kelda's eyes moved slowly from the pot to Ian. He waited. Her face supplied nothing useful.

“That was a joke,” he added quickly. “You can try the soup though. It's not poisoned.”

“I knew it was a joke.”

Kelda picked up the spoon.

“I was deciding whether explaining it made it better.”

Apparently it had not. She ate. Her eyes stopped on the table. The barley stayed in her mouth for several seconds before she swallowed. Then she tasted it again. This time she took enough to include one of the dark mushrooms and a piece of root. Kelda set the spoon down carefully.

“That is it.”

There was no question in the words. Not merely ironpot barley. The particular impossible attempt Thomas had made on a cold road after asking her to describe a simple dwarven meal, when she had told him it ought to taste like a warm room beneath mountain stone after somebody else had taken first watch. The first mouthful had made her sit down and tell him, with considerably more honesty than she had intended, that it was not her mother's cooking but knew the door. Kelda looked at Ian differently after that. Not more warmly. More precisely.

“You really were there.”

She took another spoonful despite herself.

“And Thomas would be unbearable if he knew you had preserved this.”

A pause.

“He apologised to the food.”

The memory did something small to her face. It was gone almost immediately, but she ate once more before pushing the pot slightly to one side rather than away. Ian waited until it seemed safe.

“The present is not food. It is more complex and I need your help to do it. I want you to want to do it.”

Kelda's fingers remained around the spoon. For the first time since he had arrived, she did not answer immediately. The wording appeared to matter to her. Not *I need you to do it.* Not *Thomas and Isha need you to do it.* Not even the softer coercion of gratitude. She looked toward the other house through the window, then back at Ian.

“Good. Because if you need obedience, you came to the wrong house.”

Her chair shifted as she turned fully toward him.

“If you need my help, tell me the whole shape of it first. What you want to give them. What you need me to do. Who else you expect to involve. And what this machine of yours might decide to do while we are doing it.”

Then she folded her arms.

“After that, I will decide whether I want any part of it.”

“You have seen the machine-made pictures that Thomas has sent? Photographs.”

The Common word did not exist cleanly. Whatever carried Ian's speech supplied something closer to *light-made likeness*, then seemed to settle around the foreign term itself. Kelda nodded.

“Yes. The cat first. Then Thomas and Isha together. They explained enough that we understood it was not a drawing and not magic as we know it. Light captured by one of your machines.”

Ian continued.

“I want to capture—to record—some of these images of you, of family and friends, of places, of Porridge, put them in a book and give it to them. So they can see you, clearly, and what has changed and what remains. Not memories. The real you.”

Kelda had gone very still again. This time the stillness was different. Not suspicion leaving her. Suspicion had apparently settled in for the evening. But the proposal had reached somewhere the explanations about reality had not. Ian added, “And, maybe something else.” Kelda's gaze moved through the window. Porridge had wandered nearer the fence and was now standing with his head over the rail, chewing while looking profoundly unconcerned by being proposed as interworld art. Then she looked toward Thomas and Isha's house. The closed door. The workshop beyond it. The paths between the buildings that Thomas had once helped lay and that nobody had subsequently preserved as sacred merely because he had touched them.

Kelda rubbed one thumb slowly against the side of the spoon.

“You want to show them home.”

The words came quietly. She frowned almost immediately, dissatisfied with them.

“No. More than one home.”

Thomas's family farm. The Wood Elf settlement. People whose faces had existed for Thomas and Isha only through memory for longer than Kelda liked thinking about. Changes they could hear described on a sheet of paper but never see. Her attention returned sharply to Ian.

“And you can do this without taking anything away? The image stays even after you leave? And the person knows you are making it.”

Kelda's expression hardened around that requirement.

“You ask them first. You do not come through a door with your machine already looking at them because you think they will say yes afterward.”

She glanced once at the pot of barley, perhaps recognising the irony. Then her eyes narrowed.

“What is the other thing?”

“The image is like a painting, or a drawing. It does not steal them or their soul, no. And yes, I need you to agree—no, to *want* to do it. I want them to want to do it too. I want it to be *your* gift. I...”

Ian paused again and closed his eyes briefly.

“I want to do something that they like, and like me for helping.”

Kelda's expression did not soften. But neither did it close.

“There,” she said after a moment. “That part I believe. The selfish part. Not as an insult. People usually want to be liked when they do something generous. They simply prefer to pretend they don't.”

She leaned back in her chair.

“It is better if you say it plainly. If Thomas and Isha like what you helped make, then good. If they do not like *you* more afterward, that is still a risk you are taking.”

The point seemed to matter enough that she let it sit between them before Ian continued.

“I can show you the other thing, if you let me record you eating?”

Kelda frowned.

“Record.”

“A moving image.”

The frown deepened, but understanding arrived in pieces. She had seen still photographs. She knew, in the abstract, that Ian's world had stranger machines than captured light on paper. That did not make the next step feel less absurd.

“You mean the image moves afterward.”

“Yes.”

“And you carry this in your hand.”

“Yes.”

Kelda considered the pot, the spoon, Ian, the table, and the accumulating evidence that this conversation had already abandoned most ordinary standards of plausibility. Then she said, “Ten breaths. Only my face, the bowl and the spoon. Not the house behind me, not the shelves, not the papers, and not the other window.” She gave him a level look.

“And if you show me something foolishly flattering, I will assume the machine has done it by accident and judge you for bringing it anyway.”

When Ian nodded, Kelda picked up the spoon once more. He took a slim black rectangle from his pocket. That alone almost drew her attention off the bowl. The object was flat, dark and smooth, with a reflective face like polished black glass except cleaner and more deliberate, as if someone had made a mirror specifically for holding captive light. A lit image appeared beneath his thumb. Kelda's brows tightened, but she did not speak. Ian raised the device and captured her for the promised few seconds.

Kelda ate one more spoonful of barley in the same calm, practical way she might have done in front of anyone. If she felt self-conscious, she buried it under discipline. When he lowered the machine, she said, “Well?”

“Now look at this...”

He turned the device toward her and touched the surface. Kelda saw herself. Not merely a likeness. Not merely a series of still images. She watched herself lift the spoon, watched the faint movement of steam, the small shift of her shoulders, the exact moment she swallowed. Even knowing in advance that motion was the point did not prepare her for the effect. It was like a polished-memory trap set off in daylight. No painter, however skilled, could have held the ordinary timing of it so exactly. Her hand went to the table. Not for balance. For certainty. The moving Kelda in Ian's hand looked mildly displeased and entirely real. The clip ended.

It began again when Ian replayed it. Kelda held up one hand sharply.

“Enough.”

Ian stopped it at once. Silence sat in the room for several moments. Outside, Porridge snorted through his nose and shifted at the fence, indifferent to revolutionary developments in image-making. Kelda looked at the black device, then at Ian, then back at the device.

“That is worse.”

Ian blinked.

“Worse than the still images. Not morally. In effect.”

Her eyes remained on the dark screen.

“A page can tell Thomas I am well. A still image can show him my face. This—”

She stopped and corrected herself.

“No. This would show *him* me. As I am now. Moving. Breathing. Annoyed. Eating his barley.”

The idea had plainly landed. So had the danger of it.

“If you carry this to his family, to Isha's mother, to Tessa, to Aelira—”

She did not finish the list. She did not need to.

“They may cry before you finish explaining what it is.”

Her attention sharpened again, returning from wonder to consequence.

“And if they agree, they will care what they say in it. More than with a page. More than with a still image. A person can spend too long trying to be wise when they think they are speaking across worlds.”

She folded her arms.

“So now I understand the shape better. You want help not only finding people, but preparing them. Deciding who should be asked first. Explaining enough that they are not ambushed. Stopping the ones who would try to turn ten breaths into a speech for history.”

There was dry certainty in that last part.

“And there is another question before I say yes or no. Who did you imagine first?”

Her gaze held his.

“When you thought of making this gift—whose face did you want to capture first?”

“Why Porridge, of course. The real Hero of this epic story.”

Kelda stared at him. Outside, as if summoned by slander, Porridge pulled another mouthful of grass through the fence. Kelda's eyes moved briefly toward the window. Then back to Ian.

“No. He has contributed less than you think.”

A pause.

“He would also eat the book.”

That was apparently the full extent of her participation.

“You, of course,” Ian said. “That's why I am here. I didn't just need an experienced adventurer to resolve a complex quest, but you were the third of three.”

Something in Kelda's face changed. Only slightly.

“Even if I just have one still picture of you, and nothing else, it will be a good present. At least, I think it will. My track record is not great.”

Kelda stopped touching the spoon. The joke had passed. The room became quieter around the sentence that followed it. *The third of three.* She had heard Thomas and Isha use other words over the years. Family. Green Road. Their house beside hers. The road chosen together. She had written some of those words back across the impossible distance herself. Coming from Ian, it was stranger. He claimed to have watched all of it. Not the public version. Not the accounts that made Thomas the Hero and Isha his companion and Kelda the half-dwarf who joined later. All of it. Kelda looked down at the barley.

“When people tell the story badly,” she said after a while, “I usually become the dwarf who came with them. Sometimes the one Thomas saved.”

A faint irritation entered her voice.

“I particularly dislike that version.”

She lifted her eyes to Ian.

“You saw enough to know better.”

It was not gratitude exactly. But it was the first thing she had said to him that did not carry a test inside every word. Kelda glanced toward the black device still in his hand.

“One picture of me would matter to them. I know that.”

Her gaze went again to the empty house across the yard.

“And I would like them to have one.”

The decision seemed to surprise her only after she had spoken it. Kelda breathed out through her nose.

“So there. You have one person.”

She pointed at Ian with the spoon.

“Do not become pleased with yourself yet. I will help you ask the others.”

A beat passed.

“Ask.”

The distinction was deliberate.

“I will tell them what I have seen. I will tell them what you did with the arrow. I will tell them that the moving pictures are real enough to make me uncomfortable, and that you stopped when I told you to stop. And I will tell them they may refuse you completely.”

Kelda looked at the little pot again, then took another mouthful as though formal agreement did not justify wasting food. After swallowing, she regarded Ian across the table.

“But before I take you anywhere near Thomas's family, I want to know what you intend to give Thomas and Isha in the end. A book of still pictures, you said. These moving ones cannot live on paper. So how are they going to see them?”

“They have devices like this black rectangle. I can send the moving image from mine to theirs.”

Kelda looked at the device again.

“So it does not have to cross Thomas's little road.”

“No.”

That answer was simple enough to require nothing further from Ian. Kelda sat back. For several moments she seemed less interested in him than in the implications of the object in his hand. A paper photograph had weight. It had to fit beneath Thomas's stone, disappear from one world and arrive in another at whatever cost his impossible System paid for the privilege. This did not. The moving Kelda could simply appear in Thomas and Isha's Earth device because Ian had decided to send it there. Her expression tightened.

“You can reach their machines whenever you choose.”

It was not quite a question. Kelda glanced towards the correspondence shelf. Every page had cost waiting, preparation and, on Thomas's side, bodily risk they had described carefully enough that Kelda had learned to hate the blank space between openings. Ian could apparently move ten breaths of Kelda across that distance with his thumb.

“That is irritating.”

She picked up the spoon again and finished another mouthful while thinking. Then she pointed it at him.

“You do not send that one. That was for me to understand what you meant. It was not my message to Thomas and Isha.”

Kelda lowered the spoon.

“If I agree to make one for them, I decide when it begins. I decide when it ends. And I see it before you take it away. The others get the same choice.”

Then she looked again through the window toward the neighbouring house.

“They could hear us as well? Not only see us. If I spoke while you made one of these, Thomas and Isha would hear exactly what I said?”

“It can. What you say, what many people say. We can show birds flying, the whole family eating, one person talking. Seconds, minutes, hours; I don't want to constrain, edit, or judge. I owe them. I want to try and... do something.”

Ian sighed. Then his face changed again. Not the body in Kelda's room, exactly. That remained seated across from her, eyes wet and breathing unevenly. But his attention seemed to turn fractionally elsewhere, toward the other place he kept insisting was also him.

“I am now crying in my real life, so fucking pathetic.”

Kelda's brows drew together.

“No.”

The answer was immediate enough to interrupt whatever judgement Ian had been making about himself. She put the spoon down.

“I have watched men cry because their boots leaked. One of them was Thomas.”

That was probably not entirely fair to Thomas, but Kelda did not appear troubled by the historical precision.

“You are sitting in my house telling me you watched people you came to care about die, suffer, marry, leave this world and continue living somewhere you cannot properly join. You have also somehow made yourself partly responsible for all of it.”

Her mouth tightened.

“That sounds exhausting and badly designed. And if you truly are somewhere else crying while this version of you sits here, then I have even less idea what rules apply to you than I did five minutes ago.”

Kelda reached for the pot again, took one more mouthful and chewed before continuing.

“But pathetic is a useless word. It tells me nothing except that you dislike being seen having the feeling. I have no objection to you crying. I may object if you expect me to fix it.”

The distinction sounded thoroughly Kelda. She pushed the pot a little nearer the centre of the table, neither offering it nor claiming it.

“As for the gift—hours is too much. Not because your machine cannot hold it. Because people will begin trying to make something perfect.”

She gestured toward the workshop beyond the wall.

“If you tell a craftsperson there is no limit, some fool will use all of it.”

Kelda considered for another moment.

“But I understand now. Not messages only.”

Porridge passing through the yard. The sound of tools from the workshop. A meal at Thomas's family table. Wind through trees Isha had known before Thomas ever entered the Wood Elf forest. Someone laughing at something that had nothing to do with being separated by worlds. Kelda's expression shifted.

“That may be the part that matters most. If they only speak *to* Thomas and Isha, everyone will behave as though they are saying goodbye.”

Her fingers tapped once against the table.

“I do not want that. I want them to see people living.”

Kelda looked toward the door of the neighbouring house.

“And yes. I want to help you do that.”

“Thank you.”

Kelda accepted that without comment.

“Maybe we should start with some simple things. The houses here, the workshop, the Hero Porridge. You could maybe be the final message, after whoever else agrees? It's your choice. We then go to whoever you want. I would imagine the Elves might handle it better and give you some practice, but I don't *really* know them.”

Kelda's mouth moved slightly at that.

“No. You don't.”

It was not hostile. It was simply correction.

“Aelira will understand faster than most people that something impossible can still have rules. That does not mean she will enjoy a strange man appearing in front of her and announcing that he helped arrange her life. Sereth may understand you perfectly and still decide she dislikes you. Ruvan will ask questions until either you improve at explaining yourself or one of you dies.”

That assessment apparently satisfied her.

“But you are right about starting here.”

She rose and carried the barley pot toward the kitchen area, then stopped halfway and looked back at Ian.

“Not Thomas and Isha's house inside. The outside, yes. The workshop, yes. My house where I choose. The paths. The spring. Porridge, assuming your great Hero consents to remaining in one place long enough.”

Outside, the pony had begun investigating a fence post for possible nutritional value. Kelda looked at him through the window.

“He will not.”

She set the pot down and returned.

“And I do not want the others to be practice. We practise here. You show me how the still pictures work properly. You show me how to start and stop the moving ones. I learn what the machine sees when you point it somewhere. If I am going to tell people they may trust me when I explain this, I want to know what I am explaining.”

She glanced at Ian's phone.

“Then I go ahead of you. I tell them you exist. I tell them what you want. I tell them they do not have to meet you at all. And you do not appear until I say they have agreed to that much.”

Kelda looked toward the other house again.

“As for where we go first...”

She thought for longer this time.

“Thomas's family and Isha's people are close enough that once we reach the mainland, we can do both without turning the road into nonsense. I think the Wood Elves first.”

Ian had guessed correctly for the wrong reason.

“Not because they will be easier. Because Aelira already knows how to contain a dangerous truth without immediately sharing it with everyone who becomes curious. And Sereth deserves to hear what you want before somebody arrives at Thomas's family farm carrying a story about the strange man who can make their children move inside black glass.”

She paused.

“Then Thomas's family. If either group refuses, we do not use the other one to persuade them.”

Kelda picked up the small working hammer from the table and returned it to its proper place by the workshop door.

“And I will be last. If this works, I want to know what everyone else chose before I decide what I want to say.”

A faint, difficult smile appeared.

“Besides, somebody has to finish the thing properly.”

Then she opened the door onto the yard. Porridge raised his head. Kelda looked at him.

“Apparently you have been promoted.”

“Yes, you can use the device. I will show you how.”

Kelda stopped just outside the door and looked back. That caught her attention differently from everything else Ian had offered.

“You will let me hold it?”

“Yes.”

Her gaze dropped to the black rectangle in his hand. A tool that could apparently preserve light, sound and movement, then send those things between worlds without Thomas's passage. Ian had handled it casually enough that Kelda had initially filed that behaviour under the general category of people failing to respect their own equipment. The possibility that she might operate it herself changed the proposition.

“Good. Then you are not making all the pictures. If Sereth wants something recorded and does not want you staring at her while she does it, I can do it. If Thomas's mother wants to show him something without you deciding where to point the machine, she can tell me.”

Kelda held out her hand.

“Later. You teach me before we leave.”

Ian paused.

“There is also the question of travel. We can... go quickly... if you prefer.”

The yard seemed to become quieter around the offer. Kelda looked at him for several seconds. Then at his boots. Then, with obvious deliberation, at the empty road leading away from the houses.

“How quickly?”

Her tone was wary now.

“I have heard that sort of sentence from Thomas. The last time he discovered a way to make a long road short, I ended up standing in a mushroom ring two miles from his family's farm with no useful understanding of how I had crossed half the world.”

A faint crease appeared between her brows.

“And his method at least belonged to rules he was learning.”

She looked back at Ian.

“You have just explained that your method involves telling reality to become different and hoping the workmanship is acceptable.”

Kelda glanced towards Porridge.

“I am not letting you accidentally put him in the Elven Woods. Or me.”

She studied Ian more carefully.

“So before I choose the boat or whatever *quickly* means in your language: what exactly are you proposing to do to the road?”

“I can force the machine to be precise and I can make it so your door opens into her private chambers. Or just outside. Or down the road. I think the Elves to Thomas's family is less, so we can maybe do that a more traditional way. There will be no damage or consequence to you, your house, or anyone. I can't guarantee the same with the revelation of me, or the images, of course.”

Kelda stared at the open doorway. Then at Ian. Then back at the doorway.

“You can make *my door* open somewhere else.”

It was not quite disbelief. By now disbelief had become an inefficient response to Ian. Her hand settled on the doorframe.

“This door.”

“Yes.”

“And afterward it is my door again.”

The simple confirmation cost Ian nothing. Kelda looked through it at the yard, the workshop, the other house and Porridge beyond the fence.

“No private chambers. If Aelira agrees to see you, I am not rewarding that agreement by having reality put an unknown man inside whatever room she considers private.”

She thought for another moment.

“Not directly outside either. She would have guards, attendants, somebody moving through a corridor, or simply the reasonable expectation that walls mean something. Somewhere outside the settlement's ordinary paths. Somewhere I can take you from after I have spoken to her. And I choose the place before you alter anything.”

The impossible method did not seem to offend her nearly as much once she had converted it into a route with an agreed destination. Then Ian continued.

“But more importantly—you, they, can use the device. Still, moving, sound, no sound... entirely up to you, and them.”

That pulled Kelda's attention away from the door again. She looked at the phone.

“Entirely?”

“Yes.”

Kelda considered the possibilities in silence.

“So Isha's mother could decide she wants no words at all.”

Yes.

“Thomas's family could put the thing on a shelf while they eat and ignore it.”

Yes.

“Aelira could make one still image and decide that is all she is willing to give you.”

Yes. Kelda's posture eased by a small but visible degree.

“And I can turn it away. Stop it. Delete something before you take it.”

Yes. That answer mattered. Kelda held out her hand again. This time she did not withdraw it.

“Then show me. Not later. Now.”

She glanced toward Porridge.

“We start with the Hero before either of us finds a way to make this more complicated.”

Ian placed the phone in Kelda's hand. She took it with more care than she had taken the spoon. The device was lighter than its appearance suggested. Smooth-sided, warm from Ian's hand, and almost aggressively free of the seams, fasteners and obvious controls that would have allowed Kelda to understand how it had been assembled. She turned it once, inspected the edges, found the small openings and buttons without pressing them, then looked at the black glass face. Ian showed her the camera.

He kept the explanation practical. The large image on the screen was what the device currently saw. One control made a still photograph. Another changed to moving image and sound. A visible mark showed when recording had begun; pressing again stopped it. The image could be reviewed immediately. She could discard it. She could choose whether sound belonged with a moving image. Turning the device changed what it captured, and the small image on the screen made the boundary visible before she committed to anything. Kelda listened without interrupting until he reached deletion. That part she made him demonstrate twice.

“So gone means gone from what you intend to carry away.”

Ian confirmed it. Kelda accepted the distinction, though her expression suggested she had noticed the careful wording. She turned toward the yard. Porridge was still beside the gate. Kelda raised the phone. The screen filled with pony. For the first few seconds, she forgot that looking at the screen and looking at the subject were now different tasks. The device dipped, giving her an excellent moving view of fence rail and compacted ground before she corrected it. Porridge lifted his head. Kelda stopped. On the screen, he stopped too. She moved one step sideways. The image changed with her.

“Oh.”

It was the first uncomplicated sound of wonder Ian had heard from her. Kelda walked closer. Porridge regarded the strange black rectangle in her hand with the serious caution of an animal deciding whether it might contain food. Kelda framed him from shoulder to hoof, frowned, stepped back because the ears had disappeared from the top of the image, then adjusted until the whole pony fitted. She pressed the still-image control. Nothing visibly dramatic happened. Kelda lowered the phone.

“That's all?”

Ian confirmed it. She opened the captured image. Porridge stared back from the screen, ears forward, one strand of grass hanging from the corner of his mouth. Behind him, the fence sat slightly crooked in the frame and part of Thomas and Isha's workshop roof appeared at the edge. Kelda studied it. Then she looked at the actual pony. Then back at the image.

“You look more intelligent in this.”

Porridge chewed. Kelda appeared satisfied that the machine had already demonstrated editorial dishonesty without requiring human intervention. She took another photograph, then a third. She deleted one because she preferred the first. The act of choosing seemed to matter. She switched to moving image and watched for the recording mark before lowering the phone toward Porridge. The pony chewed the fence. Kelda waited. Porridge continued chewing the fence. Somewhere beyond the yard, a bird called twice.

Kelda moved the phone slightly to include the workshop, the path and the side of Thomas and Isha's house beyond it. For several seconds the recording contained no person at all: pony, autumn light, the faint movement of grass, a hammering sound from somewhere farther down the road. Then she stopped it. She watched the result once. Halfway through, her expression changed. The screen had caught something she had not noticed while making it: the sound of the place. Not anything important. The gate shifting faintly in its fitting. Porridge tearing grass. Wind touching the roof edge. A distant tool striking wood or stone. Thomas and Isha had once lived inside those sounds.

Kelda replayed the clip, stopped it before the end and lowered the phone. For a while she said nothing. Then she walked toward the workshop. Inside, Kelda experimented more deliberately. A still image of the workbench. Another from lower down, where the repaired legs and braces mattered more than the scarred top. A close image of the shallow chisel cut, deleted almost immediately.

“Thomas would ask what happened.”

She moved on. The east-road contract remained beneath its stone, and Kelda deliberately shifted the phone away from it before taking anything else. The crew notes disappeared from the frame as well. She understood boundaries quickly once the device made them visible. A short moving recording followed: her hand opening a drawer of measuring tools, the small click of metal against wood, the drawer closing again. No explanation. No message. Just the workshop functioning. Kelda watched it back and nodded once.

“This.”

She looked around her own workspace differently now, not as a room to document but as a collection of things Thomas and Isha might recognise and things they would not.

“The bench matters. They asked about it. The path matters. Porridge apparently matters more than civilisation. The spring. The three houses from the road. Smoke from Larchmeet if the day is clear enough.”

Kelda looked at the phone again.

“And not everything needs me standing in front of it explaining what they should feel.”

That conclusion seemed to please her. She changed back to the still camera and turned it toward Ian. Then stopped. The phone lowered. Her eyes rested on him.

“You said you want this to be ours. If I take a picture of *you*, does that belong in the gift?”

“You can do what you want, as can the others. Isha has seen the view from my house in the real world. She has not seen the real me, although this me probably looks like me.”

Kelda kept the phone lowered for a moment.

“So she has seen where you live. But not you.”

Ian confirmed it.

“That seems backwards.”

She raised the phone. Ian appeared on the screen. Kelda adjusted the angle once, moving enough that the workshop window sat behind him rather than the papers on her bench. She did not tell him how to stand. She did not ask him to smile. She simply took the picture. The photograph showed a middle-aged man sitting in a dwarven craftswoman's workshop in clothes that did not belong anywhere nearby. There was nothing grand about him. No light. No impossible object in his hands. No visible indication that he claimed to exist simultaneously beyond the reality containing the room. He looked slightly tired.

Kelda enlarged the image with the gesture Ian had shown her, frowned when she enlarged it too far, then corrected the mistake.

“You look disappointing.”

She glanced at the real Ian.

“That may be useful.”

The phone returned to her attention.

“If Thomas and Isha eventually see this, they will know what stood at my door.”

Not *who*. What. Kelda seemed satisfied with the precision. She did not delete the photograph. She also did not mark it as part of the gift.

“That one is mine for now. Perhaps later I put it in. Perhaps I don't. Perhaps I send it separately and tell them you cried in my workshop after producing stolen barley.”

Her mouth moved very slightly.

“The barley was not stolen.”

Ian did not need to defend the metaphysics; Kelda had already turned away. She stepped back into the yard with the phone still in hand. For the next several minutes she became increasingly ambitious. The first view of the three houses was poor because Kelda stood too close. The second cut the workshop in half. On the third she went farther down the path, turned, and captured the cluster properly: her own house, Thomas and Isha's beside it, the workshop, low fence, autumn grass and Porridge occupying an inconvenient but authentic piece of foreground. Kelda looked at the result for a long time.

“This has changed.”

She did not explain immediately. Ian could see very little that would have meant anything to someone arriving for the first time. A repaired gutter. More stacked timber beneath the workshop shelter. The bench visible faintly through the window. A path worn more deeply between Kelda's door and the workshop than the path toward Thomas and Isha's house. Kelda knew every difference. She took another picture. Then a moving one. This time she did not narrate. She began at the road and walked slowly toward the houses, letting the image carry the approach Thomas and Isha would have known: fence, rooflines, yard, workshop, Kelda's door, then the other house standing quiet beside it.

At the end she stopped the recording before reaching Thomas and Isha's threshold. She reviewed it once. Her thumb hovered over deletion. Then moved away.

“No. They should see that.”

Porridge approached while she was still holding the phone and pushed his muzzle against her shoulder. The resulting recording began with a violent blur of brown-grey hair, Kelda swearing, and the camera swinging toward the sky. She stared at the playback. Then laughed. It was not restrained. The first sound burst out of her before she had decided whether the failure deserved dignity. Porridge's enormous nose filled the image, vanished, returned, and then Kelda's own voice could be heard telling the supposed Hero to remove himself from the work. She watched it twice.

“That stays.”

No philosophical consideration followed. Porridge had apparently completed his contribution. Kelda handed the phone back to Ian only after checking that everything she intended to keep was still present.

“Good. Now we have something worth explaining instead of a story about a black rectangle.”

Her expression became more serious again.

“I will go to Aelira first. Alone.”

She pointed toward Ian's boots.

“You remain here until I have asked whether she will meet you.”

Then she looked at the houses, reconsidered something, and added:

“And while I am gone, do not improve anything. No repaired roofs. No gifts. No resurrected furniture. No weather. No making the spring taste better. You may feed Porridge if he asks convincingly.”

She took two steps toward the workshop, where travelling gear could be assembled, then stopped.

“There is one thing I need from you before I leave. When I tell Aelira what you are asking for, what name do you want me to give you? Not what Thomas and Isha called you because it was convenient. What should *she* be told you are?”

“I am Ian. She can call me that. I am a man, a human man. How to describe my... interaction... with reality I'm afraid I've no good short version of. Hopefully you can figure that out.”

Kelda gave him a look.

“That is an unreasonable amount of confidence in my vocabulary.”

Ian moved toward her door.

“Now, where do you want to appear? I will read your talk with her and enter when you say.”

Kelda's expression changed at once.

“You will *read* it.”

The words were not a question for long. She remembered what he had already told her: written account, lives visible from elsewhere, the machine producing reality around whatever he supplied to it. Her mouth compressed.

“I dislike that.”

She thought anyway. There was one place.

“Not the settlement. North of the old stream there is a forester's rest. Small. Warded enough that people do not wander through it, outside the ordinary paths. Aelira used it once when Thomas needed to exist somewhere the rest of the world wasn't allowed to notice.”

She looked directly at Ian.

“There. And not *inside* it. Ten paces from the door, on the clear side where I can see what has happened before I step anywhere.”

Ian closed Kelda's door. For one breath it was only a door. When Kelda opened it again, Larchmeet was gone. Cool forest air entered the house. Beyond the threshold stood close old trees, moss-dark ground and the small timber forester's rest exactly where Kelda remembered it. The building had weathered. One shutter had been replaced with newer wood. Ferns had thickened around the uphill edge. The old stream could be heard through the trees rather than seen. No flash. No sensation of movement. Her house simply had the wrong outside. Kelda stood with one hand still on the latch.

“Awful.”

She meant it admiringly enough that she immediately looked annoyed with herself. Porridge called from the yard behind her. Kelda turned. Her own house remained behind her. Her table, the remains of Thomas's barley, Ian, and through the far window the ordinary yard outside Larchmeet. She looked forward again. Elven forest. Back. Home. Forward. Forest.

“You have made a door behave worse than Homegate.”

She took her travelling hammer from its hook, checked the forest once more and stepped through. The ground accepted her. That seemed worth confirming. Kelda crouched, pressed one hand into the moss, then stood and examined the forester's rest. No ward alarm sounded. No tree split. No ancient interface politely informed her that she had violated an administrative boundary. Behind her, her own doorway still framed Ian and the impossible view back into her house.

“You stay on your side until I say.”

The door closed. The forest became a forest again.

---

Kelda remained beside the forester's rest for nearly a minute. Nothing arrived. That helped. She walked toward the stream. The old route came back more easily than she expected. Not because she had travelled it often, but because Isha had once selected paths the way other people selected tools: for purpose, not beauty. Kelda remembered the bent cedar where the ground dropped, the shallow crossing with pale stones and the place where a watcher could see the lower track without being visible from it. Time had changed some things.

A fallen trunk had been cut and moved from one route. The cut was old enough to have darkened. A narrow drainage line had been repaired with smaller stone than Kelda would have chosen but competently seated. One of the old ward markers was newer. People had kept living here. Kelda approved. She did not go directly into the settlement. A Wood Elf warden found her first. He appeared on the path twenty paces ahead without any theatrical rustling, bow already in hand but not drawn. Kelda recognised him only after several seconds. He recognised her sooner.

His eyes travelled over Kelda, the hammer, the absence of pony, pack or visible travelling supplies, and the path behind her.

“Flintvein.”

“Still.”

The warden's gaze sharpened.

“You did not approach through the eastern gap.”

“No.”

That answer earned the silence it deserved. Kelda continued before silence became procedure.

“I need Aelira. Privately. It concerns Thomas and Isha's correspondence.”

The man's entire posture changed without visibly moving much at all. That phrase remained one of the few capable of cutting past ordinary questions. He did not ask for the subject.

“Wait.”

Kelda did. A younger version of herself might have found the lack of explanation insulting. The current Kelda had survived enough courts to appreciate a person who recognised that not knowing was sometimes part of the job. The warden disappeared. Someone else watched her from somewhere she did not identify. She resisted the temptation to wave. Aelira arrived herself. That told Kelda how seriously the message had been carried.

The Princess came along the upper path in practical forest clothing rather than court layers, one attendant following far enough behind that the conversation could become private if Aelira chose. Time had not transformed her into another person. It had accumulated in smaller places: slightly different braiding at her temples, a new clasp at one shoulder, the manner of someone whose authority had continued being used after the crisis that once seemed likely to consume all future crises. She saw Kelda. Stopped. Then looked behind her. No Thomas. No Isha. No Porridge.

“Kelda.”

“Aelira.”

“You are supposed to be on the eastern island.”

“I was this morning.”

Aelira became very still. The attendant behind her did the same. Kelda realised that this was going to become annoying quickly.

“They are alive.”

Aelira's shoulders changed by a fraction.

“I did not ask.”

“You were about to.”

“Yes.”

“They are alive. The passage did not open. No new letter came. Nothing has happened to Thomas or Isha that I know of.”

Aelira studied her face.

“Then how are you here?”

Kelda exhaled.

“There is a man.”

Aelira closed her eyes. Only briefly. When she opened them again she said, “That is not usually the beginning of a sentence I expect from you.”

“This one is worse.”

Kelda looked toward the attendant. Aelira followed the glance.

“Stay here,” she told him.

He withdrew without argument. Aelira gestured toward the forester's rest. They went inside. The room was cleaner than Kelda remembered. Someone still used it occasionally. A small stack of dry wood waited beside the hearth, and a wrapped emergency bundle occupied the shelf where Thomas had once put a cup down and forgotten it long enough for Isha to threaten ownership transfer. Kelda noticed herself looking for the cup. It was gone. Good. Aelira closed the door.

“Now.”

Kelda sat.

“Ian.”

Aelira did not sit. The name reached her immediately.

“The Earth man.”

“The one from the page.”

“The arrow.”

“Yes.”

Aelira's face cooled.

“He is here?”

“In a complicated sense.”

“Kelda.”

“I am trying.”

“That is already worrying.”

Kelda rubbed both hands over her face.

“He knocked on my door.”

Aelira's composure finally failed enough to show open disbelief.

“On the island.”

“Yes.”

“At your house.”

“Yes.”

“And you let him in.”

“I had a hammer.”

“That does not improve the sentence.”

“It improved mine.”

Aelira stared at her for several seconds. Then she sat.

“Tell me exactly what happened.”

Kelda did. Not every sentence Ian had spoken. She was not a recording device and refused to become one merely because she had recently learned what those were. She gave Aelira the shape. Ian had appeared looking like the description Thomas and Isha had sent: ordinary human man, foreign Earth clothes, no visible magic, no road behind him that explained arrival. He claimed again that he existed both as the man who appeared and somewhere outside their reality, where he participated in something that produced their world through writing and an unreliable mechanism. Aelira interrupted there.

“You believe him?”

“I believe he can do things that make his explanation difficult to dismiss.”

“That was not my question.”

“No.”

Kelda considered it more carefully.

“I believe he believes most of what he says. I believe Thomas and Isha had good reason to separate what he demonstrated from what he claimed. I am keeping the same rule.”

Aelira nodded once. That sounded familiar enough to pass.

“The arrow?”

“I asked.”

Kelda gave the answer without protecting Ian from it. He admitted choosing large events. He admitted that the machine did not always produce what he intended. He was ashamed of some of what had happened. He wanted Thomas, Isha and Kelda not to hate him. Aelira's expression did not soften.

“He wants forgiveness.”

“He wants to be liked.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“I told him.”

That produced the faintest shift at one corner of Aelira's mouth.

“Of course you did.”

Kelda continued.

“He also made ironpot barley appear on my table.”

Aelira stared.

“What?”

“The one Thomas made at Irondeep.”

The Princess's eyes narrowed.

“You told me about that meal.”

“I did not tell Ian.”

Silence.

“He says he watched it happen,” Kelda said. “From wherever he is.”

The room seemed less private after that sentence. Aelira looked slowly toward the walls. Kelda understood.

“I know.”

“And he can hear us now?”

“Read us, according to him.”

Aelira's gaze snapped back to Kelda.

“Now?”

“Yes.”

A long silence followed. Aelira's first response was not fear. It was anger. Very controlled anger, which on Aelira looked like a sudden absence of everything unnecessary.

“Then I have not agreed to this conversation being witnessed.”

“No.”

“And yet it is.”

“Yes.”

Kelda let her have the answer without defending it. Aelira rose and crossed to the shutter, though shutting it would obviously accomplish nothing. For a while she looked outside.

“When Thomas first came here,” she said, “half my work involved preventing people with power from deciding that access created ownership.”

Kelda said nothing. Aelira turned.

“And this man can apparently enter my private decisions because reality itself reports them to him.”

“He says he cannot reliably prevent that.”

“That is convenient.”

“Yes.”

“You dislike him.”

“Sometimes.”

“Yet you came.”

“Yes.”

That answer finally brought Aelira back to the actual purpose.

“Why?”

Kelda took Ian's phone from inside her jacket. Aelira saw the object and stopped again.

“Earth device?”

“Yes.”

“His?”

“For now.”

The black screen reflected a narrow piece of window light. Kelda did not activate it.

“He wants to give Thomas and Isha a marriage present.”

Aelira's expression became almost offended by the scale mismatch.

“He entered our world because they married, and he requires you.”

“Yes.”

Aelira sat again.

“I see why you called this worse.”

Kelda's mouth twitched despite herself.

“He wants pictures.”

Aelira glanced at the phone.

“The light-made images Thomas and Isha have sent.”

“Yes. But not only those.”

Kelda woke the screen and found the recordings Ian had shown her how to access. She chose Porridge first. Not herself. The still image appeared. Aelira had seen a printed photograph of the community cat from Earth and later a couple photograph of Thomas and Isha. She understood the principle already. Porridge was still enough not to challenge it.

“That is the pony.”

“Yes.”

“He looks respectable.”

“He is committing fraud.”

Kelda moved to the short recording. Porridge came alive. Grass moved. Wind touched the yard. The workshop stood behind him. For the first few seconds Aelira watched with complete concentration. Then the sound reached her. Her face altered. Not because Porridge was interesting. Because the yard was. Kelda let the clip finish. Aelira said nothing. She showed her the next one. The approach toward the three houses. No commentary. The path. Fence. Workshop. Kelda's house. Thomas and Isha's house. The quiet ordinary place they had once built and left behind. When the recording ended, Aelira reached out. Kelda handed her the device. Aelira held it carefully.

“Again.”

Kelda showed her how. The Princess replayed it. This time she watched Thomas and Isha's house almost exclusively. When it finished, she did not return the phone.

Aelira asked whether Thomas and Isha could both see and hear what the device preserved, and whether Ian could carry it to their Earth device without Thomas using the passage. Kelda confirmed all three.

Aelira looked at her.

“Then why are we involved?”

That was the right question. Kelda leaned forward.

“Because he doesn't want it to be his gift.”

Aelira waited.

“He wants to make the ability available. I decide whether I use it. You decide whether you use it. Sereth decides. Ruvan. Lethira. Thomas's family. Anyone else we choose to ask. We choose still or moving, sound or no sound. We point the device. We decide what stays. We can delete anything before he takes it.”

Kelda tapped the phone.

“He says he wants to facilitate it. Not choose it.”

Aelira's eyes narrowed.

“Because the last time he chose a gift, he stole Tessa's arrow.”

“Yes.”

“And now he has learned consent.”

“I would phrase it less generously.”

Kelda considered.

“He is trying.”

Aelira was silent for several breaths.

“Did you agree?”

“Yes.”

That surprised her.

“Fully?”

“To helping him ask. To making something of my own if I still want to after everyone else. Not to guaranteeing him anything from anyone.”

Aelira looked down at the phone.

“Why?”

Kelda glanced toward the shutter.

“Because I watched my yard move in that little black glass.”

Her voice became quieter.

“I heard the gate. Porridge. Someone working down the road. Things I do not put into letters because paper is small and none of them sounds important until you cannot hear them anymore.”

Aelira's eyes returned to her.

“I thought of Thomas seeing it.”

A pause.

“And Isha.”

Kelda's fingers closed loosely together.

“I want them to see people living.”

That landed. Aelira looked at the phone again. Not at Porridge now. At its blank screen.

“You came to me first.”

“Yes.”

“Before Sereth.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because Ian suggested the elves might handle it better.”

Aelira's eyebrows rose.

“I corrected him.”

“Good.”

“He doesn't really know you.”

“That may be the first reassuring thing you have told me.”

Kelda almost laughed.

“I came because you understand dangerous information. And because if I took Ian to Thomas's family first, whatever happened there would reach Sereth eventually with six pieces missing and one invented by a farmer.”

Aelira considered that.

“Also true.”

Kelda continued more carefully.

“I want Sereth told before Ian appears anywhere near her. Properly. I want you to decide who among the Wood Elves even hears the proposal. I am not walking him through the settlement.”

“Good.”

Aelira's response was immediate.

“No public arrival. No court. No ward line full of witnesses trying to decide whether to shoot him.”

She leaned back.

“If I meet him, it will be here.”

Kelda nodded.

“That was my thought.”

Aelira glanced around the modest forester's room.

“He knows where this is.”

“He knows now.”

Aelira's expression sharpened.

“Yes.”

The privacy problem returned. This time she set it aside deliberately rather than solving it.

“What does he want from me?”

“Nothing specific.”

“That is difficult to believe.”

“He wants us to want to participate.”

Aelira's gaze became sceptical. Kelda added, “He also wants Thomas and Isha to like him for helping.” Aelira blinked. Then, unexpectedly, laughed once. It was a small sound. Not amusement at Ian exactly. More at the absurd honesty of the problem.

“At least that motive is comprehensible.”

“I told him something similar.”

“And if I refuse?”

“He says you refuse.”

“If Sereth refuses?”

“She refuses.”

“If everyone refuses except you?”

“Then he has a picture of me. Possibly Porridge eating a fence.”

Aelira looked at the device in her hand.

“And Ian accepts that?”

“He says so.”

“You believe him?”

Kelda thought about Ian crying in her workshop. About his admission that if he knew Thomas and Isha would hate him for it, he would not do it. About the way he had handed over the phone and let Kelda delete whatever she wished.

“I believe he wants us to say yes.”

“That is not the same.”

“No.”

“And?”

“I believe he is trying to make our no real anyway.”

Aelira sat with that. Outside, water moved over stone. The sound was faint through the walls. Eventually Aelira tested the practical boundary herself: whether she could use the device without Ian holding it, record Sereth with him absent, stop a recording and erase it afterward. Kelda answered yes to each.

“And Ian can still see what happens while we make it.”

Kelda hesitated.

“Probably.”

Aelira's mouth tightened.

“That is the part I dislike most.”

“Not the part where he claims to participate in making reality?”

“That is too large to dislike usefully.”

Kelda nodded with immediate respect for the distinction. Aelira looked down at the phone again. Then she opened the Porridge recording herself. The pony began eating. She watched him for several seconds.

“Thomas will laugh.”

“Yes.”

“Isha will call him heroic purely because Thomas objects.”

“Yes.”

The certainty of that seemed to do something. Aelira stopped the recording. Her thumb rested near the edge of the device.

“What happens after?”

Kelda shrugged. “We travel. We ask people. We record whatever they choose. Ian says he can make a book of still images. The moving ones go to the devices Thomas and Isha use there.”

“And the passage?”

“Not required.”

Aelira's eyes narrowed again.

“I want the passage used.”

Kelda waited.

“Not to send the images. To tell them afterward.”

The decision formed visibly as Aelira spoke.

“Kelda writes. In her own hand. She tells Thomas and Isha what happened. That Ian appeared. That we chose. That no one was compelled.”

Kelda nodded slowly.

“I had considered the same.”

“If the opening is not due yet, we wait.”

Aelira's gaze became hard.

“We do not ask Ian to alter their System to make our reassurance arrive sooner.”

That was an interesting complication. Kelda thought of the man outside reality, reading the conversation as it happened.

“He may offer.”

“I will decline.”

“For yourself?”

“For the message I am proposing.”

Aelira's expression did not move.

“If he can change Thomas's passage at will, I do not want the first proof that we acted freely delivered by a route he changed for us.”

Kelda smiled. Aelira looked at her.

“What?”

“That is why I came to you first.”

The Princess ignored the compliment with long practice. She rose. For several seconds she walked the small room, considering matters Kelda could not see and Ian, apparently, could. Then she stopped.

“I will meet him.”

Kelda remained seated.

“That is not agreement to a photograph.”

“I know.”

“Or recording.”

“I know.”

“Or Sereth.”

“Kelda.”

“Yes.”

Aelira held out the phone. Kelda took it.

“I want to hear his explanation badly enough to regret the decision already.”

“That is normal around him.”

“You have known him for part of one afternoon.”

“It has been a dense afternoon.”

Aelira went to the door. She opened it and spoke quietly to the warden outside. No one was to approach the forester's rest until she called. No alarm was to be raised unless the wards themselves indicated danger or she failed to emerge by the agreed time. The instruction produced questions in the warden's face and none aloud. When the door closed again, Aelira moved the table slightly so neither chair had its back directly to the entrance. Then she looked at Kelda. Kelda understood. She also understood, with a peculiar delayed discomfort, that Ian had been present for all of this in the only sense that mattered to his claim.

She looked at the empty space beside the door.

“Fine.”

Aelira's posture settled into stillness. Not court posture. Not battle readiness either. Something between diplomacy and waiting for a dangerous animal to decide whether it understood the gate. Kelda addressed the room.

“Ian. Aelira Caelithen has agreed to meet you. Here. Now.”

Aelira's eyes remained on the empty space.

“Come in.”

The door opened. For an instant the forester's rest had acquired a second impossible window. Beyond Ian stood Kelda's cottage: the table, part of the workshop-facing window, late island light and, farther back, a narrow slice of the yard. Aelira had enough time to see that the doorway genuinely joined two places before Ian stepped across the threshold. Then he closed it. Timber met frame. The other world vanished. Aelira's eyes stayed on the door for another second.

“That,” she said quietly, “is offensive.”

Kelda's mouth twitched.

“I said awful.”

“You undersold it.”

Ian looked toward Aelira.

“Princess Ae—”

The first attempt was wrong. Not badly enough that the name became unrecognisable, but the stress landed where Common spelling had apparently encouraged him to put it rather than where an elf would. Aelira waited. Ian tried again.

“Princess Ael—ira.”

Her expression altered by the smallest degree. A third attempt somehow corrected the first error and introduced another. Kelda looked away. Ian stopped. Aelira supplied her own name once, evenly.

“Aelira.”

Rendered into Common it looked no different. Spoken, the shape was obvious enough that Ian could hear immediately where he had been going wrong. He tried once more. Closer. Aelira inclined her head.

“That will do.”

Only then did her attention move properly from his face to the rest of him. Black trousers. Heavy black boots. Bare forearms. The strange cut of Earth clothing Kelda had already described. And the shirt. Aelira read Common. The lettering therefore presented no difficulty. **LYSENNE IS THE BEST ELF** Beneath it stood a blonde, long-eared woman with a bow, one hand at her hip and the unmistakable visual confidence of an artist who had never met a Wood Elf but felt entitled to establish several opinions about them. Aelira stared. Ian became aware of what he was wearing. Colour rose into his face. Kelda saw the change and folded her arms.

Aelira looked from the illustrated elf to Ian. Then back to the illustrated elf.

“This is what humans in your world think elves look like?”

There was no anger in the question. That was worse. Her eyes travelled over the printed bow, the ears, the hair, the fitted clothing, then returned to the large declaration above it.

“And she is the best one.”

Ian's blush deepened. Aelira turned slightly toward Kelda.

“He arrived at your house wearing this?”

“Yes.”

“You did not mention it.”

“I had more serious problems.”

Aelira considered the shirt again.

“I am no longer certain.”

Kelda's face remained impressively neutral. Aelira stepped closer, though not close enough to surrender the careful distance she had arranged before his arrival.

“Lysenne.”

She tested the unfamiliar name.

“A fictional elf?”

Kelda glanced at Ian, but the answer was sufficiently trivial that she supplied what she had inferred.

“From one of their Earth stories.”

Aelira looked genuinely interested now despite herself.

“So your world invents stories about people like us.”

“Apparently badly,” Kelda said.

“I did not say badly.”

Aelira inspected Lysenne for another moment.

“The bow is questionable.”

Kelda's eyes dropped to the printed weapon.

“Yes.”

“The ears are too decorative.”

“Yes.”

“The trousers appear sensible.”

Kelda looked at her. Aelira's composure finally cracked by the smallest amount.

“Do not tell Isha I began with the trousers.”

Kelda's answer came immediately.

“I expect Ian has already read it.”

The humour disappeared. Not violently. Aelira simply remembered what he was. Her gaze returned to Ian's face. The blush made him look considerably less like an incomprehensible external power and much more like an ordinary man who had made a poor clothing decision before meeting royalty. That seemed to help and irritate her simultaneously.

“You knew you were coming to meet Wood Elves.”

Her eyes dropped deliberately to **BEST ELF**.

“And you chose to keep wearing this.”

The question did not quite require an answer. Aelira let it pass before the absurdity could consume the purpose of the meeting. She gestured toward the chair opposite her.

“You may sit.”

Kelda took the other chair without invitation. Ian sat. Aelira remained standing for another moment. She studied him with the same attention she had once given Thomas when deciding whether a strange human boy represented danger, political disaster or merely a new category of work. Ian was older. More ordinary in appearance. Less visibly frightened. And, according to his own account, vastly more dangerous. She sat.

“Kelda has told me what you propose. She has also told me what you told her about yourself.”

A pause.

“I do not understand it.”

There was no embarrassment in the admission.

“I understand that you can alter things here. I understand that Thomas and Isha believe you possess knowledge you should not possess. I understand that Tessa's arrow disappeared after you wanted Isha to have it. And I understand that you claim some difference between what you intend and what the mechanism around you makes real.”

Aelira glanced once toward the closed door.

“That distinction may matter greatly.”

She returned to Ian.

“But Kelda told me another thing that matters more immediately. You want our participation, not merely our images.”

A beat.

“So I will begin there. I have not agreed to give you a photograph. I have not agreed to let you record me moving or speaking. I have not agreed that you may approach Sereth, Ruvan, Lethira or anyone else under my protection.”

Nothing in her tone suggested hostility. It was simply the current boundary.

“I have agreed to meet you.”

Her eyes flicked once more to the ridiculous elf on his chest.

“Despite some evidence that this was unwise.”

Kelda made a sound suspiciously close to a cough. Aelira ignored her.

“I want to hear the proposal from you. Not the mechanism. Not why you feel guilty. Not whether Thomas and Isha might like you afterward.”

Her attention sharpened.

“Tell me why you believe *we* should want to make this gift.”

“I am... sorry for the elf. Mostly, for myself. I had forgotten that the reality-machine had this in its canon for me. At least it is the version with trousers.”

Aelira looked at the shirt again.

“Yes.”

A pause.

“I am beginning to understand why Isha declined to strike you.”

Kelda turned her head. Aelira's expression remained entirely composed.

“She would have had to decide where to begin.”

Kelda's laugh escaped before she could stop it. Aelira let Ian endure that for a moment, then the shirt ceased to matter.

“I can't invent a reason for you wanting it,” Ian said. “I present the opportunity to let them see and hear you, and others. To give them a tangible, visceral, real connection to this world they saved. And lost.”

Aelira's face changed at the final word. Ian continued before she interrupted.

“I am no Princess, Lord, or God. I don't have the words. I fuck up a lot. An awful lot. I just thought, if I was one of them, whilst it might hurt, I'd want to see those I love, to feel a connection... I might be wrong. I usually am.”

He looked down at the shirt again.

“Not just about the correct attire to meet an Elven Princess.”

The room stayed quiet after he finished. Aelira did not look amused this time. Her attention had moved elsewhere.

“Lost.”

Ian looked at her.

“You said they lost this world.”

Aelira's hands remained folded, but one thumb moved slowly across the other.

“They did.”

Kelda glanced toward her. Aelira shook her head slightly.

“No. Let me finish.”

She looked at Ian again.

“They lost the ability to walk back into it. They lost mornings here. Meals. Roads. Arguments. People becoming older where they cannot see it.”

Her voice remained controlled.

“But they did not lose *us*.”

The distinction seemed important to her beyond language.

“We know they live. They know we live. We send paper through an impossible hole often enough to make Thomas unconscious and everyone else impatient.”

Kelda murmured, “Mostly impatient now.” Aelira ignored the correction.

“That is not nothing. It is also not this.”

She reached toward Kelda. Kelda understood and handed over the phone. Aelira found the moving image of the three houses more slowly than Kelda would have, but without asking for help. She played it again. The room filled with the faint sounds of another place. Wind. A gate. Porridge. For several seconds Aelira watched an empty path. Then Thomas and Isha's house appeared on the little screen. Aelira stopped the recording there. Her finger remained against the glass.

“When they left, I thought the worst part would be not knowing.”

She spoke to the image rather than Ian.

“It was. Then Kelda's first page came back, and the worst part changed.”

Kelda went very still. Aelira looked up.

“Knowing they are alive somewhere does not tell me what Thomas looks like when he has been awake too late. It does not tell Sereth whether Isha still moves her left hand when she is listening and pretending not to interrupt. It does not tell Tessa whether Thomas laughs before or after he realises he is being mocked.”

The smallest smile touched her mouth.

“It does not tell me whether Isha has learned to tolerate badly made bows on shirts.”

Ian's clothing survived one final glance. Then Aelira set the phone on the table.

“That is why I might want it.”

Not agreement. Something nearer.

“Not because they saved the world. I would not make this into another payment for that. And not because I think they need evidence that we remember them.”

Kelda nodded once. Aelira continued.

“I might want it because there are parts of loving someone that paper is poor at carrying.”

The sentence seemed to surprise her slightly after she said it. She looked away toward the shutter.

“And because if Isha can see Sereth living instead of imagining her waiting, that may be worth the pain of seeing her at all.”

Silence held for several breaths. When Aelira returned her attention to Ian, the diplomatic caution was still there, but it was no longer the only thing in the room.

“You said something else. If you were Thomas or Isha, you would want this.”

Aelira studied him.

“But you are not. You have watched them. You care about them. Perhaps you know things even Kelda and I do not. But you have also admitted that caring has made you interfere before.”

Kelda's gaze shifted to Ian too. Aelira pushed the phone a few centimetres toward the centre of the table.

“So tell me this. If we make these images, and afterward you realise there is one moment—one face, one sentence, one piece of this world—that you believe Thomas or Isha desperately ought to see...”

She paused.

“...and the person who made it tells you **no**.”

Aelira held his eyes.

“What will you do?”

“I will respect it. And, if you wish, I will prevent the machine from letting me see you talk to the others until you want me to enter. Or not at all. I will sacrifice that if it helps. But I also will meet them. They can ask me anything. Or hit me. It is all my fault, in a way. But so is the entirety of this existence I guess? It's complicated.”

Ian pondered.

“Have either of you tried chocolate ice cream?”

Silence. Aelira looked at Kelda. Kelda looked at Aelira. Neither expression suggested recognition. Aelira returned her attention to Ian.

“I understood each word until the first one.”

Kelda frowned. “I understood *cream*.”

“Possibly *ice*,” Aelira said.

“Yes.”

They considered the compound as though Ian had just proposed freezing dairy for structural purposes. Kelda's eyes narrowed.

“Is this another meal you watched Thomas make?”

“No,” Aelira said before Ian could answer. “Look at him.”

Kelda did. Ian's expression apparently contained evidence.

“Oh.”

Aelira folded her hands again.

“You have moved from questions concerning consent, reality and responsibility to an unknown food.”

“Yes,” Kelda said. “This may actually be progress.”

Aelira almost smiled, but her attention returned to Ian's earlier offer before the absurdity could erase it.

“You can prevent yourself from observing us.”

It was the first part she chose to revisit. Ian confirmed it.

“Completely?”

Another confirmation. Aelira sat with that.

“You would know that Kelda had come to speak to me. You would know you were waiting. But you would not know what I said until I chose to tell you.”

Yes. For the first time since Ian entered, Aelira's posture eased in a way that had nothing to do with humour.

“That matters.”

She glanced at Kelda.

“When you speak to Sereth, he does not watch.”

Kelda nodded immediately.

“Agreed.”

“If she chooses to meet him, then he enters afterward.”

“Yes.”

“And Ruvan.”

Kelda's expression suggested Ian was going to discover the practical consequences of making that promise soon enough.

“Yes.”

Aelira looked back at Ian.

“I still dislike that the boundary exists only because you choose to make it. But a voluntarily surrendered power is more informative than another promise that you mean well.”

Kelda gave a small grunt of agreement. Aelira's attention then drifted, despite herself, back to the unanswered food problem.

“Now. What is chocolate ice cream?”

Ian bent down. There had been nothing on the floor. Kelda knew this with the certainty of someone who had spent most of the conversation tracking precisely where impossible objects were not. When he straightened, he was holding two bowls. Both were cold enough that condensation had already begun gathering along the outside. Each contained three rounded scoops of something dark brown beneath a white mound of whipped cream, with a thin glossy line of darker sauce across the top. Two small spoons rested against the bowls. Aelira looked at them. Then at the empty floor. Then at Ian. Kelda looked only at Ian.

“No.”

It was not refusal of the food. It was an objection to reality behaving like this without warning. Aelira's eyebrows had risen farther than Ian had yet managed to move them.

“You reached toward an empty floor.”

“Yes,” Kelda said. “He does that.”

“And food appeared.”

“He did it with the barley.”

“You omitted the *reaching into nothing* part.”

“I was trying to keep the explanation useful.”

Aelira looked at the bowls again. The cold was visibly affecting them. A small softened line had begun forming where chocolate met ceramic. Ian handed one to Kelda and one to Aelira.

“Please try this.”

Kelda accepted hers because she had already eaten one impossible meal that afternoon and apparently considered two an irritating extension rather than a new category. Aelira took hers more cautiously. The bowl was genuinely cold. That seemed to bother her almost as much as its arrival. She touched the spoon to one scoop and found resistance softer than butter but firmer than cream. The spoon cut through cleanly. A little of the white topping folded into the brown beneath it. Kelda smelled hers first.

“Sweet.”

Aelira did the same.

“And something bitter.”

Neither ate. For several seconds they simply investigated. Kelda touched one fingertip to a bead of condensation on the bowl.

“It is freezing itself while sitting here.”

“Not freezing,” Aelira said. “Melting.”

Kelda looked at her.

“Yes. Thank you, Princess.”

Aelira ignored that. They each took a small spoonful. Kelda's reaction came first. Her entire face stopped. Not widened eyes or theatrical pleasure. Simply a complete interruption of whatever judgement she had prepared. The cold reached her before the flavour had fully developed. Then sweetness. Fat. The unfamiliar dark bitterness beneath it. The sauce intensified something she had no existing food category for, while the whipped cream made the whole thing richer and softer at once. She swallowed. Looked into the bowl. Then took another spoonful, substantially larger. Aelira had not moved yet. Her spoon remained just inside her mouth. Kelda noticed. That was enough to make Aelira withdraw it with dignity.

“This is absurd.”

She looked at the bowl as though the food had personally violated restraint. Kelda nodded.

“Yes.”

Aelira tasted it again. This time deliberately including the dark sauce. Her eyes closed. Only briefly. Kelda saw. Aelira opened them and found Kelda watching.

“Do not.”

“I said nothing.”

“You were about to.”

“I was going to ask whether Elven royalty commonly closes its eyes when confronted by dairy.”

Aelira took another bite instead of dignifying the question. The room became quiet in a surprisingly ordinary way. Two women who had fought demons, negotiated dangerous ancient systems and preserved truths capable of destabilising kingdoms sat in a forester's rest eating chocolate ice cream supplied by a man claiming partial responsibility for existence. Kelda scraped some whipped cream into the melting edge of one scoop.

“What is the dark part?”

Aelira looked toward Ian too.

“Chocolate,” Ian said.

Kelda repeated the word badly. Aelira did better. Neither had anything to attach it to. Kelda ate another spoonful.

“I dislike that Thomas does not have this ingredient.”

The complaint arrived with complete seriousness. Aelira glanced at her.

“You have had it for less than a minute.”

“That is enough information.”

Aelira looked down at her own bowl. The edges were softening now. A thin brown pool had begun forming beneath the scoops. She tasted that mixture with the whipped cream. Then her gaze shifted back to Ian. Some of the distance had returned, but not all of it.

“This is another example of what you mean by doing something kind.”

She looked at the bowl.

“And another example of why I understand Kelda's concern.”

Ian waited. Aelira continued.

“You can make pleasure appear with no labour, no warning and no way for the recipient to know what accepting it implies.”

Kelda stopped eating for a moment. Aelira's tone was not condemning. She seemed to be working through the problem as she spoke.

“But this time you asked us to try it.”

She took another bite.

“And nothing was taken from anyone.”

Aelira regarded the melting bowl.

“So this is better.”

Kelda gave her a sideways look.

“Your standard for him has become impressively low.”

“It appears practical.”

Kelda resumed eating. Aelira did too. Within another minute, both bowls had lost much of their original shape. Kelda had begun chasing the remaining chocolate sauce around the bottom with her spoon. Aelira was pretending not to do essentially the same thing. Kelda finished first. She looked into the empty bowl. Then at Ian.

“You realise you have created a problem.”

Aelira set her own spoon down.

“Yes.”

The two women looked at one another. Then back at Ian. Kelda folded her arms.

“Thomas cannot make this unless he knows what it is.”

Aelira's expression had become thoughtful.

“And if Isha sees us eating something from his world that she has never tasted...”

Kelda's mouth curved.

“...she will be furious.”

Aelira considered.

“Not furious.”

“Hungry, then.”

“That may be worse.”

For the first time since Ian entered, Aelira smiled at him without reservation. It lasted only a moment. Then she looked at the empty bowl again.

“You may have accidentally found the first thing I would like recorded.”

For the first time, Ian smiled.

“Giving women chocolate usually works to fractionally compensate for the transgressions of men. I'm glad that covers humans, elves and half-dwarves.”

Kelda's spoon stopped halfway to the empty bowl. Aelira looked at Ian for long enough that his smile became slightly less secure.

“That is an extraordinarily dangerous conclusion to draw from two bowls of food.”

Kelda nodded. “Especially when one of the women owns a hammer.” Aelira's mouth curved.

“But the food was excellent.”

Ian reached behind himself. A hessian bag appeared in his hands. Both women immediately stopped smiling. Kelda sighed.

“You had almost gone several minutes.”

Ian placed the bag down and opened it enough to reveal the seeds inside.

“I don't know if this is wise, but I think you can grow your own. Consider it a gift to the Wood Elves.”

Aelira did not touch the bag. Her attention sharpened in a way Kelda recognised immediately: not princess receiving a diplomatic object, but someone responsible for a forest being handed an unknown living thing from another world.

“You don't know if it is wise.”

“No.”

“And this is a plant from Earth.”

Ian confirmed it. Aelira crouched beside the bag without putting her hand inside. The seeds meant nothing to her by sight.

“What does it do when it escapes cultivation? What eats it? What diseases live on it? What does it compete with? Does it survive our winter? Does anything here recognise its leaves as food? Is any part poisonous to people, animals or spirits?”

There was no useful trivial answer to that. Aelira looked up.

“You have successfully given her work,” Kelda said.

“I noticed.”

Aelira stood.

“I am not refusing it. But I am certainly not planting an unknown other-world plant in the Elven Woods because the result tastes good frozen with cream.”

A pause.

“Though that is a stronger argument than I would prefer.”

Kelda looked pleased. Aelira pointed toward the bag.

“It stays contained. Sairen can examine it. We can try one or two seeds under controlled conditions if we decide that is sensible. Nothing goes into the forest until we understand what it is.”

She looked directly at Ian.

“If that disappoints you, take it back.”

The bag remained where it was. Aelira accepted that as sufficient. Ian's expression sobered.

“Do you have anything else to ask me? Will you help me?”

Aelira returned to her chair. This time she did not make him wait as long.

“Yes.”

Kelda looked at her. Aelira continued before either could mistake the scope.

“I will help you offer the choice. I will make something for Thomas and Isha if, after I have understood the device properly, I still want to. I will speak to Sereth. I will speak to Ruvan. I will decide with them whether anyone else here should even be told you have come.”

She paused.

“I will not order anyone to meet you. I will not tell them Thomas and Isha need this. I will not use my position to make refusal embarrassing.”

Kelda nodded once.

“And when I speak to them,” Aelira said, “you do not read it.”

Her gaze fixed on Ian.

“You offered that boundary. I am accepting it.”

The words carried more significance than a request for privacy. She was testing whether Ian would surrender access when access was available simply because someone had asked him to.

“If they agree to meet you, I will tell you. If they refuse, you will know only that they refused unless they choose to give you a reason.”

Aelira glanced toward Kelda.

“And Kelda remains involved.”

Kelda's eyebrows rose.

“I had planned to.”

“Good. You brought him here. You may share the consequences.”

“That sounds suspiciously like ownership through administrative responsibility.”

“It is friendship through punishment.”

Kelda considered the distinction.

“Acceptable.”

Aelira looked back at Ian.

“There is one more thing I want from you before I go to Sereth. You keep saying this is your fault.”

She gestured vaguely—not merely at the room, but at the world outside it.

“I do not know whether I believe that. I am not certain I even understand enough to decide whether the sentence has meaning.”

A pause.

“But when you meet Sereth, or Ruvan, or Thomas's family, do not offer yourself to be hurt as payment.”

Kelda's gaze shifted toward her. Aelira continued.

“If someone strikes you because they are angry, I will judge what happened when it happens. But do not walk into a room and tell grieving people that hurting you will balance what happened to their children.”

Her voice remained quiet.

“That makes your guilt another thing they have to carry.”

Kelda's face had become unreadable. Aelira let the silence remain for several seconds.

“Answer their questions. Let them be angry. Let them dislike you.”

Then she touched the phone.

“And if they choose to make something for Thomas and Isha, help them make what *they* want. That is enough.”

Aelira stood.

“I will go to Sereth now.”

She glanced toward Kelda.

“You are coming.”

Kelda pushed herself away from the table. Aelira looked at Ian one last time.

“You are not.”

There was no hostility in it now. Only the boundary he had offered her.

“When we want you, we will call.”

“Thank you. Thank you both.”

Aelira inclined her head. Kelda was less ceremonial.

“Do not thank us for work we have not done.”

She picked up Ian's phone, then looked at him.

“This stays with me.”

It was not really a question. Ian had already given her control of the device and the images upon it. Aelira moved toward the door.

“You offered not to observe what happens next. Keep that promise.”

Ian acknowledged it. Aelira studied him for another moment, perhaps checking whether a man who claimed to stand outside reality could meaningfully look as though he intended to behave himself. Apparently she decided that was the best evidence available.

“Kelda.”

They left together. The door shut. What followed belonged to the privacy Ian had offered them. No written account opened for him. No convenient narration supplied Sereth's expression when Aelira told her that the man connected to Tessa's arrow had appeared in Kelda's house. No unseen perspective told him whether Ruvan was summoned immediately, whether voices rose, whether anyone cried, or whether the little moving image of Porridge made the explanation easier or more difficult. For once, the machine gave him nothing because he had asked it not to. The forester's rest remained only a room.

Outside, wind passed through the trees. Water moved along the old stream. Once, footsteps approached and continued past without stopping. Much later, the latch moved. Kelda entered first. She looked tired. Not road-tired. Conversation-tired. Aelira followed and closed the door behind them. Neither woman spoke immediately. Kelda still had Ian's phone. She placed it carefully on the table between them. Aelira remained standing. Kelda looked at Ian.

“Sereth will meet you. She has agreed to that much.”

Her expression made clear that the rest had not been simple. Aelira added, “She has questions.” Kelda gave Ian a long look.

“Many.”

Ian asked, “Here, or there?”

“Here,” Aelira said immediately.

Kelda nodded toward the closed door.

“Sereth was very clear that you are not appearing inside the settlement.”

Aelira's mouth tightened slightly.

“She has agreed to come to the forester's rest because it is private, because Kelda and I will remain, and because she can leave whenever she wishes.”

A pause.

“Ruvan added several conditions of his own.”

Kelda sat down.

“Most of them were variations on *do not surprise us with reality*.”

“That is not how he phrased them.”

“It was the useful part.”

Aelira looked toward Ian.

“They are already on their way. You remain here. No food appearing from the floor. No altered doors. No gifts before they have decided whether they want anything from you.”

Kelda's expression became dry.

“And I strongly recommend you do not begin by discussing Dwarven courtship.”

Footsteps sounded outside. More than one person. Aelira's attention moved to the door. Kelda's humour vanished with it. The latch turned. Sereth entered first. Ian recognised her before the machine-supplied familiarity had time to become useful. She looked older than Isha had ever looked in the years he had watched her, though not old in any human sense. Pale hair carried back from her face, green-grey travelling clothes chosen for the forest rather than audience, no ornament beyond a small fastening at her throat. There was enough of Isha in the eyes and cheekbones to make the resemblance immediate and enough difference everywhere else to prevent comfort from it. Sereth stopped inside the door.

She looked at Ian. Nothing more happened for several seconds. Ian had already experienced Kelda's suspicion and Aelira's controlled assessment. Sereth's attention was quieter than either. She looked at him as though she had been given a difficult claim and intended to discover which portions survived direct inspection. Ruvan entered behind her. He shut the door himself. The older elf was tall and lean, pale hair gone almost completely white and tied back without decoration. A bow rested over one shoulder. A long knife rode at his hip. Neither weapon was presented as a threat; they were simply things Ruvan had brought because he was Ruvan and had travelled through woodland.

His gaze travelled over Ian once. Boots. Jeans. Black shirt. The shirt delayed him. **LYSENNE IS THE BEST ELF.** Ruvan read it. He looked at the illustrated elf. Then at Aelira. Aelira's face became very carefully neutral.

“We have already discussed the shirt,” she said.

“No,” Kelda corrected from the other side of the room. “We have mocked the shirt. That is not the same process.”

Ruvan looked back at Ian.

“The bow is poor.”

Aelira breathed slowly through her nose. Kelda folded her arms. Sereth did not look at the shirt at all.

“Ian.”

She said his name correctly on the first attempt. Not warmly. Not coldly. Identification. Ian acknowledged it. Sereth's gaze remained on his face.

“Aelira and Kelda told us what you offered.”

Behind her, Ruvan moved away from the door and chose a place beside the wall rather than taking the remaining chair. It put no one behind him and left him with a clear view of Ian's hands. Habit rather than theatre.

“They also told us what you claim to be,” Sereth continued. “As far as either of them can describe it.”

Kelda said, “Poorly.”

“That was implied.”

The room settled again. Ian's phone lay on the table. Sereth looked at it only briefly.

“We saw the moving image. Porridge. The houses. Kelda's workshop.”

A pause.

“I understand the offer. I understand why I might want it.”

Her eyes left Ian at last and moved toward the black rectangle.

“My daughter has not seen my face move since she left this world.”

No one filled the silence after that. Sereth did not appear to need them to.

“She knows I am alive. I know she is alive. We have had more than I thought we would ever have again.”

Her fingers tightened once against the edge of her sleeve.

“A page can carry a great deal. It cannot carry how someone looks before they answer.”

Ruvan's eyes shifted toward her. Sereth noticed and ignored him.

“So I did not come here to tell you the gift is cruel. I came because I may want to make it.”

Ian could see the cost in the wording. Not reluctance to give something to Isha. Reluctance to admit that a man connected to so much impossible intrusion might possess a tool she genuinely wanted. Ruvan finally spoke.

“I have not decided.”

His voice was exactly as Ian might have expected and less comfortable to hear in person: dry, weathered, economical.

“I agreed to meet you because refusing to see a dangerous thing does not improve understanding of it.”

Kelda glanced toward him.

“That sounds almost affectionate.”

“No.”

The answer was immediate. For a moment, the room loosened. Then Ruvan's gaze fixed on Ian again.

“Aelira says you offered privacy before we met you.”

“Yes.”

“You did not watch our discussion.”

Ian confirmed it. Ruvan watched him another few seconds, apparently searching for some sign that truth behaved differently on a face.

“You could have.”

Another confirmation.

“And chose not to.”

Yes. Ruvan nodded once. A result recorded. Nothing more. Sereth stepped farther into the room but did not sit.

“When Thomas and Isha's page told us about you, I thought you were a man with access to something dangerous. The arrow made that simple enough. Aelira has now told me that your explanation is larger.”

There was no awe in her voice.

“You say that what happens here is, in some part, shaped by you. That you choose large things. That the mechanism you use fills what lies between those choices.”

Ian remained silent. It was not yet his turn; Sereth was building something carefully and did not require interruption.

“She told me you said Thomas was always going to be a Hero.”

Ruvan's face hardened slightly at that sentence. Sereth's did not.

“She told me Kelda challenged you on whether their choices were real. And she told me you were ashamed.”

Sereth finally pulled out the chair. She sat opposite Ian. The table between them was small enough that he could see fine lines beside her eyes, a tiny pale scar near one knuckle, the ordinary details that no page to Earth had ever contained. For the first time since she entered, something explicitly maternal entered her expression. Not softness. Pain that had been lived with long enough to become structurally useful.

“I have buried my daughter twice.”

Nobody moved.

“The first time I was told she had died far from me and returned through something no one understood.”

Ruvan lowered his eyes.

“The second time, I watched the man she loved disappear after I had already been told both of them were dead.”

Sereth's voice remained steady.

“I later learned she had died again before they vanished.”

The forester's rest seemed smaller around the sentence.

“I have had years to decide which parts of that I am angry about.”

She looked directly into Ian's eyes.

“I do not need to hit you. I do not need you to cry for me. I do not need an apology prepared because you believe mothers are owed one.”

Her hands rested on the table.

“I need an answer.”

Ruvan remained against the wall. Aelira and Kelda said nothing. Sereth did not look toward either of them.

“When Isha died on the bridge—”

Her voice caught for less than a breath and continued.

“—when Thomas found her body and brought her back...”

The silence became complete.

“Did you choose that?”

Sereth held Ian's gaze.

“Did you decide my daughter had to die?”

“Yes, I did. If I had just let the machine generate reality, it may have done the same. Or better. Or worse. I didn't take pleasure in it, I felt the pain. The reader of a story does not normally talk to the mother of the protagonist. I have no justification that will help.”

Ian looked away from Sereth.

“The thing I haven't said to Isha, or Kelda... the truth: I wanted a good story and to push Thomas to be the Hero.”

His gaze dropped.

“There. I said it.”

Nothing answered him. The silence lasted long enough that it stopped being restraint and became something Ian had to remain inside. Kelda moved first. Not toward him. Her chair scraped backwards hard enough to strike the wall.

“You said what?”

The anger in her voice was different from the anger at the door. That had contained uncertainty, the possibility that Ian was dangerous because nobody understood what he was. This had understanding in it. Enough, at least. Ian did not look up. Kelda stood.

“You told me he was destined to be the Hero.”

Aelira rose as well, though more slowly.

“Kelda.”

“No.”

The word struck the room. Kelda's hand had closed into a fist. She did not reach for her hammer; she had left it elsewhere, and for once that seemed fortunate.

“You watched him spend years refusing that. You watched Crownholt try to make him useful. You watched every damned thing that recognised what he could do decide that meant it owned what he should become.”

Her voice roughened.

“And above all of them was you wanting a good story.”

Sereth had not moved. That was worse. Ruvan had. He pushed away from the wall and crossed half the room before stopping himself. His hand rested on the hilt of his knife, not drawing it, perhaps not even consciously choosing it. His eyes were fixed on Ian.

“A story.”

The word sounded foreign in his mouth despite being perfectly ordinary Common.

“My niece died because you wanted the man who loved her to become more interesting.”

Aelira said quietly, “That is not exactly what he said.” Ruvan turned his head.

“No?”

Aelira met his stare.

“No. And I am not defending him.”

That mattered enough that Ruvan let her continue.

“He said he chose her death. He said he wanted a story and wanted Thomas pushed toward the Hero. We do not yet know whether those were the same decision.”

Kelda looked at her with open disbelief.

“You are making distinctions now?”

“Yes.”

Aelira's own anger had arrived. It did not sound like Kelda's. It made every word exact.

“Because if we are going to condemn him, I would prefer to condemn what he actually did.”

Sereth finally moved. She lifted one hand. Everyone stopped. Even Ruvan. Sereth looked at Ian's bowed head. When she spoke, her voice was quiet.

“You wanted a good story.”

Ian had already answered that. She did not require repetition.

“You wanted Thomas pushed toward being a Hero.”

Again, not a question. Sereth's eyes closed for a moment. When they opened, the maternal pain was gone from her face. What remained was colder.

“I spent years teaching Isha that being strong did not mean being available to everyone who needed strength. Ruvan challenged Thomas because we were frightened love would make him spend himself for her.”

Ruvan's jaw tightened.

“We worried about kings. Priests. Systems. Grief. His own need to protect her.”

Sereth looked directly at Ian again.

“We did not know to worry about an audience.”

Kelda turned away sharply. She crossed to the window and stood with both hands braced against the sill. Aelira remained beside the table. Sereth continued.

“You say you felt the pain.”

For the first time, contempt entered her voice.

“That does not help.”

Ian had said as much himself. Sereth did not care.

“My daughter felt it. Thomas felt her body go cold. Kelda carried what came after. And I learned about it years later on a piece of paper.”

The anger cracked there. Only once. She drew breath through her nose and regained control.

“You got your feeling at the same time.”

Nobody tried to soften the sentence. Aelira sat again. Not because she was calmer. Because standing had begun to resemble judgement delivered from authority, and whatever this was, she evidently did not want that shape. Sereth stared at Ian.

“I believe you when you say you have no justification. That is the first useful thing you have told me.”

Kelda turned from the window. Her eyes were wet. She seemed furious about that too.

“You didn't tell Isha.”

Ian did not answer; the statement did not require one. Kelda's voice lowered.

“You stood in front of her and apologised. Again and again. You let her decide what you could be in her life.”

Her mouth twisted.

“And you left this part out.”

Aelira looked sharply at Kelda. That was the new wound. Not merely what Ian had done. What Isha had consented to without knowing. Sereth saw it too. Her expression hardened further.

“She does not know that you chose her death because you wanted Thomas pushed toward the Hero.”

The sentence stripped away every abstraction Ian had used. No machine. No narrative. No reader. Just choice and consequence. Ruvan's hand finally left his knife. He walked to the far wall instead, putting distance between himself and Ian by choice.

“That,” he said, “is what she must know before you give her anything.”

Kelda looked at him. Ruvan met her eyes.

“If he sends her our faces while keeping this from her, then the gift is built on another omission.”

Sereth's attention stayed on Ian.

“I agree.”

Aelira did not answer immediately. When she did, it was with visible reluctance.

“So do I.”

Kelda wiped one hand across her face.

“Fuck.”

The word sat strangely in the forester's rest and suited her perfectly. She looked at Ian.

“I still want them to have the pictures.”

That admission seemed to hurt.

“I hate that I still want that.”

Sereth's expression shifted.

“I don't.”

Kelda looked at her.

“I want Isha to see you.”

Sereth held her gaze.

“I know.”

For several seconds the two women said nothing else. Then Sereth looked back at Ian.

“You came here wanting to make something good. Perhaps you can.”

A pause.

“But not by making us part of another thing Isha has not been allowed to choose with the truth in front of her.”

Sereth leaned back.

“So before I decide whether you may record my face, I have one question. When you return to Thomas and Isha—are you going to tell Isha what you just told us?”

“I have promised them I will never appear in their world.”

Sereth's expression did not change.

“But, if you want, you can record me on that device saying what I really am and what I really did.”

Kelda's gaze went to the phone. Ian continued.

“I also promised they will never have demons, or unnatural death, or anything bad like here. Ever again in their lives.”

Aelira's eyes narrowed at *ever*. Ruvan's did too. Ian did not seem to notice immediately.

“I did not expect to love an elf who became a human in a story I co-authored, nor come face to face with the consequences of my actions in choosing the story direction.”

The room became still again. Sereth looked at him differently. Not because the possibility of Ian's feelings for Isha was entirely new; Kelda and Aelira had explained what Thomas and Isha's page said about his unreturned attachment. Hearing him name it in front of Isha's mother was another matter. Ian paused.

“Maybe I should just go, and stop fucking things up even more.”

Kelda's chair struck the floorboards as she stood.

“No.”

Ian looked at her. Kelda crossed the small distance between them, stopped on the opposite side of the table and planted both hands on it.

“You do not get to do that. You came to my door. You told me you wanted us to choose. You came here and told Aelira the same thing. Then Sereth asks you a question you do not want to answer cleanly, and suddenly you are deciding that perhaps everyone would be better if you vanished.”

Ian had not actually said that. Kelda was close enough to the meaning that nobody corrected her.

“That is Thomas-like too,” she said bitterly. “The worst part of him.”

Ruvan made a small sound of agreement. Kelda glanced at him.

“Do not enjoy that.”

“I am not.”

Sereth remained seated.

“You said you love Isha.”

Ian's attention returned to her. Sereth did not look offended by the feeling itself.

“She does not love you that way. Kelda told me.”

Aelira added quietly, “Thomas and Isha's page was clear enough about that part.” Sereth nodded.

“Then your feeling is yours to manage.”

No jealousy. No maternal outrage. No accusation that affection itself was theft.

“But do not put it beside her deaths as though loving her changes what you chose.”

Ian's face tightened. Sereth continued.

“I believe you did not expect this. Perhaps nobody expects to meet the people who suffer because of a story they enjoy.”

Her mouth pulled faintly at the word *enjoy*.

“I cannot decide whether that makes you unusually unlucky or unusually fortunate.”

Ruvan spoke from the wall.

“And your promise is nonsense.”

Aelira looked toward him. Ruvan ignored her.

“No demons. Fine. Perhaps you can choose that. No unnatural deaths. Perhaps. Nothing bad?”

The disbelief in his voice was almost contemptuous.

“You will prevent sickness? Accidents? Age? Grief? Someone they love dying? A bad decision? A marriage argument? A roof falling because a carpenter was careless?”

Ian had said *anything bad like here*, but Ruvan was deliberately testing the edge.

“You cannot promise them a life without pain unless you intend to stop them having a life.”

Aelira's expression shifted.

“That may not be what he meant.”

“Then he should mean what he says more carefully.”

Ruvan folded his arms.

“He claims words can alter reality. Precision seems advisable.”

Kelda gave a humourless laugh.

“That is the first thing everyone here agrees on.”

Sereth's attention had never left Ian.

“The recording.”

She looked toward Kelda's phone.

“I may want that.”

Kelda went still. Sereth's voice remained level.

“Not because I want to punish Isha with a confession from you. Not because I want to decide for her what she should think. But she should know what you withheld before she decides what place you have in her life.”

Aelira nodded.

“Yes.”

Ruvan said nothing, but his face gave the same answer. Kelda slowly sat again.

“And Thomas?”

Sereth thought.

“He should see it too.”

That surprised Kelda slightly. Sereth noticed.

“They are married. This concerns both of them. Ian may have directed the pressure toward Thomas and chosen Isha's death, but I will not send something to my daughter that requires her to hide it from her husband.”

Kelda's mouth tightened.

“Agreed.”

Aelira reached for the phone. She did not activate it.

“If Ian records it, he chooses the words. We do not script an apology for him.”

Sereth nodded.

“He says what he actually means.”

“And then,” Aelira continued, “we decide whether that recording travels with the gift, separately, or at all.”

Kelda looked at her.

“You think we may choose not to send it?”

“I think *Isha* needs the truth. That does not mean I have yet decided this is the right route for giving it to her.”

That distinction left the room unsettled. Ruvan finally returned to the table. He did not sit. He looked down at Ian.

“As for leaving. If you want to leave because you have changed your mind about the gift, say so.”

A pause.

“If you want to leave because you are frightened of us, say that. If you want to leave because you cannot bear hearing what people think of you, say that too.”

Ruvan's eyes were hard.

“But do not turn disappearing into an act of kindness and make us grateful for it.”

Sereth looked at Ian for several seconds. Then she pushed the phone slightly toward him.

“I have not yet agreed to be recorded. I have agreed to hear you. And I am not finished.”

Kelda sat back, anger exhausted enough now to reveal something beneath it. She still wanted the gift. That seemed to make everything harder. Sereth spoke again.

“You offered us a choice. So let us have one.”

She nodded toward the door.

“If you truly want to go, I will not stop you.”

Then toward the chair.

“If you stay, sit down and continue answering us. Which do you choose?”

“I will stay as long as I can cope with it.”

Ian swallowed.

“And what you said was a truth, even though it hurt a lot. I am the worst of Thomas. The best of him is what I want to be.”

Kelda's expression changed first. Not forgiveness. The anger remained, but some of its direction loosened.

“Then start with one thing Thomas eventually learned,” she said. “Wanting to be better does not count as having done it.”

Aelira glanced at her.

“That was almost gentle.”

“It was not.”

Sereth had been watching Ian throughout.

“The worst of Thomas,” she repeated.

Her voice held less anger now and more examination.

“I do not think Thomas would like you saying that.”

Kelda's mouth twitched faintly.

“No.”

“He spent too long believing every bad thing he did revealed what he really was.”

Ruvan's gaze moved briefly toward the window.

“And too long believing every useful thing proved what he ought to become.”

Sereth nodded.

“So perhaps do not borrow him for your confession.”

That landed more quietly than the earlier accusations.

“You are Ian. Whatever is worst in you belongs to you. And whatever is better will have to belong to you as well.”

Ian remained seated. No one rescued him from the discomfort. But the room had stopped feeling as though every person in it was deciding whether he deserved to remain. Aelira reached for the phone and turned it once on the table.

“You offered something practical before this became... larger. The ability to prevent yourself from observing conversations.”

Ian acknowledged it.

“I want that boundary to continue. When Kelda and I speak to anyone else, you do not watch unless they specifically agree that you may.”

Kelda nodded. Sereth did too. Ruvan looked unconvinced by the mechanism and satisfied by the rule. Then Sereth spoke.

“I have one question before we decide anything about recording.”

Her hands rested loosely in her lap now.

“You said you wanted a good story.”

She held Ian's gaze.

“If you had the choice again—knowing us as you know us now—would you still choose Isha's death on the bridge?”

“Yes, unless it meant they wouldn't have the happiness they have now, or something like it.”

Sereth's face emptied. Not anger this time. The answer seemed to hurt in a place anger could not conveniently occupy. Kelda stared at Ian. Aelira's eyes closed for a moment. Ruvan turned away. It was Sereth who spoke first.

“So you would kill her again.”

Ian had qualified it. Everyone in the room had heard the qualification. Sereth did not ignore it. That was what made her next words harder.

“Because you look at the life she has now and believe the road through her death may have helped make it.”

She pressed her lips together.

“I understand the reasoning. I hate it.”

Kelda sat motionless beside the table. Her earlier anger had returned, but without the explosive edge.

“I don't know if that is worse or better than saying you regret everything.”

Aelira opened her eyes.

“Better.”

Kelda looked sharply at her. Aelira did not retreat from the judgement.

“If he told us he would erase every painful choice because he now cares about the people who suffered, I would believe him less.”

She looked at Ian.

“That does not make the answer good.”

“No,” Sereth said. “But it makes it honest.”

Ruvan turned back from the window.

“You are making the same mistake people make about roads.”

His eyes settled on Ian.

“You know where this one ended.”

He gestured vaguely toward a world none of them could see: Earth, marriage, work, a home in Sendai.

“So you look backward and make every broken bridge part of the route. You do not know that Isha had to die for them to become happy. Nor that Thomas needed to be pushed as hard as he was to become the man he is now.”

Kelda's fingers tightened against her knee.

“He was already Thomas.”

That sentence carried more conviction than volume.

“Before Rank S. Before the Broken Court. Before half the things you decided were good for the story.”

She looked at Ian.

“He was annoying much earlier.”

Aelira's mouth shifted despite herself. Sereth did not smile. But something in the room eased enough to breathe again. Ruvan continued.

“If you truly mean *unless they could have reached something like this without it*, then that is different from saying the death was necessary. Do not confuse an outcome you love with proof that every cruelty on the road was required.”

Sereth looked down at her hands. For several seconds she said nothing. Then she looked back at Ian.

“I asked because I wanted to know whether your remorse meant that you now wished my daughter had lived.”

Her eyes were wet, though no tears fell.

“You gave me a harder answer. I believe it.”

That was not absolution. It was, perhaps, worse and better than absolution. Sereth reached toward the phone but stopped before touching it.

“I still want Isha to see me.”

Kelda looked at her. Sereth's eyes remained on Ian.

“And I still think she needs to know what you just told us. But I no longer want your confession to be the first thing she receives.”

Aelira nodded slowly.

“Neither do I.”

Sereth took a breath.

“If we make this gift, it should first be what you said it was supposed to be.”

Her gaze moved around the room—to Kelda, Ruvan, Aelira.

“People living.”

Then back to Ian.

“The truth about you can accompany it. It cannot consume it.”

Ruvan gave a small nod. Kelda looked relieved enough to resent the feeling. Sereth finally touched the phone.

“I think I want to make something.”

She looked at Ian.

“But before I decide what, I need one answer. When you look at Isha now—not the character you wanted for your story, not the woman you love from outside it—what do you think she would actually want from me?”

“I can't answer that.”

Ian lowered his head into his hands.

“I am a mediocre man, a flawed man. I cannot give you all the answers. I do not know them. My life has not prepared me for the guilt of an entire reality shaped by my choices presented solely as words on a page.”

Nobody interrupted.

“She is your daughter. You will know better than I. All of you will know better than I.”

He paused.

“This is why it's not my gift. It's yours.”

Sereth watched him for a long moment. Then she breathed out.

“Good.”

Ian looked up. Not forgiveness. But the word carried relief.

“That is the answer I wanted. I did not ask because I believed you knew my daughter better than I do. I asked because I wanted to know whether you would try.”

Ruvan's posture eased slightly against the wall.

“You have an unfortunate habit of placing yourself at the centre of questions and then apologising for being there.”

Kelda made a quiet sound of agreement. Ian remained with his hands against his face. Sereth continued more gently.

“Isha would hate being told what she ought to want from me.”

A small, private smile touched her mouth.

“She would probably tell me I should know that already.”

Kelda's expression softened.

“That sounds like her.”

“So I will not make something because Ian thinks it will heal her. Or because Aelira thinks it carries the correct meaning. Or because Kelda believes a particular view will make Thomas laugh.”

Kelda frowned.

“Porridge will make Thomas laugh.”

“Yes. That is different. Porridge possesses objective merit.”

Aelira looked briefly toward the ceiling. The humour passed without displacing what remained underneath it. Sereth looked toward the shuttered window.

“When Isha was young, there were mornings when she would come into my rooms and say almost nothing. She would eat. Sharpen something that did not need sharpening. Watch me work. Eventually she would tell me whatever had brought her there.”

Her gaze moved back to the phone.

“If I point that device at myself and tell her how much I miss her, it will be true. It will also be the thing she already knows.”

She thought for another moment.

“I think I would rather let her see me doing something.”

Kelda nodded slowly.

“That is what happened with the yard.”

“Yes.”

Sereth looked at her.

“You said the sound mattered.”

“More than I expected.”

Ruvan had become thoughtful.

“She might want the forest.”

Sereth glanced toward him.

“Perhaps.”

“The lower river path. Morning birds. The old practice ground.”

Aelira added, “Not all at once.” Ruvan gave her a dry look.

“I was naming possibilities.”

“You were beginning an itinerary.”

Kelda's mouth curved.

“Thomas would approve.”

That silenced everyone for one beat. Then Sereth laughed. Quietly. The sound seemed to surprise her. She touched beneath one eye and looked almost annoyed to find moisture there.

“All right.”

Her attention returned to Ian.

“I will participate.”

This time there was no qualification attached to the statement itself.

“I do not yet know what I will make. Perhaps several things. Perhaps I will discard most of them. But I want my daughter to see me alive.”

The room held that sentence carefully. Ruvan looked at Sereth, then at Ian.

“I am not agreeing yet.”

Kelda muttered, “Of course not.”

“I heard that.”

“You were meant to.”

Ruvan ignored her.

“But I will help Sereth make hers if she wants me to.”

Sereth nodded once. Then she looked at Ian again.

“And when we do this, you will not decide where I stand, what I say, or when the recording has become good enough.”

Her gaze stayed steady.

“You can teach me how the device works. Then you let me make mistakes.”

“Agreed.”

Ian let the answer settle.

“And, one thing if I may? A little more practical.”

Sereth's expression changed almost imperceptibly. After everything else, *practical* appeared to be a relief.

“Yes. What is it?”

“In my world the still images of these memories, especially when presented as a gift, are typically placed in a book. The choice of which photos go together, what order, what page, is part of the journey. The titles, the written words underneath, they matter too. I would like the elves to construct a book with pages and no writing, something very elven in binding and cover, to house the still images in an order you want... some for Thomas's family to decide, if they wish, some for you—”

He gestured toward the elves.

“—and some for Kelda.”

No one interrupted.

“I can make that appear for them. I also suggest that you write to them, using the existing mechanism—yes, I heard that you don't want me to change it—and let them accept before I send anything to them, so receipt is their choice, but your ask.”

This time the silence that followed was practical rather than hostile. Aelira was the first to answer.

“Yes. That part is non-negotiable.”

She rested one hand beside the phone.

“If this gift is to be theirs by choice, then they choose whether to receive it before it arrives.”

Kelda nodded immediately.

“Good. A page first means no ambush.”

Sereth's gaze had gone more inward.

“A book.”

She tested the word as if deciding whether it was the right vessel or merely Ian's familiar one.

“Not loose images.”

“No,” Ian said.

“That matters,” Sereth murmured.

Ruvan spoke from the wall.

“A thing made to be handled again.”

Kelda looked over at him. Ruvan shrugged once, annoyed at being caught saying something useful.

“If they are to receive many images, a packet becomes clutter. A bound object tells them to move through it.”

Aelira's attention shifted slightly.

“That is well put.”

Ruvan looked displeased by the compliment. Sereth considered further.

“I do not want an empty beautiful object given to them with our choices fixed before they answer.”

Kelda's brow furrowed. Aelira nodded before Ian needed to.

“We can separate the decisions. First: we write and ask whether they wish to receive such a gift at all. Second: if they agree, we gather images and make recordings. Third: the book is constructed here, but the final arrangement of printed images need not be completed until we know who is contributing and what Thomas and Isha themselves may wish included.”

Kelda leaned forward.

“So the book could be made with spaces.”

Aelira glanced at her.

“Yes. Not blank in the sense of unfinished carelessly. Blank in the sense of awaiting chosen contents.”

Sereth's expression softened slightly.

“That I like.”

Ruvan had become thoughtful despite himself.

“Different paper, perhaps. Thick enough to hold mounted images. Interleaves, so nothing rubs.”

Aelira turned her head toward him.

“You have opinions.”

“I have hands. Books are objects.”

Kelda's mouth twitched.

“So are ponies. That has not made you wise about them.”

Ruvan chose not to answer. Sereth looked at Ian again.

“And no writing already placed beneath the images. If there are words, they should be ours. Or theirs.”

Ian agreed. Aelira's gaze sharpened.

“You said something *very Elven* in binding and cover.”

“Yes.”

“That will require caution. Not because it is a poor thought. Because there is no single *Elven* in the way humans sometimes imagine such things. Court work is not household work. A family object is not a ceremonial object. Sereth's taste is not mine.”

She looked toward Sereth. Sereth almost smiled.

“Thank you for sparing him the lecture in full.”

“I considered giving it.”

Kelda said dryly, “The shirt already did half of it.” That passed through the room lightly enough not to harm the quieter thing underneath. Aelira resumed. “If a book is made, I would prefer it to be simple, beautiful, durable, and clearly made by living hands rather than by idealised fantasy.” She let the final word sit just long enough for Ian to understand he was included in the warning. Sereth nodded.

“Yes. Something one keeps near, not something one is afraid to touch.”

Kelda folded her arms.

“And not so elegant Thomas becomes frightened of putting it down on a table.”

Ruvan's mouth moved almost imperceptibly.

“That narrows the options.”

“It improves them,” Kelda said.

Then she looked at Ian.

“The page first part is good. But understand what you are asking by it. You are asking them whether they want to receive a gift from the world they lost. Not whether they would like some pictures.”

Kelda's gaze remained steady.

“Thomas will read the question all the way through. Isha will too.”

Sereth added quietly, “That is why the wording matters.” Aelira nodded once.

“I will draft the Wood Elf page with Kelda.”

Kelda looked at her.

“Not alone.”

“No.”

Sereth said, “I want to see it before it is sent.” Ruvan did not immediately speak, then said, “I do too.” All four of them seemed to understand that this was not bureaucracy. It was care. Aelira then turned her attention back to the physical problem.

“As for the book itself... I will speak to Sairen about materials and to one of the binders who can keep their mouth shut.”

Kelda gave a short laugh.

“So, a real expert.”

Sereth said, “If we proceed, I would like to choose some of the paper.” A beat later she added, more softly, “And the cover lining.” Not because it was the most important thing. Because it was a thing she could imagine touching while deciding how to send a piece of herself to her daughter. Ruvan looked at Ian.

“And Thomas's family may decide they want no part in any book-making at all. They may prefer to send images and let us or you arrange them.”

Ian agreed. Sereth looked down at the phone.

“There is another practical consequence. If the first letter asks them whether they want this, then we should not make everything before the answer comes.”

Kelda frowned.

“Some things we can.”

Aelira thought for a moment.

“Yes. We can prepare. We can experiment with the device. We can decide who among us is willing. We can even make recordings and hold them back if we choose.”

Sereth nodded.

“But not as though the gift already belongs to them.”

That distinction satisfied the room. Aelira looked back to Ian.

“This is the best practical suggestion you have made since arriving.”

Kelda snorted.

“The bar is under the floor.”

“It is still an improvement.”

Sereth's face had grown calmer. Not easy. Not forgiving. But the proposal now belonged more to the work than to Ian's guilt.

“I will help with the page,” she said.

Then, after a slight pause:

“And if Isha agrees, I think I would like the first still image to be one of the lower river path in morning light.”

Ruvan glanced at her and understood at once. He said nothing. Kelda looked between them, then gave a small nod. Aelira turned the phone once on the table.

“So that is settled enough for now.”

Her eyes moved to Ian.

“We will ask first. We will make only what we freely choose. And if they refuse, the work stops there.”

She let that remain clear. Then Sereth asked the only question that seemed to matter immediately:

“When we write to them, do you want your name included in the request, or only after they have agreed to hear more?”

“I think they should know I am involved instead of guesswork or confusion, the other System for example. A moving picture perhaps of me and Aelira could be offered to be sent to their black squares if they require proof?”

Ian sighed, looking suddenly older in a very ordinary way.

“The machine has said around seven days until the window opens. My suggestion is you write the message, we record something with me and Aelira, ask if they want to see more, without ruining the shape of the gift?”

He paused.

“That might be too much. Don't trust the most useless deity ever.”

Kelda rubbed at her forehead.

“Stop calling yourself that.”

Ian looked up.

“Deity. Useful or useless. It is making the whole thing worse.”

Ruvan gave a small grunt.

“She is right.”

Aelira, who had been thinking rather than reacting, finally spoke.

“They should know you are involved. I do not want Thomas or Isha receiving a page that hides the central strangeness and forces them to infer it afterward. That would only repeat the problem in another form.”

Sereth nodded.

“Yes. If they are being asked whether they want this gift, they should know who made the opportunity possible, who will carry it, and that some among us have already agreed in principle.”

Kelda added, “Without making the page sound like a petition on your behalf.” Ruvan's attention sharpened slightly.

“The proof should not come first.”

Everyone looked at him. He seemed faintly irritated by being the person saying something moderate.

“If the page says: *a man called Ian appeared; he can carry still and moving images; some of us are willing to make them; do you want this gift?* then that is enough for the first decision.”

He looked at Ian.

“If they say yes, proof can follow immediately after.”

Aelira nodded.

“That is better.”

Sereth considered for a moment, then agreed.

“A brief proof may be offered in the page, but not forced on them. If they are uncertain, they can ask for it. If they are ready to trust us, the gift can remain whole.”

Kelda leaned back.

“So the page asks two things at once.”

Aelira glanced toward her.

“Not exactly.”

Kelda corrected herself almost at once.

“No. One thing, with one offered safeguard.”

She began counting on her fingers.

“First: do you want a gift of still and possibly moving images from family and friends here. Second: if you want reassurance before deciding further, a short proof recording exists and can be sent to your device there.”

Ruvan said, “Better.” Sereth looked at Ian.

“And the proof should not attempt to become the gift in miniature. No speeches from everyone. No trying to compress love, grief and explanation into one little moving page because we are afraid they may refuse the larger thing.”

Aelira's eyes moved briefly to the phone.

“If there is a proof, it should be exactly that. Proof.”

Kelda gave Ian a dry look.

“So not chocolate, ponies and a confession.”

“No,” Aelira said. “Definitely not that.”

That almost loosened the room. Then Aelira looked at Ian again.

“A short recording with me is acceptable. Because I am one of the people already inside the correspondence circle, because Thomas and Isha know my face, and because I can state the offer clearly.”

She paused.

“I do not especially wish to become your guarantor. But I am willing to stand beside you and say that I have seen the device, understood the proposal, and chosen to participate.”

Kelda nodded once, satisfied. Sereth said, “Good.” Ruvan folded his arms.

“And brief.”

Aelira inclined her head.

“Very brief.”

Ian looked exhausted enough that the agreement itself seemed almost difficult for him to receive. Then his last self-description returned to the room. Sereth's expression changed first.

“The useful part is not for you to decide.”

Ian blinked.

“You called yourself useless,” Sereth said. “That is simply another way of making the whole matter about your failure. You are not useless. You are dangerous, intrusive, at times thoughtless, and apparently capable of both kindness and catastrophe.”

Kelda's mouth twitched.

“That is a stronger category than useless.”

Ruvan said, “And more accurate.” Aelira's gaze stayed on Ian.

“If you want a practical measure of usefulness, then give us what you promised: boundaries we choose, transport that does not misbehave, and help without editing.”

The sentence seemed to steady the room again by returning it to tasks. Sereth nodded.

“Yes. That is enough.”

For several moments no one spoke. Then Aelira drew the phone toward her, set it flat on the table and looked directly at Ian.

“This is how I think the first page should work. Kelda, Sereth, Ruvan and I draft a page for the next opening. It tells Thomas and Isha that Ian has appeared in the fantasy world, that he proposed a voluntary gift of still and moving images, and that some of us are willing to participate. It asks whether they wish to receive such a gift at all. It also says that, if they want reassurance before deciding further, a brief proof recording can be sent to their Earth device.”

Kelda nodded. Sereth and Ruvan both gave the same quiet assent. Aelira continued.

“If they refuse, the matter ends. If they accept, or ask for the proof first, then we proceed accordingly. And if we make that proof now, it should be short enough that Thomas and Isha can understand the shape immediately, without feeling that the gift itself has already begun without their answer.”

Sereth said, “Agreed.” Ruvan added, “Very short.” Kelda said, “Almost painfully short, in your case.” That left only one point still hanging. Aelira rested her fingertips beside the phone.

“If we record that proof now, I know what I would say. What, exactly, would *you* say in it?”

“I would say that I have offered the option for each person to decide themselves. The choice to record is theirs, the choice to receive is yours. I hope you take it.”

Aelira nodded once.

“That is sufficient.”

Ian paused. Then, because apparently sufficiency remained intolerable to him, he added:

“I would say: ‘This was not the most sensible attire to meet Princess Aelira Caelithen, First Princess of the Wood Elves. But at least it wasn't the version with you on it, Isha.’”

He attempted a smile through eyes that had become heavy with exhaustion. Aelira stared at him. Sereth's attention dropped to the shirt. Then returned very slowly to Ian. Kelda covered her face with one hand. Ruvan looked between the printed elf and Sereth.

“There was a version with Isha on it?”

Ian's expression answered before anyone else could. Sereth became absolutely still. Aelira's composure failed first. She turned her face aside, one hand covering her mouth, though the sound that escaped was unmistakably laughter. Kelda dropped her hand.

“Oh, no.”

Ruvan looked genuinely interested now.

“What was she doing?”

Aelira made an urgent gesture for him to stop.

“That question cannot improve anything.”

Sereth was still looking at Ian.

“My daughter was on your clothing.”

The sentence was not angry. Yet. Kelda intervened with unusual speed.

“Apparently before he met her.”

Aelira recovered enough to add, “And he changed it.” Sereth's eyes narrowed.

“To this woman.”

“Lysenne,” Ruvan supplied.

Everyone looked at him. He gestured toward the shirt. “It says so.” For several seconds Sereth held Ian beneath a stare whose resemblance to Isha had become deeply unfortunate. Then the corner of her mouth moved. Barely.

“I think you should include that sentence.”

Ian blinked. Sereth's expression remained controlled.

“If Isha receives proof that you are standing beside Aelira in this world, frightened, exhausted and wearing a shirt proclaiming another elf superior to her, she will know immediately that nobody sensible staged it.”

Kelda began laughing. Not politely. Aelira sat back and surrendered to it a moment later. Even Ruvan's mouth shifted. The room did not become forgiving. Nothing said earlier disappeared beneath the joke. But for perhaps half a minute Ian was no longer an external architect, the chooser of deaths, or an impossible visitor carrying guilt too large for any one person in the room to resolve. He was a tired man who had worn the wrong shirt. When the laughter faded, Aelira picked up the phone.

“We record that version.”

She looked at Ian more carefully.

“Not now. You have done enough today.”

Kelda nodded immediately.

“The proof will still exist tomorrow.”

Sereth's expression softened by a degree.

“And if this is meant to show Thomas and Isha that our choices are real, then we need not manufacture urgency merely because you can.”

Aelira set the phone down again.

“We have approximately seven days before the ordinary opening. We can use them.”

She glanced toward Sereth and Ruvan.

“We draft the page first. Then decide what, if anything, each of us wishes to begin recording before their answer.”

Ruvan nodded. Sereth did too. Kelda looked at Ian.

“And you? Can you remain somewhere in this world for a night without deciding reality needs improving?”

“Time in this context, for me, is about as reliable as a Dark Elf in a tavern selling cheap wine. So yes... I shall be here and not there until you want me.”

Ruvan's eyes narrowed. Aelira looked at him. “Do not.”

“I said nothing.”

“You were going to.”

Ruvan's expression suggested that this accusation was correct and therefore unnecessary. Ian hesitated.

“I would like to see the Elven village though, if Aelira could escort me.”

His gaze dropped to his chest.

“I can change my shirt if required. I've never met a princess of any reality before.”

Aelira did not answer immediately. Sereth did.

“You chose my daughter's death.”

The sentence landed without raised voice.

“And now you would like to walk through the place where she grew up.”

Ian looked at her. Sereth's expression was difficult to read. Not refusal. Not invitation.

“I am not saying no. I am making sure you understand what you are asking.”

Ruvan folded his arms.

“There are children there.”

Kelda looked at him sharply.

“He isn't going to eat them.”

“That was not my concern.”

“I know. It was still a ridiculous way to phrase it.”

Ruvan ignored her.

“You are not merely an unusual human traveller. You are a man who can make a door open across hundreds of miles and produce food from an empty floor. If people see something impossible, curiosity spreads. If people learn who you claim to be, that is worse.”

Aelira remained quiet until both had finished. Then she looked at Ian.

“I will take you into the settlement. Not as Ian the architect of reality. Not as the man from Thomas and Isha's page. Not as anything that requires explanation beyond my authority to bring a guest through the lower paths.”

Her gaze hardened.

“You do not demonstrate anything. No objects appearing. No doors becoming other doors. No photographs unless I tell you the place and people are appropriate, and certainly no recording anyone without asking them.”

Ian acknowledged each condition.

“You do not tell strangers what you are. If someone asks where you came from, you are my guest and the answer is that the circumstances are private.”

Kelda leaned back.

“That is going to torment him.”

Aelira's eyes flicked toward her. “Good.” Then she looked again at the shirt.

“That must change. Not because Lysenne offends me.”

Aelira paused.

“She does, slightly.”

Kelda made a quiet choking sound.

“But because if I walk an unknown human man through a Wood Elf settlement wearing a declaration that one fictional elf is superior to all others, I will spend the entire evening answering questions I have no wish to hear.”

Sereth's mouth moved. For the first time since Ian admitted choosing Isha's death, genuine amusement reached her face.

“I almost want him to keep it.”

“No,” Aelira said.

Ruvan looked at the illustration again.

“The bow remains poor.”

“Ruvan.”

“Yes.”

Aelira breathed out.

“A plain shirt. And you stay beside me. Not behind Sereth. Not wandering because something looks familiar from having watched Isha's life. If you recognise a place she once stood, you do not announce that fact to whoever happens to be standing there now.”

That condition carried more weight.

“You may know things about the settlement that nobody there knowingly told you. That will feel different when you are walking among them.”

Kelda looked at Ian. She understood that part too. Sereth rose.

“I will not come. I have had enough of you for today.”

There was no malice in it.

“I mean that literally, not permanently. I also want some time in my home before deciding what I wish Isha to see of it.”

Her eyes held Ian's for a moment.

“You staying is acceptable.”

It was a small statement after everything else. It did not feel small. Ruvan pushed away from the wall.

“I am going with Sereth.”

Kelda raised an eyebrow. “Protecting her?”

“No.”

Sereth looked at him.

“Yes.”

Ruvan ignored both women. Aelira stood and adjusted the fastening at her shoulder.

“Kelda?”

“I have been travelling with impossible people for years. I am coming.”

“That was what I expected.”

Kelda picked up Ian's phone from the table and tucked it safely inside her jacket. Ian looked at it. She noticed.

“You said it was ours to use. You may have it back when I decide I am finished learning.”

Aelira opened the door. Late forest light entered the room. Sereth stopped beside Ian before leaving. For several seconds she seemed to consider saying something. Then she simply touched two fingers to the tabletop between them.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “Not tonight.”

The recording. Ian understood. Sereth and Ruvan left together. Their footsteps faded along the path. Aelira waited until the forest had swallowed the sound before looking back at Ian.

“Change the shirt.”

Kelda's expression brightened.

“And please do not improve it.”

The last word had barely left Aelira's mouth when the image vanished. No shimmer crossed the fabric. No light. No visible transition from one design to another. One moment Lysenne stood beneath the declaration that she was the best elf. The next, Ian wore a plain black T-shirt. Aelira stopped. Kelda looked at the shirt. Then at Ian. Then back at the shirt.

“I said do not improve it.”

“I think technically he reduced it,” Aelira said.

“That is not the point.”

Aelira stepped closer, inspecting the fabric without touching it. The shirt had not been turned inside out. No ink remained. No seam suggested another garment beneath it.

“You did not need to move.”

Ian shook his head. Aelira looked toward the forester's door, then back at his now entirely ordinary clothing.

“This is going to be difficult.”

Kelda folded her arms. “You invited him into the village.”

“I know.”

“You may reconsider.”

“No.”

Aelira's answer was immediate. She looked at Ian again.

“But this is exactly what I meant. People notice less than you think until something gives them a reason to notice everything. So from this point onward, reality remains bored.”

Kelda nodded approvingly.

“An excellent rule.”

Aelira opened the door. The forest outside had begun taking on the cooler colours of evening. The route toward the settlement was not one Ian had ever physically walked, although pieces of it carried an uncomfortable familiarity: the proportions of old trees, suspended paths glimpsed through leaves, pale ward markers half grown into bark. Knowing a place from words was not the same as being there. Aelira stepped onto the path and waited until Ian came alongside rather than behind her. Kelda followed, deliberately leaving him between people who understood the forest. For the first several minutes, nobody spoke. The settlement announced itself gradually.

First came signs of use rather than buildings: a repaired drainage channel, a braided marker tied high enough that a human passer-by might miss it, a narrow side trail with footprints too light and numerous to belong to game. Then voices travelled through the trees from somewhere above. Ian looked up. A walkway crossed between enormous trunks perhaps twenty metres overhead, built in layered pale timber that followed the trees rather than forcing straight geometry through them. Two Wood Elves moved along it carrying baskets between them. Neither noticed him.

Or if they did, they saw only one human walking beside Aelira Caelithen and Kelda Flintvein and concluded that somebody with greater authority had already accepted responsibility for the problem. Aelira noticed where Ian was looking.

“Do not stare upward with your mouth open.”

Kelda made a sound behind him. Aelira stopped. For perhaps two seconds her expression was completely blank. Then she looked at Kelda.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“That was something.”

Kelda's face had acquired a deeply unhelpful satisfaction.

“Thomas.”

Aelira closed her eyes. Ian knew exactly why. So did Kelda. Years earlier, another human had entered these woods and received almost precisely the same correction from Isha. Aelira opened her eyes and looked at Ian.

“This is not an invitation to explain that you know why that was funny.”

The path widened ahead. Between the trees, the first ground-level houses appeared. And beyond them, rising through layers of living wood and constructed platforms, was the settlement Isha had once called home.

“I have two adult daughters,” Ian said.

The path continued beneath them.

“The dying thing hit home a bit.”

Aelira stopped walking. Kelda took another step before noticing and turned back. For a few seconds Aelira simply looked at Ian. Not at the impossible man. Not at the person who had admitted choosing Isha's death. At a father. That fact had not existed anywhere in the discussion until now.

“You have daughters.”

Ian confirmed it.

“Adult.”

Another confirmation. Aelira looked away toward the settlement. Somewhere above them, someone called to another person across the platforms. A child answered from farther away, too indistinct for Ian to understand the words. Kelda's expression had changed as well.

“You should have said that to Sereth.”

There was no accusation in it. Ian looked toward her.

“Not as defence,” Kelda added quickly. “It would have been a terrible defence.”

Aelira nodded.

“But she would have understood why you could not look at her.”

They resumed walking, more slowly now. Kelda stayed beside Ian rather than behind him. After perhaps twenty paces she said, “If someone told you they had chosen one of your daughters to die because it made another person's story better...” She stopped herself.

“No. I do not need you to answer that.”

The forest path curved around a massive root system. Aelira waited until all three had crossed before speaking.

“It explains something. Not what you did.”

Her correction was immediate.

“Why meeting Sereth affected you differently. You knew Isha had a mother before today. That is not the same as sitting opposite one.”

Aelira's gaze returned to the path.

“Apparently there are some things even your machine cannot make abstract once you are physically present for them.”

Kelda grunted.

“Good.”

There was no cruelty in it. They reached the first occupied clearing. Two Wood Elves were repairing a raised storage platform beside one of the ground structures. Both stopped when they saw Aelira. One recognised Kelda and raised a hand in greeting. Then both noticed Ian. Their attention lingered. He was human, older than Thomas had been when the settlement first knew him, dressed entirely in black and carrying nothing useful. No pack. No bow. No cloak. No visible reason to be walking into one of the least casual places for an unknown human to appear. Aelira greeted them by name. Neither asked who Ian was. They clearly wanted to. Aelira kept walking. Ian followed.

Kelda waited until the workers were behind them before murmuring, “They will have invented six explanations by supper.”

“Only six?” Aelira asked.

“They are working. Less time.”

The settlement grew around them. Ian had known its components through prose, but prose had cheated. It had made geography obedient to relevance. Here, paths continued to places no scene had ever required. Houses existed whose inhabitants had never been named. Children moved through spaces Thomas had never entered. Someone had hung washing beneath a platform. A young elf sat repairing a basket beside a doorway while arguing with an older man about something involving onions. The great central tree was larger than Ian had imagined. That irritated him in a strange way. The machine had generated scale his imagination had never properly supplied. Aelira saw him looking. This time she allowed it.

“You may stare at that.”

Kelda looked upward too.

“It deserves it.”

They passed beneath a high bridge. A girl perhaps ten or eleven years old stopped beside the path with a bundle of thin branches in her arms. She looked at Aelira, then Kelda, then Ian. Her eyes stayed on Ian.

“Human?”

Aelira answered before the question could become larger.

“Yes.”

The girl considered that.

“Why?”

Kelda made a choking sound. Aelira's composure held.

“My guest.”

The girl apparently found this answer inadequate but recognised rank when it became inconvenient. She shifted the branches in her arms and continued down the path, looking back once. Kelda waited. Aelira did too. When the child was out of easy hearing range, Kelda said, “Excellent diplomatic interrogation.” Aelira looked at Ian.

“That is approximately the level of explanation you should expect all evening.”

They continued. Something moved overhead. A small bird crossed between branches, followed by another. Somewhere deeper in the settlement a bowstring snapped against a practice target. Ian's attention shifted toward the sound. Aelira noticed.

“The practice grounds are that way.”

She pointed through the trees. Then she looked at him more carefully.

“Isha trained there.”

The words were deliberate. Not a test. Permission to know openly what all three already knew he knew.

“She was younger than the woman you met on Earth, obviously. She was also already very much herself.”

Kelda smiled faintly.

“I can imagine.”

“You do not need to. You have travelled with the result.”

They reached a junction where one path climbed toward the elevated settlement and another remained near ground level. Aelira chose the lower route. Ian looked toward the upper platforms. Aelira answered the unspoken question.

“Another time, perhaps. If there is another time.”

The qualification was not hostile. It was simply honest. They walked on. Kelda eventually said, “Your daughters. You do not have to tell me about them.” She seemed almost annoyed to have introduced the subject.

“But I am glad there are people in your world who know you as something other than this.”

Her hand gestured vaguely at Ian, the settlement, reality, guilt and everything else the word *this* had accumulated.

“Someone who forgets to buy something. Someone who gives bad advice. Someone who embarrasses them.”

Aelira's mouth curved.

“Someone who wears unfortunate shirts.”

Kelda nodded.

“Exactly.”

The path opened toward a broad communal space beneath the central tree. Several people were eating at low tables. Others worked nearby. Children moved between adults without the architecture caring whether the area was dining room, meeting place or passage. Ian could smell bread, cooked greens and woodsmoke. No one here knew what he had done. No one here knew what he claimed to be. They saw only Aelira walking with Kelda and an unfamiliar human man whose eyes had become wet again for reasons none of them could guess. Aelira stopped beside him.

“If you need to leave, say so.”

Her voice was quiet enough that only Ian and Kelda could hear.

“Not disappear because you think we would be better without you. Leave because you have reached your limit.”

Kelda nodded once.

“That is allowed.”

“May I show you something? It is small, so when it appears it won't create a scene.”

Aelira stopped before the edge of the communal space. Her eyes went immediately to Ian's empty hands. Kelda did the same. The two women exchanged a look. Kelda spoke first.

“That sentence has a poor history.”

Ian waited. Aelira glanced around them. The nearest table was far enough away that nobody was paying close attention, but several children moved unpredictably through the clearing and an older elf was carrying bowls between two groups.

“Here?”

Ian confirmed it. Aelira considered the risk rather than the novelty.

“Nothing alive.”

Kelda nodded.

“Nothing that belongs to someone else.”

Aelira added, “Nothing dangerous, nothing loud, and nothing that changes the ground, the trees or anything already here. And if it is another food, I am not explaining chocolate to the entire settlement tonight.” Kelda looked disappointed by the restriction. Aelira ignored her.

“You may show us.”

Ian reached down. This time what appeared in his hand was only paper. Aelira's attention still sharpened at once, but the communal clearing continued around them. Nobody cried out. No doorway became somewhere else. No frozen food appeared beneath a tree. Ian held out the photograph.

“This is the real world, not this form of me. The view from my room. Now.”

Aelira took it. Then she looked at Ian.

“Your world.”

The correction was quiet. Ian waited. Aelira's fingers remained careful around the photograph's edges.

“This one is real too.”

Kelda stood beside her.

“Yes.”

There was no anger in either voice, merely a boundary they apparently considered too important to leave imprecise. Then Aelira looked down. The image held no impossible city. That seemed to surprise her. A dark edge framed one side, as though the image had been made from inside a room. Beyond it, trees filled much of the view, their leaves catching low warm sunlight. Gardens and hedges lay below. Houses gathered farther down the slope, roofs and windows packed together in a way unlike the settlement around them but recognisably made for ordinary people. Beyond those stood another wooded rise. Above everything was a huge clean blue sky. Aelira stared for a long time.

Kelda leaned closer.

“That is where you are.”

“Where the other me is, yes,” Ian said.

Aelira's thumb moved along the white border without touching the image itself.

“There are so many trees.”

Ian had perhaps expected something else to matter first. Kelda pointed toward the houses.

“And those are homes?”

He confirmed it. She studied them.

“They build very close together.”

Aelira noticed the pale vehicle partly visible among the greenery below.

“That is one of your road machines.”

“Yes.”

Neither woman pursued it. The light held them more than the technology did. Warm evening sun touched the upper leaves while the valley beneath had already begun to fall into shade. Nothing in the image appeared arranged for them. A tree obscured part of the view. The dark frame intruded at the left. There were marks against the sky that might have been on glass rather than in the air. It looked like a view someone actually had from a room. Aelira lifted the photograph closer.

“This is now?”

Ian nodded.

“While you are standing here.”

Another nod. Kelda looked at him, then at the photograph, visibly unhappy with time as a material concept.

Kelda asked whether the room continued to exist while Ian stood in the forest, and whether he was somehow both there and here. Ian confirmed it.

Kelda breathed out.

“I preferred the camera.”

Aelira almost smiled. Then she returned to the photograph. For all Ian had said about being outside their reality, the view was painfully undivine. Houses. Gardens. Trees. A vehicle. A wooded hill beneath evening light. A place where somebody might make tea. A place where adult daughters might visit their father. A place where an ordinary man could sit in a room and read about people dying somewhere that, to him, had initially existed only in words. Aelira's expression changed. Some piece of Ian became smaller. Not less dangerous. More human.

“You are looking at our world from there,” she said.

Ian acknowledged it. Aelira looked once more at the image.

“And this is what you look at when you stop.”

The photograph lowered. Kelda held out her hand. Aelira passed it to her. Kelda studied it much more practically: houses, slope, vegetation, apparent road access, the relationship between buildings and land. Then she looked toward the enormous living trunks surrounding them.

“You have a decent view.”

She handed it back to Aelira rather than Ian. Aelira noticed.

“So this one is ours?”

Ian had offered it without conditions. A simple yes was enough. Aelira looked down at it again.

“Then I am keeping it. Not for Thomas and Isha.”

Her gaze lifted to Ian.

“For now, I want one thing that reminds me you come from somewhere ordinary.”

She slipped the photograph carefully inside her clothing. Then she looked toward the path ahead.

“And if you call that place the real world again, Kelda may explain the problem more physically than I will.”

Kelda nodded.

“I am available.”

Ian looked toward the communal space again.

“I think it is time for me to retire. I shall return to the hut when you need me next.”

Aelira looked at him properly. The walk had done little to hide his exhaustion. If anything, the ordinary life around them had made it clearer. Ian's eyes were heavy, his face carrying the aftermath of too many conversations that could not be repaired merely by reaching the correct conclusion.

“Yes.”

No argument. No test. Kelda glanced toward the communal space, then back along the path they had taken.

“I'll come with you.”

Ian began a small objection. Kelda dismissed it with a look.

“I know.”

Aelira led them back by a quieter route. Evening had settled farther during the short visit. Lamps had begun appearing among the higher platforms—not one coordinated illumination, but individual households admitting that daylight was no longer sufficient. Warm points of light sat between enormous trunks. Voices travelled differently after dark, closer and harder to place. Ian passed places he knew only incompletely. A root chamber glimpsed through an opening. A bridge whose destination had never mattered to Thomas's story. A low house with two pairs of boots outside and herbs hanging beneath the eaves. The settlement exceeded everything that had ever been written about it. People lived in the unwritten parts. Ian said nothing.

Aelira did not require him to. Near the outer paths, the same young girl with the bundle of branches appeared again, now carrying nothing. She saw Ian between Aelira and Kelda and stopped.

“Still human?”

Aelira closed her eyes for half a second.

“Yes.”

The girl nodded, apparently reassured that the situation had not deteriorated, and continued home. Kelda waited until she was gone.

“I like her.”

“You would.”

The forester's rest appeared through the trees after the last ward marker. Aelira stopped outside rather than entering.

“This room is yours tonight. Temporarily. Do not interpret that sentence cosmologically.”

Kelda made a tired sound that might have been laughter.

“There is water. Wood. Bedding. Ordinary food in the emergency store, although after today I assume ordinary food has lost some prestige.”

Aelira's attention returned to Ian.

“No one will disturb you unless something changes. And I will make sure nobody decides the mysterious human guest requires investigation before breakfast.”

Kelda leaned against the doorframe.

“Sereth meant what she said about tomorrow.”

Ian looked at her.

“She didn't agree because she forgave you. She agreed because she wants Isha to see her.”

Aelira nodded.

“Do not confuse those things.”

Ian did not. The distinction was already too familiar. Kelda took Ian's phone from inside her jacket, looked at it, and then surprised him by keeping it.

“I am borrowing this.”

Aelira raised an eyebrow.

“For what?”

“Practice. I need to learn how not to make every moving image look as though the viewer is falling down a hill.”

She looked at Ian.

“I will not record anyone without asking. I will not send anything. I will not open anything that isn't part of what you showed me.”

The last part had the shape of a promise rather than a request. Then she added:

“And I want another picture of Porridge in the morning when the light is better.”

Aelira accepted this as apparently inevitable. Kelda pushed open the hut door. The room inside was simple and dim. One narrow bed. Table. Two chairs. Hearth. Storage shelf. No impossible geography waited beyond another door. Only a place to stop. Aelira remained on the path. For a moment the First Princess seemed uncertain whether anything else needed saying. Eventually she settled on:

“You asked to see the settlement.”

Ian looked at her.

“I am glad you did.”

The statement surprised Kelda enough that she turned. Aelira continued before either could make too much of it.

“Not because I wanted you to possess another part of us. Because you needed to discover that a place is larger than the scenes you know happened there.”

She did not explain the lesson further. The forest had already done it. Kelda stepped away from the doorway.

“We'll come back when there is something to do.”

Aelira inclined her head.

“Sleep, if that is something your present body actually does.”

Then, after the smallest hesitation:

“Good night, Ian.”

Kelda followed her down the path. At the first bend she looked back once. Not suspiciously. Just checking that he was still there. Then both women disappeared between the trees, leaving Ian alone in the forester's rest while the Wood Elf settlement continued living beyond the dark. For Ian, there was no night. No waiting in the forester's rest. No sleep. No hours in which the fire burned down or dawn worked slowly through the trees. He had given them time. The machine obeyed. Elsewhere, the world continued without him.

Kelda learned the camera well enough that she no longer thought about where her thumb belonged. Aelira arranged what needed arranging without turning Ian's arrival into settlement knowledge. Sereth went home. Ruvan went with her. Words were considered, rejected and rewritten. People who had agreed to privacy were allowed to have it. Ian saw none of it. Then someone needed him. From his perspective, the door had barely finished closing when a knock came from the other side. He opened it. Morning stood outside.

The forest was wet with recent dew, the light clean and low between the trunks. Kelda stood on the path wearing different clothes from the evening before, Ian's phone in one hand and a small folded sheet in the other. She looked as though considerably more time had happened to her than to him.

“Good. You're here.”

Kelda held up the phone.

“I can use this now without photographing my own fingers.”

A pause.

“Mostly.”

Then she lifted the folded sheet.

“We have a draft for Thomas and Isha. It is not finished, and you are not reading it unless we decide you should.”

The paper disappeared back inside her jacket. Kelda looked at him more carefully.

“Sereth is ready. She wants you there for the beginning because she has questions about the machine. After that, she may ask you to leave while she decides what to record.”

Kelda turned toward the path.

“She asked for you herself.”

Then, after two steps, she looked back.

“And Ian? Today is about her daughter. Try to let it stay that way.”

“I shall try my best.”

Kelda considered him for a moment, then nodded.

“That is all anyone sensible can ask.”

She turned and led him through the morning forest. The route was different from the previous evening. They stayed away from the communal ground and followed a narrower path beneath the lower platforms, crossing a stream where flat stones had been placed between exposed roots. Ian saw only a handful of people. Those who noticed him also noticed Kelda and apparently decided that whatever explanation existed could wait for someone else to provide it. Sereth had not chosen her home.

She waited at a small open-sided shelter beside the lower river path, far enough from the settlement that conversation would not carry easily and close enough that the forest still felt inhabited. A table had been brought beneath the roof. Two chairs stood beside it. Ruvan was absent. Aelira was absent too. Sereth had asked for Kelda. And Ian. On the table sat a shallow wooden tray containing breakfast: fruit, bread, something folded in leaves and a small cup of hot infusion. Nothing had been arranged for Ian. That seemed deliberate. Sereth stood beside the river with Ian's phone in her hands. She had apparently already received a lesson.

Her first recording showed nothing but moving water. Not herself. The river passed between moss-dark stones beneath roots that reached toward the bank. Morning light entered in pieces through the canopy. A bird called somewhere upstream. Another answered farther away. Sereth stopped the recording and looked at the result. Kelda remained several paces back.

“She has made six of those,” she told Ian quietly.

Sereth turned.

“Five.”

“You deleted one.”

“Then I made six.”

Sereth gave Kelda a look that contained an uncomfortable amount of Isha. Ian stayed where he was. Sereth's attention moved to him.

“You came.”

The observation held no surprise. Ian acknowledged it. She looked healthier this morning than she had in the forester's rest—not because anything physical had changed, but because he was no longer seeing her for the first time while admitting responsibility for her daughter's death. The knowledge remained between them. It simply was not the only thing there. Sereth held up the phone.

“I understand the still image. I understand how to begin and end the moving one. Kelda has shown me how to erase something and how to view what remains.”

Kelda said, “She understands it better than I did after the same amount of time.”

“I listened.”

“That is an accusation.”

“Yes.”

Sereth looked back at Ian.

“I have not recorded myself yet.”

Her thumb rested along the edge of the device.

“I thought I knew what I wanted last night. Then I came here this morning and realised I was choosing scenes for Isha as though I were arranging evidence that I am well.”

That seemed to bother her.

“I do not want to perform being alive for my daughter.”

Kelda leaned against one of the shelter posts and kept silent. Sereth glanced at the little screen again.

“So I have made recordings of water. Birds. A path. My breakfast before I ate it.”

A faint embarrassment appeared.

“I deleted the breakfast.”

Kelda said, “It was a good breakfast.”

“That was not why I deleted it.”

Ian did not interrupt. Sereth walked to the table and placed the phone down.

“I think I understand something now. If Isha receives hours of us trying to show her everything she misses, we will make the absence larger.”

Her gaze moved toward the river.

“But if she sees the river for twenty seconds because I happened to be standing beside it...”

Sereth's fingers rested on the tabletop.

“That is closer to what I want.”

Kelda nodded once. Sereth looked at Ian again.

“I do want to speak to her. Not for long.”

She breathed in.

“And not with you holding the device. I want Kelda to record it.”

Kelda straightened slightly. Sereth continued.

“You may remain nearby the first time. I want to know whether what I ask the machine to preserve is actually what it preserves. If I decide I dislike your presence, you leave.”

The boundary did not require discussion. Then Sereth looked toward the phone.

“There is one thing I do need from you before we begin. When I look into this, where should I look if I want Isha to feel that I am looking at *her*?”

Ian pointed to the tiny dark lens near the top of the device.

“Here. This is the eye of the device. Light enters and is recorded.”

Sereth brought the phone closer. The lens itself was almost disappointingly small.

“This.”

She touched beside it, careful not to cover the glass.

“Yes.”

Sereth turned the device around again and looked at the screen, where the river waited behind her own hand.

“So if I watch myself on this, I am not looking at Isha.”

Kelda nodded from beside the shelter.

“You are looking slightly downward.”

Sereth raised the phone experimentally and looked into the lens instead. On the screen, her own eyes appeared to settle directly on the viewer. She froze.

“Oh.”

Kelda stepped closer. Sereth switched her attention back to the screen. Immediately the recorded gaze shifted again. Then she looked into the lens. Back at Isha. Or close enough to make the distinction hurt. Sereth lowered the phone.

“That is unpleasantly effective.”

She handed it to Kelda.

“Show me where you will stand.”

Kelda moved several paces away, positioning herself where the river and a section of wooded bank would remain behind Sereth without making the scene feel arranged. She raised the phone, checked the frame, then moved half a pace left. Sereth watched all of this with the seriousness of preparing for something much more dangerous.

“No instruction,” she said.

Kelda lowered the phone slightly.

“I wasn't going to.”

“If my hair is wrong, it stays wrong.”

“Yes.”

“If I stop speaking, do not stop the recording unless I tell you.”

Kelda nodded. Sereth looked toward Ian. He had been given permission to remain nearby. She seemed to confirm for herself that his presence was tolerable, then turned away from him. The river occupied her attention instead. For perhaps a minute she did nothing. A bird landed somewhere overhead. Water slipped around one exposed stone and rejoined itself beneath a root. Farther downstream, something moved briefly through undergrowth and disappeared. Sereth sat on the low edge of the shelter.

“Now.”

Kelda began recording. Sereth looked first at the river. When she finally turned toward the phone, she looked at the lens.

“Isha.”

The name stopped her. Not because she had forgotten what came next. Because there was no page between them now. Sereth breathed in slowly.

“I have tried to decide what I should tell you while you can see my face.”

Her mouth moved faintly.

“That was a mistake. You would object to the word *should* before I reached the next sentence.”

Kelda's grip on the phone remained steady. Sereth looked away for a moment, toward the river.

“I am well.”

She glanced back into the lens.

“There. That is the part mothers are apparently required to say first.”

A tiny smile.

“I am well. Ruvan is still Ruvan. Aelira is still too patient with people who require less patience. Lethira remains dangerous in ways that do not qualify for archery.”

From behind the phone, Kelda's mouth tightened to prevent a sound. Sereth noticed.

“And Kelda is here pretending she is not reacting.”

Kelda's eyes narrowed. Sereth smiled properly. It changed her face. For several seconds she said nothing. The recording continued.

“I miss you.”

No ornament. The smile remained, though her eyes had filled.

“I miss you when something happens that I know you would notice. I miss you when nothing happens at all.”

Her fingers settled together in her lap.

“I do not spend every morning waiting for you to return. I want you to know that.”

She looked briefly toward the trees.

“I live here. I work. I argue. I eat. I become irritated. Sometimes I am happy for an entire day before I remember that there is another world where my daughter is doing the same thing.”

Her eyes returned to the lens.

“And remembering does not ruin the day.”

The tears reached her cheeks then. Sereth let them.

“I saw the photograph of you and Thomas.”

A small breath.

“You look human.”

The sentence carried no rejection.

“I thought that would hurt differently.”

She wiped beneath one eye.

“It did.”

Then, after a moment:

“You also looked like yourself.”

Sereth went quiet again. Kelda did not stop recording. The river continued behind her. Eventually Sereth looked straight into the lens once more.

“I do not know whether this is the part we send you.”

Her mouth curved.

“That is one advantage of this machine. Apparently I can change my mind.”

She stood.

“If you receive this one, it means I did not.”

Sereth stepped toward Kelda.

“Stop.”

Kelda stopped the recording. Nobody spoke immediately. Sereth held out her hand. Kelda passed her the phone. She watched the recording from beginning to end. The first time her own face appeared, she winced. Kelda looked toward the river instead of watching her watch herself. Ian remained where Sereth had allowed him to remain. At *I miss you*, Sereth's thumb tightened around the side of the device. She continued. When the recording ended, she replayed only the final twenty seconds. Then she locked the screen.

“I am keeping it.”

Kelda looked at her.

“For now?”

Sereth considered.

“No.”

She corrected herself.

“If Isha accepts the gift, I want her to have that. And the river recording before it.”

Kelda nodded.

“Separate?”

“Yes.”

Sereth looked downstream.

“I want her to see the river before she sees me.”

No one translated the choice into a lesson. She walked to the edge of the water and crouched, trailing two fingers through the current. After several moments she looked back toward Ian. Her expression had changed again. Less exposed now. More curious.

“I understand how to speak to her through it.”

A pause.

“But you said these moving images can show many people.”

She glanced toward Kelda.

“Can the person holding the device be inside the image as well, without another person there to hold it?”

“Yes.”

Ian showed Sereth the control that changed which camera the device used. The river vanished from the screen and Sereth's own face appeared instead, larger and much closer than before. She recoiled slightly. Kelda laughed. Sereth ignored her.

“The place you look is just here.”

Ian pointed to the smaller lens on the front of the device.

“People sometimes move themselves to one side to show what is behind. Other times they keep themselves in the frame. You can film two people, if they are close.”

Sereth experimented immediately. She held the phone at arm's length and discovered three things in quick succession: her arm was visible if she angled it badly, the device made the distance between face and background difficult to judge, and Kelda could apparently find considerable entertainment in watching someone else learn badly.

“You were worse,” Sereth said.

“I had no teacher except him.”

“That is not the defence you think it is.”

Sereth moved to the riverbank and turned until the water appeared over one shoulder. She looked at the screen, corrected herself, then deliberately looked into the lens. The effect startled her again. She switched back to the screen. Then the lens.

“I dislike how quickly this becomes intuitive.”

Kelda came nearer. Sereth looked at her through the device.

“Stand there.”

Kelda stopped beside her.

“Closer.”

Kelda moved perhaps half a step. Sereth frowned.

“He said close.”

“I am beside you.”

“You are occupying the edge like an accused criminal.”

Kelda moved closer until their shoulders touched. Both women now fitted inside the frame, though the difference in height and the angle of Sereth's arm made the composition slightly crooked. Sereth looked at the image. Kelda looked at herself.

“That is strange.”

“You have seen yourself before.”

“Not beside you from your hand.”

Sereth turned the phone slightly. The river widened behind them. Kelda's shoulder remained pressed against hers. For a few seconds neither spoke. The screen held two women Thomas and Isha knew separately and together in different parts of their remembered life, standing beside the lower river in ordinary morning clothes while neither attempted to send a message across worlds. Sereth's expression softened.

“This might be useful.”

Kelda glanced sideways at her.

“For Isha?”

“For me.”

That silenced Kelda. Sereth pressed the still-image control. The resulting photograph was imperfect. Kelda had been looking at Sereth rather than the lens. Sereth herself had begun smiling at exactly the wrong moment. She studied it. Then showed it to Kelda. Kelda stared for several seconds.

“Keep that.”

“I intended to.”

“You did not ask me.”

Sereth looked at her.

“Do you want me to delete it?”

Kelda considered the question properly.

“No.”

Sereth nodded and kept it. The ease of that small exchange seemed to matter more than either woman commented upon. She tried again, this time warning Kelda first. The second image was more deliberate and consequently less alive. Both looked toward the lens. Both were composed. The river sat neatly behind them. Sereth compared the two.

“The first.”

Kelda nodded.

“The first.”

The second disappeared. Sereth then changed to moving image. She held the phone at arm's length, looked into the lens and waited. Nothing happened because she had not pressed record. Kelda's face became unbearable.

“Do not.”

“I said nothing.”

Sereth started the recording. For several seconds the image held both of them silently. Then Kelda looked sideways.

“Are we supposed to speak?”

“I don't know.”

“You started it.”

“You agreed to stand here.”

“This is already worse than the pony.”

Sereth laughed. The phone shifted slightly as her arm moved, catching more sky and the upper branches. Kelda reached across instinctively to steady Sereth's wrist. The resulting image held them too close, both laughing, the river partly lost behind Kelda's shoulder. Sereth stopped recording. They watched it. Kelda's laughter faded as she saw herself. Not because the recording embarrassed her. Because she was laughing. Thomas and Isha had not heard that particular laugh in a very long time. Sereth looked at Kelda instead of the screen.

“Keep it?”

Kelda swallowed.

“Yes.”

Sereth locked the phone and handed it back.

“Then I think I understand.”

She turned toward Ian. There was no gratitude large enough to make the previous day disappear, but there was something simpler now.

“You were right about one thing. This can carry what a page cannot.”

Her gaze moved toward the river.

“And we do not need to make all of it *for* them. Some of it can simply be what happened while we were holding the device.”

Kelda tucked the phone safely away again. Sereth looked thoughtful.

“I want to learn one more thing. If I give this to someone else for a day—Ruvan, perhaps, or Aelira—and they make images without you present, can they keep those hidden from you until they decide whether you may see them?”

“I will not look at anything you don't want me to.”

Sereth held his gaze for a moment, then nodded.

“I believe that you intend not to.”

It was carefully phrased. Ian continued.

“I can also create physical copies of the still images for you, or others, to keep. Not just ones to send to Thomas and Isha. I'm not sure that counts as interfering in the natural development of another culture though... but the offer is there.”

Kelda's hand went automatically to the pocket holding the phone.

“Oh.”

The possibility affected her immediately. Until now the images had belonged conceptually to Thomas and Isha: things made here, carried impossibly away. The photograph Ian had given Aelira was the exception. Now the little candid image beside the river could remain here as well. Sereth understood the larger problem first.

“Yes. That could interfere. Not because one picture exists. We already know pictures can exist. Thomas and Isha have sent them.”

Her eyes returned to Ian.

“But if you make them without cost, without craft, without limit, and people begin expecting that whenever they wish to preserve a face...”

Kelda finished the thought.

“Then he has introduced a new trade by accident.”

“Or destroyed one before it exists,” Sereth said.

She did not sound alarmed. Merely unwilling to pretend the question disappeared because the result was beautiful. Kelda took the phone out again and opened the first photograph of the two of them. The imperfect one. Sereth smiling at the wrong moment. Kelda looking sideways at her instead of toward the lens. The river visible behind them.

“This isn't a trade,” Kelda said.

Sereth looked at her.

“No.”

“It is one picture.”

“No.”

“Made because we wanted it.”

Sereth's expression softened.

“Yes.”

Kelda studied the image again.

“I think there is a difference between giving a few people something impossible because this impossible situation happened to us, and teaching everyone that portraits now come out of black glass whenever they ask.”

Sereth nodded slowly.

“That boundary I could accept. Private copies. For the people who choose to participate. Perhaps Thomas's family. Perhaps those who contribute something and wish to keep a copy of their own.”

Her gaze sharpened.

“Not a new service.”

Kelda smiled faintly.

“You are already writing rules.”

“I am standing beside an unknown Earth machine operated by a half-dwarf who learned photography yesterday. Rules are appropriate.”

“I learned quickly.”

“You photographed the ground for the first several seconds.”

“That recording was deleted.”

“And therefore history is already being manipulated.”

Kelda stared at her. Sereth smiled. The joke landed quietly, and for a few moments the morning became easier. Then Sereth looked down at the photograph again.

“I would like one.”

Kelda stopped smiling. Sereth touched the screen lightly.

“This one. Not because I intend to display it publicly. Not because I need proof that this morning happened. I simply want it.”

Kelda swallowed.

“So do I.”

Sereth glanced at her.

“Then two.”

Kelda considered correcting the arithmetic and apparently decided against it. Sereth turned toward Ian.

“And perhaps one of the river by itself. No writing on them. No decoration. Just what we made.”

She paused.

“If that is something you can do without the machine deciding we secretly wanted anything else.”

The qualification was dry. Then she held Ian's gaze.

“Will you make those for us?”

Ian did not answer with words. One moment Sereth's hands were empty. The next, he was holding photographs. Three of them. Quality glossy prints, each mounted simply on firm pale cardboard. Nothing ornate. No writing. No decorative border beyond the clean edge of the mount. He handed them over at once. Kelda received the first and second. Sereth took the third. Both women looked down. The first two were the candid river image: Sereth smiling at the wrong moment, Kelda looking sideways at her, the lower river behind them and morning light caught in a way neither of them had consciously arranged. Two identical copies.

The third was the river alone. Water over stone, roots, moss-dark bank, morning light through leaves. Quiet and ordinary and unmistakably theirs. For several seconds neither woman spoke. Kelda touched the edge of the mounted print with one thumb.

“It is already real.”

Not because the image had been unreal on the screen. Because this was different. Weight. Surface. Something to keep. Sereth turned the river print slightly, watching light move across the glossy surface. Then she looked at the image of herself and Kelda again, comparing them almost unwillingly, as though deciding which form of impossible she trusted more.

“The mount is sensible,” Kelda said quietly.

Ian did not need to explain that the choice had been deliberate. Sereth ran one finger across the lower edge of the cardboard, careful not to touch the image itself.

“No writing. Good.”

Kelda held both copies of the candid river image beside each other, as if checking whether reality had managed to produce two genuinely identical things.

“That is unsettling.”

She did not sound entirely displeased by it. Sereth's attention had gone inward again. Not painfully this time. Just carefully.

“If I put this away and look at it a month from now,” she said, more to herself than anyone else, “I will remember that this morning happened whether or not I send anything to Isha.”

Kelda looked up from the photograph. That mattered. Sereth noticed her looking and gave a small nod.

“Yes. That is why I wanted it.”

Kelda lowered one copy, then held the other out toward Sereth.

“This one is yours.”

Sereth blinked once, then accepted it. Kelda kept the second. Neither of them made a performance of the exchange. That, perhaps, was why it carried so much. Sereth then lifted the river photograph.

“And this one?”

Kelda glanced toward the actual water beyond the shelter.

“For Isha, if she wants it.”

Sereth considered the answer. Then nodded.

“Yes.”

She looked at Ian.

“This is interference.”

The statement was matter-of-fact, not accusatory. Kelda snorted softly.

“Everything about him is interference.”

Sereth's mouth moved faintly.

“Yes. But this is limited interference. Chosen. Specific. Not a new craft handed indiscriminately into the world.”

Her gaze returned to Ian.

“I can live with that.”

Kelda tucked her copy away with an amount of care she would have denied if challenged. Then she looked at Ian and said, “Do not become pleased with yourself.” Sereth did not disagree. But when she glanced back at her own photograph, the expression on her face had become gentler than anything she had offered him since entering the forester's rest the previous day.

“We will continue,” she said.

Not *because* of the prints. But not despite them either. She slipped her copy safely into the inner fold of her clothing and handed the river print to Kelda for keeping until decisions were made. Then she looked toward the path leading back toward the settlement.

“I want Ruvan to try the device.”

Kelda nodded once.

“That should be entertaining.”

Sereth's eyes rested on Ian.

“You may stay for that.”

A small pause.

“For now.”

“The photos may fade in direct sunlight,” Ian said, “or maybe reality can be persuaded to disregard the laws of nature for these items.”

He smiled slightly at Sereth. Sereth looked down at the photograph tucked carefully against her clothing. Then at Ian.

“No.”

Ian's smile faltered.

“I would rather it fade.”

Kelda glanced toward her. Sereth ran one thumb along the cardboard edge.

“If I keep it badly, it should age badly. If I handle it, perhaps the edges should wear. If I leave it in sunlight after you warn me not to, then I deserve whatever happens to it.”

Her expression softened.

“I do not want everything you give us preserved because you can preserve it. I want this to be an object.”

Kelda nodded with immediate approval.

“Good.”

Sereth's mouth curved faintly.

“So tell me how to care for it. Then leave the laws of nature alone.”

The photograph disappeared safely back inside her clothing.

“And thank you.”

She said it before Ian could turn the moment into another apology. Then she stood.

“Now Ruvan.”

---

They found him at the practice ground. Not because Sereth had arranged symbolism. Because Ruvan had apparently decided waiting for an impossible man did not justify wasting the morning. The range lay beneath tall trees where the ground opened enough for clean shooting lines. Several targets stood at different distances, their faces repaired and reused rather than decorative. Two younger Wood Elves were packing equipment at the far end when Sereth, Kelda and Ian approached. Ruvan dismissed them with a few quiet words and waited until they had left. He was holding a bow.

Ian recognised none of its exact construction from prose alone. That fact had begun becoming familiar: every real object contained more decisions than the story had ever needed to mention. Ruvan set the bow down. His gaze went first to Sereth. She nodded once. Then to Kelda. Kelda took Ian's phone from her pocket and held it up.

“I have not broken it.”

“Yet.”

“I dislike you.”

“I know.”

Ruvan's attention moved to Ian.

“You stayed.”

Ian acknowledged it.

“So did we.”

Ruvan held out his hand. Kelda gave him the phone. He turned it over once. Unlike Sereth, he showed almost no fascination with the construction itself. He checked where the lenses were, where his fingers might cover them, then looked at Kelda.

“Show me.”

She did. Ruvan learned quickly and without commentary. Still image. Moving image. Sound. No sound. Front camera. Rear camera. Review. Delete. The final function received the most attention.

“Gone?”

“Gone,” Kelda said.

Ruvan looked at Ian. Ian confirmed it. Ruvan nodded. Then, without warning, he pointed the phone at Kelda. She stared. The shutter sounded. Ruvan inspected the image. Kelda was standing with her arms folded, expression openly suspicious, morning forest behind her. He handed the phone to Sereth. Sereth looked.

“That is accurate.”

Kelda took the device from her.

“Delete it.”

Ruvan did not argue. Kelda deleted the photograph herself. He nodded once. Apparently that had been the test. Then he took the phone back and walked toward the shooting line. He did not record himself. He recorded the ground. The target. The bow resting on its stand. A section of forest behind the range where light moved through leaves. He stopped. Reviewed it. Deleted it. Tried again. This time he began with the bow, moved slowly along the shooting line and ended on the target. No speech. Only birds, distant movement through the settlement and the soft sound of his own steps. He watched it once. Kept it. Then he looked at Ian.

“I understand why Sereth wants this.”

The admission seemed to irritate him slightly.

“I also understand why it is dangerous.”

He raised the phone.

“Not because it steals anything. Because it makes keeping something easy.”

Kelda leaned against a tree.

“That was roughly Aelira's concern.”

Ruvan nodded.

“A memory normally survives badly. A painting requires skill. A written account requires someone to decide what words matter.”

He looked at the phone.

“This requires a thumb.”

Sereth said quietly, “And someone deciding where to point it.” Ruvan glanced at her.

“Yes.”

That distinction mattered. He walked back toward them.

“I do not want to speak into it yet. I may not speak into it at all.”

Sereth nodded.

“But I will participate.”

Kelda's eyebrows rose.

“That was faster than expected.”

“I had the night to think.”

“You did not tell us.”

“I was not required to.”

Kelda accepted that with a grunt. Ruvan handed the phone back to her.

“What I want to send may not include me. Isha knows my face.”

A pause.

“She may have more use for seeing where she learned to shoot.”

Sereth's expression softened. Ruvan noticed and looked faintly annoyed.

“Do not make that sentimental.”

“I said nothing.”

“You were about to.”

Kelda murmured, “This family has a recurring problem.” Ruvan ignored her. He walked to the bow stand and picked up his weapon. Then he looked toward Ian.

“One thing. You watched Isha learn here.”

Ian already knew where the question was going. Ruvan rested the bow lightly against one leg.

“What do you remember?”

“I could ask the machine to remember for me, and lie. But I can't, it was three hundred-plus chapters ago. There are two hundred and thirty thousand lines, one point eight million words in the saga so far.”

Ian looked toward the practice ground.

“I remember Isha meeting Thomas, I remember her bringing him here, it is many years of story, even if only a few months for me. Sorry.”

His gaze dropped.

“I don't think you want falsehoods.”

Ruvan said nothing for several seconds. Then he set the bow down again.

“No.”

The answer was unexpectedly mild.

“I don't. And I did not ask because I wanted you to recite her childhood back to me.”

Kelda shifted against the tree. Ruvan's attention stayed on Ian.

“I wanted to know what watching us means to you. You remember deaths. Battles. Thomas becoming stronger. Isha meeting him. The things that changed the road.”

His hand rested briefly on the bow.

“You do not remember every morning she stood here and missed a target because she was angry. Or every time I corrected her feet. Or which tree she once put an arrow into because she was looking at someone speaking behind her.”

Sereth's mouth moved faintly.

“You still mention that.”

“It was an avoidable tree.”

Ruvan looked back at Ian.

“That is good.”

Ian blinked.

“Not the tree.”

Kelda muttered, “Thank you.” Ruvan ignored her.

“It is good that you do not remember everything. If you remembered every ordinary moment as clearly as the people who lived them, I think I would find you much harder to tolerate.”

His eyes moved briefly toward Ian's face.

“You watched a story.”

Then toward Sereth.

“We lived a life.”

Sereth nodded once. Ruvan picked up the phone again.

“And this is why I think the gift may work. Because Thomas and Isha already remember the large things. They do not need me to reconstruct the important chapters for them. They may want the things nobody thought were important enough to preserve.”

Ruvan stopped recording. He watched the short clip once, then kept it. For several moments he stood quietly with the phone in one hand and his bow in the other. Then he handed the device to Kelda.

“I think I know what I want to make.”

Kelda accepted it.

“A speech?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Ruvan picked up an arrow. He moved to the shooting line and settled into position with the unhurried familiarity of someone who had repeated the sequence for decades before Thomas ever entered the forest. He looked toward Ian.

“You said you do not remember. Would you like to see what you forgot?”

“Yes, please.”

Ruvan nodded. He did not ask Kelda for the phone. That surprised Ian. Instead he carried his bow to the line, checked the string with his thumb and selected an arrow from the stand. Nothing in the movements was performed for an audience. He had done them too many times for that.

“This range is newer in parts,” he said. “Targets have moved. Two trees came down in a winter storm. We widened the left line because younger archers kept crowding the root.”

He settled his feet.

“But this is where she learned.”

The bow rose. Ian had watched Isha shoot hundreds of times across the story: hunting, fighting, training, later adapting to Earth bows and then submitting herself to kyūdō's unfamiliar discipline. Ruvan's shooting did not look like hers. That was the first useful thing. His body was older. His draw belonged to different proportions. The rhythm was quieter, perhaps slower, and there was no reason for Ian to decide whether one was better. The arrow left. It struck the target with a dry sound. Ruvan lowered the bow.

“That part is what people remember. The arrow reaching where it was sent.”

He selected another arrow.

“The arrow is rarely the important part.”

He adjusted one foot by less than its own width.

“I corrected this.”

His shoulder changed.

“This.”

Two fingers shifted on the string.

“This.”

He drew, let the tension down without shooting, and began again.

“Again.”

Kelda had gone quiet. Sereth stood beneath the edge of the trees, watching her brother reconstruct something neither of them had known would ever need preserving. Ruvan drew once more.

“Children want the arrow.”

He released. The second shaft landed near the first.

“Teachers want the next arrow.”

Ian felt something tighten unexpectedly in his throat. Ruvan walked forward and retrieved both shafts himself. On the way back he stopped beside a low root near the shooting line.

“She sat there once for most of an afternoon because she was angry with me.”

Sereth smiled faintly.

“Only once?”

“That afternoon.”

He looked toward Ian.

“She had decided correction meant I did not trust her judgement. I had decided a child who could not place her feet consistently had not yet earned a philosophical dispute about judgement.”

Kelda's mouth twitched.

“Who won?”

“I was older.”

“That was not the question.”

“No.”

Ruvan returned to the line. He placed one arrow back in the rack and kept the other.

“Isha remembers this place differently from me. Sereth remembers bringing food here. Aelira may remember seeing her train with older archers. Someone else remembers being beaten by her for the first time.”

Sereth said, “That happened later.”

“Yes.”

He rested the bow against his leg.

“No single recording can give her the place back. So I will not try.”

Only then did he look at Kelda's pocket.

“The device.”

Kelda handed it to him. Ruvan started a moving recording. He did not face the lens. He walked the practice line. The image passed over worn earth, bows resting beneath shelter, target faces, the low root where he had said Isha once sat angry, then upward through the trees until the range became part of the wider forest. Ruvan stopped beside the shooting position. He set the phone somewhere stable, checked the frame once, and stepped into it. No speech. He nocked an arrow. Raised the bow. Drew. Released. The arrow struck. Ruvan lowered the bow and remained there for a few seconds while birds called beyond the range.

Then he walked toward the device and stopped the recording. He watched it once. Sereth watched over his shoulder. Kelda did not. Ian stayed where he had been invited to stay. When it ended, Ruvan replayed the middle section: himself drawing and releasing, the sound of the string, the impact farther away. Then he shook his head.

“No.”

He deleted it. Kelda raised an eyebrow.

“You said you knew what you wanted.”

“I do.”

Ruvan reset the device. This time he pointed it away from himself. At the shooting line. He pressed record and put the phone down. Then he walked out of the frame entirely. For nearly half a minute, nothing happened. An empty Wood Elf practice ground. Leaves moved. Somewhere beyond sight, someone called from the settlement. A bowstring sounded from another range farther uphill. A bird landed briefly near one target, reconsidered the decision and left. Ruvan let the recording continue. Then he walked into view from the side carrying a bow and several arrows. He placed them on the stand. Checked the target. Adjusted something near the shooting line. Ordinary preparation. No demonstration. No message.

He left the frame again. The empty range remained. After another few seconds he returned and stopped the recording. This time, when he watched it, he nodded.

“That.”

Sereth looked at him.

“You are barely in it.”

“Yes.”

“Isha may want to see you.”

“She can see me elsewhere if I decide to permit that.”

His thumb rested beside the saved recording.

“This is the range.”

He looked at Ian.

“And if she watches it and remembers something I have forgotten, good.”

Ruvan handed the phone back to Kelda. Then he picked up his bow again.

“You said there are too many words for you to remember all of us.”

His voice carried no accusation now.

“I think perhaps the gift should contain fewer.”

He looked along the shooting line.

“Let Thomas and Isha supply some of their own.”

Sereth came closer and touched his arm once. Ruvan tolerated it. Then, after a moment, he looked toward Ian.

“You wanted to see what you forgot. There it is.”

He gestured around them.

“Most of it.”

“Thank you. I don't deserve it, but I'm glad you showed me.”

Ruvan's expression tightened.

“Do not do that.”

Ian looked at him.

“Turn gratitude into debt. I showed you because I chose to show you. That does not create a question of whether you earned it.”

Kelda folded her arms.

“You have managed to find one of our oldest arguments.”

“I noticed.”

Sereth's mouth softened slightly. Ruvan looked over the practice ground again.

“You did things I dislike. Some I may never forgive. That does not mean every decent thing offered to you must be weighed against them before you are allowed to receive it. If I decide you should not have something, I will not give it to you.”

A beat.

“This was mine to give.”

Kelda nodded once, firmly.

“So say thank you and leave the accounting alone.”

Ian had already said it. That seemed enough. Ruvan took his bow from the stand and began checking the arrows he had used, returning the morning to something ordinary. After a few moments Sereth looked toward Kelda's pocket.

“We should show Aelira what we made.”

Kelda nodded.

“And then?”

Sereth's eyes moved toward Ian.

“Then I think we decide who else here should be asked before we leave for Thomas's family.”

Ruvan slid one arrow back into the rack.

“Lethira.”

Sereth gave him a sideways look.

“Yes.”

Kelda sighed. Ian had heard enough about Lethira to recognise that sound as advance preparation. Ruvan's mouth shifted faintly.

“She may like him.”

“That is precisely the problem,” Kelda said.

“Should I put her on my T-shirt?” Ian asked.

Kelda answered before anyone else could.

“No.”

Ruvan looked thoughtful. Sereth looked at him. “Do not encourage this.”

“I was considering whether Lethira would find it insulting.”

“She would find it funny,” Sereth said.

“That is worse,” Kelda replied.

Ruvan nodded slowly. “Yes.” Ian's question had achieved the rare result of putting all three of them on the same side. Kelda took the phone from her pocket and started back toward the settlement.

“Plain black remains the safest available technology.”

Sereth fell into step beside her, still carrying her photograph carefully inside her clothing. Behind them, Ruvan collected his bow. After several paces he said, almost casually, “If you do eventually put Lethira on a shirt, I recommend not using the word *best*.” Kelda stopped walking. Ruvan continued past her. Sereth covered her mouth.

“You are both terrible,” Kelda said.

Ruvan glanced back.

“I did not say he should do it.”

“That is exactly how Thomas starts.”

That ended the matter for perhaps thirty seconds. Then Sereth began laughing again. They left the practice ground with less recorded than Ian might once have expected and considerably more than any of them had intended that morning. Sereth carried her photograph. Kelda carried the phone. Ruvan remained behind. He did not say goodbye to Ian. He had already said what mattered, and by now Ian understood that absence of ceremony from Ruvan was not absence of decision.

The return toward the lower paths took them through a settlement beginning its ordinary middle of day. A group of children crossed ahead carrying bundles of cut greenery. Two older elves worked at a raised platform with the patient disagreement of people who had been repairing the same structure together for longer than most human careers. Somewhere above, somebody practised a stringed instrument badly enough that Sereth looked upward once.

“That is new.”

Kelda listened.

“Is it supposed to sound like that?”

“No.”

They kept walking. Ian's involvement in reality did not improve the musician. That seemed healthy. Aelira found them before they reached the forester's rest. She came down from one of the upper paths carrying several folded sheets beneath one arm and stopped when she saw Sereth. No questions were needed about whether the morning had happened. Sereth touched the place inside her clothing where the photograph rested.

“I agreed.”

Aelira's expression softened.

“To the gift?”

“To my part.”

A better answer. Aelira accepted it.

“And Ruvan?”

“He agreed to participate.”

Kelda added, “Mostly by recording an empty practice ground.” Aelira looked unsurprised.

“That sounds like Ruvan.”

“He was briefly in danger of becoming emotionally articulate,” Kelda said. “He recovered.”

Sereth gave her a look. Aelira's attention moved to Ian.

“He behaved?”

Kelda considered.

“Yes.”

It was perhaps the first character reference Ian had received from her. She did not improve it. Aelira held out the folded sheets.

“The page is becoming shorter.”

Kelda took them.

“That is usually a sign of improvement.”

“It began at nearly three pages.”

“Thomas has infected you.”

“He is in another world.”

“That has never stopped him from causing paperwork.”

Sereth moved nearer while Kelda opened the draft. Ian did not. Aelira noticed that too. The boundary had become sufficiently established that nobody needed to tell him not to read over Kelda's shoulder. For several minutes the three women discussed phrasing beyond his involvement. Not hidden from him in the metaphysical sense—he had already promised not to use that access—but physically private in the simple human way of people turning a page toward one another and lowering their voices. Ian received only fragments that ordinary hearing could not avoid. *Not “gift from Ian.”* *No. “Opportunity offered by Ian.”* *They need to know he appeared here.* *Do we tell them he reached Kelda first?* *Yes.*

*The photographs can wait.* *Moving images needs explanation.* *Do not call it moving paintings.* *Why?* *Because Thomas will spend half the page correcting the metaphor.* Kelda's objection prevailed. Eventually Aelira folded the sheets again.

“We have time.”

Sereth nodded.

“Do not spend all of it rewriting.”

“That was directed at Kelda.”

“It was directed at both of you.”

Kelda looked offended. Aelira did not. Sereth took the lower path toward her own part of the settlement after telling Kelda she wanted the phone again later. There were things she wished to attempt without Ian present. Ian made no objection. She stopped before leaving. Looked at him. The previous day's confrontation remained plainly available between them. So did the photograph now resting against her clothing.

“I meant what I said. Tomorrow.”

The recording of his truth. Not now. Ian acknowledged it. Sereth left. Aelira watched her go. Then she looked at Kelda.

“Lethira.”

Kelda groaned. Ian had heard that response already. Aelira's mouth shifted.

“You were the one who suggested her.”

“Ruvan suggested her.”

“You agreed.”

“I was emotionally compromised.”

“You were standing at an archery range.”

“That can happen anywhere.”

Aelira looked toward Ian.

“We spoke to her this morning.”

Ian's attention sharpened. He had not seen it. Aelira noticed that fact registering.

“Good. She knows what you proposed. She knows what happened at Kelda's house. She knows about the images, the recording, the intended page, and the fact that none of us can agree on whether you are a man using an incomprehensible mechanism or an incomprehensible mechanism wearing a man.”

Kelda said, “I am leaning toward badly supervised workshop.” Aelira continued.

“She also knows what you told Sereth.”

The humour left. Ian did not need clarification. Aelira's gaze held his.

“I did not conceal it to make the meeting easier. She asked whether you actually said you chose Isha's death.”

Ian remained still.

“I told her yes.”

Kelda crossed her arms.

“She was quiet for almost a full minute.”

Aelira glanced at her.

“That is not remarkable.”

“For Lethira, it is medical.”

Aelira ignored the comment.

“She agreed to meet you.”

Ian had no opportunity to answer before a voice came from the path behind them.

“I was told there would be a mysterious human responsible for appalling decisions.”

Kelda closed her eyes. The woman approaching them looked older than Isha had ever appeared while still carrying herself with the physical ease of someone for whom human assumptions about age were mostly irrelevant. Longbow across her back. Travel knives. Practical forest clothing. Hair arranged with less ceremony than Aelira's and considerably more success than anything the road had once done to Isha's. Lethira's eyes found Ian immediately. She stopped several paces away. Looked him over. Boots. Jeans. Plain black shirt. Face. Hands. Back to face. The inspection was unembarrassed and thorough. Ian had the odd sensation that the thing being appraised was not his danger.

It was whether he was interesting enough to justify everyone's morning. Lethira looked at Aelira.

“This is him?”

“Yes.”

Lethira looked at Kelda.

“You let him into your house?”

“I had a hammer.”

“I heard.”

Her eyes returned to Ian.

“You are disappointingly ordinary.”

Aelira said, “That was almost exactly my reaction.”

“No, yours involved the shirt.”

Ian's gaze moved instinctively downward. Plain black. Lethira saw. Her grin appeared.

“Oh, good. That part was true.”

Kelda muttered something under her breath. Lethira stepped closer. Not recklessly. She had spent more than a century surviving things that punished recklessness. But neither did she maintain the careful diplomatic distance Aelira had used. She simply entered conversational range and looked into Ian's face.

“So. You're Ian.”

Ian acknowledged it.

“The man who put Isha on a shirt.”

Kelda made a frustrated sound. Aelira said, “That is not the important part.”

“I know.”

Lethira's grin disappeared. Entirely. The transition was so complete that Ian understood why Thomas had once found her frightening despite her humour.

“The important part is that you chose to kill her.”

The settlement continued around them. Somewhere nearby, an axe struck wood. A child laughed on an upper path. Nobody in sight knew what the sentence meant. Lethira did not raise her voice.

“I knew Isha before Thomas did. I watched her become happier with him. I watched her frighten herself with how much she wanted that happiness. I watched both of them become exceptionally irritating about pretending everyone else could not see it.”

Kelda's mouth moved despite the subject. Lethira did not notice.

“Then I watched them go into dangers I could not follow. I learned afterward that she died. Then she survived.”

Lethira folded her arms.

“I have had long enough to become grateful for the second fact without making peace with the first.”

There was no polished moral judgement following it. She simply stood there with the contradiction. Then her eyes moved briefly toward Kelda's pocket.

“The little machine.”

Kelda handed it over. Lethira accepted the phone and woke the screen without instruction. She had already been taught. Of course she had. She opened the short recording from Ruvan's practice ground. The empty line. The target. The sound of someone moving outside the frame. Ruvan entering only long enough to put equipment in place. Lethira watched it once. Then the river. Then Sereth. Her face changed during Sereth's recording. The grin did not return. She watched all of it. At the end she handed the phone back to Kelda without replaying anything.

“That is cruel.”

Ian's expression shifted. Lethira raised one hand.

“Not wrongly cruel.”

She frowned at her own phrasing.

“Perhaps cruel is not the word.”

Aelira waited. Lethira looked toward the settlement.

“Isha can know Sereth is alive. That is knowledge.”

She glanced at the phone.

“This lets her miss the exact way her mother's mouth moves when she is trying not to cry.”

The distinction bothered her.

“It will hurt.”

Kelda nodded.

“Yes.”

“And she may still want it.”

“Yes.”

Lethira breathed out.

“That is inconvenient.”

Aelira's expression became faintly dry.

“You were free to refuse.”

“I still am.”

Lethira looked at Ian again.

“I haven't.”

Then she reached for the phone once more. Kelda gave it to her. Lethira changed to the camera and pointed it at Aelira. The Princess stared. Lethira took a photograph. Aelira's expression suggested she had just watched a diplomatic incident form in real time. Lethira inspected the result.

“Excellent.”

“Delete that.”

“Why?”

“Because I did not agree.”

Lethira looked at her. Then immediately deleted it. No joke. No argument. The phone went back to Kelda.

“Good machine.”

Kelda stared at her.

“You just violated the rule to test the rule.”

“Yes.”

Aelira's gaze sharpened.

“And?”

Lethira shrugged.

“You said no. I deleted it. That part works.”

“That was already established.”

“Not for me.”

Aelira looked as though she had rediscovered several old reasons for assigning Lethira to duties away from court. Lethira ignored her. Her attention returned to Ian.

“I am probably going to participate.”

Probably. Not yes.

“I have several ideas already, which is irritating because I had hoped to dislike the entire proposal.”

Kelda nodded sympathetically.

“That also happened to me.”

Lethira looked at her.

“You like him?”

“No.”

“Useful clarification.”

Ian had not asked. Lethira studied him for another moment. Then the humour faded once more.

“Aelira told me something else. You said you don't remember most of our lives.”

Ian had already admitted that to Ruvan. Lethira knew.

“One point eight million words. You remember Isha dying. You remember Thomas becoming a Hero. You remember large things because large things are what made the story.”

She looked over Ian's shoulder toward the ordinary settlement behind him.

“And now you're here asking us to record the parts your story forgot.”

No one corrected her. Lethira's head tilted slightly.

“I think that may be why I am willing to help. Not for you.”

She smiled faintly.

“For them.”

Then the smile disappeared again.

“But before I decide what I want Isha to see, I want something from you.”

Only one question. Lethira held his gaze.

“You said the best of Thomas is what you want to be.”

Her voice was very calm.

“What do you think the best of Isha is?”

“I was going to say her strength. But her compassion and love, I think. The adventurer in her is appealing—strength, courage, tactical skill. Her physicality—not just the way she looks, her agility, poise, grace. They're all great... but when I see her and Thomas, even when they fight, it's always love and compassion.”

The silence afterward was shorter than Ian expected.

“Good.”

Lethira folded her arms.

“Because if you had stopped at strength, I was going to make you spend an afternoon watching her repair arrows.”

Kelda looked interested.

“As punishment?”

“As education.”

Aelira said, “Those are not always distinct with Lethira.”

“No.”

Lethira's gaze remained on Ian.

“You are still describing the Isha you find attractive.”

There was no accusation in it. She had heard about Ian's feelings already and seemed uninterested in pretending they did not exist.

“Her movement. Her courage. Her body. Her competence. Even her love for Thomas is something you admire from outside.”

Ian's expression tightened slightly. Lethira noticed.

“I am not telling you that is wrong. I liked watching them too.”

Kelda turned her head. Lethira looked at her.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You are imagining something indecent.”

“I was not.”

“Then you are losing your touch.”

Aelira exhaled through her nose. Lethira let the humour die there.

“The best thing about Isha was never that she was strong. She was strong before Thomas. She was competent before Thomas. She had courage before Thomas. She could be compassionate before Thomas.”

A pause.

“What changed was that she learned she could want things for herself and remain someone worth trusting.”

Aelira's eyes shifted toward Lethira. The thought had plainly come from somewhere older than this conversation.

“She could love Thomas and still argue with him. Protect him and still let him choose badly. Need him and not become weak because of it.”

Lethira looked back at Ian.

“And sometimes she failed at those things. So did he.”

Kelda nodded. Lethira's mouth curved faintly.

“That may be the part you understand better than I expected.”

She stepped past Ian and looked toward the communal ground beyond the trees.

“Love and compassion are not what made them pleasant.”

Kelda snorted.

“No.”

“They were often exhausting.”

Aelira said, “Frequently.”

“But those things kept bringing them back after they were frightened, angry, wrong or ashamed.”

Lethira turned again.

“That is better than strength.”

For a moment nobody spoke. Then Lethira reached for Kelda's phone. Kelda handed it over without protest this time.

“I will participate.”

The *probably* was gone. Aelira noticed.

“So quickly?”

“I already knew I wanted to. I was deciding whether I wanted him to know that.”

Kelda looked at Ian.

“Wood Elf diplomacy.”

“Do not blame the species.”

Lethira woke the camera and turned slowly, inspecting the settlement through the screen.

“I don't want to send Isha another picture of an archer being impressive. She knows we can shoot. And I don't particularly want to tell her I miss her while staring into the little eye. Sereth has done that better than I would.”

Aelira said nothing. Lethira looked toward a path climbing away from the communal ground.

“There is a place I want her to see.”

Kelda's eyes narrowed with recognition.

“Oh.”

Aelira understood a moment later.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

That was enough for both of them. Lethira looked at Ian.

“It is not secret. It is simply hers in a way that most people here have forgotten.”

She handed the phone back to Kelda rather than keeping it.

“Isha used to go there when she wanted everyone else to become less available.”

Kelda smiled.

“That sounds familiar.”

“She improved at telling people to leave her alone later.”

Lethira started up the path. Aelira remained where she was.

“I will not come.”

Lethira looked back.

“No?”

“This does not require a princess. And I have work.”

Kelda said, “You mean you have already spent far too much time supervising him.”

“That too.”

Aelira gave Ian a short nod.

“Lethira knows the boundary.”

Then she looked at Lethira.

“And you know his.”

Lethira smiled.

“Probably.”

Aelira did not find that reassuring. Kelda joined Lethira on the path. Ian followed. The climb took them away from the busier lower settlement, past older platforms and narrower footways until voices became occasional rather than constant. Nothing about the route looked ceremonial. No markers declared that an important character had once used it. Moss had grown over one side of a step. A handrail had been replaced. Someone had tied a bundle of drying herbs beneath a nearby overhang. Eventually Lethira left the main path. The route narrowed between two enormous trunks and climbed onto a natural shelf high enough that the settlement below became fragments of roof and bridge between leaves.

A simple wooden platform occupied part of the space. Not a lookout. Not a shrine. Just somewhere to sit. Lethira stopped.

“She used to come here when she was young.”

Kelda looked around.

“You said people forgot.”

“Most did. Children find their own private places. Then they grow up and stop needing the same ones.”

Lethira walked to the edge and rested one hand against the old trunk beside it.

“I remembered because I interrupted her here once.”

Kelda smiled.

“How badly did that go?”

“She threatened to throw something at me.”

“What?”

“I don't remember.”

Lethira considered.

“That improves the story.”

She turned toward Ian.

“This is what I want to record.”

Not herself. The platform. The trees. The pieces of settlement visible far below. Wind moving through leaves at a height where the sound became broad and continuous.

“Isha knows what this place looks like.”

Lethira's expression softened.

“But she has never seen it after leaving it.”

A new rail. Different growth. One tree lost farther downslope. Another bridge where there had once been only rope.

“Change,” Kelda said.

“Yes.”

Lethira looked at Ian.

“You said the gift was about what changed and what remained. This does both.”

She took the phone from Kelda and began recording without another word. For nearly a minute there was no person in the image. Only the place. Then Lethira sat down at the edge of the platform. Not facing the camera. She looked out over the settlement. Wind moved a few strands of her hair. After a while she said, almost conversationally:

“You were right, you know.”

Kelda looked at her. Lethira kept looking outward.

“She will care more about this than about watching me shoot.”

A pause.

“Although I remain very good.”

Kelda rolled her eyes. The recording continued. Lethira did not add anything else. Eventually she stood, walked back to the phone and stopped it. She watched the whole thing. Then handed it to Kelda.

“Keep that.”

Kelda nodded. Lethira looked toward Ian. Her expression was lighter now.

“You have seen enough of Isha's old life for one morning.”

Then the mischief returned.

“Now I want to know something much less important. What did the shirt with Isha on it actually look like?”

“I can show you, but I want to give you something first, so you are disarmed enough to not hit me.”

Lethira stopped. Then she looked deliberately at her bow. At the knives on her belt. At Ian. Kelda moved two steps away.

“I want it recorded that I have taken no responsibility for this sentence.”

Lethira's eyes narrowed with interest rather than offence.

“You think a gift will prevent me hitting you?”

“No,” Kelda said. “He thinks it will alter the probability.”

“That is much more Thomas-like.”

She walked closer to Ian, stopping just beyond easy reach. The amusement remained, but so did the warning beneath it.

“I have already heard that you attempted diplomacy with Kelda using remembered food and Aelira using frozen chocolate.”

Kelda frowned.

“The barley was not diplomacy.”

“It worked.”

“It absolutely did not.”

Lethira ignored her.

“So now you have prepared something specifically for me. That is either thoughtful or evidence that you planned this conversation farther ahead than I like.”

She folded her arms.

“I will not promise not to hit you. But I promise I will decide whether to hit you *after* I understand what you have done.”

Kelda considered that.

“Probably the best offer available.”

Lethira's smile widened.

“Go on, then. What have you brought me?”

Ian reached into nothing. Kelda closed her eyes.

“Of course.”

When his hand came back, it held a bowl of chocolate ice cream crowned with whipped cream and a dark drizzle of sauce. Lethira stared at it. Then at the empty air his hand had occupied a moment earlier. Then at Ian.

“You really do this.”

“Yes,” Kelda said. “Annoyingly.”

Ian held out the bowl.

“Eat it.”

Lethira took it with the careful suspicion of someone accepting a possible trap and discovering that, regardless of intent, the trap had been served attractively. The cold reached her hand through the bowl. She looked down at the dark scoops, the white cream, the little spoon.

“You order me strangely for a guest.”

Kelda folded her arms.

“Just do it. It improves judgement and damages caution.”

“That sounds like your biography.”

Lethira put the spoon in, cut through the top scoop and took a proper first bite. Her whole face stopped. Not delicately. Not with princessly composure or Sereth's guarded reserve. Lethira simply ceased being an elf with opinions for several seconds and became a person whose mouth had encountered something both impossible and immediately successful. She swallowed. Looked into the bowl. Took a second bite, larger. Then a third, dragging some of the whipped cream and sauce into it.

“Mm.”

Kelda's expression brightened with vindication.

“Yes.”

Lethira pointed the spoon at Ian without looking up.

“If this is bribery, it is effective.”

At that exact moment the shirt changed. One instant Ian wore plain black. The next, colour and printed image flowed across the fabric with the silent offensiveness of reality making a decision nobody had approved. Kelda saw it first.

“Oh, no.”

Lethira looked up. So did the shirt version of Isha. The machine had not chosen restraint. Printed across Ian's chest was a stylised cartoon Isha with unmistakable long pale hair, pointed ears, bow, and an outfit that could most charitably be described as *inspired by clothing rather than burdened by it*. Short skirt. Bare thighs. The expression was bright, confident and extremely unlike anything Isha herself would ever have permitted. Above it, in large letters: **ISHA IS THE BEST ELF** For perhaps two heartbeats Lethira only stared. Then she nearly dropped the bowl laughing.

Not a small laugh. Not the controlled amusement of someone being socially kind. The sound burst out of her hard enough that she had to catch the bowl with her free hand while bending slightly at the waist, shoulders shaking. Kelda put one hand over her own face.

“I am going to kill the machine.”

Lethira laughed harder. The spoon remained in her hand, still loaded with chocolate ice cream she could no longer responsibly deliver to her mouth. She looked from Ian to the shirt, back to Ian, then back to the shirt again as if checking that reality truly intended to commit to the bit.

“The skirt,” she managed.

Kelda made a strangled sound.

“The *skirt*.”

Lethira took another breath and failed to stop laughing.

“You said there was a version with her on it and I pictured something embarrassing. This is catastrophe.”

Kelda muttered, “For once that is exactly the right word.” Lethira finally got enough control to eat the spoonful already in her hand. It did nothing whatsoever to restore seriousness.

“She would kill you.”

“Yes,” Kelda said. “Thank you.”

“No, genuinely. She would look at this, become very still, ask whether you had lost your mind, and then Thomas would make it worse by failing to stop laughing quickly enough.”

That thought nearly restarted her. Kelda's shoulders had begun moving too. She was trying very hard not to join in and losing ground. Lethira took another bite of ice cream and inspected the printed image more carefully.

“The bow is still wrong,” she said.

Kelda looked at her.

“That is your priority?”

“I am being thorough. And the skirt is absurd.”

“Yes.”

“But...”

She tilted her head.

“The artist understood the expression.”

Kelda considered despite herself. Then glanced at the shirt. Then away again.

“Annoyingly, yes.”

Lethira laughed one more time, softer now, and licked a trace of whipped cream from the corner of the spoon before looking back at Ian.

“I was going to ask whether this was your idea of courage or stupidity. I see now that the machine has helpfully removed the distinction.”

She took another spoonful, still smiling. Then, with the bowl in one hand and the other resting on her hip, she looked at him and asked:

“Did you actually own this before you met her?”

“In my defence... this is a perfect example of me not knowing what happens. I failed to be specific enough and the reality machine clearly wants me to curl up and die.”

As if accepting the accusation, the shirt changed again. The scandalous skirt vanished. The printed Isha remained, but the image settled into something much more restrained: practical adventuring clothes, trousers, bow, long pale hair, pointed ears, the same bright caption above her. **ISHA IS THE BEST ELF** Lethira stopped laughing long enough to take that in. Then she looked at the second version. Then at Ian. Then back at the shirt.

“That,” Kelda said, “is annoyingly strong evidence in your favour.”

Ian continued.

“I started with a different version—not of Isha. It was a pretty sad attempt at creating shared experience. I then changed it to this. It didn't help, but she didn't hit me.”

Lethira's mouth twitched.

“A ringing endorsement.”

“This shirt doesn't exist in my reality,” Ian said. “It exists on the me here, and the me that was with Isha, not the real me. It's complicated.”

“It always is,” Kelda muttered.

Lethira took another spoonful of ice cream, chewing over both the chocolate and the explanation. Her eyes kept returning to the shirt, now with considerably less alarm and considerably more interest.

“The machine corrected for taste,” she said at last.

Kelda looked at her.

“The machine corrected for public decency.”

“Yes. That too.”

Lethira pointed the spoon at Ian's chest.

“This one is much worse in a different direction. Because now I can see why you thought it might work.”

Her tone held no mercy, but it also held no real cruelty.

“The first version was absurdity. This one is embarrassingly earnest.”

Kelda made a short sound that was unhelpfully close to laughter. Lethira kept looking at the shirt. The stylised Isha was still not right in the exact way a real portrait might have been. The proportions were too neat. The bow too decorative. The whole thing softened into a kind of affectionate fantasy rather than memory. But it was recognisably trying. And worse, from Ian's point of view, recognisably trying badly. Lethira took another bite.

“I believe you,” she said.

Ian looked at her.

“Not about all of it,” she clarified. “Your explanations about reality remain offensive. But I believe this part was not entirely under your control.”

Kelda nodded once.

“The machine has developed a malicious sense of timing.”

Lethira's eyes stayed on Ian.

“And I believe you when you say the shirt was a foolish attempt at common ground rather than mockery.”

She paused.

“That does not make it a good idea.”

“No,” Kelda said. “We have standards.”

Lethira's grin returned.

“Low standards, apparently, but still standards.”

She finished another spoonful, then looked down at the bowl with open approval.

“This continues to be excellent.”

Kelda folded her arms.

“That was my experience too.”

Lethira lowered the spoon and looked back at Ian.

“So. She saw this version.”

Ian had already said as much. Lethira's head tilted slightly.

“What did she actually say when you showed it to her?”

“Would you like to read the entire encounter between myself and Isha? It will answer your question, and maybe help you understand what I see.”

Lethira's amusement disappeared. Not because she disliked the offer. Because she understood it too quickly.

“The entire encounter.”

“Yes.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Including what she thought?”

Kelda looked sharply at Ian. The platform suddenly felt much less lighthearted. Lethira lowered the half-finished bowl.

“No.”

The answer was immediate. Ian had not expected that.

“I want to know what happened,” she continued. “I am extremely curious what Isha did when confronted by this shirt. But if what you *see* includes thoughts she never chose to speak, those are not yours to give me.”

Kelda's face settled into firm agreement. Lethira looked out through the trees for a moment.

“That may actually help me understand you more than reading them would. You sit somewhere outside us and receive things even family, lovers and friends are normally not entitled to receive. That must make the boundary very strange for you.”

There was less accusation in that than he might have expected.

“But strange is not absent.”

She took another bite of ice cream.

“If you can show me only what Isha did and said—what I would have known if I had been sitting in the carriage with you—then yes.”

Kelda added, “And nothing she later told Thomas in private unless she already gave you permission to share it.” Lethira nodded.

“That. I am willing to read a humiliatingly complete account of *you*. I have fewer ethical concerns there.”

“It is mostly the interaction between me and her, just that chapter. I can ask the machine to filter anything you would consider unethical. But me replying to her thought was part of the process. The chapter, from memory, doesn't have much outside of me and her.”

Ian paused.

“I'm not going to share the rest of it.”

His eyes dropped.

“I think... I think I want someone else to see it. See me. See her. Raw.”

Lethira did not answer immediately. The ice cream softened in her bowl while she looked at him. Kelda had gone very still beside the tree. Finally Lethira said, “I understand why.” That was not agreement.

“You have been carrying an encounter in which you were both participant and observer. Isha knows what happened to her. You know what happened to you. Thomas knows what she later chose to tell him.”

She looked down at the bowl, then back up.

“And you want someone who knows Isha to see whether your memory of it has become kinder to you than the thing itself was.”

Ian said nothing. Lethira's gaze sharpened.

“That is useful. It is also dangerous.”

She set the bowl carefully on the platform.

“If the thought you answered is necessary to understand what frightened her about you, then removing it would make the account false in an important way.”

Kelda frowned.

“But reading it is still reading something Isha never chose to tell Lethira.”

“Yes.”

Lethira looked toward her.

“Which is why I am not going to decide that my curiosity outranks her privacy.”

She thought for several seconds.

“Ask your machine for this instead: everything spoken and done between you and Isha, plus only those pieces of interior thought that *you directly revealed you had perceived during the encounter*.”

Kelda considered that.

“So nothing merely available to the narration.”

“Exactly.”

Lethira's eyes returned to Ian.

“If you answered an unspoken thought, I need to see the thought or your answer makes no sense. If Isha thought something privately and you never demonstrated knowledge of it, I do not.”

She picked up the bowl again.

“That is as raw as I am willing to make *her* for the sake of understanding *you*.”

Then, more quietly:

“And yes. I will read it. Not because I want ammunition against you. I want to see the Isha who was actually in that carriage, not the version built out of your guilt or her later explanation.”

She took one final spoonful of melting chocolate.

“And when I have read it, I will tell you what I think.”

Kelda gave Ian a dry look.

“You may regret asking.”

Lethira glanced at her.

“He probably will.”

Then she held out her hand.

“Show me.”

Ian held out an empty hand. A book appeared in it. Lethira's eyes dropped to the object. By now the appearance itself earned only a brief narrowing of her eyes rather than another argument with causality. The volume was plainly bound and made to be read rather than admired. Inside, Common filled the pages in a clean, regular hand. It was not the chapter exactly as Ian had received it. The machine had obeyed the boundary reasonably well.

The private beginning of Isha's run was compressed into what Ian could have known or observed when she reached the train: she had run farther than usual, was hot, tired and carrying ordinary running things. Once she entered the carriage, the account widened. Everything Ian had said remained. Everything he had done remained. The things visible to him remained: Isha's stillness after *Green Road*; her handling of the sealed water; the plastic bottle cracking beneath her grip; her tears over Tessa's arrow; the way she touched the corrected binding; her reactions to Thomas's wooden bird and her old ribbon; Sereth's bowl; the photographs; the changing shirt; the station where she finally chose to leave.

Isha's spoken words remained exactly hers. Most of what she had thought privately did not. The book did not tell Lethira every interpretation Isha had formed while studying Ian. It did not give her Thomas's private moments merely because Isha remembered them. It did not reproduce the thoughts Isha had never surrendered to the conversation. There was one conspicuous exception. *Thomas first.* The words appeared because Ian had answered them. Beside them remained his immediate response: *And yes, you can tell Thomas.* The account then made clear what Isha herself had made clear: she had not spoken. Lethira's face changed when she reached that page. She read on.

Kelda eventually sat on the platform a short distance away. She did not ask to read over Lethira's shoulder. The ice cream melted forgotten in its bowl. Lethira read Ian admitting that he sometimes steered events and sometimes did not. She read him tell Isha that he had chosen things that hurt them because Heroes and adventure carried pain. She read Isha tell him plainly that she did not yet know how angry she was. She reached Tessa's arrow. Stopped. Went back several paragraphs. Read the exchange again.

Her thumb remained against the edge of the page while the book described Isha recognising every error Tessa had once made in the shaft: corrected binding, short feather, nick near the base, ash along the wood. Lethira looked up at Ian. She said nothing. She continued. The bird. The ribbon. Sereth's meal. Isha crying on the train and thanking Ian anyway. The book preserved Ian's repeated offers to be hit. By the third one, Lethira glanced at Kelda. Kelda noticed.

“Yes.”

Lethira returned to the page. Later she reached the line about the crush. Her eyebrow rose. Then Isha's answer. *You may have the crush. I am not going to return it.* Lethira's mouth twitched. She kept reading. The humour faded at the thought-access exchange. She read Isha's anger. Not narrated anger hidden inside her head, but what Ian could actually see and what Isha chose to say. *I did not give it to you.* Lethira read that line twice. Then the request that followed: if Ian could restrict what reached him to what a reasonable observer could know, Isha wanted him to do it. She read Ian admit he could not confidently promise perfect restraint.

And Isha's answer: *That is disappointing. But it is better than promising because you want me to think well of you.* Lethira stopped again. This time she closed the book around one finger.

“She saw you very clearly.”

Ian said nothing. Lethira opened it again. She reached the parts about future influence. Marriage rather than demons. Arcs. Options. Children someday as a discussion Ian might bring toward them, but not a decision he would make. She read Isha tell him he could bring them to the table but could not choose what they said across it. Then the promise against further deaths, forced separation and Hero-scale catastrophe. Lethira's reading slowed there. Not because the words were difficult. Because she now knew something Isha had not known when she heard them. She turned several pages back. Found Ian's earlier admission again. *Did you choose the things that hurt us?* *Yes, I did.*

She read the rest carefully. Heroes and adventure. Pain. Triumph. Not letting Isha's story end. Wanting Thomas not to have to Hero everything. The lamp as an intervention into a problem. Then she returned to the promise near the end. Kelda watched her face. Lethira's jaw tightened. She read on. The garden photograph. Ian asking for permission to remain somehow part of Isha's life. And Isha giving it. Not Thomas's permission. Not Kanno's, Kelda's, Sereth's or anyone else's. Only hers. *Yes. You may remain part of my life from where you are.* Then the limits. No ownership. No entitlement from affection. No treating pain as justified because overcoming it made her interesting.

No repeatedly reaching into the fantasy world merely because Ian missed it. *Their world is not your cupboard.* At that, Lethira made a small sound through her nose. Kelda looked over.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

She kept reading. Then: *Do not make me yours.* Lethira became completely still. *I belong to myself.* A long time passed before she turned the page. Eventually she reached Isha's answer about the life she had been given. She read the names slowly. Her mother. Her people. Aelira. Lethira. Green Road. Kelda. Thomas. Then: *I am happy here.* Lethira's eyes remained on those four words. Kelda knew something had happened but did not ask. The book continued through Isha choosing to stay on the train, choosing finally to leave, thanking Ian for what she genuinely meant to thank him for, and telling him to keep his promise. It stopped with the train carrying Ian away.

No flat 202. No Thomas at the table. No later private discussion. No convenient access to what happened after Ian ceased being present. At the end was the short senderless goodbye Ian himself had sent later, marked separately as his own act rather than part of the carriage conversation. Lethira reached the last page. She did not close the book. For a while she looked through the trees beyond it. Then she went back to the beginning. Not all the way. She found several passages. Isha refusing to punch Ian. Isha telling him Tessa's arrow had not been a terrible idea.

Isha saying she would have wanted something real from before if she had been asked. Isha accepting that Ian might care from afar. Isha's boundaries around thought, pain and ownership. Isha saying the life had been good. Finally Lethira closed the book. She rested both hands on the cover.

“That was her.”

Her voice had changed. Kelda looked toward her. Lethira stared at the closed book.

“Human body. Earth train. Strange words. But that was Isha.”

A small smile appeared and vanished.

“She still answers a dangerous proposition by defining its jurisdiction.”

Kelda laughed once.

“Yes.”

Lethira did not. Her eyes were wet.

“She said my name.”

Kelda's expression softened immediately. Lethira looked away, irritated with herself.

“I know she knows I am alive. I know she remembers me. That is not new information.”

“No.”

“It is still different.”

Kelda nodded. Lethira wiped beneath one eye with one finger and looked back at Ian. For several seconds her expression held gratitude strongly enough that it might have become kindness. Then the rest of what she had read returned.

“You did listen to her.”

Ian remained silent.

“The thing you are doing now—the photographs, letting us decide what to show, asking them whether they want to receive it before anything arrives...”

Lethira touched the cover.

“That is an answer to what she asked of you.”

Her gaze sharpened.

“She told you our world was not your cupboard.”

A pause.

“So this time you came here and asked the people in it to choose what leaves.”

Kelda's eyes moved toward Ian. Lethira nodded once.

“That matters to me. More than the ice cream.”

Kelda looked sceptical.

“Somewhat more.”

The humour disappeared again.

“But Sereth was right.”

Ian already knew what came next. Lethira's fingers tightened around the book.

“You did not tell Isha the whole truth. You told her you chose things that hurt them. You admitted that you thought Heroes and adventure required pain. You admitted steering. You admitted the lamp. You got close.”

Her eyes held his.

“But you did not say: *I chose your death on the bridge because I wanted a good story and wanted Thomas pushed toward becoming the Hero.*”

Kelda's face hardened again. Lethira continued.

“And then Isha gave you permission to remain part of her life. She made that choice with a great deal of truth. Not all of it.”

She looked down at the book.

“That does not make her choice false. I will not take her answer away from her merely because I now know something she did not.”

Her gaze returned to Ian.

“But it does mean she deserves the opportunity to answer again.”

The words sat between them. Lethira's thumb moved slowly across the cover.

“There is something else.”

She looked less angry now than troubled.

“I expected to read you manipulating her. I expected to find some place where the person outside the story knew exactly which words would make Isha forgive him, and pushed until she reached them.”

Lethira shook her head.

“I didn't.”

She looked almost annoyed by the conclusion.

“You were clumsy. You frightened her. You repeatedly embarrassed yourself. You made gifts without understanding the cost. You answered a thought and looked horrified when you realised what you had done.”

Kelda's mouth twitched.

“You offered to be punched far too often.”

Lethira nodded.

“Far too often.”

Then:

“And she kept choosing. To stay on the train. To drink the water. To take the arrow. To refuse to hit you. To tell you no. To tell you yes.”

Lethira looked at Ian for a long time.

“I understand better why she allowed you a place.”

That did not sound like approval. It sounded like recognition.

“And I understand better why you wanted me to read this.”

She held the book out toward him. Then stopped before he took it.

“No.”

Lethira drew it back.

“I want to keep this until we send the page.”

Kelda raised an eyebrow.

“Why?”

“Because when I begin feeling sorry for him, I want the part where Isha says *I did not give it to you.*”

She opened the book near the marked place.

“And when I begin thinking he is only an intrusion, I want the part where she says *yes*.”

Kelda considered.

“That seems fair.”

Lethira closed it again. Then she looked at Ian.

“I am going to help you. I am going to help make the gift. I am going to help explain it to the others. And if Thomas and Isha accept, I will choose things I want them to see.”

A pause.

“But I am also going to help make sure the truth about you reaches Isha.”

Her expression was not punitive.

“If she still wants you in her life afterward, then I will stop wondering whether she would have answered differently.”

Lethira rested the book against her thigh.

“And if she tells you to go away...”

She held Ian's eyes.

“...you go.”

One question remained.

“When the time comes, will you let *her* decide again?”

“Yes.”

Ian's answer to Lethira came without qualification. Then something in him gave way.

“I didn't want her to leave the train. I wanted to beg her to stay. Annoyingly, the machine didn't get me a chance. I could've forced it. I could've made it regenerate reality. I could have hand-edited history and changed it.”

Lethira's face lost what remained of its amusement.

“I did nothing.”

Ian stopped.

“I...”

He sat down on the wooden platform. Not gracefully. His hands went to his head, fingers pressing into his scalp while the forest moved around him with complete indifference.

“I don't know what I am doing.”

Neither woman answered immediately. Ian drew a breath.

“May I have a few moments?”

Kelda's expression changed. Not softer exactly. More certain.

“Yes.”

Ian looked toward the book in Lethira's hands.

“Please go show that book to Aelira. And Kelda, you read it. Please. Then come back. And...”

He swallowed.

“Please help me?”

Kelda stared at him. Then she crossed the small distance between them. For one instant Ian might have expected touch. She did not give it. She crouched instead, bringing herself close enough that he did not have to look upward to hear her.

“Yes. We'll help.”

Her eyes remained on his lowered face.

“That does not mean we're going to tell you that everything you did was acceptable. It does not mean Sereth stops being angry. It does not mean Isha will forgive the thing you didn't tell her.”

A pause.

“It means you asked for help instead of deciding what everyone else needs from you.”

Kelda stood.

“That is better.”

Lethira held the book against her side.

“And if you alter history while we're gone because being alone becomes uncomfortable, I will find out.”

Ian looked up. Lethira's expression was entirely serious. Then one corner of her mouth moved.

“And I will make you wear the skirt version through the entire settlement.”

Kelda closed her eyes.

“That is not an appropriate enforcement mechanism.”

“It is effective.”

The humour lasted only long enough to make breathing easier. Lethira looked back at Ian.

“You get your few moments.”

She turned toward the path. Kelda followed, then stopped. She looked back once.

“Stay here.”

Not an order against escape. Something closer to a promise that there was a *here* to stay in until they returned. Then both women left. Ian did not follow them. He did not ask the machine to show him Kelda opening the book. He did not watch Aelira read Isha's anger, her tears over Tessa's arrow, her refusal to be made anyone's possession, or the permission she had given Ian with part of the truth missing. He had asked for a few moments. For once, those moments contained only what was physically around him. Wind moved through the high leaves.

The abandoned bowl of chocolate ice cream had become a brown-white puddle with no dignity left in it. Far below, the Wood Elf settlement continued without reference to him. A hammer struck somewhere. Someone called across a bridge. A bird landed on the rail beside the platform, looked at Ian, and decided he had nothing useful to offer. Ian remained on the floor. Time did whatever time did. Eventually footsteps returned. Three people this time. Kelda came first. The book was under her arm. Aelira followed. Lethira came last. None of them looked pleased. None looked as though they had come to send him away either. Kelda stopped several paces from Ian.

Her face was different. She had cried. Not recently enough that the tears remained, but recently enough that Ian could see the faint swelling around her eyes. She looked down at him.

“I read it.”

Ian waited. Kelda looked away toward the trees.

“I hated some of it. I hated you saying you chose pain because Heroes needed it. I hated you giving her the arrow before asking Tessa. I hated the thought thing. I hated how often you offered to let her hit you as though pain would make the conversation easier.”

Her gaze returned.

“And I hated that I liked parts of you in it.”

Ian said nothing. Kelda continued.

“You were frightened of her answer. You kept giving her room to leave.”

A pause.

“And when she did leave, you let her.”

Kelda's jaw tightened.

“You could have changed it.”

Ian had told them that himself.

“You didn't.”

She looked at the book.

“I understand why you told Lethira that.”

Aelira stepped forward. She did not sit.

“I read it too.”

Her tone was quieter than Kelda's.

“Isha's permission stands.”

Ian looked toward her. Aelira's expression sharpened immediately.

“Do not mistake what I mean. She made a real choice with the information she had. She knew you had influenced suffering. She knew you could reach beyond ordinary limits. She knew you could see more than she wanted you to see. She knew your feelings for her.”

Aelira paused.

“She did not know the sentence you told Sereth.”

The missing truth remained exactly where it had been.

“So she gets to choose again.”

Ian lowered his gaze.

“Yes.”

Lethira moved past Aelira and sat on the platform edge.

“We already established that. What we have not established is what you are supposed to do until then.”

Kelda made a small sound.

“Preferably nothing catastrophic.”

“That is implied.”

Aelira finally sat opposite Ian.

“You said you do not know what you are doing.”

Ian did not need to repeat it.

“Good.”

He looked at her. Aelira's face held no mockery.

“Certainty would worry me more.”

She rested her hands loosely together.

“You have power here that none of us can meaningfully contain. Perhaps you could change the room, the road, the weather, the next year. Perhaps you could override every refusal and then alter the record so we believed we had agreed.”

Kelda's face hardened at the idea. Aelira continued.

“And yet you are sitting on the floor asking three people whose lives you claim some part in shaping to help you behave better.”

A pause.

“That is ridiculous.”

Lethira nodded.

“Extremely.”

“It is also something we can work with.”

Ian's eyes lifted. Kelda put the book down between them.

“You need rules.”

Aelira looked toward her. Kelda shrugged.

“He likes systems.”

Despite everything, that almost produced a smile from Ian. Kelda saw it.

“Do not become excited. I am not making you a procedure manual.”

Lethira leaned back on both hands.

“A few rules may prevent him turning grief into another dessert.”

“The desserts were successful,” Kelda said.

“Not the point.”

Aelira ignored both.

“The first rule already exists. No overriding a person's refusal.”

Kelda added, “Including a refusal that disappoints you.” Lethira said, “Especially those.” Aelira continued.

“Second: you do not repair your guilt by giving people things.”

Kelda glanced at the melted ice cream.

“Occasional food remains acceptable.”

Aelira gave her a look.

“Within reason.”

Kelda accepted the amendment.

“Third,” Aelira said, “when you do not know whether an intervention is wanted, ask.”

Lethira tilted her head.

“If asking itself requires the intervention?”

Aelira considered.

“Then make the smallest intervention necessary to create the choice.”

Kelda nodded slowly.

“That describes knocking on my door better than stealing an arrow.”

Ian's face tightened. Kelda did not withdraw it.

“Fourth,” she said, taking over, “stop offering yourself as punishment. If someone hits you because they decide in the moment that they are going to hit you, that becomes its own problem. You do not invite it because you think suffering makes you morally balanced.”

Lethira's expression became unexpectedly serious.

“Fifth: do not turn every mistake into evidence that you are terrible.”

Ian looked toward her.

“You keep doing that.”

She gestured vaguely toward him.

“*Useless deity. Mediocre man. Worst of Thomas. Maybe I should leave.*”

Her mouth twisted.

“That is exhausting.”

Kelda nodded firmly.

“Very.”

Lethira continued.

“If you did something wrong, name the thing. Fix what can be fixed. Accept what cannot. Do not expand it until your entire existence becomes the crime.”

Aelira's gaze softened slightly.

“That one may be useful beyond Ian.”

Kelda looked suspiciously at her. Aelira did not elaborate. The forest shifted around them. Ian remained seated on the floor while three women from a world he claimed to have partly authored constructed boundaries for him out of the damage that claim had caused. Kelda looked down at the book again.

“There is another rule.”

She hesitated. This one seemed harder.

“You do not get to use our forgiveness as proof you were right.”

Ian went very still.

“If Sereth eventually forgives you, that doesn't make killing Isha correct. If I like you someday, that doesn't make the arrow acceptable.”

Lethira added quietly, “If Isha chooses you again, it does not retroactively give you permission for what you hid.” Aelira nodded.

“Forgiveness changes the relationship after harm. It does not rewrite the harm into consent.”

No one spoke for several seconds after that. Then Kelda pushed the book toward Ian.

“I am done with it.”

Lethira looked at her.

“You don't want to keep it?”

“No.”

Kelda's fingers remained on the cover for a moment longer.

“I don't need Ian and Isha's train conversation in my house. But I'm glad I read it.”

The book remained between them. Aelira looked toward the settlement below.

“We will still make the gift.”

Ian's attention snapped toward her.

“Yes,” Aelira said. “I still want to.”

Lethira nodded.

“So do I.”

Kelda's answer came last.

“Yes.”

Her mouth tightened.

“Perhaps more now.”

Ian frowned slightly. Kelda understood the question without making him ask it.

“Because the train made something very clear.”

She pointed at the book.

“Isha wanted pieces of home.”

A pause.

“She just wanted the people who still lived here to matter in how those pieces left.”

Kelda looked toward the phone in her pocket.

“That is what we're doing.”

For the first time since returning, Lethira smiled.

“And we are going to make it very difficult for you to ruin.”

Ian's eyes had filled again. Lethira noticed. She groaned.

“Oh, no.”

Kelda's expression became wary.

“Do not summon anything.”

Aelira, somehow, remained composed. Ian had asked them to come back and help. They had. Kelda crouched in front of him again. This time she did touch him. One broad hand settled briefly against his shoulder. Not absolution. Not affection he had earned. Contact.

“You do not need to know what you're doing for the whole road. You need to know what you are doing next.”

Kelda looked at him.

“One thing.”

Aelira and Lethira waited.

“What do you need from us *right now*?”

The book disappeared. Not closed. Not taken from the platform. Gone. Kelda looked at the empty place where it had been, then at Ian.

“I want to keep the gift, for now, to just the Elf side of things. I don't think I can emotionally handle Thomas's family yet.”

Ian's hands rested loosely between his knees.

“That is selfish, but having a breakdown will mean nothing happens. If Thomas and Isha want that part of it, I commit to seeing them too.”

He looked toward Kelda, then Aelira.

“I would like you, Kelda, and you, Aelira, to join me. You are better at—”

His hand moved vaguely through the air, indicating perhaps the forest, consent, diplomacy, consequences and being a functional person.

“—everything than I am.”

He paused.

“Apart from T-shirts and ice cream.”

The smile he attempted survived a little better this time. Kelda folded her arms.

“I am not an elf.”

Ian's face changed. Lethira laughed. It was exactly the wrong moment for it and therefore lasted longer than it should have. Kelda waited.

“Your proposed *Elf side of things* currently includes one half-dwarf who has done most of the work.”

“I think,” Aelira said, “he means this group.”

“I know what he means.”

“That has never prevented you correcting terminology.”

“No.”

The small exchange gave Ian enough room to continue.

“The alternative is you go talk to them without me and I see or observe nothing. But... I don't know if that's fair to them.”

Aelira answered before that uncertainty could expand.

“Then we do neither.”

Ian looked at her.

“We do not approach Thomas's family yet.”

The answer was simple enough that for a moment he seemed not to understand why it had required so much worry. Aelira continued.

“Your present limit is real. Their agency is also real. Neither requires us to manufacture a decision today.”

Kelda nodded.

“We do not tell ourselves they refused something they were never offered. We also do not arrive at their farm saying the strange man who shaped their son's life was too emotionally tired to meet them, but would they please make a cheerful recording anyway.”

Lethira winced.

“Yes. Do not do that.”

“I wasn't going to.”

“I know. I am appreciating the alternative by describing it.”

Aelira gave Kelda a brief look and returned to Ian.

“If Thomas and Isha accept the first gift and later say they want the same opportunity offered to Thomas's family, then that becomes a new decision. For you. For us. And for them.”

The structure seemed to settle something. No proxy consent. No hidden refusal. No obligation to complete the largest possible version merely because the mechanism allowed it. Ian drew breath.

“Otherwise, please help me be a better... whatever I am. Let's get this all ready for them.”

Kelda looked at Aelira. Aelira looked at Lethira. Lethira shrugged.

“He has already improved from stealing arrows to asking committees.”

Kelda's mouth twitched.

“That may be the least flattering description of moral development I have ever heard.”

“It is still development.”

Aelira's expression had become thoughtful rather than amused.

“We can help with the behaviour. I am not promising we can help you decide what you *are*.”

Ian looked toward her.

“You are Ian. For present purposes, that is sufficient.”

Kelda crouched again, though this time she sat properly on the platform rather than staying ready to rise.

“And stop trying to become the best parts of Thomas.”

Ian's brow tightened. Kelda continued.

“You will fail.”

Lethira looked at her.

“That sounded unnecessarily cruel.”

“It is not.”

Kelda's eyes stayed on Ian.

“You cannot become Thomas by copying what you admire in him. He became Thomas by making his own choices badly for years. You need to become a less dangerous Ian.”

Lethira nodded slowly.

“That is much better.”

Aelira added, “And considerably more achievable.” Ian's faint smile returned. Kelda pointed at him.

“Do not make that another standard you punish yourself for failing perfectly.”

The smile vanished.

“Good.”

Lethira leaned back against the tree.

“So. The smaller gift.”

She began counting what already existed.

“Sereth wants the river first, then herself. Ruvan wants the practice ground and may eventually permit his face to appear in something. I want this place.”

Her hand touched the platform beside her.

“Kelda has Porridge, the houses and workshop.”

Kelda corrected, “Porridge has Porridge.”

“Of course.”

Aelira's gaze moved over the settlement visible below.

“I have not chosen mine.”

Everyone looked at her. She appeared mildly offended by the attention.

“I have been occupied supervising the arrival of a man from outside reality wearing fictional elves.”

“That is fair,” Lethira said.

Aelira ignored her.

“The book can begin here. Not with Ian. Not with an explanation.”

Kelda nodded.

“The houses?”

“Perhaps.”

Sereth's river, Ruvan's range, Lethira's old refuge, the Green Road houses. Images whose significance belonged to Thomas and Isha without anyone writing instructions beneath them. Aelira looked toward Ian.

“The proof recording with you and me remains separate.”

Ian nodded.

“Short,” Ruvan had demanded.

“Painfully short,” Kelda reminded them.

“Yes.”

Aelira continued.

“The page goes through the ordinary passage when it opens. It tells them enough: you appeared here, you offered this, we chose whether to participate, and nothing will be sent to their devices unless they accept.”

She looked toward Kelda.

“No surprise photograph enclosed.”

“Agreed.”

“No sample moving image sent first.”

“Agreed.”

“The physical book is not finished before they answer.”

Kelda considered.

“The binding can be.”

“Yes.”

That distinction pleased both of them. A thing prepared for a possible gift, not a gift already imposing its existence upon recipients who had not accepted it. Lethira looked at Ian.

“And you do not need to fill the next seven days.”

He blinked. She gestured around them.

“This is the problem with people who discover a project after an emotional collapse. They immediately decide recovery means becoming productive.”

Kelda looked impressed.

“That was almost wise.”

“I am very old.”

“You hide it well.”

“Thank you.”

Aelira brought the conversation back before it escaped.

“We have time. We use what is useful. Sereth and Lethira can continue making whatever they choose without Ian present. Ruvan likewise. Kelda can work with the binder and decide what she wants from the houses.”

Kelda nodded.

“I want the book to feel like something from here, not something Ian thinks elves would make.”

Aelira's eyes moved briefly to the now-plain shirt.

“Strongly agreed.”

Lethira laughed. Aelira continued.

“I will choose my own contribution.”

Then she looked directly at Ian.

“And you will help when requested.”

Not lead. Not disappear. Help. Kelda's hand settled briefly against his shoulder again.

“We'll tell you when we need the impossible part. The rest of the time, try being a man.”

Lethira tilted her head.

“He may need instructions.”

Kelda considered.

“Eat. Sleep. Walk. Be embarrassed. Don't alter causality.”

“A demanding schedule.”

“Good.”

For the first time since Ian had sat down on the platform, Aelira smiled. Then she rose.

“One thing now. We should make the proof recording before the page is finished. Not because it will necessarily be sent, but because if Thomas and Isha ask for proof, I do not want the answer improvised after they are already waiting.”

She glanced down at her own practical forest clothing, then at Ian's plain black shirt.

“No special clothes.”

Kelda said, “That rule is for him.”

“Yes.”

Aelira looked back at Ian.

“No gifts in the recording. No explanations of reality. No apology. No confession. You say what you told me you would say: everyone here chooses whether to record; Thomas and Isha choose whether to receive.”

A faint pause.

“And you may include the shirt joke.”

Lethira looked delighted. Kelda looked betrayed. Aelira ignored both.

“I will say that I am Aelira Caelithen, that I met you willingly, that I understand the proposal, and that I chose to help offer it.”

She held out her hand toward Kelda.

“The device.”

Kelda gave it to her. Aelira looked at Ian.

“We can make that now. Unless you need longer.”

“This might be a bad idea, but...” Ian began.

Kelda closed her eyes. Lethira brightened immediately. Aelira lowered the phone.

“No.”

Ian looked at her.

“You have not even heard it.”

“I have now heard that sentence from you often enough to understand its function.”

Kelda nodded. “It means reality is about to become involved.”

“Or clothing,” Lethira added.

“Usually both,” Kelda said.

Aelira regarded Ian for another moment, then sighed and set the phone against her palm.

“Fine. Finish the sentence before you do anything.”

“I would like to film it where she died.”

Aelira did not move. The phone remained in her hand. Ian added quickly, “A request, not a requirement.” For a few seconds nobody answered. Lethira's earlier humour disappeared completely. Kelda's eyes closed. Not in anger. Something older had crossed her face. Aelira was the first to speak.

“The bridge.”

It was not really a question. Ian confirmed it. Aelira looked away from him. Through the trees below the platform, the settlement continued in pieces: roofs, bridges, people moving between them. Somewhere within it Sereth was deciding what else she wanted her daughter to see. Somewhere farther down, Ruvan's practice ground remained exactly as it had been after they left it.

“The place she first died,” Aelira said.

*First* landed badly. Lethira turned away. Kelda's jaw tightened. Aelira noticed the effect of her own wording and did not repair it. There was no better wording available. For a while she stared down through the trees. Then she asked, “Why?” Not accusingly. She genuinely did not know. Kelda looked at Ian before he could answer and then back at Aelira.

“I think I know.”

Aelira's eyes shifted toward her. Kelda rubbed one hand across her mouth.

“The proof is meant to tell Thomas and Isha that this is real. That Ian is here. That we met him and chose to help.”

“Yes.”

“And the thing he did not tell Isha properly is tied to that place.”

Aelira's expression hardened. Kelda continued.

“If he stands there and says the choice is ours now...”

She stopped. The idea had become more difficult once spoken aloud. Lethira turned back toward them.

“That is either very good or appalling.”

Kelda nodded.

“Yes.”

Aelira looked at Ian again. The weight of royal judgement had gone from her posture. What remained was the woman who had known Isha before Thomas, who had helped contain the secret after a spell nobody had precedent for returned a dead woman to life, and who had later watched Green Road walk away carrying a wound no one knew how to classify.

“You understand that Thomas may recognise it immediately.”

Ian nodded.

“Isha certainly will.”

Another nod. Aelira's fingers tightened slightly around the phone.

“So before either of us says anything, they may already know exactly where you chose to stand.”

Kelda said quietly, “That may be the point.” Lethira sat down on the edge of the platform.

“I hate it.”

Everyone looked at her. She frowned.

“I also think I would remember that recording for the rest of my life. Which is not automatically an argument in its favour.”

“No,” Aelira said.

Silence returned. Kelda eventually sat beside Lethira.

“I was there after.”

Her voice had become rough. Not at the bridge itself when Isha died. But close enough in the years after to have watched what that death had done to both of them, close enough that Thomas's ability to cross death later became one of the dangerous truths Green Road carried. She looked at Ian.

“If we go there, you don't make it look like it did.”

Ian's expression shifted. Kelda's voice hardened.

“No blood. No broken body. No gold-white light because you think symbolism would help. No version of Thomas kneeling on the stone.”

Aelira nodded immediately.

“The place as it is now.”

“Yes.”

Lethira added, “Whatever has weathered, weathered. Whatever was repaired, repaired. If the bridge is gone, then it is gone.” Kelda looked toward her.

“Exactly.”

That changed something for Aelira. She looked down at the phone again.

“The place now. Not the scene.”

A small breath left her.

“That I might agree to.”

Kelda's gaze shifted to Ian.

“So might I.”

Lethira's expression remained troubled.

“I am not part of the proof recording.”

Aelira glanced toward her.

“I know.”

“But I would go.”

Kelda nodded.

“So would I.”

Aelira was silent for several more seconds. Then she looked at Ian.

“If we do this, we go to the old pilgrim bridge as it exists now. You do not restore anything for effect. You do not make the weather meaningful. You do not arrange the light.”

A pause.

“You and I stand there as two people who are there now.”

Her eyes held his.

“And before I agree, I need your reason in your own words. Why do you want Thomas and Isha to see *that place* behind us when we ask them whether they want this gift?”

“I don't want them to think I am hiding from what I did, I want them to, in some way, understand I am trying to fully acknowledge it, be truthful.”

Aelira listened without interrupting.

“We can make my... truth... a distinct question for them to ask, so it's not tied to the joy I hope the rest will bring.”

That made Kelda look up. Ian continued.

“I will say what I should say, in the form you wish, wherever you wish. I just ask you're there to provide provenance, Princess Aelira.”

Aelira's expression tightened slightly at the word. Not objection. Consideration.

“We can go to the bridge in an instant. We do not need to travel.”

For a while the only sound on the platform was wind through leaves. Then Aelira looked toward Kelda.

“He is right about separating them.”

Kelda nodded slowly.

“The gift shouldn't arrive carrying a confession inside it like a blade under cloth.”

Lethira's mouth tightened at the image, but she agreed.

“If Thomas and Isha ask what Ian withheld, they receive that answer because they chose to ask for it. If they only want to know whether the images are genuinely ours, they should not have to accept his guilt at the same time.”

Aelira looked back at Ian.

“And the bridge?”

She thought for several more seconds.

“I understand your reason now. You are not asking to stand there because suffering makes the recording more dramatic.”

A beat.

“You want the place itself to say that you know what happened there and are not presenting yourself to them from somewhere clean.”

Ian had already given his reason. She did not require him to confirm her interpretation. Kelda's eyes had gone distant.

“The bridge doesn't belong to Ian's confession.”

Aelira glanced toward her.

“No.”

“It belongs to Isha too.”

“And Thomas.”

Kelda nodded.

“That bothers me.”

Lethira folded one leg beneath herself.

“It should.”

She looked toward Ian.

“But if Aelira stands there willingly, says where she is, says she met him and that everyone chooses for themselves...”

Her gaze shifted to Aelira.

“Then the place is not only his.”

Aelira absorbed that. Something settled.

“Yes.”

Kelda looked sharply at her. Aelira continued before objection could form.

“I will do it. I will stand with Ian at the bridge. But I am not there to certify his cosmology. I am not telling Thomas and Isha that he is an author, architect, deity, or anything else he has called himself badly.”

Kelda murmured, “Good.”

“I certify what I can actually know.”

Aelira counted it without theatrics.

“I met the man Thomas and Isha named Ian. He appeared here by a means I cannot explain. I saw his recording device. I used it. I spoke privately with Kelda, Sereth, Ruvan and Lethira without his observation after he offered that boundary. We each chose whether to participate.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“That is provenance.”

Ian had asked for exactly that. Aelira looked toward the forest beyond the platform.

“As for your truth, I will not tell you what apology to make.”

Kelda nodded.

“If you need us to write it for you, it isn't yours.”

Aelira continued.

“But I may ask you to state one thing plainly if they request the full recording.”

Ian waited.

“You chose Isha's death on that bridge. You wanted a good story. You wanted Thomas pushed toward becoming the Hero.”

No machinery to hide inside.

“No qualification about what the reality-engine might otherwise have done until after you have said that.”

Kelda's jaw tightened, but she agreed.

“Then explain the uncertainty if they want it.”

Lethira added, “And do not tell them that you would do it again unless they actually ask you that question.” Aelira glanced toward her. Lethira shrugged.

“Sereth asked. They may not.”

That was accepted. Then Kelda rose.

“I want to go.”

Aelira looked at her.

“Not in the image.”

“No.”

Kelda's voice was firm.

“But I want to see the bridge now.”

Lethira stood as well.

“So do I.”

Aelira hesitated.

“You were not there.”

“No,” Lethira said. “That is precisely why.”

Her face had become serious.

“I have heard what happened there for years. I want the place rather than the story of the place.”

Kelda looked toward Ian.

“And if we're doing this by one of your impossible shortcuts, we all arrive outside it. Not on the bridge itself.”

Aelira nodded immediately. Kelda fixed the remaining limits aloud: the structure stayed as it was, with no recreated weather and no sounds from that day. Aelira agreed to each.

Lethira added, “No helpful ghost of Isha telling us this was all worthwhile.” Kelda stared at her.

“I know.”

“I am making the list complete.”

Aelira's attention returned to Ian.

“One more boundary. We do not record immediately. I want to see the place first. So does Kelda. So does Lethira.”

The bridge would not begin as content. They would arrive. Stand there. Look. Decide afterward whether the recording still felt right. That seemed to satisfy all three women. Aelira stepped closer to Ian.

“Then take us near the bridge. As it is now. And do nothing else.”

“Then, we are there, near the bridge as it is now.”

And they were. There was no sensation of movement. The high platform beneath the Wood Elf trees ceased to exist beneath their feet. Wind changed. Light changed. The broad layered noise of the settlement vanished into running water and a thinner woodland silence. Ian had placed them off the road, perhaps fifteen paces from the bridge, on firm ground above the stream. Nothing else had changed for their benefit.

The old pilgrim road approached through trees that had grown thicker around its neglect. Moss softened stones at the edges. Leaf litter filled places where travellers would once have kept the surface clearer. The former offering niches remained beside the route, weathered and empty, their purpose long since reduced to old stone and memory. The bridge crossed the stream ahead. It was smaller than the importance attached to it. That was Ian's first impression. No great span over a ravine. No monumental ruin worthy of the event that had happened there. Old stone carried the road across fast, shallow water beneath trees. Time had worked on it. So had people.

Some damaged stones had plainly been reset rather than replaced. A section along one edge carried newer mortar whose colour had already begun approaching the older work. One broken piece near the downstream side had never been restored to symmetry; the repair had made the crossing sound, not made history invisible. The old passage mark was gone as a functioning thing. Its remains were harder to identify unless someone already knew where to look: shallow scars in stone, interrupted lines, one section where weathering behaved differently because the surface had once been damaged more deeply. The stream still ran through the same place. Lethira stopped breathing. Not dramatically.

Her body simply recognised the bridge before anything else about her did. Aelira turned toward her. Lethira did not look back.

“There.”

Her voice was almost inaudible. She pointed. Not toward the centre of the bridge. Toward one section of cracked stone close to the waterline. Aelira's gaze followed. Kelda stood completely still beside Ian. She had never seen this place. That fact became visible in the way she looked at it—not remembering, not comparing, but trying to reconcile stone and water with years of knowing what had happened upon them. Lethira walked first. No one stopped her. She crossed the distance to the road slowly, boots finding the old stones without hesitation until she reached the bridge approach. Then she stopped again.

“The water was higher.”

Aelira remained several paces behind.

“That day?”

“Yes. Not much. Enough that Isha was kneeling in it afterward.”

The words caught. She looked downstream instead. Kelda lowered her head. It had been information to her. Here it acquired distance. The bank where someone could lie. The gap between stream and road. How far a runner would have had to go for Sereth. How little space there had been for Thomas to contain the fact that Isha was dead. Kelda walked past Ian. She did not look at him. At the near side of the bridge she crouched and placed one hand against the stone. Nothing happened. Of course nothing happened. No System answered. No dark line appeared. No memory belonged to the rock strongly enough to become visible merely because she touched it.

Kelda left her hand there anyway. Aelira approached more slowly. Her attention moved first to the structure itself: repaired stone, old route, stream, scars where the corrupted working had once occupied the crossing. Then to Lethira.

“You stood here?”

Lethira looked toward the far bank.

“Not when she died. When I reached them, Thomas was already down.”

She indicated a place above the waterline.

“Ruvan and I moved him there after.”

Aelira's face tightened.

“And Isha?”

“With him.”

Lethira swallowed.

“She would not leave him.”

Kelda's hand remained on the bridge.

“That sounds like her.”

“Yes.”

Lethira looked at the repaired stones again.

“I had remembered it larger.”

No one laughed. Aelira understood.

“So had I.”

“You weren't here.”

“No.”

Lethira turned toward her. Aelira's expression remained on the bridge.

“I have heard about it for years.”

The answer was enough. They stood there for some time. Ian had promised not to arrange the weather, and reality apparently took him seriously. The day was neither beautiful nor hostile. Thin cloud moved high above the trees. Occasional light reached the stream without turning it silver. The air smelled of damp leaf litter and stone. A small bird landed on one of the old offering niches. Kelda noticed it first. It hopped once, inspected the empty recess and left. Nothing commemorated Isha. No plaque. No flowers. No shrine to resurrection. The road had continued being a road badly enough to weather, repair and gather leaves. Kelda rose. She walked onto the bridge.

Her boots crossed the line where the old passage working had broken. Nothing answered. Halfway across she stopped and looked down at the stream. Then she turned toward Ian for the first time since arriving. Her face was wet. She seemed surprised by that. Kelda wiped one cheek angrily and looked toward Lethira instead.

“You saw her dead.”

Lethira nodded.

“I did.”

“And then alive.”

“Yes.”

Kelda looked down again.

“I only ever knew the second part as one of Thomas's impossible secrets.”

Lethira came onto the bridge and stopped beside her.

“It did not feel like a miracle.”

Kelda looked at her. Lethira's eyes remained on the water.

“It felt like somebody had broken the order of things and we were all too frightened to object.”

That silenced Kelda. Aelira joined them last. She did not stand at the centre. She chose the near side, where the three of them could see one another without making a line across the bridge. For several moments Aelira said nothing. Then she looked toward Ian.

“This changes the recording.”

Kelda's expression sharpened slightly. Aelira continued.

“Not the purpose. But I will not stand here and pretend the place is merely background.”

Lethira nodded once. Aelira's gaze travelled along the bridge.

“If Thomas and Isha ask for the proof recording, I will tell them where we are.”

Kelda looked toward Ian.

“And why.”

Aelira considered.

“Yes.”

Her face remained composed, but her voice had softened.

“I will say that Ian asked to make the proof here because he did not want his request to hide from the harm he chose. I will also say that the decision to stand here was mine.”

That mattered. Aelira glanced toward Lethira and Kelda.

“And that Kelda and Lethira came because they wished to see the place themselves.”

Lethira breathed out slowly.

“I don't need to be in the image.”

“No.”

“But I want that known.”

“It will be.”

Kelda walked to the far end of the bridge and looked back at it from the bank. Aelira and Ian would fit easily in one frame without making the location theatrical. Stone beneath them. Trees and road behind. The stream visible if the camera stood slightly downstream. Kelda's practical eye returned despite everything.

“Not from low down.”

Aelira looked toward her.

“It will make the bridge look larger. I don't want that.”

Lethira gave a small nod.

“Eye height.”

“Yes.”

Aelira looked at the bridge once more. Then toward Ian. She had asked to see the place before deciding whether the recording still felt right. Now she had.

“I still agree.”

She took Ian's phone from where Kelda had been carrying it and held it in both hands for a moment.

“We can make the proof here. But first I want you to stand on the bridge and decide whether you still want to say what you proposed saying when this was only a place in your memory.”

“I am as ready as I'll ever be.”

Aelira studied him for a moment, then nodded.

“Good.”

Kelda chose the position. Not the centre of the bridge. Not the broken edge. She walked downstream until the phone could see the old crossing at ordinary eye height, with enough of the stream beneath it to establish place without making the bridge loom behind them. Lethira stood beside her but outside the frame. Aelira moved onto the bridge and stopped near Ian.

“Here.”

Ian joined her. There was space between them. Not diplomatic distance exactly, but enough that nobody watching later could mistake Aelira's presence for intimacy or Ian's for custody. Kelda raised the phone.

“Both visible.”

Aelira looked toward the lens.

“Bridge visible?”

“Yes.”

“Do not improve the light.”

Kelda's gaze flicked toward Ian.

“That was for him.”

Nothing changed. Cloud remained cloud. Water remained water. The old road looked exactly as neglected and repaired as it had a minute earlier. Kelda touched the control. A small mark appeared on the screen.

“Recording.”

Aelira did not begin immediately. She looked once at the stone beneath her feet. Then directly into the lens.

“My name is Aelira Caelithen, First Princess of the Wood Elves.”

Her voice was steady, formal only because clarity required it.

“I am standing at the old pilgrim bridge where Isha Vaeloren died and Thomas Albrecht restored her.”

Beside the phone, Lethira lowered her eyes. Aelira continued.

“Ian asked to make this recording here because he did not want his proposal to Thomas and Isha to hide from harm he acknowledges choosing.”

Her gaze remained on the lens.

“I agreed to stand here. Kelda Flintvein and Lethira came here by their own choice and are present outside the image.”

Kelda's hands remained very still around the phone.

“I have met Ian willingly. I have seen and used the Earth device making this recording. I have spoken privately with Kelda, Sereth, Ruvan and Lethira after Ian offered not to observe those conversations, and as far as I can judge he respected that boundary.”

Aelira paused.

“I cannot verify what Ian claims to be. I can verify what happened here after he arrived.”

That distinction sounded entirely hers.

“He offered us the means to make still and moving images for Thomas and Isha. Each person chooses whether to participate, what to record, what to keep and what to discard. No one has been ordered to contribute.”

Aelira turned her head slightly toward Ian. Not enough to leave the frame.

“Your part.”

Ian looked into the little dark lens.

“I have offered the option for each person to decide themselves. The choice to record is theirs, the choice to receive is yours. I hope you take it.”

His voice held. Then his eyes dropped briefly to the plain black shirt.

“This was not the most sensible attire to meet Princess Aelira Caelithen, First Princess of the Wood Elves.”

Aelira's mouth moved. Barely. Ian continued.

“But at least it wasn't the version with you on it, Isha.”

Kelda made a noise behind the phone. Lethira's hand went over her mouth. Aelira closed her eyes. Only for a moment. When she opened them again, her composure had acquired a visible crack.

“I was told there was a worse version.”

Ian said nothing further. Aelira looked back into the lens.

“If Thomas and Isha receive this recording, it will be because they asked for proof after receiving our written proposal.”

Her expression settled again.

“The gift itself is separate. And so is anything further Ian may need to tell them about his past choices. Neither will be hidden. Neither will be forced into the other.”

Aelira glanced once toward the repaired stone at her feet.

“You may decide whether you want any of it.”

Then she looked at Kelda.

“Stop.”

Kelda stopped the recording. For several seconds nobody moved. The stream filled the silence. Then Lethira breathed out.

“That was unpleasant.”

Aelira looked toward her.

“Bad?”

“No.”

Lethira's face tightened.

“Real.”

Kelda walked onto the bridge and handed the phone to Aelira.

“Watch it.”

They did. All four stood close enough to see the screen, though Ian stayed slightly apart. The bridge looked smaller on the device. That helped. Aelira appeared composed. Ian appeared tired. No dramatic light touched either of them. Behind their shoulders, repaired stone and moving water gave no indication that anything supernatural had ever happened there. When Aelira named the place, Kelda's mouth tightened. When Ian reached the shirt line, Lethira laughed again despite already knowing it was coming. Aelira paused the recording.

“Do I really make that expression?”

“Yes,” Kelda said.

“No,” Lethira said. “Usually it is worse.”

Aelira resumed playback. At the end she watched herself tell Thomas and Isha they could choose whether they wanted any of it. The screen went still. Nobody spoke immediately. Then Aelira looked toward Kelda.

“I keep it.”

Kelda nodded. Lethira said, “Yes.” Aelira turned toward Ian.

“The proof is done.”

She locked the phone.

“The other recording is not.”

Ian knew what she meant. Not the gift. Not this proof. The truth he had omitted on the train. Aelira looked at the bridge, then back at him.

“We do not have to make it here. But if you want to record it now, while you are standing in the place itself, I will stay beside you.”

Her voice softened slightly.

“Or we leave this bridge and do it later.”

She did not recommend either answer.

“That choice is yours.”

“I want to record it, please.”

Aelira nodded. No one tried to persuade him otherwise. Kelda took the phone again and walked back downstream to the same position she had used for the proof. Then she reconsidered, looked through the screen for several seconds and lowered it.

“No. Different recording.”

Aelira glanced toward her. Kelda moved closer to the bridge.

“This one should not look like the other one.”

She chose a position where Ian would remain clearly visible but the bridge sat more beside him than behind him. Repaired stone occupied one edge of the frame. The stream could still be heard. Aelira would stand nearby, but not shoulder to shoulder with him. Provenance, not endorsement. Lethira understood first. She stepped well away.

“I don't want to be visible.”

Kelda nodded. Aelira moved into position several paces from Ian. She looked toward the phone, then at him.

“I will introduce it. Then I will say nothing unless you ask me to clarify something factual.”

Her gaze remained steady.

“This is your truth. Not my interrogation.”

Kelda raised the device. Before starting, she looked at Ian over its top.

“You do not need to make this elegant. In fact, please don't.”

Lethira stood near the bridge approach with her arms folded, watching the water rather than Ian. Aelira looked down once at the old stone. Then back to the lens. Kelda began recording. The little mark appeared. Aelira waited through several seconds of nothing but stream noise before speaking.

“My name is Aelira Caelithen. This recording is separate from the proposed gift.”

She glanced briefly toward Ian.

“Ian told Kelda, Sereth, Ruvan, Lethira and me that there was something important he had not told Isha when they met on Earth.”

Aelira looked directly into the lens again.

“We believe Thomas and Isha should be able to choose whether they want to hear it.”

No defence of him. No condemnation either.

“If they ask to receive this recording, Ian has agreed to tell them himself.”

She paused.

“We are again at the old pilgrim bridge. Ian chose this place because part of what he withheld concerns what happened here. I agreed to remain while he speaks.”

Aelira turned toward Ian. Not ceremonially. Simply giving him the space he had asked for. Kelda's hands tightened slightly around the phone. Lethira looked up from the water. Aelira said only:

“Whenever you're ready.”

“Isha, Thomas, I hope that the proximity of this message to the gift those you love have sent does not tarnish that gift in any way.”

Kelda's hands remained steady around the phone.

“Isha, when we spoke on the train, I did not give you the full truth.”

Ian paused. He did not look at Aelira, Kelda or Lethira. His gaze dropped instead to the bridge. To the repaired stone. To the place where Isha's body had once lain beyond any help the people around her understood.

“I chose your death, which happened here, because—”

He swallowed.

“—I wanted a good story. One that pushed Thomas towards becoming the Hero.”

Lethira closed her eyes. Aelira did not move.

“I did not expect to go from passive... reader... to... to whatever this is. This is not an excuse. I have come here and asked your friends to help me. You have good friends. They have offered to help me. Not out of fear of a malevolent deity, but because they are great people. Like you. Like Thomas.”

Ian's breathing had become less even.

“I am ordinary—this is not self-deprecating, it is fact—with often unpredictable omnipotence.”

Kelda's mouth tightened at the phrase, but she did not interrupt.

“It would be foolish to apologise for back then, but I am sorry I didn't open up to you more on the train.”

Ian looked down at his feet. Then, with visible effort, back into the lens.

“I didn't want you to leave the train. I could have made you stay, but then you wouldn't be you. But saying the above would have made you leave sooner.”

Aelira's expression changed. Very slightly. Not forgiveness. Recognition.

“I am attached to you, to Thomas, to Kelda, Lethira, Aelira, to all of you in different ways. But mostly to you, Thomas, and you, Isha.”

His voice caught.

“It hurts that I hurt you.”

The tears came then. Ian did not turn away from the camera. The stream continued beneath the bridge. No music arrived to make the moment larger. No wind rose. No light found the clouds. Kelda kept recording.

“There is one other thing I want you to know... the name of your story and the first line.”

Ian breathed in.

“*Summoned to another world by accident, I tried to avoid becoming the Hero even though the system kept forcing it on me.*”

Kelda's grip changed. Only fractionally. The title seemed to strike her harder than the confession had. Not because she understood titles as Ian did. Because she understood Thomas. A system. A role. A man trying not to become what the role demanded. Ian continued.

“Chapter One: *Thomas had died once before.*”

Lethira's face crumpled. She turned away sharply. Aelira remained beside Ian, but whatever composure she had maintained across the recording became visibly harder work. The first sentence of the story had been a death. Years before any of them had understood why Thomas knew things no fourteen-year-old should know, before Green Road had a name, before Revive, Crownholt, the Broken Court or Earth, the account outside their world had apparently begun with the fact Thomas had already died. Kelda stared at Ian through the phone screen. Then past him, at the bridge. The title had promised the Hero. The first line had supplied the cost before Thomas ever met Isha.

Ian looked into the lens one last time.

“Please, let me stay connected, in some way. I will try to be a better person.”

His voice failed on the final words. Silence followed. Kelda did not stop recording immediately. Five seconds. Ten. Ian crying quietly on the bridge. Aelira standing beside him without touching him. Lethira turned toward the stream, one hand against her mouth. Repaired stone. Running water. Nothing else. Then Aelira looked toward Kelda. A small nod. Kelda stopped the recording. The red mark disappeared. Nobody moved. Ian wiped at his face once and failed to make much difference. Aelira looked down at the bridge.

“The title.”

Her voice was quiet. Ian did not need to answer anything yet. She repeated only part of it.

“*I tried to avoid becoming the Hero.*”

Kelda stared at the phone in her hands.

“And the System kept forcing it.”

Her voice had roughened. For several seconds she looked genuinely angry again, but not solely at Ian.

“That is what the whole damned road was.”

Lethira turned back. Her eyes were wet.

“No.”

Kelda looked toward her. Lethira wiped her face.

“Not all of it. That is what the story called itself.”

The distinction mattered.

“Thomas also fell in love. Isha chose him. You joined them. They built houses. Ate terrible road food. Argued with kings. Made stupid jokes.”

Kelda gave her a look.

“Some of the road was very stupid.”

“Yes.”

Lethira's mouth trembled.

“That doesn't fit in the title.”

Aelira looked toward Ian's phone.

“No title could.”

For a while they simply stood there. Then Kelda unlocked the device.

“We watch it.”

Ian did not object. The four of them gathered around the small screen. The recording began. Aelira watched herself introduce the purpose and then Ian begin. The first time his gaze dropped toward the place Isha died, Kelda stopped the playback. She looked at him.

“You did not make the bridge larger.”

Ian said nothing. She resumed it. They watched the confession. The exact sentence. *I chose your death.* No machinery before it. No qualification. Kelda nodded once. Good. They continued. At *unpredictable omnipotence*, Aelira's brow tightened. At *I could have made you stay, but then you wouldn't be you*, Lethira looked toward Ian rather than the screen. She had read enough of the train encounter to understand exactly what that meant. Then came the title. On the recording, Kelda's own hands shifted slightly behind the camera. She noticed it now. The first line followed. *Thomas had died once before.* Aelira stopped the playback. Not Kelda. Aelira. She held the phone for several seconds.

“That stays.”

Her voice was firm. Kelda looked at her.

“The title too?”

“Yes.”

Lethira nodded slowly.

“Yes.”

Kelda's expression was troubled.

“It might hurt him.”

Aelira looked at her.

“It will.”

No attempt to avoid the fact.

“But Ian chose to tell them the frame through which he first encountered Thomas. If Thomas asks for Ian's full truth, that is part of it.”

Lethira added quietly, “And Thomas gets to decide what the title means to him.” Kelda stared at the frozen image of Ian on the phone. Then nodded. Aelira resumed the final seconds. *Please, let me stay connected, in some way. I will try to be a better person.* The recording ended. This time nobody replayed anything. Kelda locked the phone.

“It is done.”

Ian's shoulders shifted with a breath. Aelira turned toward him.

“I will not tell you whether they will forgive you. I don't know.”

Lethira said, “Neither do you. That is important.” She wiped the last dampness beneath one eye.

“You asked them to let you stay. Now you have to let the answer belong to them.”

Kelda put the phone away.

“And until they answer, you do not need to confess again. You have said it.”

Aelira nodded.

“The next work is the gift.”

She looked along the old road.

“Joy, ordinary life, faces, places. What the people here actually choose.”

Kelda's gaze followed hers. The bridge had done enough. Aelira stepped off it.

“We leave now.”

Lethira went with her. Kelda waited beside Ian for a moment longer. She looked down at the repaired stones. Then at him.

“You asked us to help you be better. This was one part.”

She gestured toward the road ahead.

“Come on. We have a book to make.”

“Thank you for being here with me for that. Let us return.”

And they had. The bridge vanished. No transition carried them between places. One moment there was old stone beneath their feet and running water below; the next there was the high wooden platform among the Wood Elf trees, the abandoned bowl of melted ice cream still sitting exactly where Lethira had left it. The change was almost offensively clean. Kelda looked down at the boards. Then back toward the place where the bridge no longer existed.

“I continue to hate that.”

“Good,” Aelira said.

Lethira crossed immediately to the platform edge and looked down into the settlement. For several breaths she simply watched people moving below. A woman carrying folded cloth. Two children running along a lower path until an older elf stopped them from doing something reckless near a root bridge. Someone opening shutters. Life after the bridge. The contrast did not need discussion. Kelda took Ian's phone from her pocket and checked the two recordings again, not playing either. The files were there. Proof first. Truth second. Separate. She locked the screen.

“That stays separate from everything else.”

Aelira nodded.

“The page offers the gift.”

“Then offers proof if they require it.”

“And separately tells them there is something Ian withheld on the train, which they may choose to receive.”

Lethira turned from the railing.

“No summary of the confession in the page.”

Kelda looked toward her.

“They need enough to choose.”

“Yes. *Ian has told us there was an important part of his responsibility he did not tell Isha fully. He has recorded it directly. We believe you should know it exists.*”

Aelira considered the wording.

“Something like that.”

“No bridge mentioned?” Kelda asked.

Lethira shook her head.

“If they ask for it, the recording tells them.”

Aelira agreed.

“The choice should not be emotionally forced by the request itself.”

Kelda breathed out.

“Good.”

For the first time since Ian had appeared at her door, the whole proposal seemed to possess a shape that did not require another metaphysical argument. A page. A choice. Proof if wanted. Truth if wanted. Then, only if accepted, the gift. Kelda looked around the platform.

“And now we need the actual thing.”

Lethira raised an eyebrow.

“You have a pony.”

“I have more than a pony.”

“You've become defensive very quickly.”

“I have a workshop.”

“A pony and a workshop.”

Kelda pointed at her.

“You have a platform.”

Lethira smiled.

“An *important* platform.”

Aelira left them to it. She walked to the edge and looked toward the central tree.

“I know what I want.”

Both women stopped. Kelda said, “Already?”

“Yes.”

Aelira's gaze remained on the settlement below.

“Not me speaking.”

Lethira joined her.

“What, then?”

Aelira pointed. Not toward the Princess's own elevated rooms. Toward the broad lower communal space they had passed the previous evening. Tables beneath the central tree. People moving through. Food, work, conversation, children, somebody probably arguing about onions again.

“That.”

Kelda came beside them.

“The communal ground.”

“Yes.”

Aelira folded her arms loosely.

“Thomas spent months here when he was young. Isha spent much longer. Most of what either of them remembers about this place cannot possibly be councils, ward lines and dangerous conversations.”

Her eyes followed a child carrying a bowl from one table to another.

“I want them to see an ordinary meal.”

Lethira smiled faintly.

“No speech?”

“No.”

“Do people know the device is there?”

Aelira thought.

“The people clearly visible do.”

Kelda nodded.

“Anyone passing in the background?”

“We choose an angle where that is manageable. If someone enters unexpectedly and objects afterward, we delete it and try again.”

The rules had become practical enough to stop sounding revolutionary. Lethira looked toward Ian.

“He doesn't need to do anything for that.”

“No,” Aelira said.

She seemed pleased.

“Kelda can record it.”

Kelda looked less pleased.

“Why me?”

“Because you have the device.”

“You are a princess.”

“That does not improve camera work.”

Lethira said, “It may worsen it.” Aelira ignored her. Kelda nevertheless drew out the phone. She looked down at it, then across the settlement. The thing no longer seemed quite as alien in her hand.

“We'll ask.”

Aelira nodded.

“And the binder?”

Kelda's expression shifted into familiar territory.

“That I understand.”

She put the phone away again.

“A simple bound book. Good paper. Strong enough for mounted prints. Nothing ceremonial. Nothing that looks like it belongs behind glass.”

Lethira said, “Sereth wants the lining.”

“I remember.”

“Aelira wants something distinctly Wood Elf without pretending there is one universal Wood Elf style.”

“I remember that too.”

Aelira's mouth moved. Kelda continued.

“I'll speak to whoever you trust to bind it. I want to see the materials before anything is cut.”

“That sounded inevitable,” Aelira said.

“It should.”

The plan had become a craft problem. Kelda visibly preferred it. Lethira retrieved the ruined remains of her ice cream and inspected them.

“This cannot be saved.”

Kelda stared at her.

“It melted.”

“Yes.”

“That is what ice does.”

Lethira looked toward Ian. There was intent in the glance. Kelda immediately lifted one finger.

“No.”

Lethira looked innocent.

“I said nothing.”

“You were about to request another one.”

“I was considering whether asking counts as corrupting the natural development of Wood Elf cuisine.”

Aelira closed her eyes.

“We are not beginning a chocolate economy.”

“Not today.”

“Lethira.”

“Fine.”

She put the bowl aside. Then she looked at Ian more seriously. The shift was immediate enough that Kelda noticed too.

“You asked for help. We have given you rules. We have given you work. We have also just stood beside you while you told two people you care about something that may make them reject you.”

Her gaze softened.

“You do not need another test today.”

Aelira nodded.

“Kelda and I can handle the binder and the page draft.”

“Sereth and I can continue recording,” Lethira said.

Kelda looked at her.

“You have promoted yourself into Sereth's assistant?”

“No. I am inviting myself to lunch.”

“That is more believable.”

Lethira continued.

“Ruvan will do whatever Ruvan does and inform us afterward as if it was obvious.”

Aelira said, “Also believable.” The three women looked toward Ian. Not as a deity. Not as a prisoner. Not even quite as a guest anymore. As the strange man who had brought the possibility and was now, by design, becoming less central to what happened with it. Kelda seemed to approve of that most.

“We'll call you when we need you. Not because you are being excluded.”

Aelira added, “Because you asked us to make this ours.” Lethira's expression became faintly mischievous again.

“And because if we leave you alone for several hours, perhaps you will finally discover whether the local emergency store contains anything you consider edible without rewriting it.”

Kelda glanced toward him.

“He is not allowed to improve the food.”

“I know.”

“Or summon chocolate.”

“I know.”

“Or make another shirt.”

Lethira hesitated. Kelda stared.

“I know.”

Aelira shook her head. Then she looked at Ian.

“You have done what we needed from you for now. If you can tolerate not being useful for a while, that would probably be good practice.”

“I can make the recording happen, appear on the phone, as you wish—not showing faces of anyone other than those that are aware of what's going on. That way, Kelda, you can eat with us. Or them.”

Ian looked toward the communal ground.

“I don't think I should be there?”

Kelda's first reaction was visible relief.

“Yes.”

Aelira looked at her. Kelda shrugged.

“What? He asked.”

Lethira considered the offer more carefully.

“So nobody has to hold the device.”

“No,” Aelira said, thinking through the implication. “More importantly, nobody has to behave around the person who brought it.”

Her gaze moved toward Ian.

“That is useful.”

She did not say *kind*. She had become careful about awarding moral descriptions to mechanisms.

“If the people at the meal agree to being recorded, and everyone else remains outside the image or unidentifiable, then the recording can belong to the meal rather than to you standing nearby watching it.”

Kelda nodded.

“And I get lunch.”

“That appears to be your principal concern.”

“It has become one.”

Lethira looked toward the lower clearing.

“I like it.”

Aelira's eyes narrowed slightly.

“With one condition.”

Kelda sighed. “Only one?”

“For this part.”

Aelira ignored her.

“We choose where the recording begins and ends. The mechanism does not decide that because a moment looks emotionally useful.”

That distinction caught Kelda's attention.

“Yes.”

Lethira nodded too.

“If someone spills a bowl, it may stay.”

“If someone cries, it does not automatically become important,” Aelira added.

“If someone says something clever, the machine does not decide it belongs in the gift.”

Kelda looked toward Ian.

“You said you don't want to edit or judge. Then don't.”

She gestured toward the communal ground.

“We choose a place. We choose the people who know. We choose the length. The thing records what happens inside those limits.”

Aelira nodded.

“That is acceptable to me.”

Lethira smiled faintly.

“And Ian is elsewhere.”

There was no punishment in the sentence. Ian had offered absence as part of the gift. Kelda seemed to understand that.

“You should not be there,” she said. “Not because I don't want you near us.”

She paused, dissatisfied with the wording.

“Well. Sometimes because of that.”

Lethira laughed. Kelda continued.

“But mostly because this is exactly the kind of thing you said you wanted to give them.”

She pointed toward the settlement.

“Us living when you aren't the subject.”

Aelira looked at Ian.

“That may be one of the better contributions you can make.”

A pause.

“Not being in it.”

The sentence was severe enough that Aelira briefly looked as though she regretted its shape. Ian did not require rescuing from it. Kelda did anyway.

“She means the recording.”

“I know what I mean.”

“I am helping.”

“You are not.”

Lethira stepped between the argument before it acquired momentum.

“So we arrange lunch.”

Aelira looked toward the communal space.

“Not the whole settlement. A small table. People who already know enough to consent without widening the Ian question.”

Kelda counted mentally.

“Sereth. Ruvan. Lethira. You. Me.”

Aelira nodded.

“Perhaps Sairen.”

Lethira raised an eyebrow.

“He will spend the entire meal analysing the recording device.”

“He is already analysing the cocoa seeds.”

Kelda looked delighted.

“Are they still contained?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Aelira's expression suggested the question had not been necessary.

“No one else for the first one.”

Sereth could decide later whether she wanted other people included in different scenes. The point was not to create a complete census of everyone Isha had ever known. Kelda looked toward Ian again.

“And the recording?”

Aelira answered for the group.

“Ten minutes.”

Lethira looked offended.

“That is barely lunch.”

“That is intentional.”

“Twenty.”

“Ten.”

Kelda said, “Fifteen.” Aelira looked at her. Kelda spread her hands.

“You invited a craftsperson into negotiation.”

Aelira considered.

“Fifteen.”

Lethira smiled.

“Excellent.”

Aelira pointed at her.

“No bargaining upward from the compromise.”

“I said nothing.”

“You were about to.”

Kelda looked toward Ian.

“Fifteen minutes. Fixed angle unless we decide otherwise beforehand. Everyone visible knows what the recording is. No one else appears recognisably.”

Aelira added, “Natural sound. No music. No improvement.” Lethira said, “Especially no improvement to lunch.” Kelda frowned.

“That depends who cooks.”

Aelira ignored that too.

“And when it ends, the recording appears on the device. We watch it. Anyone present may ask for it to be deleted.”

Kelda nodded.

“If one person says delete, it goes.”

No majority vote. No negotiation. Aelira looked satisfied.

“Good.”

The structure settled around them. Ian's role had become very small. Provide the impossible capacity. Then leave. Kelda looked at him for several seconds.

“Go back to the forester's rest. We'll come for you afterward.”

Lethira added, “Unless the lunch is terrible. Then we may flee the world entirely.” Aelira started down the path. Kelda followed, then stopped beside Ian. She hesitated. Finally she said, “This is helping.” Ian looked at her. Kelda gestured vaguely toward the settlement.

“You not being there.”

Her face tightened.

“That sounded awful.”

Lethira called from several paces away, “It did.” Kelda glared at her. Then she tried again.

“Giving us control over something you could have controlled yourself. That's helping.”

Then she went after the others. Ian was left alone on the platform. Below, Aelira, Kelda and Lethira disappeared into the ordinary movement of the settlement. The recording had not begun yet. They would decide when it did. And Ian would not see any of it until they chose to bring it back. The device recorded perfectly to their every wish. For Ian, waiting remained optional. He had asked for the time to belong to them. So it did.

The forester's rest did not become a night he experienced. No hours accumulated around him in which he grew bored, checked the door or wondered whether fifteen minutes of lunch had become twenty because Lethira had argued successfully after all. The next useful moment arrived. Morning light was already through the small window. Someone knocked. Ian opened the door. Kelda stood outside with the phone in one hand and a wrapped parcel beneath the other arm. She looked rested. More importantly, she looked pleased. Not delighted. Kelda did not generally advertise emotions at that volume. But pleased.

Aelira stood behind her carrying a flat bundle of papers and materials. Lethira leaned against a tree farther back, eating something from a folded leaf and looking entirely too satisfied with herself. Kelda held up the phone.

“Fifteen minutes. Fourteen minutes and fifty-eight seconds, actually. Aelira ended it early because Ruvan was beginning another argument.”

Aelira said, “He was not beginning an argument.”

“He said, ‘There is one thing about this I still dislike.’”

“That is sometimes merely a statement.”

Lethira called from the tree, “It was an argument.” Aelira ignored her. Kelda came inside and put the phone on the table.

“The machine behaved.”

That appeared to cost her something to admit.

“Exactly the angle we chose. No wandering toward whoever looked interesting. Nobody appeared who had not agreed. The sound was right.”

She sat.

“And it stopped when we told it to stop.”

Aelira entered behind her.

“The people present watched the full recording afterward.”

Ian did not reach for the phone. Aelira noticed.

“No one asked for deletion.”

Kelda's expression softened.

“Sereth asked to keep it.”

A pause.

“Not only send it. Keep it here.”

Ian had already offered physical copies of still images. Moving recordings were another matter. Kelda glanced toward the phone.

“She understands that she cannot play it without one of these devices. She still asked.”

Lethira finally entered and closed the door behind herself.

“So now you have accidentally created inheritance law for a black rectangle.”

Aelira looked toward her.

“No.”

“Not yet.”

Kelda rubbed her forehead.

“We are not solving that today.”

She unlocked the phone. The lunch recording sat among the growing collection. Ian still did not play it. Kelda looked at him.

“You may.”

That permission mattered. Ian looked down at the screen. The recording began. The camera had been placed at the end of a low table beneath the central tree. Not centred. Someone—probably Kelda—had chosen an angle slightly to one side so the image did not look like a formal gathering arranged for posterity. Aelira sat nearest one end. Sereth beside her. Ruvan opposite. Lethira. Kelda. Sairen, quieter than the others and plainly aware of the device without ever performing awareness of it. Food occupied the table between them. Nothing special. Bread. Greens. Small bowls. Something roasted. Cups. For the first several seconds nobody spoke. Then Lethira looked at Kelda.

“You are watching it.”

“I am eating.”

“You are watching whether it works.”

“I can do both.”

Ruvan said, “That explains neither activity being done well.” Kelda turned toward him. The argument began naturally. Not about Ian. Not about the gift. About whether Kelda had repositioned the device twice after everyone had already agreed to the angle. Sereth laughed before anyone finished establishing the facts. Aelira tried to eat. Sairen asked one question about whether the front edge of the black rectangle contained another lens and immediately received four separate instructions not to touch it. The conversation moved. Someone mentioned a repair near the eastern ward. Sereth asked Lethira whether she had returned a borrowed knife. Lethira claimed the premise was biased.

Ruvan ate with the calm of someone who had already decided everyone else was wasting energy. Kelda took more greens. Aelira noticed and pushed the dish closer without interrupting the conversation. At no point did anyone turn toward the camera and explain who they were. At no point did someone say *Isha, we miss you.* They simply existed where she used to know them. Halfway through, Sereth said something that made Lethira laugh with food still in her mouth. Aelira looked appalled. Kelda laughed at Aelira looking appalled. Even Ruvan smiled. The recording did not move toward any of them. It stayed where they had told it to stay.

Near the end, conversation faded briefly because everyone was eating. Birds filled the silence. Someone passed beyond the intended frame and remained only an indistinct movement behind a tree, exactly as required. Then Ruvan put down his cup.

“There is one thing about this I still dislike.”

Kelda immediately looked toward Aelira. Aelira reached for the phone. The recording ended. Fourteen minutes and fifty-eight seconds. Ian looked at the still final frame. Lethira had been right. Kelda looked almost smug.

“We kept it.”

Ian needed no explanation why. Aelira placed her bundle on the table next. Inside were samples. Paper. Thread. Thin prepared boards. A piece of pale worked wood. A darker green material that Ian could not immediately identify.

“The binder has agreed,” Aelira said. “She knows only that this is a private family object connected to Thomas and Isha. She does not know about Ian, Earth, or the images.”

Kelda picked up the pale wood.

“No elaborate carving.”

She looked at Ian as if this possibility might somehow be his fault.

“Sereth chose the inner lining.”

A muted green textile lay beneath the other materials.

“Ruvan chose the paper thickness.”

Lethira said, “After claiming he had no opinion.”

“He had seven opinions.”

“Eight.”

Aelira continued.

“The cover will be simple wood over board, with cloth at the spine. No title on the outside.”

Kelda looked toward Ian.

“Inside, the first page stays empty until Thomas and Isha answer.”

The structure had become theirs. Not Ian's imagined Elven book. A real object being made by people who had disagreed over paper and thread and whether Ruvan's eighth opinion was distinct from his fourth. Kelda reached beneath the table and lifted the wrapped parcel she had brought. She opened it. Inside were photographs. Physical prints Ian had not created. Not yet. Small placeholders made by the binder from blank paper, cut to several likely sizes. Some portrait. Some landscape. Several smaller rectangles that could sit together on one page. Kelda arranged them across the table.

“This is where we need you again.”

Aelira nodded.

“We know what some of the images are.”

Sereth's river. Sereth herself. Ruvan's practice ground. Lethira's platform. The houses. Workshop. Porridge. The meal. Aelira still had her own contribution to decide. Kelda tapped one blank rectangle.

“We need to know what physical forms you can make reliably. Whether a still image taken from a moving recording will look as good as a still image made deliberately. Whether we can choose the same image in two sizes without the machine deciding to improve it.”

Lethira sat opposite Ian.

“And Sereth wants one still image from the lunch.”

Kelda looked at her.

“She has narrowed it to four.”

“Three.”

“She changed her mind?”

“This morning.”

Aelira said, “That is allowed.” Kelda sighed.

“Yes.”

Then Aelira looked at Ian. There was one more development in her expression.

“We have also decided something about the page. We do not want to wait until the passage opens to discover whether our question is badly phrased.”

Aelira's fingertips rested on the folded sheets.

“We want you to read it. Not change it.”

Kelda nodded.

“Not improve it.”

Aelira's gaze remained on Ian.

“Read it as someone who knows how Thomas and Isha may understand Earth-side implications we do not.”

A pause.

“Then tell us only if something is unclear, misleading, or accidentally asks for more consent than we intend.”

She pushed the folded page across the table.

“Will you do that?”

“I will read it. Also, you may have whatever sized pictures you want, they will appear wherever you want them and move wherever you want them, but will always be true to the source. Just wish it and it will be so.”

Kelda stared at him.

“Move.”

“Yes.”

“The pictures.”

“Yes.”

She looked at the empty mounts.

“If I decide this one belongs here—”

A photograph of the river appeared precisely where her finger touched the page. Kelda withdrew her hand. The image remained. She pointed to the facing page. It moved there. Not slid. Not lifted. One instant it occupied the first page; the next it rested on the second in exactly the same orientation. Kelda looked at Aelira. Aelira looked at Ian. Ian had already lowered his attention to the letter.

“I shall read whilst you experiment with strangeness.”

“Good,” Kelda said. “I have work.”

The experiments began immediately. Lethira asked for the candid photograph of herself and Sereth laughing at the river to appear in three different sizes at once. Three copies appeared.

“That is excessive.”

She kept all three long enough to compare them. Kelda tested landscape and portrait formats, then asked one image to shrink slightly without changing its crop. It did. She enlarged Porridge until his face occupied almost an entire page, looked at the result for several seconds, and declared it unusable while failing to move it away. Aelira discovered that a still frame drawn from the lunch recording remained genuinely a still from that recording. No corrected posture. No improved expression. When she selected a moment where Ruvan had his mouth partly open and Kelda was reaching across the table, the resulting photograph faithfully preserved both indignities.

“Good,” she said.

Kelda looked over.

“That is a terrible photograph.”

“That is why it is useful evidence.”

Lethira leaned closer.

“I want a copy.”

“No.”

The photograph disappeared at Aelira's request. No residue remained on the page. The three women continued while Ian read. The letter was written in Common, compact enough for the known passage and deliberately free of Earth words none of them properly owned. In reader-facing English, it said:

> Thomas and Isha,
>
> We are safe. This page is strange, but no new danger has happened here.
>
> Ian came to Kelda's house.
>
> We mean the same Ian you described in your last page: the Earth man connected to Tessa's arrow and the other things that appeared with you. He came here in the body of an ordinary human man and spoke with Kelda. He later met Aelira, Sereth, Ruvan and Lethira. None of us understands fully how he came or what he is. We have kept the same distinction you asked us to keep: what he does is evidence; what he says about the thing outside our worlds is his explanation.
>
> He offered us a way to make a marriage gift for you.
>
> You have sent us still likenesses made by capturing light. Ian's Earth device can also preserve a short span instead of one still moment: people and places continue moving inside the preserved image, and their voices and other sounds can be heard. He says he can carry those preserved sights and sounds to the small Earth devices you use for distant writing without using your little passage.
>
> He offered the use of this ability to us rather than choosing the contents himself.
>
> Some of us want to use it.
>
> We have already made several still and moving images while learning what the device does. We choose whether an image is made, what it contains, whether it is kept, and whether Ian may see it. Ian has agreed that any person may refuse completely. We have tested that boundary ourselves. We have also spoken together without Ian observing after he offered us that privacy.
>
> We are preparing a bound book here which may hold still images if you choose to receive them. Nothing has been fixed into its final order. No one owes an image, a message or participation.
>
> **Do you want us to make this gift for you?**
>
> If you say no, we will stop.
>
> If you want reassurance before answering fully, Aelira and Ian have made a short moving record together. Aelira states what she has personally seen and what we have chosen. Ian does not explain his larger claims in it. You may ask him to send that record to your Earth device.
>
> There is one other matter, separate from the gift.
>
> Ian has told us that when he spoke with Isha on the Earth train, there was an important part of his responsibility for earlier events that he did not state fully. He has made a separate moving record in his own words. We believe Thomas and Isha should know that this record exists. We have not put its contents into this page because we do not want his confession tied inside a gift from us or forced upon you without your choice.
>
> **If you want that record, ask for it.**
>
> Whether you ask for it or not does not change our offer of the other gift.
>
> Tessa's arrow remains yours, Isha. No one here has changed their answer about it.
>
> We are safe. Erenai has not been told about Earth. The station has not been used for this.
>
> Kelda
>
> Aelira
>
> Sereth
>
> Ruvan
>
> Lethira

Ian reached the end. The page did several things he had expected and one he had not. It barely spoke about him. His appearance mattered. His mechanism mattered insofar as Thomas and Isha needed enough information to choose. His withheld truth was named because hiding its existence would repeat the problem. But the emotional centre of the page belonged entirely to the people sending it. *Some of us want to use it.* *Do you want us to make this gift for you?* Across the table, Kelda had progressed from moving photographs to arguing with the book.

“The river first.”

Aelira shook her head.

“The houses first.”

“Why?”

“Because the houses establish that Green Road continued.”

“The river establishes Isha's home.”

“It establishes one part of it.”

Lethira looked at both of them.

“Porridge first.”

Neither answered. Lethira smiled.

“You both know I am right.”

Kelda pointed toward Ian without looking at him.

“He is not allowed to vote.”

“I didn't ask him.”

Aelira moved the photograph of the three houses onto the left page. Kelda moved the river onto the right. Both remained there, physically impossible and compositionally unresolved. Sereth's portrait sat nearby but not yet on a page. Ruvan's empty practice ground remained landscape-shaped and deliberately lacking Ruvan. The candid river photograph of Sereth and Kelda had somehow acquired a place in the working pile despite neither woman initially proposing it for the gift. The lunch image had not yet been chosen at all. Nothing looked like a completed album. It looked like people deciding. Aelira finally glanced away from the photographs. Ian was still holding the letter. She waited until his eyes reached hers.

“You have read it.”

Kelda stopped moving Porridge around the page. Lethira sat back. Aelira touched the edge of the Common sheet.

“Is anything in it unclear, misleading, or asking Thomas and Isha for more than we intend?”

“It is as beautiful as an elven song, and as well engineered as a dwarven mine.”

Kelda stared at him. Aelira's eyebrows rose. Lethira looked delighted.

“That,” Kelda said, “was not the question.”

Ian's expression suggested he knew. Aelira took the page back from him carefully.

“It was, however, an unusually diplomatic failure to answer it.”

Lethira leaned across the table to inspect Ian as though something new had happened.

“He has been among elves for two days and has learned flattery.”

“He began with chocolate,” Kelda said. “This is actually deterioration.”

Aelira looked down at the Common text again. The compliment had affected her despite the refusal to acknowledge it. One finger smoothed the existing fold in the sheet before she placed it beside the unfinished book.

“And the dwarven mine?”

Kelda's eyes narrowed. Ian had already said enough to make the meaning obvious: not decorative stonework, but structure that did what it was meant to do and remained standing under load. She tried not to look pleased. Failed slightly.

“Fine.”

Lethira smiled.

“Kelda has accepted praise. We should record the date.”

“No.”

Aelira's mouth curved. Then she looked at Ian more seriously.

“I will take your answer to mean you found no accidental coercion or misleading implication.”

She paused long enough to allow him a simple correction if that interpretation was wrong. Nothing required one.

“Good.”

The page was folded and put aside. Kelda immediately returned to the photographs.

“Then the letter is no longer his problem.”

She moved Porridge away from the opening spread. Lethira protested.

“You are suppressing the Hero.”

“I am preserving narrative judgement.”

“You just said he doesn't get a vote.”

“He doesn't.”

Aelira watched the two images currently facing each other: the three houses and Sereth's river. Then she quietly moved both away. Kelda looked at her.

“No.”

Aelira selected a different photograph. The path approaching the Green Road houses. No person visible. Porridge only a small shape near the fence. The buildings emerging through ordinary autumn light rather than presented frontally. She placed it on the first page.

“This.”

Kelda studied it. The argument left her face. Lethira leaned closer.

“Oh.”

The photograph did not announce *home*. It simply approached it. Kelda touched the lower edge of the page.

“Yes.”

No title appeared beneath it. No explanation. Thomas and Isha would know the road. Aelira sat back.

“Then perhaps the river later.”

“Obviously,” Kelda said, as though she had supported this arrangement from the beginning.

Lethira looked at Ian.

“You understand that you are now forbidden from solving the book for us.”

Kelda nodded firmly.

“He can produce the prints.”

Aelira added, “He can answer technical questions.”

“And make ice cream,” Lethira said.

“No.”

“Occasionally.”

“No.”

Kelda considered.

“Perhaps after the page is sent.”

Aelira looked betrayed by the defection. The disagreement wandered away from Ian almost immediately. That, more than the praise, seemed to establish that his review was finished. The page belonged to them. So did the book. And, for the moment, Ian's most useful contribution was exactly what they had asked of him earlier: to remain nearby without taking hold of either. For Ian, the book took no time at all. He waited. The world went elsewhere. When it returned to him, someone was knocking on the forester's-rest door. Kelda entered carrying a book beneath one arm. Aelira followed her. Lethira came in last with Ian's phone, though by now the possessive had become questionable.

Nobody was arguing. That was Ian's first indication that something significant had happened. Kelda placed the book on the table.

“Finished.”

The word carried satisfaction. The object was not elaborate. Pale wooden boards formed the covers, thin enough not to become furniture and thick enough to survive being handled. The grain remained visible beneath a smooth protective finish. A muted forest-green cloth covered the spine, the colour darker and greyer than Isha's old ribbon. Sereth's chosen lining appeared inside the covers: woven green with irregular pale fibres that made every section slightly different. No title marked the front. No Green Road symbol. No heroic device. No names. Aelira opened it.

The paper was warm cream and heavier than ordinary correspondence stock. Thin protective leaves sat between the mounted photographs. Nothing was gilded. Nothing looked too precious to touch. The first image was the approach to the Green Road houses. Road, fence, roofs emerging ahead, Porridge small in the distance. No caption. The next spread moved closer. The three houses. Workshop. Paths worn differently now from when Thomas and Isha had lived there. Then Porridge. Kelda had eventually permitted two photographs. In the first he stood beside the fence looking unexpectedly respectable. In the second his nose occupied most of the image because he had attempted to investigate the device.

Beneath the second photograph, in Kelda's handwriting, was a single Common sentence: **This was his choice.** Lethira looked extremely pleased with that page. Kelda turned it before comment became necessary. Her workbench followed. One broad view of the workshop showed tools, timber, current work and the bench she had once asked Thomas and Isha about through a page that could carry only words. Another image showed the bench closer: scars, measurements, the shallow chisel mistake near one edge, a half-finished handle lying across it. No attempt had been made to clean anything first. Then the book left the island homes. Sereth's river occupied a full spread.

The first photograph held water, roots and morning light with no person visible. The second showed Sereth. Not the frame from her message. A still photograph made afterward, when she had already stopped trying to decide what expression a mother ought to send across worlds. She sat at the edge of the shelter with one hand around a cup, looking slightly past the camera because something downstream had caught her attention. Beneath it Sereth had written: **I am well.** Nothing more. The following page held the candid photograph of Sereth and Kelda together by the river. Sereth smiling at the wrong moment. Kelda looking at Sereth rather than at the lens.

Kelda tapped the edge of the page.

“I objected.”

Lethira said, “Briefly.”

“I considered objecting.”

“That is not the same.”

Kelda continued turning pages. Ruvan's practice ground appeared next. Empty line. Bow stand. Targets. Trees. Then another photograph Ian had not previously seen. Ruvan stood beside one target replacing a damaged face. His back was partly turned toward the camera. He was not shooting. The bow rested against a nearby stand.

“He permitted Sereth to make that one,” Aelira said.

Lethira added, “After claiming his face was unnecessary.”

“It remains mostly unnecessary,” Kelda said.

On the next page was the low root beside the line where Isha had once sat angry with him. No explanation beneath it. Thomas and Isha would either remember something or they would not. Then came Lethira's platform. The changed rail. The glimpse of settlement through leaves. A still image showed Lethira sitting at the edge, facing away toward the view rather than toward whoever held the device. On the facing page she had written: **The bow on your shirt was still bad.** Aelira shut her eyes.

“It survived.”

“Of course it survived.”

“It contributes nothing.”

“It contributes accuracy.”

Kelda turned the page. The communal meal followed. Not a posed group picture. A frame chosen from the fifteen-minute recording showed Sereth laughing, Lethira visibly halfway through saying something, Ruvan holding his cup, Sairen looking toward whoever had spoken, Kelda reaching for a dish and Aelira pushing it closer from the other side. Nobody looked at the camera. Nobody looked ready to be remembered. It was simply lunch. The following pages moved outward through the settlement. The lower paths. One of the old bridges between trees. The central tree seen from ground level rather than arranged majestically from afar. The lower guest house.

A place near the ward line where the forest opened enough to show sky. Aelira had chosen most of those. Ian noticed what was absent. No audience chamber. No throne. No formal portrait of the First Princess. Her contribution was the settlement behaving as a place. Only near the end did Aelira herself appear. She stood beneath the central tree speaking to an older Wood Elf whose face was outside the crop by deliberate consent. One hand was lifted slightly as she listened. Her clothes were practical. No one looking at the image without context would have known she was royalty.

“I chose that one after considerable harassment,” Aelira said.

Lethira looked offended.

“Advice.”

“Harassment.”

“Successful harassment.”

Kelda turned another page. The last photographs returned to the island. Late light now. Green Road's houses from farther down the road. Thomas and Isha's door. Closed. The photograph did not explain that it remained unlocked. Kelda knew they would know—or ask. Then the workshop again. And finally Kelda. She had evidently refused a formal portrait. The image showed her standing behind the workbench with both hands resting on its scarred surface. No hammer raised. No armour. No attempt at Green Road's former road clothes. Work shirt. Hair tied back badly enough that one section had already escaped. She looked directly at the camera. Not smiling. Not solemn. Kelda. Beneath the image she had written:

**Still here. Still working.** Ian's attention remained on those words. Kelda shifted slightly beside him.

“I wrote more.”

Lethira looked surprised.

“You did?”

“Then I removed it.”

Aelira said, “The shorter version was better.” Kelda nodded.

“I know.”

The book did not end there. Several pages remained empty. Ian looked at Aelira.

“For them,” she said.

No grand explanation followed. Thomas and Isha had photographs of Earth now. Wedding photographs. Otakamori. Friends. A community cat. Whatever came later. If they wanted this book to remain entirely fantasy-world, the pages could stay blank. If they did not, they had room. The back cover closed softly. Lethira put the phone beside it.

“The moving records are ready too.”

Not one enormous film. Separate pieces. Sereth's river. Sereth speaking. Ruvan's range. Lethira's refuge. The fifteen-minute lunch. Several short settlement scenes. The houses and workshop. Porridge attacking the camera. And others the people involved had made privately and approved afterward. Aelira's proof recording remained outside that collection. Ian's truth recording remained outside it again. Three distinct things. Gift. Proof. Confession. Kelda rested one hand on the wooden cover.

“The page is ready.”

Aelira nodded.

“We stopped rewriting it.”

Lethira added, “Under supervision.”

“The ordinary opening should be close now,” Kelda said. “Close enough that we prepare the page and then leave it alone.”

Her hand moved once across the cover.

“The book waits here until they answer.”

Aelira looked at Ian.

“If they accept, you may make this exact object appear for them.”

Exact. Not a perfected copy. The slight irregularity in the green cloth. One corner of an image Kelda had mounted perhaps half a millimetre lower than its partner. Sereth's handwriting. Lethira's unnecessary criticism of fictional archery. The blank pages. All of it.

“If they refuse,” Aelira continued, “it remains here.”

Kelda nodded.

“I'll keep it.”

That possibility no longer sounded like failure. Aelira looked at the book once more. Then at Ian.

“There is nothing left for you to improve.”

Lethira smiled.

“That may be difficult for him.”

Kelda ignored her. She looked at Ian across the finished book.

“We made what we wanted.”

A beat.

“Now we ask whether they want it too.”

Her fingers rested against the pale wooden cover.

“What do you think?”

“You are all wonderful, I wish I could really meet you.”

For a moment, no one answered. Kelda's hand remained on the cover of the book. Then she said, “You have met us.” Ian looked at her.

“Not properly,” he said.

Kelda considered that.

“No. Not properly.”

Aelira's expression softened.

“But properly enough to be inconvenient.”

Lethira smiled.

“That is how most significant meetings feel.”

Ian looked down at the finished book.

“I have one suggested picture, and a few things to say, before I go, and we wait for the transfer window and what happens.”

Kelda withdrew her hand from the cover and folded her arms.

“One picture. That sounds survivable.”

Aelira nodded once.

“Then suggest it.”

Lethira leaned one hip against the table, visibly curious.

“And say the other things after.”

Kelda looked at Ian more carefully.

“You do not need to leave dramatically, if that is where this is heading.”

Aelira added, “No speeches about vanishing into the machinery of reality.” Lethira said, “No final bowl of ice cream offered as a legacy.”

“That was directed at you,” Kelda said.

“I know.”

The room settled again around the book, the phone, the waiting page, and the fact that the next true step belonged to Thomas and Isha rather than to any of them. Aelira looked at Ian.

“Which picture?”

Ian did not answer immediately with words. Instead, a photograph appeared in his hand. Not a portrait size this time. Larger. He set it carefully on the table beside the finished book. All three women leaned in. The image showed Green Road from above. Not from a hill. Not from a watch platform. From a height and angle no one in this world could actually stand within.

The three houses sat clearly below, their relationship to one another suddenly obvious in a way ground-level memory never quite supplied. Paths, rooflines, fences, the workshop, the surrounding land—everything arranged into a coherent whole. Porridge stood near the middle of it all as though the composition had understood the true centre immediately. Off to one side, small but distinct, Kelda was working. Farther away, in the top-left reach of the image, Larchmeet itself was just visible. No one spoke for several seconds. Kelda reached the photograph first. Not touching the image itself, only the edge.

“That is impossible.”

There was no complaint in it. Only plain recognition. Aelira studied the layout of the land, the spacing between the houses, the road, the relationship between Green Road and the wider settlement.

“You can see how near and far things really are,” she said quietly.

Lethira smiled faintly.

“And Porridge has still arranged to be central.”

Kelda almost laughed.

“Of course he has.”

She kept looking. From ground level, Green Road had always been lived in piecemeal: this house, that path, the workshop, the road, the pony, whoever was currently carrying wood or arguing near a doorway. The aerial view changed none of it, but gathered it into one whole. Aelira looked from the photograph to the finished book.

“This would fit.”

Kelda nodded slowly.

“Yes.”

Lethira tilted her head.

“Near the beginning?”

“Or near the end,” Aelira said. “As a whole after the parts.”

Kelda thought about that properly. Ian had not interrupted. At length Kelda said, “No. After the approach, before the closer house pages.” Both Aelira and Lethira looked at her. Kelda kept her eyes on the image.

“The road first. Then this. They arrive. Then they understand where they have arrived.”

Aelira considered. Then nodded once.

“Yes.”

Lethira smiled.

“And Porridge gets an early entrance.”

Kelda ignored that, though not convincingly. She finally looked up at Ian.

“That was a good suggestion.”

Simple. Unexaggerated. Probably as strong a compliment as he was going to get from her on craft. Aelira's gaze remained on the photograph a little longer.

“It is recent?”

Ian had already implied as much. That seemed to matter. Not memory reconstructed. Not an idealised Green Road from years earlier. Real, recent, ordinary. Lethira looked toward the finished book.

“That makes the beginning stronger.”

A beat.

“Annoyingly.”

Kelda lifted the photograph and, with the careful confidence she had acquired over the last few days, placed it exactly where she wanted it in the book. It appeared mounted there at once. She turned the page back and forth once to check the flow. Road. Then the whole of Green Road from above. Then the nearer views. She nodded.

“Yes.”

The book closed again. Aelira folded her hands loosely before her and looked at Ian.

“You said you had a few things to say before you go.”

Kelda remained beside the table, one hand resting near the cover. Lethira leaned back against the wall and watched him with open curiosity. No one interrupted. They waited.

“Thank you, all of you, for what you've done for me. I appreciate it. A lot.”

Kelda gave a small nod.

“You're welcome.”

Aelira inclined her head more formally. Lethira smiled.

“Try not to make us regret it.”

“I will return, if Isha and Thomas wish it, and, with your help, go see Thomas's family.”

Kelda nodded.

“If they ask, we'll decide the road then.”

Ian touched the finished book.

“If you want, a copy of this book can remain here. You should have the memories too. We can show it to them as well, if you think.”

Aelira looked toward Kelda.

“Yes,” Kelda said. “One stays.”

Lethira added, “Not a perfect preserved relic. A book we can actually handle.”

“Agreed,” Aelira said.

Ian then indicated the black device.

“I also want you to keep the black device, under Royal protection.”

Aelira's eyebrows rose slightly.

“Protection, yes. Royal ownership, no.”

Kelda's mouth twitched. Aelira picked up the phone.

“It will remain secured, available to those already involved, and not become court property.”

Lethira smiled.

“Much better.”

A second book appeared beside the first. Identical. Same pale wooden covers. Same green cloth spine. Same tiny irregularities in mounting and binding. Every handwritten word, every photograph, every empty page preserved exactly as the original. Kelda stared at the pair. Then she picked one up, opened it halfway and checked several pages.

“Actually identical.”

Aelira looked at Ian.

“No improvements?”

None.

“Good.”

She placed one book beside the secured black device.

“This one remains here.”

Lethira ran her fingers lightly over the wooden cover.

“And one goes to them, if they say yes.”

Kelda closed the copy.

“Then that part is settled.”

“Irrespective of what Thomas and Isha wish for visiting their parents.”

Ian hesitated.

“May...”

The word failed once.

“May I visit you?”

Kelda looked at Aelira. Lethira did not.

“Yes,” she said.

Simple. Immediate. Kelda's answer took a little longer.

“If you knock.”

Aelira's expression softened.

“And if you remember that visiting is not the same as arriving because you need something.”

A pause.

“Yes, Ian. You may visit.”

Kelda nodded.

“Preferably without changing my door first.”

Lethira smiled.

“And bring chocolate.”

“Lethira Dawnleaf, providing you chocolate shall be my purpose for existing.”

Lethira put a hand to her chest.

“At last. A sensible divine mandate.”

Kelda groaned. Aelira looked at Ian.

“We have made very little progress.”

Ian continued, “I have accepted, of course, that Isha is not available, I will not pursue her romantically. I will say however, that Thomas and I do share a certain Elven eye.” Lethira's expression sharpened with immediate interest. Kelda closed her eyes. Aelira merely looked at Ian. Not encouragingly. Ian pressed on.

“And, Princess Aelira, according to my prose, you are still single, are you not?”

The shirt changed. Again. The plain black vanished beneath a new declaration of poor judgement: a stylised Aelira in fitted Wood Elf clothing that had somehow landed midway between practical dignity and suggestive nonsense, bow in hand, pale hair arranged more dramatically than reality had ever once required, with the inevitable inscription across his chest: **AELIRA IS THE BEST ELF** No one spoke for perhaps two seconds. Then Lethira folded over laughing. Kelda made a sound of pure despair. Aelira looked first at the shirt. Then at Ian. Then back at the shirt.

“You are impossible.”

Her voice was calm enough to be dangerous. Kelda pointed at him.

“No. Absolutely not. We are not doing courtship by catalogue.”

Lethira was still laughing too hard to help. Aelira stepped closer. She inspected the printed version of herself with the severity of someone reviewing a forged diplomatic seal.

“The bow is still wrong,” she said.

Lethira made a strangled noise. Aelira's gaze lifted to Ian's face.

“And yes, I am unmarried.”

A beat.

“That is not an invitation. It is a correction.”

Kelda nodded vigorously.

“Good.”

Aelira continued, perfectly composed.

“You have mistaken three things in quick succession. First: being unattached is not the same as being available. Second: finding elves attractive is not a personality. Third: a shirt is not a viable opening strategy.”

Lethira wiped at her eyes.

“That last one may actually require testing.”

“No,” said Kelda and Aelira together.

Aelira looked once more at the stylised version of herself on Ian's chest. Then, with the faintest shift at the corner of her mouth:

“Though I concede this version is less offensive than the first Isha one you showed people.”

Kelda stared at her.

“Princess.”

“I am being fair.”

Lethira straightened, still smiling helplessly.

“So that is not a refusal to the shirt, only to the man?”

Aelira gave her a look.

“It is a refusal to the proposition.”

Then back to Ian:

“You may visit. You may bring gifts. You may continue existing in a state of regrettable admiration.”

Her expression settled into something dry and unmistakably final.

“You may not attempt to recruit me into your collection of impossible emotional problems.”

Kelda looked deeply relieved. Lethira, unfortunately, looked delighted.

“And yet,” Lethira said, eyeing the shirt, “Thomas was right about one thing.”

No one liked where that was going. She grinned.

“We do all look very good in his nonsense.”

The Aelira shirt vanished. In its place was plain black cotton carrying a red-and-yellow circular emblem, a blocky creature with enormous jaws, a smaller flying shape, and two words none of the women could read. Ian looked down at himself.

“This is what I am really wearing. It is nerdy and I can't explain it. Right now, that is.”

Lethira studied the creature.

“That is reassuring.”

Ian looked at her.

“I have no idea what it means,” she clarified, “but none of us are on it.”

Kelda nodded firmly.

“Your best shirt so far.”

Aelira examined the unfamiliar lettering.

“And whatever warning it carries appears to be directed at someone else.”

She paused.

“I approve.”

“Now I think I should go. May I... leave some gifts?”

Aelira looked immediately cautious.

“You may **offer** them.”

Kelda nodded.

“We decide whether they stay.”

Lethira added, “Unless one is chocolate. Then I decide whether the others get any.” Aelira ignored her.

“No unknown living things. No objects taken from somebody else's keeping. Nothing that changes this place merely by existing.”

Kelda glanced at Ian.

“And nothing impossibly sentimental unless you warn us first.”

Aelira's expression softened slightly.

“But yes. You may offer us gifts.”

Lethira held out both hands.

“I am prepared.”

A full-sized splitting axe appeared beside Kelda. With it came a compact sharpening block. Kelda stopped breathing for half a beat. Then she picked up the axe. Whatever material formed the haft was immediately wrong to her hands: neither wood nor metal, seamless around an unfamiliar manufactured head connection. She tested the balance, shifted her grip, turned the blade sideways and inspected the geometry without once looking at Ian. Lethira watched her.

“He has succeeded.”

“Quiet.”

Kelda found enough open space to make one slow, controlled practice swing without striking anything. Stopped. Did it again. Her expression became deeply serious.

“Oh, that's irritating.”

Aelira looked at her. “Bad?”

“No.”

That was apparently the problem. Kelda examined the edge, then crouched over the sharpening block. She understood its intended relationship to the axe quickly enough, though the construction was as foreign as everything else Ian had brought. Several seconds passed. Then Kelda looked at Ian.

“This is mine?”

The answer was already implicit. Her hand closed more firmly around the haft.

“I'm keeping it.”

Lethira smiled.

“A more successful courtship gift than barley.”

Kelda pointed the axe at her.

“Do not make me test the balance more realistically.”

Lethira stepped back. Aelira regarded the tool, then Ian.

“One successful gift.”

Kelda corrected her without taking her eyes off the axe.

“Two. The photographs counted.”

A pause.

“And the barley.”

Lethira's smile widened.

“Three, then.”

Kelda scowled at both of them, but she was still holding the axe. A stack of books appeared in front of Lethira. Not one. A stack. Bright covers showed women in elaborate dresses, practical clothes, school-like uniforms, armour, city streets, flowers, handsome men, handsome women and expressions suggesting that interpersonal disaster was imminent. The writing across every cover had somehow become Common. Lethira stared. Then she picked up the top volume. Her eyes moved over the title. Then the cover. Then Ian.

“What is this?”

“Stories,” Kelda said, already distracted by her axe.

Lethira opened the book. She read the first page. Then the second. The format required perhaps half a minute to understand. After that, she became silent. Aelira leaned slightly closer.

“What kind of stories?”

Lethira turned another page.

“Apparently,” she said slowly, “the dangerous kind.”

She picked up a second volume with a much older-looking heroine and a cover whose composition made the romantic implications difficult to misunderstand. Her eyebrows rose.

“These are all about relationships?”

Not all, but enough. She sampled another. Then another. Her expression brightened with growing recognition.

“Oh.”

Kelda looked up.

“Oh what?”

Lethira held one volume against her chest.

“Humans have constructed an entire art form devoted to people making avoidable emotional decisions.”

Aelira looked at Ian.

“That explains some things.”

Lethira sat down beside the stack. She had clearly accepted ownership already.

“How many are there?”

Enough to constitute a problem. Her smile became dangerous.

“I am keeping all of them.”

Kelda glanced at the pile.

“You mocked Thomas for reading stories.”

“I mocked Thomas for many things. This is unrelated.”

Lethira opened the first volume again. Then she looked up at Ian, unexpectedly sincere.

“This is an excellent gift.”

A beat.

“Do not tell anyone I said that before I finish deciding which one is terrible.”

The third gift appeared in front of Aelira. She stared at it. The machine was compact enough to sit on a table, with a fitted bowl, lid, simple controls and no visible cable, firebox, crank or place where any sensible source of work entered it. Beside it lay an instruction book. In Common. Aelira opened the first page. Then the second. Kelda looked over from her axe.

“What is it?”

Aelira kept reading.

“A machine for making the frozen chocolate food.”

Lethira looked up from her manga. Every part of her attention transferred immediately. Ian said, “This needs to be kept in Royal protection to avoid tainting reality.” Aelira turned another page. The instructions listed cream, milk, sweeteners, flavourings, fruit and other ingredients. They described quantities, mixing, resting and cleaning. They did not mention ice. They did not mention electricity. They did not mention fuel. Aelira slowly closed the manual.

“Yes.”

Lethira stood.

“Princess—”

“No.”

“You haven't heard my request.”

“I have.”

Kelda inspected the machine from a safe distance.

“So this is a permanent impossible object.”

“Yes.”

Aelira rested one hand on its lid.

“Then it does not go into a kitchen.”

Lethira looked wounded.

“It goes somewhere secure,” Aelira continued, “and is used privately by people who understand that it must not become a technology, trade or object of study.”

Kelda nodded.

“Royal protection.”

Aelira gave Ian a dry look.

“For once, your phrasing was exactly correct.”

Lethira folded her arms.

“Can Royal protection include regular testing?”

Aelira considered.

“Yes.”

Lethira smiled. Kelda sighed. Aelira picked up the Common instruction book.

“I may already regret this gift.”

A pause.

“I am keeping it.”

Ian looked toward the door.

“Now, a goodbye.”

A door opened. Not into another part of the forester's rest. Not into Kelda's house. Into Ian's room. The three women recognised pieces of it before understanding the whole. Aelira saw the computer first—the dark screens, the little device perched above one of them, the desk from the photograph Ian had shown her. But the photograph had been selective. Clean in the way every framed view was clean, because everything outside its edges simply ceased to exist. The doorway was less charitable.

Cables descended from the desk in a black tangle and crossed the floor in several directions. Boxes sat open near the entrance. A yellow container held more objects. One pale chair faced the desk; another screen stood nearby. A small lamp cast warm light beneath the colder illumination of the room. Curtains hung high over a tall narrow window, slightly uneven, their fabric gathered and wrinkled rather than arranged for display. A large wooden wardrobe occupied most of the right side. Nothing matched. Kelda stared. Then she looked at Ian. Then back into the room.

“This is where you control reality.”

Ian had already identified it as his room. He did not need to answer. Kelda took one careful step toward the threshold without crossing it. Her eyes travelled over the cables. The boxes. The desk. The shelving. Then the cables again.

“You live like this?”

Lethira appeared over her shoulder.

“Oh.”

She sounded delighted. Aelira came last and stopped farther back. Unlike the others, she did not initially examine the objects. She looked through the open door at the space itself. Ian had shown her a view through his window. He had shown her the room in a photograph. He had described sitting there, reading words generated from their lives. Now the distance between those statements had become the width of a wooden threshold.

“That is the same room,” she said.

Kelda glanced at her.

“Yes.”

“No.” Aelira pointed through the doorway toward the desk. “The photograph he gave me. The place where he said the other version of him was.”

Lethira's humour faded. She looked at the desk. The screens were dark from this angle, giving nothing away. Yet this was apparently where Green Road had once been reduced to words. Where Thomas had died once before, then lived for hundreds of chapters. Where Isha's deaths, Kelda's road, Aelira's choices and Lethira's jokes had appeared on a screen to a man sitting in an ordinary chair. Lethira looked down at Ian's current shirt. Then into the room.

“You really are just a man.”

Kelda turned toward her.

“He has said that repeatedly.”

“Yes, but he also repeatedly produces soup from empty floors and folds roads through doors. His credibility has been uneven.”

Ian remained before the threshold. He did not enter. Aelira noticed that. The room beyond was available to him. Whatever part of Ian existed there already, this version could apparently step through and complete the geometry. Yet he waited. Kelda moved closer again. Not across. She had once objected to Ian changing her door because it was *her door*. The same reasoning seemed to apply instinctively in reverse. This was his room. A threshold did not become public merely because reality had made it accessible. Her gaze settled on the mess beneath the desk.

“I withdraw some of my criticism of Thomas's paperwork.”

Lethira followed her eyes.

“What are those?”

“Wires.”

“I know they are wires. Why are there so many?”

Kelda looked at Ian's computer equipment.

“I suspect bad planning.”

Lethira considered.

“That is reassuring.”

Aelira finally stepped nearer. She looked upward. The room was taller than the photograph had suggested. The hanging light occupied a height that felt unusual beside Wood Elf domestic architecture without being impressive enough to become grandeur. The curtains had been suspended from long rods in a solution Kelda clearly disliked on structural grounds. Aelira looked toward the half-obscured window. Beyond those curtains was the view Ian had given her. Trees. Houses. A hill. His world. Not *the* real world. His. For a few seconds nobody made a joke. Then Lethira said quietly, “You are going back there.” Ian's pause before entering had answered already. Kelda's attention returned to him.

She looked as though she might say something practical. Instead, she reached out. Not across the threshold. Toward Ian. Her hand closed around his forearm briefly. Solid. Warm. Present. Then she released him.

“Fine.”

Ian looked at her. Kelda frowned.

“I wanted to check.”

Lethira's expression softened. Aelira understood without asking what Kelda had checked. Whether this version of Ian still felt like a person before he stepped into the place where he claimed the person truly existed. He did. Aelira looked once more through the doorway.

“I think I understand your photograph better now.”

Her gaze moved across the clutter.

“You showed us the view. You did not show us the room.”

Lethira smiled.

“That was wise.”

Kelda nodded firmly.

“Very.”

The moment almost became ordinary again. Almost. Aelira looked back at Ian. The finished book remained behind them. The black device would stay under controlled protection. The page would wait for its ordinary passage window. Their images and voices existed now because they had chosen them. Ian had no work left to do here until Thomas and Isha answered. Aelira inclined her head. Not Princess to petitioner. Simply Aelira to Ian.

“Go home.”

Kelda's mouth tightened slightly. Lethira stood beside her, one hand resting against the stack of translated manga she had refused to leave anywhere unattended. Aelira continued.

“We know where your door is now.”

Kelda gave her a look.

“Metaphorically.”

“Yes.”

Lethira smiled at Ian.

“And next time, chocolate.”

Kelda sighed. The room beyond the threshold waited. Ian had not yet stepped through. Then Ian disappeared. Not through the doorway. One moment he stood before it, caught between the impossible room and the forest behind him. The next, there was nobody there. The doorway remained open for perhaps three seconds. Kelda stared into the empty room. Lethira did too. Aelira was the one who reached forward and closed the door. Wood met frame. The forester's rest returned to being a small building in a forest. Nobody spoke immediately. Kelda looked at the place Ian had occupied.

“Well.”

Lethira shifted the manga beneath one arm.

“That was strange.”

Kelda turned slowly toward her.

“That is what you have?”

“I am still processing.”

“You processed the ice cream very quickly.”

“That was simpler.”

Aelira rested one hand on the closed door.

“He really did go.”

Kelda's expression tightened.

“Yes.”

Lethira looked at her.

“You liked him.”

“No.”

“You did.”

“I became less interested in hitting him.”

“For you, that is practically adoption.”

Kelda gave her a flat look. Aelira's mouth moved despite herself. Then Kelda glanced toward the table where the duplicate book and the black device waited.

“He had better come back.”

The words escaped before she could improve them. Lethira smiled. Kelda pointed at her.

“Because Thomas and Isha may ask for something.”

“Of course.”

“And because somebody needs to explain the machine if it does something stupid.”

“Obviously.”

“And the axe may require replacement parts.”

Lethira's smile widened. Kelda stopped.

“Fine.”

Aelira looked at the closed door.

“I think he knows he may come back.”

Kelda folded her arms.

“He asked three times in different forms.”

“He was frightened.”

Lethira's humour faded.

“Yes.”

For a while the forest filled the room through its ordinary sounds. Then Lethira looked down at the books in her arms.

“I still cannot believe he thought a shirt was courtship.”

Aelira turned.

“He did not say it was courtship.”

“Kelda did.”

“Kelda was mocking him.”

“That does not make it inaccurate.”

Kelda sighed. Aelira shook her head and picked up the waiting Common page.

“We have a passage in a few days.”

That ended the subject more effectively than dignity would have. Kelda looked at the duplicate book. Lethira looked at the black device. Aelira looked at the letter they would send to two people beneath another sky. Then Kelda said, quietly:

“I hope they say yes.”

Aelira folded the page once.

“So do I.”

Lethira held the manga a little tighter beneath her arm.

“So do I.”