## Chapter 404 - The Same Door

Kelda had spent the morning correcting somebody else's retaining-wall measurements. This was preferable to metaphysics. The east-road maintenance crews had learned to send drawings before stone was ordered, which meant most mistakes now arrived on paper instead of beneath several tons of material. Kelda stood at the scarred workbench beneath the workshop window with a straightedge in one hand and charcoal in the other, marking a drainage fall that would have sent half a spring storm towards the wrong ditch.

Porridge made a noise outside. Not alarm. Interest. Kelda looked through the window. A man stood at the door of her house. She recognised him immediately this time. Ian had at least improved one thing since his first visit: he was outside. Kelda put down the charcoal, crossed the yard and opened the door. Thomas and Isha's neighbouring house remained closed and quiet behind her. The modern splitting axe Ian had given her rested in the workshop where she had chosen to keep it, beside tools whose histories were less irritating.

Ian stood on the threshold and waited.

"You are outside," Kelda said.

There was dry approval in it. She did not move aside.

"All right. Why are you here?"

"I’m here to try and sort the ... reunion? ... And to ask for your help to do it."

He handed her a folded letter. Kelda recognised Isha's Common before she had fully opened it. That changed the encounter. She read standing in the doorway at first. Then she stepped back, pointed Ian towards the same chair he had occupied during his first impossible visit, and sat opposite him with the page between her hands. The letter began lightly enough. Thomas and Isha had received everyone's separate answers. Mira's repeated yes had apparently remained so clear that Thomas and Isha had felt obliged to tease her through Kelda. Then the page turned stranger.

The Ian they saw was not the Ian who saw them. The projected body could walk, speak, hold a camera, touch a door and react with Ian's emotions and described actions. The man himself received text: dialogue, description, narrative, sometimes interior material nobody had spoken aloud. He did not directly see through the body's eyes, hear through its ears or feel what it touched. Occasionally the machine generated an approximation of an image, but that was not the actual view.

Kelda read the section twice. She had spent Ian's previous visit assuming the man in front of her had been looking back. Apparently he had been reading about looking back. The letter did not use the discovery to soften anything else. The arrow was still an unasked taking. Kanno's belongings were still an unasked taking. Privacy remained crooked in a new direction, not repaired. Thomas and Isha wanted everyone who had accepted the reunion to know the correction and choose again.

Then came the part explaining Ian himself.

> Ian is a man.
>
> The extraordinary power is not his body and it is not a natural ability. He asks a machine for outcomes and constraints. He does not always know how it will make those outcomes real.
>
> He wants connection. Other people's happiness affects him strongly because the words describing it may be the best part of this interaction that reaches him. Sometimes that has made him generous. Sometimes it has made him foolish.
>
> He has listened when people corrected him. He has returned things. He has asked more often. He has accepted no. We trust him more than we did. We do not trust every idea he has.
>
> Do not mistake the machine's power for his confidence.

Kelda's mouth moved faintly at that. The page went on to say that Ian was currently overwhelmed by the thought of the reunion, that Kelda was not being appointed organiser, persuader, manager or emotional minder, and that if she was willing, Thomas and Isha wanted her help approaching people without making their decisions harder. The final practical instruction was more familiar.

> And tell Ian when he is being an idiot. You are already qualified.

Kelda laughed once. Ian waited. She finished the letter.

> We love you.
>
> We want to see you.
>
> We are all right here.
>
> — Isha and Thomas

Kelda sat with the page for a while before folding it along its existing crease. Her answer had not changed. She was still willing to meet them. She was willing to help Ian ask other people again. That did not make her responsible for arranging the reunion, and she had no intention of becoming responsible merely because Thomas and Isha had anticipated the problem in writing. She looked across the table.

"Before we go any farther—have you read this?"

"yes. More than once. I found the last time here and some other times overwhelming, I am a normal man, I'm not used to carrying such a load. It would have been easier to remain unknown, but that felt wrong. I want to make this the best experience for all involved. I don't want to be there, I am not the story. Shall we go to Thomas's family first or the Elves?"

Kelda studied him. The answer about not wanting to be there sounded sensible. The claim that he was not the story sounded less useful. Ian had made the road possible. That did not require him to stand in the room when people crossed it, but disappearing from responsibility by declaring himself unimportant would merely create another kind of work for everyone else.

"Family first," she said.

Thomas's family were one household. All four had already met Ian. All four had given separate yeses to the reunion. Sereth, Ruvan, Aelira and Lethira carried different conditions, and the Wood Elf settlement contained a great many people who had not agreed to anything at all. More importantly, a voluntary successful trip by Thomas's family might later provide the evidence Ruvan and Aelira had requested without appointing anyone as a test subject. Kelda laid the letter flat.

"Your plan not to be there is not settled merely because you think it is considerate. They get to know what absence means and choose it too. If Mira wants you gone, you go. If she wants you available nearby, you stay. If they invent a third arrangement, you make that instead."

Ian listened. Kelda continued.

"You make the road. The reunion can still belong to them. Those are not contradictory."

She looked towards Thomas and Isha's closed house through the window. Then back at Ian.

"If the family still says yes, can you make the meeting place and the return road work while the Ian they see is somewhere else?"

"I can change reality to meet everyone's needs easily. That's not the hard part. Shall we go?"

Kelda stood.

"Good. Then don't spend effort making the easy part impressive."

She secured the workshop, put the revised road drawings under their stone weight and told Porridge he was staying. The pony followed her several steps anyway.

"You are not coming to Thomas's family to supervise metaphysics."

Porridge considered this and returned to grass. Kelda gave Ian the rules as they crossed the yard. Same approach as before: outside the farm, then walk in. Knock. No surprise in the kitchen. The new information came before the reunion question. Kelda would carry Thomas and Isha's letter. Ian could explain his mechanism if asked, but he was not arriving with a speech designed to recover anyone's trust.

"I'm ready," she said.

The yard vanished. Kelda's boots came down on leaf litter inside the old fairy circle. She bent her knees, caught her balance and looked around. The mushroom ring lay in the same small wood where Homegate had once dropped Thomas, Isha and Kelda into the landscape near Thomas's family farm, and where Thomas had later escaped Crownholt alone. The farm itself lay beyond the wood, hedge and lower field. Nothing about the place looked magical to anyone who did not already know how many impossible departures had used it.

Kelda straightened.

"Show-off."

There was little heat in it. Ian looked towards the distant farm.

"not wanting to go is too reasona. One, this is not my family and friends, two, I don't think I can handle it. I could become a distraction from what matters. I can see people afterwards if they want. I have open invitations to come here, so I don't need to waste everyone's time with Thomas & Isha"

"Lead on."

Kelda began walking.

"Not wanting to be in the room is reasonable," she said after a while. "Deciding you would waste their time is different. They gave you invitations before. They can see you later, or not. Don't make yourself so unimportant that other people have to argue you back into existence. It is annoying."

Ian did not need to answer that. The farm emerged gradually through the trees and fields. Kelda carried Thomas and Isha's letter beneath her shirt where weather and curiosity could not reach it. A chicken noticed them before the people did. They reached the yard. Kelda knocked. Mira opened the door. Her face changed first at Kelda, then at Ian behind her.

"They're well," Kelda said before anything else could form.

Mira's shoulders shifted. Kelda took out the letter.

"And they wrote to you. All of you."

Mira looked at the Common on the folded page. Kelda continued.

"There is something new you need to know before anybody answers the meeting question again."

Mira's gaze moved from the letter to Ian and back.

"Come in."

Ian followed Kelda inside. The farmhouse had changed less than the people in it. The same heavy table occupied the kitchen. The shelves still held practical crockery and jars. A newer repair showed near the window frame, and a basket of mending sat against one wall. The room smelled faintly of bread, smoke and something cooked earlier. Rowan stood near the far side of the table. Mara had already put aside whatever she had been holding. Tessa was halfway out of her chair before Mira's glance stopped the movement from becoming a rush towards either visitor.

All three recognised Ian. Kelda closed the door. Mira's attention went to the letter.

"You said they're well."

"They are." Kelda let Mira have the answer before adding anything to it. The letter mattered more than another reassurance.

Mira looked down at the Common on the folded sheet. "And this came from them?"

"Yes. Ian brought it to me. They wrote it after receiving our answers."

Tessa came closer.

"Our answers reached them?"

"All of them."

Mira's fingers settled on the paper. "Did they answer?"

"Not through the passage. Read this first."

Mira sat. Rowan came behind her. Mara took the chair beside her mother. Tessa leaned close enough that Mira nudged her gently away from blocking the light. The opening lines made Mira smile.

"She was clear," Mira said.

Kelda knew exactly which sentence she meant. "I told them you had said yes twice."

"You wrote the second one."

"Because you made me." Kelda's certainty survived Mira's immediate look of protest.

"I did not make you."

Kelda leaned back. "You stood there until I wrote it." Rowan's expression suggested he remembered enough of Mira's methods to decline the argument.

Mara's mouth moved. Tessa looked pleased. Rowan's expression suggested Kelda had lost the procedural argument. Then Mira reached the new explanation. The amusement faded. The family read more slowly. When Tessa reached the description of the visible Ian and the actual man elsewhere, she read it again.

"What does that mean?"

Kelda rested her forearms on the table.

"What it says. When you look at him now, the man himself is not seeing you through those eyes."

Tessa looked immediately at Ian. Everyone else followed. The evidence remained offensively person-shaped. Eyes tracked. A face responded. Hands occupied space. It was easy to understand why no one had thought to ask whether the man visible in the room actually received the room through his senses. Mara returned to the page first.

"So the first time he sat here—"

"He says he experienced it as words," Kelda said. "Not this room through his own senses."

Mira looked towards the chair Ian had once occupied.

"And the photographs?"

"Apparently he cannot see the real ones unless his machine makes some sort of approximation for him."

Tessa frowned. "Even the ones he took?"

"Even those."

That bothered her more visibly than the abstract explanation had. The privacy paragraph bothered everyone. Rowan pulled out a chair and sat.

"So he cannot see what is in front of him," he said, "but may be told what is inside someone's head."

"Yes," Kelda said.

Rowan considered this.

"Bad design."

Kelda gave a short grunt. "That was also my judgement."

Mara reached the section beginning *Ian is a man*. Tessa's eyebrows rose.

"That seems obvious."

Kelda leaned back. "I said roughly the same thing."

The description that followed made the obvious sentence less redundant. The machine's power was not Ian's competence. He wanted connection. Their happiness affected him. That desire had produced generosity, mistakes and several occasions when somebody had needed to stop him. Rowan paused at the account of Kanno's belongings.

"He moved her property after she had told him not to?"

"Yes." Kelda gave the answer without improving it.

Rowan's gaze dropped briefly to the letter. "And she still went with him afterward?"

"After making him undo it and ask properly."

Rowan nodded once. That sequence made sense to him. Tessa reached the part about later journeys.

"Venus?"

Kelda looked at her.

"They have been busy."

"You knew about this?"

"Some of it."

Tessa looked offended on behalf of information itself.

Mara pointed at the page. "Continue."

By the time Mira reached the description of Ian as embarrassed, frightened, guilty, excited and overwhelmed, she had slowed again. *Do not mistake the machine's power for his confidence.* Mira's thumb rested beside the line.

"I didn't," she said quietly.

Kelda looked at her.

"Not by the end."

The final instruction restored some of Kelda's humour. Tessa read it first.

"And tell Ian when he is being an idiot. You are already qualified."

She looked up.

"Kelda."

"Yes." Kelda already knew which line had caught her.

Tessa pointed at the page. "You didn't write this."

"Isha did."

Tessa narrowed her eyes. "How do you know?"

Kelda's answer came without hesitation. "Because Thomas would have made it longer."

Mara laughed before she could stop herself. Even Rowan smiled. Mira finished the letter. The last lines quietened the room.

"We love you. We want to see you. We are all right here."

Nobody spoke for several breaths. Tessa sat down properly. Mara looked towards the window. Rowan's hand rested flat on the table beside the page. Mira folded it along the existing crease and offered it back to Kelda.

"May I keep this?"

Kelda almost said yes, then looked at the envelope.

"It was written to me."

Mira nodded and released it immediately. "Then you keep it."

Kelda tucked the page away.

"Now we ask the actual question."

Tessa drew a breath. Kelda raised one finger.

"Separately."

Tessa closed her mouth. Mira looked at Ian first.

"Before any of us answers again, I want one thing clear. When you came here before, we told you not to use private thoughts. We meant that even though we did not understand how your seeing worked. That rule has not become weaker because we understand the problem better."

Mara nodded. Rowan did too. Tessa's agreement followed after a moment of thought. Mira kept her gaze on Ian.

"And before any of us answers the meeting question again, I want to know whether Thomas and Isha's description is accurate. You do not directly see or hear us now. You receive text about this afterward—or as it happens, however that works—and the machine may show you thoughts we have not spoken. Is that correct?"

"it is a book that is being written in front of me. Books have narrative, dialogue, descriptions. For example it just said 'Her gaze remained steady.' else is never know when it is time to wither under your gaze.. however I don't even know the colour of your eyes."

Ian shrugged, then sighed.

"But this body carries my emotions and actions as I describe them to it. It's imperfect. When I took Thomas, Isha and Kanno to another world I saw nothing of it but I saw their happiness and joy ..  it was nice."

Nobody answered immediately. Mira's gaze did not become less steady. Ian's example had made it newly strange. Tessa looked first at her mother, then at Ian, as though the obvious evidence of one person standing before another had become unreliable while she watched. Mara leaned back.

"That is deeply irritating."

Kelda gave her a brief look of approval. "Yes."

"No, I mean specifically this." Mara gestured between Ian and Mira. "He can know Mum is looking at him in a particular way because some unseen account decides the look matters, but not the colour of the eyes doing it."

Rowan looked at Ian's hands, then at the table, then towards the doorway through which he had entered.

"So when you used the recording device here, the body knew where to point it."

Kelda did not answer for Ian. Rowan noticed and let the statement remain a statement.

Tessa said, "When you were here before, and I was speaking to you, you didn't actually hear my voice."

The words were not accusation. They were the practical edge of the problem. Mira looked towards the chair Ian had occupied before.

"And yet you remember the conversation."

For her, the earlier visit had been physically awkward and emotionally exhausting. For Ian, it had been a written account of being physically awkward and emotionally exhausted in her kitchen.

"That explains something," she said.

Mara looked at her. "What?"

"I thought he looked overwhelmed because he was here."

Kelda understood.

"And now?"

"Perhaps he was overwhelmed because he was reading about being here."

Nobody laughed.

Tessa folded her arms on the table. "That seems lonely."

Kelda looked at her, then at Ian. The letter had warned them not to mistake power for confidence. Tessa had reached the softer edge of the same problem without needing the warning repeated. Rowan turned the thought another way.

"It also means some things we thought were being shared were not."

Mira named the meal, the yard and the recordings. Tessa added the arrow. Mara frowned at that, because Ian had still understood what the arrow meant even if he had never seen its wood or fletching with his own eyes.

"Yes. But he didn't see it."

Kelda let the family work through that. Eventually Mara looked towards Ian again.

"You said the body carries your emotions and actions as you describe them. So when you smiled here, that could still be your smile."

She glanced at the others before Ian needed to answer.

"I'm not asking yet. I'm making sure I understand. He is not saying the person we met was a puppet with no relation to him. He is saying the relation is written instead of sensory."

Rowan called Mara's wording closer. Mira amended that to *imperfectly closer*. Tessa remained unconvinced that a more accurate explanation was necessarily a better one.

"It doesn't need to be better," Kelda said. "It needs to be true enough for you to choose."

That quieted the table. Mira looked down at the place where the letter had been.

"They know he cannot see them."

"Yes." Kelda watched Mira absorb that before the next question arrived.

Mira's attention returned to the missing letter on the table, as though the page itself might make the answer easier to carry.

"And they still want the meeting."

"Very much."

Mira's face tightened. Tessa looked away. Mara rubbed one thumb against the side of her hand. Rowan's shoulders shifted with a breath he did not otherwise display. Mira recovered first.

"I still want to see them."

Kelda waited. Mira looked towards Rowan and made clear that the yes belonged to her alone; she was not spending anyone else's answer. Rowan kept his eyes on the table for another few seconds before giving his own.

"My answer is still yes. I wanted to know whether the road could be made without changing us. I still want that. This changes what I think Ian experiences. It does not change whether Thomas is my son."

Mara looked at Kelda.

"Yes. I don't like the narration part. I didn't like it before. I understand why I disliked it better now. But I still want Thomas and Isha."

Tessa had begun crying before anyone reached her. She wiped at one eye angrily.

"Yes."

Kelda's mouth moved.

Tessa glared at her. "Do not make me repeat it."

"I wasn't going to."

"Mum did."

Mira turned towards her. "You volunteered that second yes."

"No, I didn't."

"You absolutely did."

Rowan looked at the ceiling.

Mara said, "I think we have proved the family relationship remains intact."

The laughter that followed was brief and badly coordinated, but it gave Tessa enough time to wipe her face without everyone watching. Kelda waited until the room settled.

"Then four yeses remain four yeses. Same conditions?"

Rowan restated the practical conditions: no alteration to bodies, memories or belongings, an immediate way back, and no prepared speech. Mara added the privacy rule. Tessa looked at Ian and said, "And I still want to hug them."

Kelda nodded. "That part was already passed back to them."

Tessa's eyes widened. "They answered?"

"They said yes."

Tessa covered her face. Mara put one arm around her shoulders. Mira closed her eyes. Rowan looked down at the table. Kelda let the news sit for a while. Then Mira returned to the unresolved point.

"If the body we see is not in the room, what does the book do?"

Ian answered.

"i will instruct it to write as much or as little as you wish. This reunion is not for my entertainment. And to pick up on one point, when this form cried before. The real me did too. The process will be safe. No physical harm or change. I've let Isha fly in a world without air, she was mostly smiling."

Mira caught first on the middle of the answer.

"When you cried here. The man reading cried too."

Kelda had not expected that point to matter quite as much as it did. The visible body could too easily become representation once the sensory distinction was understood. Ian's answer put some continuity back. The sensations did not cross. The emotion did. Mira nodded once. Tessa had stopped on an entirely different sentence.

"Isha flew?"

Mara looked at her.

Tessa looked back. "He said Isha flew."

"In a world without air," Rowan added.

That did not improve the matter. Mara's expression acquired the resigned quality of someone discovering that Thomas and Isha had used survival to become even harder to receive sensible updates about.

"Of course she did."

Kelda frowned. "That part was not in the letter."

Tessa was already trying to imagine it.

"Mostly smiling," she repeated.

Mira's mouth moved. "That sounds like her."

The thought loosened something in the room. Rowan brought them back to the practical problem.

"If you can control how much of the meeting reaches you, that should be set before it begins."

Kelda nodded. "Individually."

Mira thought first.

"For me, very little. I want you to know if the road fails, if I ask for you, or if someone wants to leave and needs you. I do not want the rest of my first conversation with Thomas written for you while it is happening."

"The same for me," Rowan said.

Mara took longer. "If I speak to you deliberately, that can reach you. If I use your name because I want your attention, obviously I want your attention. Everything else can stay in the room unless I choose to tell you afterward."

Tessa looked at Ian.

"I don't want you reading it while it happens. But afterward I might want to tell you things. If it is good, I don't mind you knowing it was good. I just want that to come from us."

Kelda nodded once. Mira counted the safety conditions on her fingers: no harm, no changes, everyone remaining themselves, immediate return, the farm remaining the farm.

Mara added, "And no clever improvement to the farm while we're gone."

Kelda's mouth moved.

Mara noticed. "I am serious. If I come back and the roof no longer leaks because reality decided that would make the reunion nicer, I will be angry."

Rowan looked faintly offended. "The roof does not leak."

"The west shed does."

"That is not the roof."

"This is exactly why I said farm."

Mira closed her eyes briefly. Tessa smiled. Kelda let the argument exist for several seconds before gathering the result. Four yeses. Same safety terms. Ian absent from the first reunion unless deliberately called. Narrative reduced to safety information and deliberate address. Mira looked towards Ian again.

"When the meeting happens, can you make it so the body we see is not there, and the book tells you only the safety things we have just chosen—unless one of us deliberately calls for you?"

"yes. And Tessa, it would be nice to talk to you after, even if you tell me how good the cakes are and nothing else."

Tessa blinked. Then the corner of her mouth lifted.

"There are cakes?"

Mara turned towards her. "That is what you took from this?"

"It was the newest information."

Kelda made a low sound of agreement. "Fair."

Tessa looked back at Ian. "I can tell you that afterward. If there are cakes. I will not invent cakes so you feel included."

Rowan covered his mouth with one hand. Mira laughed softly. That was enough to establish the shape of Ian's absence. The family could tell him things later if they chose. Trivial things counted. Mira looked around the table.

"So we agree."

The safety conditions were repeated once, more cleanly this time. Kelda then asked each person again by name. Mira: yes. Rowan: yes. Mara: yes. Tessa gave Kelda a look before saying yes for the third time. Then Mira asked the question which changed the room.

"When?"

Kelda did not answer it.

"We still have the elves."

Mira knew that and disliked the continued existence of other people's necessary decisions. Tessa reminded everyone that Sereth had already said yes. Kelda reminded her that Sereth had said yes before learning the new information. Ruvan still wanted a voluntary successful return. Aelira still wanted the invitation repeated at the actual door after someone had crossed and returned freely. Mira looked at Ian, then at Kelda.

"Do Thomas and Isha know we're being asked again?"

"They asked me to do it."

Kelda touched the place beneath her shirt where their letter rested. That seemed to matter. Thomas and Isha were not watching their family reconsider them from the other side of a window. Tessa's attention returned to the newer information.

"You said Isha flew. Was Thomas there?"

Kelda raised an eyebrow.

"Tessa."

"What? I can ask him afterward if he wants to tell me."

That was precisely the rule they had just built. Kelda conceded it with one hand. Mira's attention drifted towards Thomas and Isha's letter.

"They sound well."

"They are."

"You've read more recent words from them than we have. What did they say about us?"

Kelda considered what had been deliberately carried.

"Thomas said Tessa may hug them. Isha said she wants her mother first."

Mira's gaze sharpened. "Sereth."

"Yes."

"And Thomas?"

"He wants Isha there when he first sees you."

Mira closed her eyes. Rowan's face changed more quietly. Mara looked towards the hearth. Tessa pressed her lips together.

"Good," Mira said.

Nothing useful needed adding. Rowan stood and discovered the kettle had gone lukewarm during the conversation.

"Are you staying for tea?" he asked Kelda.

Kelda looked at Ian, then back at Rowan.

"No. We should take the same question to the others while we are here to ask it."

Before they could leave, Ian turned towards Rowan.

"before that, Rowan, I think, and I might remember badly, you had concerns on the logistics. Do you want to see the place we'd go first? I'm sorry if I am misremembering"

Rowan stopped halfway towards the kettle. He looked at Ian, checking his own memory against the returned version.

"I asked for the way home to remain available," he said. "And that nobody be changed to make the meeting easier."

He glanced at Kelda. "That was what you wrote?"

"Yes."

"Then you are remembering the shape of it correctly."

Rowan considered the offer.

"I had not asked to inspect the place first. But yes. I think I would like to."

Mira looked surprised, not alarmed. Rowan rested both hands against the back of his chair.

"Not because I think I can inspect whatever makes it work. I cannot. Looking at the floor will not tell me whether the road is sound. But the place matters. I would like to know what we are asking Mira and the girls to enter. Where the way home is. Whether leaving feels like opening a door or asking you for permission. Whether Thomas and Isha arrive by the same route or another one."

He paused.

"And I would prefer the first time I learn those things not to be while my son is standing in front of me."

Mara leaned one shoulder against the table. "That is irritatingly reasonable."

"It happens."

"Rarely."

Tessa asked if she could come. Rowan did not answer immediately. Mira asked whether seeing it first would make the actual meeting easier for her. Tessa thought.

"I don't know. Maybe I don't want to see it empty. If I go there, I think I will spend the whole time looking at where Thomas is going to be."

Mira touched her arm.

"Then don't go first."

Tessa nodded. Mara reached the same conclusion for herself. She did not need a rehearsal. Kelda watched Rowan.

"If you go because you want to see it, and you come back satisfied, I can tell Ruvan what happened."

Rowan's attention sharpened.

"That was his condition?"

"Someone who independently wanted to go, using the place and returning unchanged."

Rowan thought about the consequence.

"It was not why I said yes."

"Good."

"If it helps him afterward, fine. But I am not going to prove the road for him."

Kelda nodded once. Mira asked whether Rowan meant now. He looked around his kitchen, at the warm kettle, the interrupted day and the door that would still exist if he waited.

"I would rather see it now than spend the evening imagining it badly."

He asked Kelda to come too. She knew what Thomas and Isha had requested and had already travelled through Ian's roads. Kelda agreed. Rowan then looked at Ian.

"I want to see the place as it would actually be for the meeting. The way in. The way home. Nothing decorative added because you think a reunion needs it. And if the version of you we can see would not be present when Thomas and Isha arrive, I would prefer you not be present there for this inspection either once you've shown us what we need to know. I want to understand what the room feels like under the conditions we're actually choosing."

Ian answered by giving them the mechanism.

"choose a door. Open it with the intention of going to my... Tavern"

He paused, evidently testing whether *café* had survived translation with its dignity intact.

"you can enter, or just look, I'll go through first if you want? Anyone can come or look or stay"

The kitchen became intensely still. Mira chose the back door because she did not want the front path turning into somewhere impossible by accident. They gathered far enough away to let Rowan control the latch himself. He opened the door. The farmyard was gone. A garden lay beyond it under clear afternoon light. Flagstones ran between planted beds towards a pale-walled café with wide windows and tables beneath open sky and shade. The place looked built to be sat in rather than admired. Nothing in it demanded awe.

Ian crossed first. Rowan looked once at Kelda and stepped through with her. The transition had no sensation worth naming. One ordinary stride took Kelda from the farmhouse into the garden. She turned immediately. Mira, Mara and Tessa were still visible through the doorway, exactly where they had chosen to remain. Home was one step back. Rowan checked the same thing. He walked several paces along the stones, studying the path, the tables, the building and the open route home. Kelda touched the back of a chair. Solid.

Tessa leaned around Mira from the other side.

"It really is a café."

Kelda glanced over one shoulder. "That appears to be the claim."

Mara said, "I dislike how reasonable it looks."

That was fair enough that Kelda almost smiled. Rowan kept inspecting. The place treated return as something available, not granted. That mattered more than whether the tables were attractive. Then Ian spoke.

"is this ok? I could make a different place. I'm sure there's some quiet areas too. There are also scones"

A plate of scones appeared on the nearest table. One moment the table held light and shadow. The next it held food.

"And tea"

A teapot and cups followed, filled with strong English breakfast tea lightly softened with milk. Mara, still on the farmhouse side, stared.

"I hate that the scones are somehow the most unnerving part."

Tessa leaned farther around Mira.

"They're real scones."

Kelda looked over. "That would usually be what appearing food implies."

"Yes, but now it has been confirmed."

Rowan ignored the table at first. He checked the doorway again, then the quieter garden path curving away from the main seating.

"It doesn't need to be different," he said.

The place was comfortable enough to sit in, the way home clear, the quieter spaces visible without forcing anyone into isolation. Nothing about it made the room itself into the event. Mira watched Rowan from the threshold. Seeing him safe in the other place seemed to affect her more than Ian's explanations had. Mara objected that the tea appearing had assumed too much. Kelda told her she was free to decline it. Tessa asked whether she could eat a scone while they decided.

"We have been invited to," Mira said.

"That was not quite my question."

Mara sighed. "Yes, Tessa. You may risk the scone."

Tessa took one, broke it open and inspected the middle.

"It's warm."

Kelda glanced at Mara. "Another successful inspection."

Tessa took a bite. Her eyes widened.

"Oh."

Rowan looked at her. "Useful?"

"Very."

Mira smiled. The café had passed whatever test Tessa believed applied to baked goods across realities. Rowan gave his verdict on the place.

"Comfortable enough to sit in. Clear way back. No sense that leaving depends on negotiation. If Thomas and Isha arrive through the same threshold we used, nobody is trapped waiting for them in some sealed performance."

Kelda nodded. Mira stepped through. Only one pace at first. Tessa came with her. Mara followed more slowly, suspicious of how normal the impossible place continued to appear. The whole family was now inside the garden, and the farmhouse doorway remained open. Tessa looked down at the flagstones.

"It doesn't feel like a trick."

"No," Mira said quietly.

Mara inspected the teapot.

"It looks like tea."

"Another strong sign," Kelda said.

Mara ignored her. "And cups."

Tessa had reached the scones again. Rowan looked towards Ian.

"The place is acceptable."

Tessa looked offended by the modesty of the verdict.

"Acceptable?"

Rowan did not improve it for her benefit. The inspection had done its work. Then Ian made a second offer.

"why don't you stay here, have some tea and scones, whilst myself and Kelda go to the elves? You can leave whenever you want, just close the door when done. The elves might join depending on timings. It might be useful to discuss if we do everyone together or maybe in a small garden nearby then come together. Or whatever you want"

He moved nearer to Kelda, ready to leave. The family looked at the open farmhouse doorway first. Mira asked whether they could simply stay.

Kelda glanced at Ian, then back to her. "Apparently."

Mara asked whether closing the door meant nobody else could accidentally walk into their kitchen from the café. Kelda did not answer a mechanism question Ian had not yet answered.

"If that matters, don't assume. Ask before we leave."

Rowan nodded. Tessa had reached the limits of her restraint around the scones.

"Can we eat them while deciding?"

Mara sighed. "Yes, Tessa. You may risk the scone again."

The family settled around the table. That was when the more useful question emerged. Sereth had already asked for her first few minutes with Isha and Thomas privately. Thomas's family had not originally asked the same thing. Standing in the place changed their imagination of the meeting. Mira did not want to sit at the next table listening for Sereth to finish. Tessa did not want to wait at home knowing Thomas was somewhere nearby. Rowan suggested separate spaces close enough that neither group had to be summoned across worlds once the first reunion was ready to widen.

Mara, after a while, said the thing none of them had yet named.

"I think I want ours small too."

Tessa looked at her. "Do what?"

"Us. Thomas. Isha. Nobody else for the first part."

Tessa considered, then nodded. Rowan stared into his tea.

"Yes. I would rather see him first as my son than as the centre of an event."

Mira looked down, fingers tightening around her cup.

"Then that is what I want too."

Kelda watched all four of them. There it was. Not an arrangement Ian had suggested for efficiency. Not symmetry forced by Sereth's request. The family had discovered their own need once the physical impossibility stopped occupying every available thought. Two beginnings. One for Sereth. One for Thomas's family. What followed could become larger if the people involved wanted it. Kelda nodded.

"Good. Keep that."

Ian then clarified the route home.

"I suggest you wait here until the Elves arrive, it would be good to not have incompatible plans that require me to bend reality until it breaks. Enjoy these whilst we go. If you leave, the last of you through the door will make the door return to normal. No one gets cut off."

More scones appeared, already split. Glass bowls of strawberry jam, clotted cream and butter appeared beside them with spoons and knives. Tessa stared. Mara looked from one plate to the next.

"He's bribing the planning committee."

Kelda gave the table a final inspection. "If four adults can have their decisions altered by cream, the meeting has larger problems."

Tessa had already picked up a knife. "I am still capable of consent."

"Reassuring."

Mira said they would stay. Rowan was comfortable with the route home. Mara wanted the planning time. Tessa had demonstrated her answer through pastry. Kelda moved beside Ian. The café vanished.

---

Kelda's boots came down on forest soil. She caught her balance without reaching for anything this time. The air was cooler. Older trees stood close around them, damp leaf mould beneath their feet and the sound of water somewhere deeper in the woods. Through layers of trunk and green, Kelda caught the edge of an elevated platform and lost it again when she shifted position. The Wood Elf settlement lay nearby. Ian had placed them a little distance outside it.

That was better than arriving inside. Kelda stayed where she was. The difficulty here was not distance. It was witnesses. Aelira, Sereth, Ruvan and Lethira knew Ian directly. Sairen knew enough from the earlier recording work to recognise the category. Most of the settlement did not. Walking an unexplained human who could alter reality through an ordinary Wood Elf afternoon would turn a private question into public knowledge before anyone had chosen it. Kelda looked towards the path.

"No."

She glanced at Ian.

"Not the place. This was the right place. The stupid thing would be walking you straight in."

She reminded him of the previous visit. Aelira had escorted him through the settlement herself. Her presence had publicly said that the unknown human guest was known, permitted and already somebody's responsibility. Kelda, for all the roads she had built beside Wood Elves, could not substitute for that authority merely because people recognised her. Ian nodded.

"Bring someone, or summon me by calling my name. I did walk around the place before, but Aelira escorting me is not the same as a human and a half-dwarf walking around."

"Yes. I remember."

Kelda looked towards the settlement. The last walk had included enough absurdity to be memorable: Aelira supervising an unknown human in a shirt announcing a fictional *best elf*, a child reducing diplomatic protocol to *Human? Why?*, and Ian discovering that a real settlement contained a great deal his prior story had never needed to mention. Aelira's escort had mattered.

"Stay where you are," Kelda said. "If calling your name actually makes you appear beside me, I am not testing that until the person standing beside me has agreed she wants you to."

She entered the ward paths alone. A warden found her before she reached the settlement proper. He recognised her.

"Flintvein."

"Still."

His gaze travelled past her towards the outer north.

"You did not approach through the eastern gap."

"No."

The silence that followed asked a question on his behalf. Kelda spared him the wrong answer.

"Thomas and Isha are well. Their March answer reached us. I need Aelira privately."

His posture changed.

"Wait."

Kelda did. Aelira came herself. She wore practical forest clothing rather than court layers, pale hair drawn back for an ordinary day. Time had accumulated around her in the manner of people whose authority had continued being used after the crisis everyone once thought would define it. She saw Kelda. Then looked behind her. No Thomas. No Isha. No Ian.

"Kelda."

"Aelira." Their old familiarity made ceremony unnecessary even here.

Aelira's attention moved past her once more. "You are supposed to be on the eastern island."

"I was this morning."

Aelira became very still. Kelda cut off the obvious fear.

"They are alive. The passage did not fail. Nothing has happened to Thomas or Isha that I know of."

Aelira's shoulders changed by a fraction.

"Then how are you here?"

"There is a man."

Aelira closed her eyes briefly.

"That is not usually the beginning of a sentence I expect from you."

"This one is worse."

Kelda looked towards the warden. Aelira understood and moved with her into a small side clearing beyond the ordinary flow of people. Only then did Kelda tell her. The March reply had arrived. Everyone's answers had reached Thomas and Isha. They wanted the meeting. Then Kelda explained the new information. Ian's visible body was connected to the man but not a sensory window. He received a written scene: dialogue, description, narrative, sometimes interior material. The earlier settlement walk had reached him as prose, not direct sight or sound.

Aelira's expression tightened at the privacy problem.

"Thoughts."

"Potentially." Kelda did not soften the answer merely because the problem was unpleasant.

Aelira looked towards the outer path. "Still."

"Yes."

She looked towards the outer path where Ian waited.

"Thomas and Isha only learned this now?"

"After Mars."

Aelira's gaze snapped back. Kelda raised one hand.

"Later."

"Mars."

"Later."

The Princess accepted that under visible protest. Kelda gave her Thomas and Isha's letter. Aelira read it standing beneath the trees. The line about trusting Ian more but not every idea earned the smallest movement at one corner of her mouth. The final instruction about Kelda being qualified to tell him when he was an idiot made her laugh softly. The last three lines took longer. Aelira returned the letter carefully.

"Does Sereth know?"

"No." Kelda let the list continue rather than pretending any of them had been reached already.

Aelira's eyes moved towards the settlement, measuring the people still inside it against the privacy of the conversation.

"Ruvan?"

"No."

Aelira's mouth tightened. "Lethira?"

"No."

Kelda tucked it away.

"I came to you because reaching them without turning Ian into settlement news is easier with you involved. And because the last time he walked through here, you were the reason everyone else could leave the question alone."

Aelira looked towards the outer trees.

"Where is he?"

"Outside the ordinary ward path." Kelda gestured towards the trees without turning.

Aelira's eyebrows rose slightly. "He stayed there?"

"Yes. He offered to wait, have me bring somebody, or come if I called his name."

That interested Aelira. She thought for several seconds, then chose the side clearing they already occupied.

"Bring him here. I have already met him. You have already met him. I want to hear what he thinks he needs before I carry anything to Sereth."

Kelda nodded. Then she looked at the empty space between the trees.

"Ian."

Ian appeared, kneeling in deference before Aelira.

"Princess Aelira. I bring you a scone, with jam, butter and clotted cream"

He offered it up. Aelira looked down at him. Then at the scone. During their last meeting he had arrived wearing a shirt declaring a fictional woman the best elf, made chocolate appear from nowhere, offered unknown seeds to the Wood Elves and repeatedly discovered that flirting with Elven women did not become diplomatic merely because he looked embarrassed afterward. The kneeling baked-good tribute was sufficiently consistent with history to make outrage difficult to organise.

Kelda folded her arms.

"I told him to wait outside."

"He did," Aelira said.

She took the plate.

"I am choosing to interpret this as hospitality rather than courtship."

Kelda's mouth moved. "Wise."

Aelira ate a small portion with butter, jam and cream. Her expression barely changed. Kelda noticed anyway.

"Good?"

"Yes."

The pastry did not distract her from the purpose for long. Kelda told her Thomas's family had been informed and had all said yes again. Rowan had then asked to inspect the meeting place. The whole household had voluntarily crossed into the café and remained there with an immediate route home. Aelira's attention sharpened.

"And they returned?"

"Not yet."

Aelira nodded once. Her earlier condition remained. She wanted someone to make a voluntary journey and return freely before her final decision at an actual door. Ruvan had asked for similar evidence. The family's current visit had begun to answer the question, not completed it. Ian then explained what he wanted from the Elven side.

"I would like her to come to the tavern/café, ideally when the others are there. Get over the strangeness a little, then probably talk to Mira and agree who meets whom first. They both can't meet Thomas & Isha first for example. I would like you all to come. The experience is novel, interesting, exciting -- but that's not the purpose of going when your friends are there."

Aelira listened. Ian added a correction.

"One point about your understanding - when we walked around before, I didn't just get your speech, i got a well written description of the place, the interaction with that young elf child, it's not the same as seeing or listening directly, but it's more than just a written dialogue. It still transfers emotion."

Kelda glanced towards Aelira. Both women remembered the child. The settlement walk had not been a transcript in emptiness. The prose had carried scale, humour, action and enough of the place to move him. That mattered. It did not turn words into sight. Ian continued.

"And Aelira, you are their friend to, so you need to decide what you want to do."

Aelira's expression became quieter.

"I would also like some time alone with Lethira before we go."

The forest filled the first silence. Aelira took the requests in order. She could ask Sereth whether she wanted to go to the café. She would not bring her because it made planning easier. If Sereth still wanted the reunion after the correction, speaking directly with Mira before Thomas and Isha arrived made sense. They could decide the first order themselves. The trip could also provide Ruvan and Aelira with the evidence they had requested, provided Sereth went because she wanted to go rather than because someone needed a test subject.

"Ruvan does not get asked to cross yet," Aelira said. "He gets told the new information. If Sereth or somebody else later returns freely, then we ask him again."

She looked towards the settlement. Then answered Ian's other point for herself.

"I want to see them. I do not want to be there when Sereth first sees Isha. I do not want to be there when Thomas first sees his mother, father and sisters. After that, yes. I want to sit with Thomas and Isha. I want to hear them speak. I want to see what they look like when they are not flattened onto a photograph."

Kelda turned her head slightly. Aelira continued.

"And if there is time, I would like some of it to be smaller than the entire collection of people who missed them. I expect my answer at the actual door will be yes. Expectation is not permission in advance."

Kelda's mouth moved faintly. Ian had heard the principle enough times by now. Aelira then addressed Lethira.

"I will tell her you asked for time alone. She decides whether she comes. Whatever happens in that conversation is between the two of you unless she chooses otherwise. The same privacy rule applies."

She and Kelda left Ian in the clearing. No convenient narration followed them into the settlement. Ian had already offered the privacy boundary on his earlier visit; the machine gave him no account of Sereth's first reaction or the words Aelira used to explain that a man who once seemed to see through his own eyes had never seen any of them directly at all. The settlement remained audible instead. A hammer worked somewhere below. Someone called across a high path. Leaves moved overhead with the broad continuous sound Ian knew only through prose.

Footsteps approached. Lethira appeared between the trees alone. Practical forest clothing. Longbow. Knives where they belonged. The expression of a woman who had been told something interesting waited outside the settlement and had chosen curiosity before good judgement could interfere. She stopped at the edge of the clearing.

"Aelira says you asked for time alone with me before we go. She told me why everyone is here. She also told me the new part about how you experience us."

Her expression changed briefly at that.

"And I said yes."

The familiar brightness returned.

"So, Ian. What did you want?"

"I have something less serious than the reunion. It involves manga. May we go to your place?"

Lethira's face changed immediately.

"Yes. If this involves another unfinished series, I would prefer to discover the offence somewhere I can sit down."

Ian held out his hand.

"Hold my hand, we can go via magic, if you want ...."

Lethira looked at the offered hand, then at his face.

"You have become very careful about the wording."

There was amusement in it.

"I have already watched you cross half a world by abusing doors. I have seen you appear where you were not standing a moment earlier. And I am about to visit a café that apparently exists because reality has poor boundaries. Yes. I want to see this version."

She adjusted her bow and took his hand. The clearing disappeared. Her room replaced it. There was no sensation of travel. One moment damp forest soil lay beneath their feet; the next Lethira stood on familiar wooden boards. Her hand tightened around Ian's for a fraction of a second. Then released. Lethira looked around. Bow equipment occupied one practical section of the room. Papers and books occupied another. The translated manga from Ian's previous visit had survived well enough, though the paper markers sticking from several volumes proved preservation had never been the purpose.

"You did not even use the door."

She crossed to the window and looked out at the same settlement.

"That is worse."

Her tone suggested approval. She sat beside the low table.

"You asked for time alone with me, then led with manga. That was either very wise or extremely suspicious. What have you done?"

"My first minor crime is that I didn't need to hold your hand, but it was very nice to hold the hand of an Elf, thank you."

Ian smiled. Lethira stared at him. Her eyes dropped to the hand she had held.

"You made the magic sound as though it required contact."

She considered that.

"That is mildly dishonest. Next time, if you want to hold my hand, you can try the astonishing technique of asking whether you may hold my hand. I might even say yes. Then you lose the pleasure of confessing crimes afterward, but sacrifices are sometimes required."

Ian continued.

"I have a gift for you, but it is a little naughty .... "

Lethira went still. Her gaze moved towards the existing stacks. Then back to Ian.

"Naughty."

She tested the word.

"You have already given me romantic stories, appeared outside my room several times, supplied chocolate as advance protection against being struck, put Isha in an absurd skirt on your clothing, and once knelt on a purple cushion while presenting me with another season. Your scale is unreliable."

She cleared a patch of table between them.

"Show me."

Ian passed her a modest tablet, simpler than the recording devices she had used before.

"This, allows you to watch something called .... Anime"

Lethira turned the dark slab over in both hands.

"Anime."

The unfamiliar word survived translation. Her eyes narrowed.

"You said this gift was naughty. If you have given me illustrated pornography, I want it established that I suspected you before opening it."

A pause.

"But I am opening it."

Ian turned it on. The screen loaded into Crunchyroll. A catalogue of illustrated faces, titles and bright rectangular images filled the glass. Lethira stopped smiling. Ian showed her how to scroll. More rows appeared. And more. Humans. Elves. Monsters. Machines. Cities. Forests. School clothing she did not recognise. Expressions intense enough to suggest subtle emotion had been declared optional.

"These are like the books."

Ian showed her search. She entered a title she knew from the manga already scattered around her room. The result appeared. Same faces. Slightly different art. Episodes. Lethira stared.

"No."

Ian opened the first episode. Drawings moved. Music entered the room. Characters spoke in a language Lethira did not understand, while subtitles appeared beneath them in perfect Common. She read one line. Then another. Her eyes widened. She looked at Ian and immediately back to the screen because something happened while she was distracted.

"Go back."

Ian did. Lethira watched again. A scene arrived that she knew from paper. The same exchange now had voices, timing, movement and music supplied by someone else. She frowned.

"That is not how I imagined her voice."

A pause landed.

"That part is better."

Another exchange.

"No. That pause is too long."

Within minutes she had learned enough of the controls to resent intervention. She stopped, replayed, searched and moved between series herself. The dangerous part became clear only when the catalogue returned. She scrolled. And scrolled. The rows continued. The physical manga around her room suddenly looked finite. Almost innocent. Lethira put the tablet flat on the table.

"This is why you called it naughty. This is not a book. It is not even a shelf."

Her eyes travelled across the screen.

"This is an entire building full of people making terrible decisions."

She picked it up again. The brightness in her expression had acquired respect. One series caught her attention. She opened the description, stared, closed it and marked it for later. Then she looked directly at Ian.

"How much of this is there?"

"An awful lot. I only ask you keep it hidden to avoid altering the course of history in this world."

Lethira's fingers stopped over the screen. That warning reached her immediately. She looked towards the window and the settlement beyond it.

"Yes. This does not leave my room casually. I do not show it to children, lend it because somebody would enjoy one particular story, or decide Aelira needs to see an especially insulting representation of elves. Even if she does."

She looked back at Ian.

"And if I want someone else to see it, I ask you first. I know you only said to keep it hidden. I am adding the rest myself."

The device went beneath a folded cloth on a shelf where an unexpected visitor would have no reason to investigate it.

"Hidden."

Ian held out his hand again.

"So a little naughty if you get caught. Shall we return before they get back?"

Lethira looked at the hand. Then at him.

"You have already confessed that this part is unnecessary. So this time I know exactly what I am agreeing to."

She placed her hand in his. Her grip was firmer this time, deliberate from the beginning.

"Yes. We should go back. And since you asked properly this time, you may enjoy it."

The room vanished. The little clearing returned exactly as they had left it. Lethira's hand remained in Ian's for the first instant after arrival. Then she let go.

"Better than walking. Do not tell Aelira I said that."

They did not wait long. Kelda appeared first between the trees. Sereth walked beside her. Aelira followed a few paces behind. The sight of Sereth removed most of the remaining mischief from the clearing. She looked composed, but the composition had work in it. She had heard the correction. She knew Thomas and Isha still wanted the reunion. She knew Thomas's family were currently sitting somewhere impossible discussing how they wanted to see the people they had lost.

Aelira noticed that Ian and Lethira had gone somewhere.

"What were you doing?"

Ian answered.

"Holding hands a bit. She squeezed mine, it was nice."

Kelda's eyes closed. Sereth looked at Lethira. Lethira remained completely unashamed.

"I did. He asked properly the second time."

Aelira's expression suggested she was assembling several replies and rejecting each as beneath the dignity of the moment.

"I see."

Kelda opened her eyes.

"No, you don't."

"I see enough."

Whatever else had happened in Lethira's room belonged to the privacy Ian had asked for and Lethira had chosen. She volunteered nothing about it. Aelira, after one more look, did not ask. Sereth stepped farther into the clearing.

"I know what Thomas and Isha learned."

She spoke to the group rather than Ian alone.

"Aelira explained it carefully. The body we see is connected to him, but he does not see through it. He receives the written account. Description, speech, perhaps thought. I understand that the description can still affect him emotionally."

Kelda corrected one point.

"He can instruct the machine to restrict what it gives him."

Sereth nodded.

"Yes."

Then she asked about Thomas's family. They were still in the café. Rowan had inspected the place first. All four had crossed voluntarily. Their farmhouse door remained open as their route home. Aelira explained the proposed reason for Sereth to go now: see the place, learn the road, meet Mira and discuss the two private beginnings before Thomas and Isha arrived. Sereth understood the problem immediately. She had asked for Isha and Thomas first. Thomas's family now wanted their own private beginning.

There was one Thomas and one Isha.

"What does Mira want?" Sereth asked.

"We deliberately left before they finished deciding," Kelda said.

Sereth nodded.

"Then I should ask her."

Aelira made clear that Sereth did not have to go. She could hear the family's eventual proposal here. Sereth's hands moved once against each other.

"I want to go. I want to see the place before I see Isha. I want to know where the way home is. And I want to speak with Thomas's mother."

That settled the reason independently of anyone else's test. Lethira chose to go too. She wanted to see the place and meet Thomas's family again before Thomas was standing there making everyone incapable of normal conversation. Aelira decided she would inspect it as Rowan had. Her final reunion answer would still be made at the actual door after somebody had returned freely. Kelda was coming because she carried Thomas and Isha's letter, knew the family and had already been part of both sides of the discussion.

Four women. Ian. A café occupied by Thomas's family. For once, the impossible part seemed simpler than the social arrangement. Ian offered the mechanism.

"We can go find a door, or I can create one. Sereth, i think you should be the one to open it -- open it intent to go to the tavern/café, and it will open. You will have control."

Sereth looked towards the trees.

"A door we already know."

Aelira nodded.

"The forester's rest."

They went there together. The small old building still sat beyond the ordinary settlement paths. Sereth entered first and stopped before the wooden door. Her hand settled on the latch.

"The café."

She opened it with the intention Ian had given her. The forest vanished from the other side. Sunlight came through. Sereth saw flagstones, low planted beds and the pale line of the café beyond them. Then the table. Mira looked up. Rowan turned in his chair. Mara's attention went to the new threshold. Tessa was holding a knife with strawberry jam on it. For several seconds nobody moved. The farmhouse door remained open at the far side of the garden. Through it, Sereth could see a kitchen belonging to another part of her own world.

Behind her, the forester's rest remained exactly where she had left it. Two doors. Two homes. One garden between them. Sereth looked backwards first. Home remained. Then she stepped through. One pace. Another. She stopped on the flagstones and looked down briefly at her boots. Nothing hurt. Nothing changed. The fastening at her throat remained beneath her fingers. The door home stayed open. Kelda crossed next. Aelira followed, pausing just inside the garden to inspect the route back for herself. Lethira came after her. Ian followed Sereth's lead and entered last.

Tessa put the jam knife down. Kelda looked between the two women who had not yet spoken.

"Mira. Sereth."

Neither required more introduction. Mira stood.

"Sereth."

Sereth nodded.

"Mira."

That was sufficient. Mira gestured towards the table.

"We have tea."

Sereth glanced at the cups.

"And apparently scones."

Tessa looked at the evidence. "They're good."

Lethira's attention moved immediately to the bowls of jam and cream. Aelira caught it.

"Lethira."

"I have done nothing."

"Continue."

Sereth's mouth moved. Some of the pressure left her shoulders. They sat. For a few minutes practical things made the impossible place ordinary enough to use. Tea was poured. Sereth tried a scone with butter and jam, then added cream after watching Lethira use an amount that established the substance was not decoration. Then Sereth looked at Mira.

"Kelda said you want your first meeting small."

Mira nodded.

"Us four. Thomas and Isha."

"And you know I asked for Isha and Thomas first."

"Yes."

Neither woman rushed to make generosity performative. Sereth set down her cup.

"I do want that. I have imagined seeing my daughter again for too long to pretend I would be equally happy entering a room where everyone is already speaking to her. I want to see her before I have to share my attention with anyone except Thomas."

Mira's expression tightened in understanding rather than offence.

"I feel nearly the same."

Sereth nodded.

"That is why we need to choose."

Mira rested both hands around her cup.

"When Kelda brought our answers, yours already asked for the first few minutes. We didn't. We discovered ours here."

Sereth watched her. Mira continued.

"That doesn't make ours less real. But it means I don't feel that you took something from us before we knew we wanted it. You go first."

Tessa inhaled. Not objection. The sound of an answer becoming real. Sereth did not accept immediately.

"How do you feel about that?"

"I will hate waiting," Mira said.

Sereth's mouth moved. "So will I, if we reverse it."

"Probably."

"And you still want me first?"

"Yes."

Mira looked towards Rowan, Mara and Tessa.

"I am speaking for myself."

Rowan answered next.

"I agree. You asked for those first minutes before we had thought clearly about wanting our own. I don't see a reason to turn that into a competition now."

Mara took longer.

"I want ours private. I don't need ours first."

Tessa's fingers folded together on the table. Everyone looked at her last. She frowned.

"I do want ours first. Sorry."

Sereth shook her head once.

"Do not apologise for answering the question."

Tessa swallowed.

"I want to see Thomas. And I know you want Isha. I just think if we make this about who lost more, it becomes horrible."

Mara's face softened. Tessa continued.

"You have the first few minutes."

The sentence cost her something. Sereth accepted it carefully.

"Thank you."

Tessa wiped beneath one eye.

"I am going to complain while waiting."

"That seems fair."

A small laugh moved around the table. No stopwatch was proposed. Sereth described the end of the first beginning more simply.

"I will know when the first moment has become a conversation. Then I ask Isha and Thomas whether they are ready for you."

Mira nodded.

"If they are."

"If they are."

That mattered. The people waiting could want, prepare and ache. Thomas and Isha would still be allowed to need another minute. The physical shape followed naturally. Sereth's first meeting could use the quieter part of the garden beyond the low hedge and partial wall. Thomas's family could have a separate nearby space afterward. Nobody needed to be waiting behind a hedge listening for somebody else's reunion to finish. Aelira had meanwhile completed her own inspection of the route home.

"The way back remains open," she said.

Sereth nodded. Aelira had not yet received the evidence she required because nobody had returned. Sereth stood. Mira looked surprised.

"Now?"

"I came here partly to speak with you. I have. I also wanted to know whether I could walk back."

She looked towards the forester's-rest door.

"I am not leaving the plan. I am going home through that door."

At the threshold, Sereth looked back once at the café, Thomas's family, Aelira, Kelda, Lethira and Ian. Then she stepped through. Her boots landed on the forester's-rest floor. She turned. The café remained visible. Sereth checked the fastening at her throat, the small object she carried in an inner pocket and her own memory of the conversation.

"I am home," she said. "I remember the conversation. I have what I carried. Nothing feels changed. And the local day appears to be where I left it."

It was the best evidence anyone could reasonably obtain. Aelira stood. Something in her posture released. The voluntary journey and return had happened. She walked to the threshold but stayed on the café side. The condition she had set now had its evidence. The actual door stood in front of her.

"Yes," she said.

No one had asked her again. That did not matter.

"I will come when Thomas and Isha are ready for me."

Sereth smiled from the other side.

"Good."

Then she closed the door and went to find Ruvan. The room was simpler once one person had gone home successfully. Ruvan's condition was not answered for him, but the evidence he had requested now existed. Aelira's own final yes had been made at a real threshold, after a voluntary return, exactly as she had required. The meeting order was also clearer than when Kelda and Ian had first arrived. Sereth first with Isha and Thomas, privately.

Then Mira, Rowan, Mara and Tessa with Thomas and Isha, privately. After that, Kelda, Aelira, Lethira and anyone else who chose to come could join in smaller conversations or a larger gathering. The larger gathering was optional. No exact duration would be imposed on either private beginning, and Thomas and Isha could ask for more time at any point. Ian returned to the table with several plain copies of the outline.

"I think this is what we discussed, am i right? I can take a copy to Thomas & Isha"

Mira read hers first. Rowan followed over the same page. Mara took another. Tessa leaned over her shoulder until Mara shifted the paper far enough sideways to make sharing less irritating. Kelda reached the bottom before anyone else spoke.

"Do not call it an itinerary."

Ian's page did not. Kelda nodded once. Mira touched the second line.

"This part is right. Sereth asks Thomas and Isha whether they are ready for us. She doesn't decide that her time is finished and hand them over."

Rowan nodded. Mara tapped the line stating that the larger gathering was optional.

"Keep that exactly as it is."

Tessa looked at the page.

"We might all want it."

"We might," Mara said. "But if everyone is exhausted after the first parts, we do not do it because it happened to be written down."

The paper pleased Tessa more once it included a way for the plan to stop. Aelira read her own copy slowly.

"My statement is accurate."

Her finger moved to Ruvan's line.

"This remains pending. Sereth's return gives him the evidence he asked for. It does not answer for him."

Nobody disagreed. Lethira reached the line containing her name while eating another half-scone.

"I approve of being promoted from *others*."

Kelda looked at her. "You were already named."

"I am approving retrospectively."

Then Lethira's expression became more serious.

"I don't want to be waiting behind a hedge listening for whether Sereth has finished seeing her daughter. And I don't want to watch Thomas's family meet him again either. Those moments are theirs. I can survive being somewhere else for a while."

"So can I," Aelira said.

Kelda did not need to say it. She had known she wanted to see Thomas and Isha since before the café existed and had never intended to stand inside either family's first reunion. Tessa studied the wording again.

"There is one thing missing."

Everyone looked at her.

"It sounds as though Sereth goes first because we decided she wins."

Mira frowned slightly.

"That isn't what it says."

"No. But Thomas and Isha won't have heard the conversation. I don't want Thomas reading this and thinking we were sitting here arguing about which mother had suffered more."

The table quietened. That shape had been rejected before it could form. Mara drew her copy closer.

"Then add one sentence. Sereth keeps the first private meeting she originally requested. Thomas's family independently chose that they also want a private beginning, and agreed theirs would follow."

Rowan nodded.

"That says what happened."

Tessa read the sentence in her head.

"Yes."

Mira agreed. Kelda glanced towards the copies.

"And no explanation after it about fairness."

Aelira nodded.

"The facts are sufficient."

She suggested one final change: **CURRENT PLAN** at the top, not language that made the arrangement sound final. Ruvan remained pending. Sereth might return from speaking with him with a new request. Thomas's family might change their minds. Thomas and Isha themselves had not yet seen any of it. Mara proposed the final line.

> Thomas and Isha may change any part concerning their own participation.

Mira agreed immediately. Rowan did too. Tessa's approval took only a moment. Lethira finished her scone.

"Yes."

The papers updated themselves. No ink visibly moved. The copies simply became the corrected version in people's hands. Mara stared down at hers.

"I suppose asking for an updated document is one of the safer uses of reality alteration."

Rowan inspected the page.

"It would be less alarming if the old words were crossed out."

"Less tidy," Aelira said.

"That was not my concern."

Kelda checked the important lines.

"It matches."

Mira read the added sentence about Sereth and the family once more.

"Yes."

While the others remained occupied with the page, Ian leaned towards Lethira.

"thank you for helping me distract everyone. but for the record, i really did like having my hand squeezed."

Lethira turned her head just enough that the whisper ended near her ear rather than her hair. For a moment she said nothing. Then, equally quietly:

"I know. And for the record, I squeezed it because I wanted to. The second time, you even managed to know that before enjoying it."

She let him straighten before adding:

"You are learning."

Ian stood back and smiled. Kelda looked at Lethira.

"What?"

"I am reading."

Kelda watched her for another second. Lethira's face remained far too pleased for six lines of meeting logistics.

"You look pleased."

"The plan is good."

Kelda decided there were already too many active mysteries. Ian addressed the table.

"I've updated the document to match the changes, i think i'll depart to Earth and pass the document on. Unless you have need of me? You may remain here for a while, enjoy the food. When the last of you leaves, the doors will return to normal."

Mira looked towards the farmhouse door. It remained open across the garden, framing her kitchen exactly as before.

"We don't need anything from you before Thomas and Isha see the plan."

Rowan nodded.

"They should have it first."

Mara laid her copy beside the brownies.

"And exactly this version. No summary that accidentally turns *current* into *decided*."

Tessa's finger rested near the first two stages.

"Tell them we're here. And tell them we're not making them hurry. They don't have to arrive because all of us have successfully sat in a garden and organised ourselves."

Mara's mouth moved.

"That is perhaps the most convincing evidence that you are Thomas's sister."

Kelda leaned back in her chair.

"I don't need anything. Take the page. Let them decide what they think of it. We can manage tea without supervision."

Lethira looked towards the brownies.

"And these."

Kelda sighed.

"Yes. Apparently also those."

Aelira checked one practical point.

"This place remains available after you leave until the last of us leaves?"

Ian had already said it would. The question was confirmation rather than a new bargain. Mira decided she wanted to stay a little longer. Rowan did too. Mara and Tessa agreed. Aelira wanted to wait for Sereth if she returned before the others chose to leave. Kelda stayed with the group. Lethira said she had nowhere urgently requiring her to read several thousand hours of hidden Earth entertainment. Aelira looked at her. The pause was tiny.

Lethira smiled.

"I said I have nowhere urgent."

Aelira continued staring. Kelda's attention shifted between them.

"What did you two do?"

"Nothing relevant to the reunion," Lethira said.

The answer was perfectly true and therefore deeply suspicious. Aelira let it go. Mira picked up the copy intended for Thomas and Isha and held it towards Ian.

"This one. Tell my son we are waiting because we want to."

Tessa added quickly, "Not waiting like we're all staring at the door."

Mara looked around the table.

"We are, in fact, largely staring at food."

"That is better."

Rowan reached for the tea. Mira's expression softened.

"Tell Thomas and Isha the plan came from the people here. They can change it. They can say no to all of it if seeing it makes them realise they want something else."

Aelira gave a small nod.

"That is the important part."

Kelda looked towards Ian.

"Go deliver the paper. We have demonstrated that we can survive unsupervised."

Ian turned to her.

"Thank you for helping me Kelda, it means a lot."

He moved towards her with the unmistakable beginning of a hug. Kelda had enough time to understand what was happening before Ian apparently reconsidered the operation halfway through and pulled back. She stared at him.

"You are remarkably bad at committing to harmless decisions."

The abandoned gesture left his arms awkwardly positioned for a moment. Kelda looked at the space he had retreated from, then at his face.

"If you're going to hug me, either do it or don't. Stopping halfway makes me wonder whether you remembered an axe. But you're welcome."

Ian continued.

"Do you want to write a note at all about today for thomas & isha? they may prefer your words to my memory or the machine"

Kelda's amusement disappeared. She looked down at the revised plan.

"Yes. Actually, I do."

She pulled one of the spare sheets towards herself, then stopped.

"Not on your paper."

A moment later she had a plain fantasy-world sheet instead, the kind that belonged beneath her own hand rather than arriving perfect from Ian's mechanism. She sat and wrote. The café conversation continued around her at a lower volume. Tessa investigated whether brownie and clotted cream were compatible. Mara objected on aesthetic grounds rather than safety. Rowan poured more tea. Aelira read the current plan once more, then decided further inspection would not improve it.

Kelda crossed out one sentence and started again. The final note was short.

> Thomas. Isha.
>
> Ian came to me with your letter. I read it more than once.
>
> I told him my answer was still yes.
>
> We went to Thomas's family first. All four of them were told the new information about how Ian experiences our world. They each chose yes again.
>
> Rowan asked to inspect the meeting place before the reunion. Ian let him choose the door himself. Mira, Mara and Tessa later crossed too. They are still here by their own choice and can return through their farmhouse door whenever they want.
>
> I then went with Ian to the Wood Elves.
>
> Aelira, Sereth and Lethira have now been told the same correction. Sereth chose to come here, spoke with Mira, and returned through her own door safely with what she carried and what she remembered unchanged as far as we can test. She has gone to speak to Ruvan.
>
> Aelira has now said yes for herself. Lethira wants to come. Ruvan still decides for himself.
>
> The attached page is the current shape we agreed. It is not an itinerary and it is not a promise made for you.
>
> Sereth and Thomas's family discussed the first meetings themselves. Sereth keeps the private beginning she asked for. Thomas's family discovered they want one too and chose to follow hers. After that, the rest of us can work out what we actually want instead of making the largest possible room merely because Ian can.
>
> Nobody has met you yet.
>
> Nobody here is asking you to hurry.
>
> Ian has been trying.
>
> He is still Ian.
>
> Those statements are both useful.
>
> Kelda

Lethira, who had made a point of not reading over anyone's shoulder, looked towards the page.

"That last part is affectionate."

Kelda did not look up.

"No."

"It is."

"It is accurate."

Aelira asked permission to read it. Kelda passed the note across. Aelira's expression changed faintly at the final three lines.

"Keep it."

Kelda took it back.

"I intended to."

Mira asked whether Kelda wanted anything from the family added.

"No. You have your own words if you want to send them. This is mine."

Kelda folded the note once and looked at Ian.

"You were right about one thing. Your memory isn't why I wrote this. And I don't especially care whether the machine would describe today accurately."

She held out the folded page.

"I want them to know what I thought was worth writing down. Take that with the plan."

Ian accepted both. Then, while there was still apparently time to make the departure less dignified, he turned towards Lethira.

"Lethira, open your mouth and close your eyes, I have a surprise for you."

The table became still. Lethira looked at Ian. Then around at the audience.

"That sentence becomes considerably worse when you have an audience."

Kelda folded her arms. "He chose the audience."

"No. I think the audience was already here and he failed to respect its tactical significance."

Aelira said nothing. Her gaze left the choice clearly with Lethira. Lethira noticed.

"I know I can refuse."

The history between her and Ian made the request foolish without making it incomprehensible. Chocolate had appeared before. Manga had appeared on cushions. Less than an hour ago she had knowingly held his hand for unnecessary impossible travel after learning the contact was unnecessary. Lethira sighed with theatrical resignation.

"If this is another shirt, I am leaving."

Then, deliberately, she closed her eyes and opened her mouth. A small piece of dark chocolate and fudge brownie appeared between Ian's fingers. He placed it carefully into Lethira's mouth, holding the outer edge while she bit through it. Her eyes remained closed for the first second. Then her eyebrows rose. The brownie was dense and soft, the darker chocolate carrying enough bitterness to remain beneath the sweetness. Lethira finished the bite and chewed slowly.

Kelda watched her face.

"Oh, that's bad."

Aelira glanced at her. "For whom?"

"For us."

Lethira opened her eyes. She looked first at Ian's hand, then at Ian, then at the rest of the table. Nobody pretended they had not been watching.

"That was chocolate," Lethira said.

Aelira nodded. "Apparently in another form."

Lethira's eyes returned to the remaining piece.

"Much more dangerous."

Kelda laughed softly. "You said that about the ice cream."

"I was less informed then."

Tessa asked whether it was good. Lethira looked at her.

"No."

Tessa blinked. Lethira held the pause.

"It was excellent."

Mara breathed out through her nose. The papers remained on the table between them. The brownie had not changed any decision. That seemed to please Mira more than the food itself. Impossible things could happen here without every one of them becoming the organising principle of the room. Lethira looked once more at Ian.

"You are becoming very skilled at making your minor crimes difficult to resent. But I am counting this one."

Ian answered with considerably less restraint.

"If you're going to flirt with a beautiful elf, choose the one that can break you in combat, or the bedroom, or perhaps both at the same time."

He took a small step backwards.

"Now, who wants chocolate brownie, from a plate, in the normal self-feeding fashion?"

For one remarkable second nobody spoke. Lethira's expression stayed still long enough that Kelda began moving slightly away from her. Aelira put her cup down with great care. Mara looked towards Mira. Tessa's eyes widened. Rowan looked at the ceiling. Lethira finally smiled.

"You have made two assumptions. First, that choosing someone capable of breaking you reduces the danger. Second, that I require a choice between combat and the bedroom."

Kelda made a strangled sound. Aelira closed her eyes.

"Lethira."

"What?" Lethira's innocence was too deliberate to be useful.

Aelira regarded her for a long moment. "You were given an opportunity not to answer in kind."

"I considered it."

The room held for half a beat before Aelira judged the consideration brief. Lethira smiled and declared it long enough. Tessa had both hands over her mouth by then, while Lethira's attention returned to Ian with the amusement bright but no longer escalating.

"For the record, that was flirting. And unlike the first unnecessary hand-holding, you have at least stopped pretending the mechanism required it."

Aelira opened her eyes.

"Progress continues to arrive in inconvenient forms."

Mira finally laughed. A plate appeared on the table: brownies already cut into modest squares, with plates and forks. The normal self-feeding fashion received widespread approval. Rowan inspected the arrangement.

"This is much better."

Tessa looked at him. "The food?"

"The delivery."

Mara nodded. "Agreed."

Lethira looked offended.

"I had no complaint about the previous delivery."

"That was apparent," Kelda said.

The brownies reduced the room to chewing for several moments. Aelira eventually took one and declared it better than the scone, which Lethira treated as a betrayal of international consequence. Sereth's abandoned cup still sat where she had left it. That sight brought the meeting back into view. Mira looked at it.

"She'll be back."

Aelira nodded.

"After she speaks to Ruvan."

Tessa looked towards the door Sereth had used.

"How long will that be?"

Nobody answered. Cross-reality chronology had already shown sufficient contempt for prediction. Tessa remembered and sighed.

"Right."

Mira touched the current-plan page again.

"Then Ian should take this to Thomas and Isha before anything begins."

The others agreed. The brownies remained on the table, considerably reduced. The plan remained provisional. Sereth had gone home by choice and would return, or not, after speaking to Ruvan. Ian looked around the group one final time.

"Thank you all, I may not see you again until after the reunion, when I will be taking advantage of the invitations you gave me last time. I hope you enjoy it."

His gaze reached Lethira last. He winked. It could have meant *we have successfully introduced forbidden animated fiction into the Wood Elf settlement and nobody here knows*. It could have been another bad attempt at flirting. Lethira's eyebrows rose. She did not rescue him by choosing an interpretation. Ian disappeared. The revised plan and Kelda's folded letter went with him. Nothing replaced him. For several seconds the café held the shape of an abruptly absent person: the place beside the table where he had been standing, the brownies he had produced, crumbs of scone and the remaining copies of a plan whose original was travelling somewhere none of them could follow.

Tessa looked at the empty space.

"He really does just go."

Kelda leaned back.

"Yes."

"I know. I watched him do it earlier."

"Then you have confirmed the result twice."

Tessa gave her a look. Rowan reached for the teapot.

"More?"

Mira held out her cup. The question restored the table faster than anything deliberate could have done. Tea was poured. Mara moved the remaining brownies towards the centre because they had somehow ended up closer to Lethira. Lethira objected to the implication and took another one before the redistribution could become effective. Aelira watched her.

"You have had enough."

"I am older than you." Lethira said it as though chronology had settled the matter.

Aelira's gaze moved to the brownie in her hand. "That has never improved your judgement."

"It has given me more time to practise."

Kelda took the last half-scone before anybody could decide whether it still belonged to the meeting. The café no longer felt like a place they were inspecting. Mira noticed that only after she had stopped checking the farmhouse door every few minutes. It remained open across the garden. Their kitchen stood beyond it. Nothing had taken the farm from them. Nothing required them to leave. Her son did not yet know that his family had sat here.

That was perhaps the strangest part.

"He'll worry that we're waiting," Mira said.

Tessa looked at her.

"I told Ian we weren't."

"I know." Mira folded her copy of the plan once.

Tessa looked at her mother and pointed out that Thomas would still worry. Mira's mouth softened in agreement. Mara took a small bite of brownie while the familiar prediction settled between them.

"Then Isha will tell him to stop."

Kelda's mouth moved.

"Probably."

Mira smiled. Across the table, Aelira had gone quiet. Her yes felt different now that Ian was gone. She had said it at the open door after Sereth returned safely. The evidence she had asked for had arrived. The choice had remained available. So she had made it. A photograph had been manageable. Moving records had been harder. A conversation would contain all the imperfections preserved images could select away: Thomas interrupting himself, Isha looking at somebody before deciding whether to say the sharper version, pauses, badly timed jokes.

Aelira found she wanted those things almost as much as she wanted their faces. She looked towards Kelda.

"You have been unusually quiet."

Kelda was eating the last piece of scone.

"I am busy."

"You have spent several days saying food does not justify silence."

"It does when somebody has put cream on it."

Aelira accepted this as a temporary defence. Kelda finished, wiped her fingers and looked towards the empty place Ian had occupied. She had expected helping him to be harder in one way and easier in another. The impossible parts kept yielding. Doors. Distance. Rooms. Food. Paper. The work had been people. That was reassuring. People could be asked. Corrected. Left alone. Brought a letter. Allowed to remain angry. Given another chance to answer. Kelda thought of Ian beginning a hug and retreating halfway through it.

A small laugh escaped her. Mara looked over.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"You are doing the thing Aelira does."

Aelira looked offended. "What thing?"

"Saying nothing when clearly thinking something."

"That is called privacy."

Kelda nodded approvingly.

"Good answer."

Tessa returned to the plan.

"Do you think Sereth will bring Ruvan here?"

Aelira shook her head slightly.

"I think she will tell him what happened. After that, he decides."

"He might say no."

"Yes."

Tessa frowned at the page. She did not like the possibility, but neither did she argue with it.

"All right."

Lethira had contributed less since Ian left. Partly because she had a brownie. Mostly because the wink had become irritating. She knew perfectly well what one interpretation meant. The tablet was hidden in her room beneath a folded cloth, containing an absurd quantity of animated Earth stories she had solemnly promised not to unleash upon local cultural development. That alone was enough for conspiracy. The other interpretation remained available too. Ian had called her beautiful. He had made the combat-and-bedroom remark in front of an audience large enough that embarrassment should have killed him if physical law were organised correctly. Earlier, in private, he had admitted enjoying holding her hand.

Then he had asked again. She had squeezed it because she wanted to. That was the useful part. The new knowledge about Ian's experience changed the memory in a way she had not expected. He had not directly felt the pressure of her fingers. Whatever version of him stood beside her carried the action; the actual man received words. Perhaps something as simple as *Lethira squeezed his hand*. Perhaps the prose had described intent. Perhaps it had noticed that she held on a little more firmly after learning she did not need to.

And those words had made him happy enough to tell her. Lethira looked at her own hand. Absurd. Also, inconveniently, rather sweet. She did not mistake sweetness for obligation. Ian's feelings were his problem. Hers remained hers. He was complicated, dangerous in ways that had nothing to do with weapons, frequently foolish and capable of making flirtation sound like a threat assessment. But she liked him. That much was easy. How she liked him did not require immediate classification merely because he had winked.

Lethira smiled to herself. Aelira noticed.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Kelda pointed at her.

"See?"

Aelira looked between them.

"I regret introducing that principle."

Lethira's smile widened. She thought of the tablet hidden upstairs in her room. Then of Ian's face when she told him the second hand squeeze had been deliberate. Some secrets were large enough to destabilise kingdoms. Others involved moving pictures and an English man's poor self-preservation. She could manage both. The ordinary café door opened. Everyone looked. Sereth stood on the other side in the forester's rest. She had returned alone. Her face gave away little.

Aelira rose.

"Ruvan?"

Sereth stepped into the garden and closed the door behind her.

"He is thinking."

No one asked her to translate thinking into yes or no. Sereth came back to the table. Her abandoned tea had gone cold. She tasted it and made a face. Tessa reached for the pot.

"I'll pour you another."

Sereth handed over the cup.

"Thank you."

Mira shifted the plate of brownies towards her.

"Those appeared while you were gone."

Sereth looked at Lethira, who immediately declared the brownies better than the scones. Aelira agreed with enough certainty that Sereth looked between them as if she had returned to find a dispute with a surprisingly developed history.

"That is apparently a serious dispute."

"It has become one," Kelda said.

Sereth took a brownie. The farmhouse door remained open across the garden. The forester's-rest door was closed again, waiting until somebody chose to make it more than a door. Thomas and Isha had not arrived. No one went looking for them. For a little while longer, the people who loved them stayed where they were, drank tea, argued quietly about baked goods, and waited for an answer carried away on two sheets of paper.