## Chapter 410 — One Day Soon

The second missive appeared beside Lethira's tablet while she was still deciding whether the programme she had chosen was genuinely interesting or merely taking an unreasonable amount of time to become so.

She paused it.

The sheet was familiar now: good paper, neat Elven script, no seal pretending at official importance. Ian's method had apparently decided that correspondence between worlds benefited from excellent penmanship.

Lethira picked it up.

> Would you be free for anime and snacks?

She read the single sentence again.

That was better.

No orbit. No impossible landscape. No offer requiring six conditions and a discussion about what counted as crossing between worlds.

Anime and snacks.

Lethira looked at the tablet beside her. The deliberately reserved title remained farther down the list, exactly where she had left it.

She turned the missive over.

> Yes. I am free now.
>
> Knock first.
>
> Bring the snacks you promised.
>
> Lethira

She considered adding something about his courage now that the elf programme was actually waiting for him.

No. He could discover that problem in person.

Lethira signed her name. The sheet vanished cleanly beneath her fingers.

She set the tablet on the low table and stood. Her bow was already resting against the wall where she kept it indoors. She had changed out of the outer travelling layers earlier, though what remained was still recognisably her clothing: practical green-brown fabric, close enough to the body not to catch on branches, loose enough to move in. Her ash-brown hair had been retied once and had already begun escaping again near one ear.

There was no reason to change for Ian.

The thought made her glance towards the small polished metal mirror near the shelf anyway.

Lethira looked at herself, then at the mirror.

"Be quiet."

The mirror had offered no opinion.

She moved two cushions into a more useful position near the tablet, reconsidered one of them, and put it back almost where it had begun.

That was irritating.

Lethira sat down. The room returned to stillness around her: lamplight, familiar wood, the faint sounds of the settlement beyond the walls. Somewhere elsewhere, Aelira remained entirely unaware that an Earth device containing several lifetimes of illustrated cultural misconduct was hidden in Lethira's room.

Lethira woke the tablet again.

The reserved title waited.

She smiled, then listened for the knock.

---

It came while she was still beside the low table.

Lethira stood and crossed the room.

Ian waited outside in the clothes she had come to recognise as his usual ones. No elaborate preparation had accompanied the second attempt at a date. That seemed appropriate after their first had involved leaving two worlds beneath their feet.

She opened the door fully.

At this distance, with neither a bow across her back nor travelling equipment interrupting the line of her body, Ian noticed details that had been easier to lose among everything else happening during their earlier encounters.

She was dressed casually—at least by the standards of a Wood Elf who might regard being prepared to walk into a forest as ordinary clothing. The heavier outer layer was gone. What remained was practical green and brown, shaped for movement and fitted enough through the shoulders, waist and hips to make her build clear. She was athletic and distinctly feminine, long-limbed and shapely, though there was little of the conspicuous muscular definition an Earth athlete might have developed to support the same impression of physical competence. Nothing about her physique advertised the amount of violence a century of experience suggested she was capable of.

Her ash-brown hair was tied back more loosely than when she travelled. Several strands had escaped near her face and around one long ear, where a silver cuff caught the warm light. There was no ceremonial styling, no court dress, and no sign she had transformed herself for his arrival. She looked comfortable in her own room.

The height difference was more obvious here too. Ian had known she was tall. Knowing it from description and standing directly in front of her were slightly different things. Lethira had about two inches on him, enough that when their eyes met his gaze travelled subtly upward rather than level. It was hardly dramatic. It was simply there, another physical fact about her that had escaped proper notice while planets, reunions and impossible doorways occupied the available attention.

He smiled.

"Hey, lovely to see you again. snacks will appear shortly."

Lethira's answering smile came easily.

"Good. I was beginning to suspect the snacks were a fictional device used to lure elves into watching questionable human entertainment."

Ian paused.

The problem of greeting her arrived approximately one second too late. A bow had the advantage of politeness and the disadvantage that he had no idea whether it meant anything remotely appropriate here. A handshake belonged to Earth and seemed absurdly professional after holding hands above two planets. A hug had precedent, although the previous one had also included Lethira explaining that there was no mysterious Elven hugging ritual and Ian should simply ask.

His uncertainty lasted long enough to become visible.

Lethira watched it happen. Her smile widened.

"You're doing it again."

She spared him the remaining possibilities. Lethira stepped across the threshold and put her arms around him.

The embrace was easy this time, less instructional than the first. Her greater height registered again at close range in the angle of shoulders and arms, subtle but unmistakable. She held him firmly for a few seconds, with the same unselfconscious confidence she brought to most physical things, then released him before the greeting could become an examination of itself.

"There. You have now survived the ritual twice. At three, I may consider you trained."

She stepped back into the room and left the doorway open for him. Behind her, the tablet waited on the low table between two cushions. One of them had been moved recently enough that its final position looked suspiciously deliberate.

Lethira glanced towards it, then back to Ian.

"Come in. I have preserved the embarrassing elves for you."

Her expression suggested this had required considerable discipline.

"Excellent, and the continued training on inter species greetings is most welcome."

"I am pleased you recognise the seriousness of the curriculum."

She closed the door behind him and indicated the cushion beside the low table—the one she had moved twice while waiting. Ian sat where directed. Lethira settled onto the other cushion, close enough that both could comfortably see the tablet without arranging themselves around it.

The room made the height difference less obvious while they were seated. It replaced it with other differences Ian had previously seen mostly in passing: the length of her ears through the loose ash-brown hair, the silver cuff on one of them, the economical way she folded herself onto the cushion. Even relaxed, Lethira gave the impression that her body generally did what she asked of it without requiring negotiation.

For a little while she showed him what she had already discovered about the tablet. She had learned the basic controls quickly, though her organisational system for the watch list appeared to consist partly of moving especially suspicious-looking programmes into positions where Ian could not plausibly miss them.

Then, at an appropriate pause, Ian said, "Two earth foods to try. Not a delicacy as such, but traditional. Cola and pizza".

The low table acquired dinner.

A large bottle of cola appeared first, accompanied by two glasses. Beside it came a broad cardboard box, warm enough for the scent of baked bread, tomato and cheese to reach them before the lid had been lifted. Inside, one half of the pizza carried pepperoni, the other sliced mushrooms, the whole thing already cut for two people.

Lethira looked from the bottle to the box, then back at Ian.

"This is traditional?"

There was no disdain in it. Mostly calculation.

She leaned forward and inspected the pizza more closely. Bread she understood. Cheese, certainly. Mushrooms required no cultural bridge whatsoever. The red sauce and circular pieces of cured meat needed more attention, but none of the individual ideas were particularly alien.

"The human world has spent a great deal of effort putting several sensible foods on top of another sensible food."

Her gaze shifted to the bottle.

The cola was harder to classify.

Lethira picked it up carefully and turned it in her hands, studying the dark liquid. Tiny bubbles gathered against the inside of the bottle.

"This one looks medicinal. Or poisonous."

Her mouth curved.

"Possibly both. That would explain why you brought a large bottle."

She opened the pizza box fully and inhaled once, more deliberately this time. The teasing eased.

"That smells very good."

Lethira reached for a mushroom slice, then stopped just short of it. Her eyes went to Ian's side of the table.

"You brought two kinds. Is this because you do not know which I would prefer, or because Earth has rules about which one I am supposed to choose first?"

"I didn't know your preference, but hoping you could experience both. I believe how little the man gets to eat is a measure of the evening."

Ian smiled.

Lethira gave him a measured look. "That sounds like a tradition invented by hungry women."

He poured her a glass.

The cola struck the bottom with a soft rush and immediately climbed. Dark liquid vanished beneath tan foam; bubbles raced through it in restless streams, gathering against the glass and breaking continuously at the surface. Ian slowed before it escaped over the rim.

Lethira leaned closer. Her expression changed from amusement to concentrated suspicion.

The foam sank while she watched, leaving a thin brown head around the edge. Fresh bubbles continued appearing from nowhere she could see.

Lethira lifted the glass but did not drink yet. She turned it slightly in the lamplight, following the trails rising through the liquid.

"It is still doing something."

Her ears shifted a fraction with her attention.

She brought the glass closer to her face. The scent made her eyebrows rise: sweetness, spice, something citrus-like beneath it, and none of the herbal bitterness its colour had suggested.

Lethira looked at Ian over the rim.

"I withdraw medicinal. This smells like someone challenged a confectioner to make a potion."

"Try some, I'm excited to see if you like it. I'm also hoping to maybe softens my sentence for whatever crime against the Wood Elves anime has performed, by bribing my judge and jailor"

That earned him a slow smile.

"Ah. So the food is evidence of corruption."

Lethira took a cautious mouthful.

The carbonation reached her before the flavour fully did.

She stopped. Her eyes widened. She swallowed with visible care, lowered the glass several centimetres and pressed her lips together while the unfamiliar fizz finished asserting itself.

For a moment Ian received no verdict.

Lethira breathed out through her nose.

"It bites."

She looked down at the glass again, then took a second drink. This one was larger. The surprise remained, though she was ready for it now. Her expression settled into thought as the sweetness and spice caught up with the bubbles.

A third, smaller taste followed.

Lethira placed the glass on the table.

"I like it."

She seemed faintly annoyed by the result.

"It is much too sweet. It attacks the tongue for no useful reason. I would not want it every day."

Her hand remained near the glass.

"But I like it."

She looked towards Ian, caught what was presumably satisfaction in his expression, and narrowed her eyes.

"Do not become triumphant. Your sentence has been reduced by perhaps one day."

The pizza received a less suspicious examination. Lethira took one of the mushroom slices first. When she lifted it, a strand of cheese followed until she caught it with one finger and folded it back onto the slice. She inspected the construction for a moment, then bit through the pointed end.

This reaction was quieter.

She chewed, took another bite and nodded once.

"The bread is good. The cheese is good. Mushrooms were already a sound decision."

By the time she reached the crust, there was no uncertainty left about the mushroom half.

She took a pepperoni slice next. The cured meat earned a pause halfway through the first bite.

"Saltier. And stronger."

Another bite.

Lethira considered the two remaining sections of her first slices as if this were now a legitimate comparison rather than an interdimensional snack.

"The mushroom one is better. But I am willing to continue investigating the other half."

She reached for another mushroom slice, then stopped with her fingers just above it and looked at Ian.

"I should warn you that your measure of the evening may become unfavourable very quickly."

Ian laughed.

"I'm glad you approve of Earth snacks. Would you like a larger thing to watch the anime on? For tonight only, wouldn't want you getting in trouble. At least, not with anyone else."

Lethira's hand stopped halfway to the pizza.

The last sentence reached her a fraction after the practical offer did.

Her eyes lifted to him.

"Not with anyone else."

She repeated it slowly, as though checking the wording for defects. None apparently presented themselves.

A smile began at one corner of her mouth.

"You improve when given training."

She took the slice and settled back onto her cushion, one long leg folded beneath her. The cola stood beside her with its remaining bubbles rising through the dark liquid; she picked it up for another drink, considerably less cautious this time.

The fizz still made her blink.

She swallowed and looked towards the tablet.

"A larger screen would be useful. For tonight."

There was enough emphasis on the final two words to make clear that she had noticed his restraint as well as the offer. The tablet itself was already an object she had agreed to keep discreet. Turning her room permanently into some impossible Earth viewing chamber would have been another decision entirely.

Tonight was simpler.

Lethira's gaze returned to Ian.

"And I appreciate your concern for my reputation. Although if Aelira eventually discovers that I have been secretly watching human stories on an impossible device, I suspect the size of the screen will not be the part she objects to."

A pause.

"As for the other kind of trouble..."

Her expression became pleasantly dangerous.

"I have more than a century of experience surviving poor decisions."

She reached for the pepperoni this time.

"So yes. Make it larger."

A flat screen appeared against the wall opposite them, sized sensibly enough that it looked as though it belonged there for the evening and nowhere beyond it. The tablet's display mirrored onto it at once, turning one suspicious thumbnail into a much larger and more incriminating proposition.

Lethira looked from the screen to Ian, then back to the screen.

Ian said, "I'm ready." He pondered. "Maybe."

Her smile sharpened almost immediately.

"Maybe is an excellent beginning."

She reached for her cola, took another drink, tolerated the fizz with better discipline than before, and set the glass down beside the pizza box.

On the larger screen, the elf woman's armour continued failing to perform several of the duties Lethira considered fundamental to clothing.

Lethira pointed at it.

"You understand, I assume, that if this begins with her getting lost in a forest while dressed like that, I will have opinions before the opening song ends."

She shifted slightly on the cushion, folding one leg beneath her and letting her shoulder angle a little more towards him so they could both see the screen comfortably.

"I am also reserving judgement on whether this is meant to be lewd, foolish, or simply evidence that humans do not know what weather is."

Her eyes moved sideways to him.

"And if I discover that you selected it because you wanted to see my face during the stupid parts, your sentence will increase again."

The accusation was not especially stern.

Lethira took a mushroom slice, bit through it, and looked back to the screen.

"Well? Press play, Ian. Let us see what crime against my people your world has committed."

"I'm not being held fully accountable for your choices. Unless it involves hand holding."

Ian grinned and pressed play, giving her shoulder a light, playful nudge with his own.

Lethira rocked perhaps half an inch. She turned her head slowly towards him.

"An interesting place to volunteer responsibility."

The opening music began before Ian could be tried for anything further. Bright colours crossed the larger screen, followed by an improbable forest, an even more improbable castle, and several characters whose occupations were apparently communicated primarily through the amount and location of armour they were not wearing.

Lethira watched in silence.

That silence lasted almost twenty seconds.

"No."

The first elf had appeared.

She was tall, pale-haired and equipped with a bow whose limbs seemed too short for her height. Her ears pointed dramatically upward through hair that should have caught around them every time she turned her head.

Lethira leaned forward.

"No, no. Look at that bow. She could use it. Technically. If her enemies were very considerate and stood nearby."

A moment later the fictional elf vaulted from a tree, landed silently and announced that humans could never understand the ancient forest.

Lethira stared.

Her expression became solemn.

"Ah. So she is an idiot."

The story introduced the human protagonist shortly afterward. He immediately failed to notice that the beautiful stranger watching him from ten paces away possessed ears extending conspicuously beyond her hair.

Lethira turned towards Ian.

"I withdraw my criticism. He is also an idiot. They may be suited."

Ian's shoulder remained beside hers. She nudged it back with slightly more force than he had used, though still comfortably within the range of teasing.

The pizza diminished as the film continued. Lethira preferred the mushroom half but made sufficiently frequent investigative incursions into the pepperoni that Ian's earlier theory about the measure of the evening began moving against him. Cola proved even more dangerous. After the fourth drink, she no longer approached it with caution at all, though the strongest bursts of carbonation still produced a tiny narrowing of her eyes.

Then the fictional elf informed the human that her people lived for centuries and therefore could never understand the urgency of human lives.

Lethira stopped chewing.

For the first time since the film began, amusement did not immediately follow.

She watched the scene finish. The human character made an impassioned reply about the value of a short life. The elf looked stricken. Music arrived to ensure nobody missed the significance.

Lethira swallowed and reached for her glass.

"That one is less stupid. Humans in my world have said similar things. Elves have too."

Nothing in her voice suggested injury. It was closer to recognition.

"Usually with fewer violins."

The film moved on before the subject demanded anything from either of them. A few minutes later, the elf's clothing was torn in a fight in a manner so geometrically selective that Lethira's brief seriousness collapsed completely.

She laughed.

"There. Your civilisation has lost its reduced sentence. And she has been fighting in a forest for three days wearing boots with raised heels. Whoever created this woman hates ankles."

Eventually the film paused at a natural break. Lethira regarded the screen with the thoughtful expression of somebody conducting a fair review despite substantial evidence against the accused.

"The forest is nonsense. The bow is offensive. Their understanding of ears is poor. The human man is alive because the story apparently likes him."

She reached for the last mushroom slice and discovered only an empty section of cardboard.

Her eyes moved to Ian's side of the box. There was still pizza there.

Lethira looked at him, then, rather conspicuously, down at his hand resting near them.

"You did specify one category in which you accepted responsibility."

Her voice had become quieter, though the amusement remained.

She set her glass aside. Rather than wait for him to negotiate the wording, Lethira placed her hand over his.

Her fingers settled between his with comfortable certainty.

"There. Now you may be held fully accountable for something."

Ian blushed and smiled in roughly equal measure.

"Maybe with some of the outfit changes her enemies might stand still for her"

Lethira looked at the frozen image on the screen, where the fictional Wood Elf's latest loss of fabric had somehow improved neither mobility nor protection.

"Possibly. Confusion is a legitimate battlefield advantage. Although relying on your opponent becoming too embarrassed to shoot you seems difficult to practise."

Her hand remained over his.

There was a small mark of tomato sauce just above her upper lip.

Ian noticed it while she was still looking towards the screen. His free hand came up almost without thought.

Lethira moved.

There was no dramatic recoil. One moment his hand was approaching her face; the next her fingers had closed around his wrist.

The change was so quick that the movement between the two positions scarcely seemed to have existed.

Her grip did not hurt.

It also did not yield.

For a fraction of a second, Lethira's expression had changed with it. The amusement disappeared beneath something older and much more automatic: attention narrowing, body already responding before the room or the person in front of her had been consciously classified as safe.

Then she recognised Ian.

Her eyes dropped to his hand, followed its interrupted path, then narrowed slightly as she realised where he had been looking.

The warrior vanished from her face almost as quickly as she had appeared.

Lethira's mouth twitched.

"Ah."

She kept hold of his wrist for another second, apparently considering the situation, then released him.

"That was not a prohibition. It was an occupational reflex."

She wiped a fingertip above her lip, looked at the faint streak of tomato on it, and understood the rest.

That earned Ian a rather different look.

"You were trying to help. I have spent a very long time teaching people that reaching unexpectedly towards my head is a poor idea."

She took a small drink of cola. The bubbles still made the tip of one ear shift almost imperceptibly.

Then she put the glass down.

"If you still wish to finish what you started, I promise not to arrest your wrist this time."

Ian moved more carefully and wiped the remaining trace of tomato from above her lip.

"Sorry for triggering something there. It wasn't entirely unpleasant though"

Lethira went still long enough to let him finish.

At the second sentence, one eyebrow rose.

"I noticed."

Her tone was dry, but the corner of her mouth had already betrayed her.

She looked briefly at the wrist she had caught, then back at him. "You should probably avoid learning the wrong lesson from that. I can stop a hand without hurting the person attached to it. Those are different skills."

Her fingers tightened once around his hand where they still rested together.

"Although I suppose there are worse discoveries for a man to make on a date than finding out the woman beside him can restrain him very easily."

There was no boast in it. If anything, that made it land more clearly. Lethira had spent too much of her life being physically competent to treat competence as performance.

Her gaze lingered on his face for a moment, amused by the blush still present there.

"Next time you may simply say, 'You have sauce on your face.' Or ask."

She leaned back towards the screen, shoulder settling against his again as though the interruption had been entirely absorbed into the evening.

"Though your method was more educational."

"I'm learning a lot, you're an excellent teacher." Ian paused. "this isn't my world, so forgive my ignorance.. have you known many humans?"

The humour in Lethira's face eased.

Her hand remained with his. For a few moments she looked towards the waiting screen rather than answering, her thumb resting lightly along the side of his hand.

"Met? Many. Known is a more difficult word."

Lethira had travelled beyond the deep forest often enough that humans were hardly exotic to her. Merrowford had not been strange territory. Royal service brought merchants, messengers, petitioners and representatives of neighbouring peoples into places where she worked; ranger work took her near roads and borders where the forest met settlements that had not always been there. A life measured in more than a century of dangerous work accumulated faces even when it did not accumulate friendships.

"Humans trade with us. They travel our borders. Some are admitted farther in for particular reasons. I have spent time in human towns, dealt with Guild people, traders, guards, officials." Her mouth bent slightly. "Idiots. Competent people. Occasionally both."

The relationship between their peoples was old and complicated. Humans had pushed east into the forests. There had been wars, then trade, agreements and borders, while memory did not move at the same speed for people whose lives were measured differently.

"Ruvan distrusts humans much more than I do," Lethira said. "You've probably gathered that. He remembers some of the old hatred through the people who raised him, which can make inherited memories very polished. I have always preferred judging the person who is actually annoying me."

Her fingers gave Ian's a small squeeze.

"Thomas benefited from that eventually."

There was affection in his name, uncomplicated by the fact that he had been human. Lethira had known him frightened, growing, infuriating, useful, in love with Isha and increasingly impossible to dismiss as a temporary visitor. Whatever humans meant as a people, Thomas had long ago become Thomas.

She looked down at their joined hands.

"So yes. I have known humans."

A quieter pause followed.

"I haven't known many like this. Pizza, secret moving pictures, hand-holding and having one reach for my face while I am unarmed in my own room is a fairly specific category."

Lethira leaned her shoulder into his once.

"You are presently the only entry."

Ian, for once, returned the gesture and squeezed her hand. The pressure she gave back made the earlier catch at his wrist easier to understand. There was strength beneath his fingers that her build did not announce in human terms. Her hand was slender, her forearm lean beneath the sleeve, yet when she chose to close her fingers there was an assurance to it that suggested considerable force remained unused.

Lethira noticed his attention shift. Her eyes moved briefly to their hands. A small smile appeared.

"I feel very privileged. Sorry for bringing that, our worlds view on fantasy worlds is perhaps more about careful camera angles than the unpleasantness of humanity. I think I prefer anime"

Lethira looked at the television, where the fictional elf remained frozen in a pose apparently designed to demonstrate both poor tactics and excellent camera awareness.

"I may prefer anime too. Your version of us is ridiculous, but at least this woman has only offended archery, forestry, clothing, anatomy and perhaps common sense."

She considered the list.

"That is manageable."

Her humour softened before she continued.

"You did not need to apologise for asking. Humans are part of my life. So are the wars. Pretending otherwise because we are eating your pizza would be stranger than mentioning them."

She picked up her cola and drank. The bubbles no longer surprised her enough to interrupt the motion, though she still regarded the glass afterward as if it had committed a minor personal offence.

"And your people imagining worlds like mine is interesting. You have no Wood Elves. No corrupted beasts. No High Elf courts, no Demon King, no old forest borders carried in living memory. Yet you invent them."

That seemed to interest her more than the inaccuracies.

"You invent long-lived people and then wonder how they would love humans. You invent wars between peoples who live beside one another. You invent forests humans are warned not to enter."

Her mouth curved.

"And then apparently you decide the most important unanswered question is how little armour an elf woman can wear before somebody notices."

Lethira looked down at herself: practical cloth, covered legs, fitted layers intended to survive branches, weather and actual movement.

She looked back at the fictional elf.

"I confess that part remains mysterious."

Her hand shifted within Ian's, fingers fitting more comfortably between his.

"Stories do not have to include every unpleasant thing merely because unpleasant things exist. I spent more than a century dealing with real corrupted creatures. I do not require my entertainment to improve me."

There was a brief pause.

"Sometimes I would like the beautiful idiot with the inadequate bow to defeat something while dressed irresponsibly. Preferably after eating more pizza."

Lethira reached towards the box with her free hand, found one of the remaining pepperoni slices on Ian's side, and stopped before taking it.

She looked at him.

"How little did you say the man was supposed to eat?"

The question was delivered with complete seriousness.

Her fingers tightened around his again. Only slightly. Enough to make the strength beneath the surface apparent once more.

Lethira's eyes flicked down to their joined hands and then back to his face.

This time there was no mistaking that she knew he had noticed.

Her smile became distinctly mischievous.

"Careful. You may discover further cultural differences."

She took the slice.

Ian narrowed his eyes and looked at her, noticing how close she had become.

"it's interesting you've chosen the lewdest evidence of my cultures love of Elven thighs"

Lethira went very still.

Her eyes moved to the screen. The fictional elf was indeed supplying considerable evidence.

Then Lethira looked down at her own legs, sensibly covered in practical clothing.

Finally she looked back at Ian.

"I chose the programme."

A pause.

"You chose the thighs."

Her composure lasted perhaps another second before her smile broke through.

"And I seem to remember predicting that your civilisation would provide useful observational evidence. For accuracy, though, I did move this one higher in the list after you left."

The confession was delivered without shame.

"I had already seen enough of the picture to suspect it might make you uncomfortable. I was curious."

Her fingers tightened around his, gently this time.

"And now I have learned that human fascination with elves apparently extends below the ears. Very educational."

Ian's gaze dropped.

Practical trousers covered her legs from hip to ankle, made for movement rather than display, but sitting close beside her made the long lines of them difficult to ignore.

His free hand lifted a little, then stopped.

"This jeans are increasingly uncomfortable," he said, half joking.

Lethira followed the abandoned movement of his hand. Her eyes returned to his face.

For several seconds she said nothing.

Then the smile arrived.

"Good."

She took another bite of pizza.

Ian looked at her.

"Not the trousers," she clarified. "You remembered the lesson before I had to catch your wrist again."

There was satisfaction beneath the teasing. He had looked. He had wanted. He had stopped.

Lethira shifted on the cushion, settling one leg a little more comfortably beneath herself. The movement did absolutely nothing to improve Ian's problem.

Whether she knew that was difficult to determine for perhaps half a second.

Then she looked directly at him.

She knew.

"As for your clothing, I am uncertain why this has become my responsibility. I am sitting here fully dressed."

Her eyes flicked towards the television.

"Unlike my alleged representative."

The fictional elf had returned to the screen in another improbable action pose, one leg exposed almost to the hip for reasons apparently unrelated to either combat or climate.

Lethira regarded her critically.

"Perhaps your people designed those clothes for safety after all. Very little fabric means very little opportunity for discomfort."

She drank from her cola, now entirely accustomed to the fizz, and placed the glass down.

Her hand was still joined with his.

Lethira's thumb moved once across the side of his hand.

"If you want to touch me, Ian, you may ask. I may say yes."

A slight squeeze of his fingers.

"I may also make fun of you while saying yes. Those are separate matters."

She turned her attention back towards the television, leaving their shoulders together and their hands intertwined.

"And if your trousers are suffering because I have legs, I refuse all legal responsibility."

Ian raised his free hand a few inches.

"May I?"

Lethira looked at the hand, then at him. The teasing in her expression softened. She had offered the choice lightly, but she did not answer it lightly merely because he had finally taken her up on it.

"Yes."

She shifted her leg just enough to make the permission unambiguous and rested her own hand briefly against the outside of her thigh.

"Here."

Then her hand returned to his other one.

There was something almost unfair about how composed she remained. Ian had been watching her for much of the evening, blushing whenever she noticed, while Lethira seemed perfectly capable of acknowledging attraction as another fact in the room.

Her mouth curved.

"And before you become overwhelmed by your success, this is still only touching my leg. Your people have apparently prepared you for far more dramatic circumstances. Try to survive the difference."

Ian rested his hand on Lethira's upper thigh and gave the smallest experimental squeeze.

The resistance beneath the cloth surprised him.

Her leg felt firm in a way her appearance had not advertised. Lethira was lean, long-limbed and graceful; beside Earth-Isha's visibly trained physique, there was comparatively little muscular definition to warn a human eye what was underneath.

"Wow."

Ian covered his mouth almost immediately and let go of her leg.

"I.. was not expecting that. I am a big fan though."

Lethira stared at him. Her eyes dropped to the place his hand had just left, then returned to his face.

Slowly, an expression of profound satisfaction appeared.

"A big fan."

She repeated the phrase as though preserving it for later use.

Ian sighed a little. "you are very.. calm.. person Lethira, apart from the occasional pleasant pinning. I do like it."

That changed her expression. The amusement remained, though it settled into something less performative. Lethira took another drink of cola and considered him over the rim before setting the glass aside.

"I have had a long time to practise being calm. It is useful when people are frightened. Useful when something is hunting you. Useful when a young human boy insists upon doing something heroic and foolish because the alternative is admitting he is fourteen."

Affection briefly softened the reference to Thomas.

"And I am in my own room, eating very good food with a man I invited here. There is presently little reason not to be calm."

She glanced down at her thigh.

"Apparently my leg has provided you with one."

The smile returned.

Lethira flexed the leg once beneath the fabric, casually. The change was subtle, though enough to make the shape beneath the cloth tighten with a density that again seemed out of proportion to how lightly built she looked.

"I did tell you appearances were unreliable. Humans seem to advertise strength more visibly. Elves do not always need to."

There was no attempt to quantify it. Lethira had no Earth measurements to offer and no apparent urge to turn herself into an experiment.

Instead, she reached for the hand Ian had withdrawn and placed it between both of hers.

"As for the pinning..."

Her fingers closed around his hand.

Firmly.

Not painfully. Not even close. Yet the effortless security of the hold made the point much more effectively than boasting would have.

Lethira watched his face.

"I have been very restrained."

Her expression was almost innocent.

After a moment she eased her grip, keeping his hand rather than releasing it.

"And you seem disproportionately pleased whenever I remind you. I should perhaps be concerned that this programme is teaching me things about human men."

She shifted slightly closer, their joined hands resting between them.

"But I agree with one part of what you said. I like this."

The words carried none of her earlier theatrical judgement. She meant the room, the food, the ridiculous programme, his embarrassment, the permission asked and given, and whatever uncertain thing they were allowing to develop between them.

Then her mouth curved again.

"And since you have declared yourself a fan of my thigh after touching it once, I reserve the right to become unbearable about this."

"You're unbearableness is wonderful even when embarrassing. I'm pleased and all you've pinned is my hand, I'm trying to decide what triggers a more comprehensive responses without breaking myself"

Lethira's expression changed slowly as she understood exactly what he was trying to decide.

Her eyes went first to their joined hands, then travelled back to Ian's face. The amusement remained, but it acquired the particular patience of somebody listening to a novice propose an unnecessarily hazardous experiment.

"You are still thinking like a human approaching a dangerous animal. Do not poke the elf until something interesting happens."

Her thumb moved once across his knuckles.

She shifted on the cushion and turned more fully towards him. At six feet, even seated, there was a little more of her when she occupied the space deliberately. The relaxed ranger he had been sharing pizza with had not disappeared; she simply became easier to imagine in other circumstances. A century of experience sat lightly on her until attention called it forward.

"If you surprise me badly enough, the response you receive may be very comprehensive. It will also be extremely poor flirting. And I would prefer not to discover exactly how much of your projected body your impossible machine considers replaceable."

Lethira lifted their joined hands and, with no visible effort, brought Ian's down against the cushion between them. Her palm settled over the back of his hand.

The pressure was gentle.

The absence of any realistic possibility of moving it was less gentle.

She watched his face for a moment, clearly entertained by the contrast. There was no strain in her forearm, no bracing through her shoulder, nothing that looked like the beginning of a contest. She might have been keeping a piece of paper from blowing away.

"That is the useful part of being stronger than someone," she said. "You do not need to prove it by hurting them."

Then she released him and threaded her fingers through his again.

"As for something more comprehensive... You have already learned the correct mechanism."

A pause, just long enough for the television and its increasingly neglected fictional elves to become conspicuously irrelevant.

"You ask."

Lethira tilted her head slightly.

"Would you like me to pin you?"

A very small "yes" came out of Ian's mouth.

"Yes. I would. But, only if you want to, of course."

Lethira's expression softened.

"I know. And I do."

Her fingers loosened from his hand.

Then she moved.

There was more warning this time than when she had caught his wrist earlier, though not much more opportunity to contest it. Lethira took his wrist in one hand and placed the other against his shoulder, guiding him backwards with controlled, unhurried pressure until the cushion gave way beneath him and his back met the rug beyond it.

She followed without haste.

One knee settled beside his hip, safely on the floor rather than on him. Her other leg gave her an easy base. She brought his captured wrist down above his shoulder and held it there with one hand.

That was apparently sufficient.

No visible effort entered her arm. Her shoulder remained relaxed; her breathing did not change. The same lean Wood Elf who had been eating mushroom pizza a moment earlier now occupied the space above him with the quiet stability of someone for whom controlling another person's movement was an old and thoroughly understood skill.

Lethira looked down at him.

Her ash-brown hair had shifted with the movement, several loose strands falling nearer her face. One long ear showed clearly through them, its silver cuff catching the light. From this angle the extra inches of height became something else entirely: reach, leverage, and the unmistakable fact that she was choosing to use very little of either.

Her mouth curved.

"This is more comprehensive."

She adjusted her grip once, not tightening it so much as making its certainty obvious.

"And since you were worried about breaking yourself, I should point out that I am quite capable of knowing how much force I am using."

The television continued behind her.

Neither of them was watching it.

Lethira's free hand came down beside his other shoulder, supporting her weight against the floor. She leaned closer, enough that the teasing in her expression became easier to read.

"You really were pleased by the wrist. I wondered."

Her gaze moved briefly over his face, taking in the embarrassment she had been cultivating all evening with considerable success.

Then she gave the pinned wrist the smallest demonstrative press.

Still painless.

Still immovable.

"Ian. I would not do this if I did not want to. So you may stop trying to protect me from enjoying myself."

She remained there, comfortably in control, waiting for him rather than increasing anything on her own.

"I would never want to stop you enjoying yourself, it makes me happy."

Lethira's expression softened at that.

Ian glanced down towards his waist and below.

"This seems to making me quite happy too"

Her eyes followed his for only a moment. Understanding arrived.

For perhaps the first time that evening, Lethira's composure developed a visible crack. Her eyebrows rose; then one corner of her mouth pulled upward, amusement fighting with what looked suspiciously like satisfaction.

"I see."

She remained above him, one hand still holding his wrist against the rug. If the evidence of his enjoyment embarrassed her, she showed remarkably little sign of it.

"I was wondering whether that particular human response was as obvious as your stories suggest."

Her gaze returned to his face.

The joke was ready to continue. Then she looked properly at him.

Ian was smiling. Happy, certainly. Curious too. Yet something quieter had entered his eyes beneath both, a small sadness that did not fit the pizza, the ridiculous elf on the television, or the fact that Lethira currently had him pinned to her floor because he had asked her to.

Her amusement faded by degrees.

The pressure on his wrist eased, though she did not immediately move away. Her free hand shifted from beside his shoulder and rested lightly against his upper arm.

"Ian. Why do you look sad?"

"ah, I don't mean to ruin the mood. This is the first time I've spent time with someone from my world that hasn't been emotionally draining, or upsetting. Just .. lovely. A bit more than lovely in the last few minutes"

The sadness made more sense once he gave it words.

Lethira's grip loosened as Ian pulled gently at the wrist she still held. She released him at once.

His freed hand rose towards her face. This time nothing in her body intercepted it.

He brushed the loose ash-brown strands back behind her ear, careful around the silver cuff. Lethira remained still beneath the touch. Her eyes followed his face rather than his hand.

"This is wonderful. And so are you."

For once, she had no quick answer ready.

A little colour reached her face, subtle beneath the warm light but visible from this close.

Lethira looked down at him for another moment, then shifted her weight and sat back beside him. The pin ended as simply as it had begun. She did not move far. One leg remained alongside his, and after a moment she reached for the hand that had brushed her hair aside.

"You haven't ruined anything. And you are allowed to be happy about something while also being sad that other things were harder."

She seemed to consider saying more, then discarded it.

Instead she looked at the abandoned television. The fictional elf had been left frozen in clothing that continued to lose its argument with practicality. Half a pizza remained, though substantially less than Ian had begun the evening entitled to. The cola bottle stood open between two glasses.

Lethira's gaze returned to him.

"I like this too. I like that you knocked. I like that you brought ridiculous food and sat in my room instead of deciding our second outing required another planet. I like embarrassing you."

Her mouth curved.

"Quite a lot, apparently."

She turned his hand over in hers, studying it briefly before threading their fingers together again.

"And I like that when you wanted something, you asked me. The pinning was enjoyable."

That brought back more of her usual expression.

"So was discovering how pleased you were by it."

She leaned closer until her shoulder rested against his again. For all the strength Ian had just discovered beneath her apparent ease, the contact was gentle.

"You do not have to make this evening important enough to repay the difficult ones. It can just be lovely."

Lethira's smile returned, quieter now.

"And somewhat more than lovely, if that continues to suit us. Though eventually I intend to discover whether the elf with the terrible bow survives her own wardrobe."

"shall we continue the film?"

Ian leaned against her.

Lethira adjusted almost automatically to the new weight, shifting one shoulder so he fitted more comfortably beside her.

"Yes."

She reached for the tablet with her free hand and restarted the film.

The fictional elf resumed her speech as if nothing significant had happened during the interruption. Within thirty seconds she was running through woodland in boots Lethira had already condemned, pursued by creatures whose ability to move through undergrowth appeared considerably less realistic than their horns.

Lethira watched. Her fingers remained threaded with Ian's.

After a minute she settled more fully against him in return. The difference in their height gave her shoulder an inconvenient advantage as a place to lean, though she seemed pleased enough with the arrangement to make no attempt to correct it.

On screen, the elf drew her inadequate bow.

Lethira sighed.

"Still too short."

The arrow nevertheless crossed an impossible distance and struck exactly where the plot required.

"Of course."

The film improved somewhat once it stopped pretending to understand archery. The human protagonist and his elven companion entered an abandoned settlement, found evidence of an older war, and spent several minutes disagreeing about whether ruins belonged more to the people who had built them or those who remembered what had happened there.

Lethira became quieter.

She did not stop the film, nor did she withdraw from Ian.

Eventually the fictional argument ended badly, with both characters saying something unnecessarily cruel and walking in opposite directions while mournful music attempted to make their stubbornness profound.

Lethira ate the last bite of crust.

"That part was believable."

A little later, the human returned.

The apology took approximately twenty seconds and solved almost nothing.

Lethira made a dissatisfied sound.

"Too short."

She glanced sideways at Ian.

"Not the bow this time."

Her mouth curved, and she looked back to the screen.

The evening settled around them.

The cola slowly lost some of its aggression. The pizza box became mostly cardboard and grease marks. Ian remained against her, and Lethira's hand stayed in his except when she needed both hands to demonstrate why a particular sword grip would have damaged the fictional hero's wrist.

At one point she laughed hard enough to lean more heavily into him.

At another, the elf on screen removed her boots beside a fire and revealed that she had apparently crossed half a continent without a single blister.

Lethira stared.

"This is the most offensive thing so far. I have walked for days in good boots and still hated my feet by the end."

The film eventually found its way back to the romance it had been constructing with all the subtlety of falling masonry.

The human and elf sat beside one another beneath an exaggerated moon.

Neither spoke.

Their shoulders touched.

Lethira noticed. Her eyes shifted briefly towards Ian, presently doing much the same thing.

She smiled.

"At least they learned one believable technique."

She rested her head lightly against his.

On the screen, the two fictional characters continued failing to say anything useful.

Lethira seemed content to let them.

As the credits began, Ian asked, "I'd like to walk around the village with you, if you'd like it to? I'd be interested in the places you know and like."

Lethira looked at him. Her expression changed in a way he had begun to recognise: amusement first, then consideration beneath it.

"You have finally asked me to go somewhere that does not require leaving the ground."

She sounded approving.

"Yes. I would like that."

She untangled her hand from his reluctantly enough that the reluctance was visible, then stood. At full height the two inches between them returned immediately. After spending much of the film folded together on cushions, Ian noticed it again when she straightened beside him.

Lethira stretched once, long arms above her head, then looked down at the remains of the evening.

"Leave those for now. Your impossible box can continue existing without supervision."

She crossed to where she kept her outdoor things. There was no transformation into formal dress. She added a light outer layer over the green-brown clothes she had already been wearing and pulled on practical boots. Her bow remained where it was.

Ian noticed that.

Lethira noticed him noticing.

"We are walking through my home, not hunting it."

She loosened her ash-brown hair, retied it more securely and left the silver cuff where it caught through the strands near one ear.

"There are places I think you would like. My platform, obviously. You've seen it, but you have mostly seen it while everyone was dealing with something impossible. It is better when nobody is crying. There is a path above one of the inner streams. An old bridge I used to sit near when court work became intolerable. And farther out, near the ward line, there is a place where the trees open enough to see much more of the sky."

She paused at the door.

"The central tree is worth seeing properly as well, though I wouldn't call it mine. Nothing that old belongs to anyone merely because they like standing beneath it."

Lethira put her hand on the latch, then stopped.

There was one practical difference between sitting privately in her room and taking Ian outside.

She turned towards him.

"If we walk through the settlement, people will see you with me. Some already know who you are. Some saw you when Aelira brought you through before. Others will simply see a human man walking out of my room with me after we have spent a considerable time inside."

Her mouth twitched.

"I am not troubled by that. I have survived gossip before. Are you?"

"not at all"

Ian slipped his arm inside hers and drew close, pressing comfortably against her side.

Lethira looked down at their linked arms, then at him. There was a fractional pause before her smile returned.

"Good."

She adjusted her arm around his rather than merely allowing the contact, drawing him into a position that suited the difference in their height. It was less intimate than the pinning on her floor and, somehow, more conspicuous. There would be no ambiguity to anyone outside about whether they had accidentally happened to leave the same room at the same time.

"I shall make the big screen go away to avoid any accidental issues?"

Lethira glanced back at it.

"Yes. The smaller criminal can remain hidden. I would prefer not to explain the larger one to Aelira."

The television vanished.

The room returned immediately to its familiar proportions. Tablet, low table, empty glasses and the remains of pizza; nothing against the wall suggesting that Earth entertainment had occupied it a moment before.

Lethira opened the door. Cooler air entered from outside.

They stepped out together, arms still entwined.

The settlement felt different at this hour from Ian's earlier passage through it. He had previously seen much of it under escort, during introductions, serious conversations and movement towards people who needed to decide whether they wanted anything to do with him. Now there was nowhere he had to reach.

Lethira set an easy pace.

Her longer stride might have pulled ahead if she had walked naturally alone, but linked as they were she shortened it without comment. The path curved between enormous living trunks and structures fitted among them with an absence of straight urban geometry. Some buildings sat partly at ground level; others occupied broad platforms above, connected by timber paths and suspended bridges whose construction looked far less precarious from beneath than Ian's first impression of an elven village might have suggested.

Evening activity continued around them.

Two elves carrying baskets passed in the opposite direction. One greeted Lethira, then visibly registered Ian beside her and their linked arms. The look lasted perhaps half a second too long.

Lethira returned the greeting as though nothing interesting had occurred. Ian felt the small movement of her arm against his afterward.

She was laughing silently.

A little farther on, three younger elves sat along the edge of a low platform talking over one another. Their conversation faltered when they saw him. One appeared to recognise Ian from his previous visit; another plainly did not. Lethira continued past before curiosity organised itself into anything more ambitious.

"That will travel efficiently," she murmured.

There was no concern in her voice.

The path narrowed and climbed gradually around the side of an ancient tree. Ian became more aware of her beside him as the terrain changed. Lethira moved over roots and uneven timber with the same unconscious certainty she had shown indoors. Her arm remained linked with his, and whenever their differing steps threatened to pull them apart she compensated before he had fully noticed.

No machine intervention was required.

Ian was simply walking with someone who had spent longer moving through this kind of place than he had been alive.

They reached a broader platform overlooking one of the inner streams.

"There."

Lethira slowed.

Water ran below through a channel half concealed by roots and shadow. The settlement had grown around it instead of covering it. Narrow bridges crossed at several levels, and warm lights from distant dwellings appeared intermittently between trunks. Voices carried without becoming distinct.

Lethira rested against the railing, keeping Ian beside her.

"This is one of the routes I use when I do not need to arrive anywhere quickly. Which is less often than it should be."

Her hand shifted where their arms remained linked, fingers curling lightly around his forearm.

Ian had seen her world from orbit.

From here, almost none of it was visible.

A stream. Old timber. Lamps between trees. Someone laughing somewhere above them. The faint movement of leaves beyond the settlement's light.

Lethira turned her head towards him.

"I thought you might like this version too."

"It's beautiful."

Ian leaned towards her, his face brushing close to her shoulder. The gesture became half a nuzzle and half a kiss against the fabric before he straightened again.

Lethira's eyes shifted sideways. She had plainly noticed which half she preferred.

Ian looked back towards the water.

"I like little streams. More than rivers, they are relaxing, pretty, fascinating. Like someone else I know."

Lethira stared at him for a moment, then looked at the stream.

"Relaxing."

Her tone suggested a disputed classification.

One hand rose to the place on her shoulder where his mouth had touched, fingertips resting there briefly before falling back to the railing.

"Pretty and fascinating I will accept without argument. Relaxing seems generous for a woman who had you pinned to the floor not long ago."

Her mouth curved.

"But perhaps you have unusual standards."

Below them, water slipped around a dark root and broke into a narrow scatter of reflected lamplight. Lethira watched it for a few seconds, then rested her shoulder against his again deliberately—the same one he had kissed.

"I like streams because they are difficult to make important. People build beside rivers. Fight over them. Name borders after them. Put bridges where everyone must cross."

Her fingers found his arm again.

"A stream can simply go somewhere."

She turned her face towards him, amusement returning.

"Although I object to being called little."

At six feet, pressed against a man two inches shorter than her, the objection had considerable evidence behind it.

Lethira let him contemplate that before starting along the path again, keeping their arms entwined.

"Come. There is another one farther up. It is taller than you too."

"I can be emotionally relaxed with someone and still be uncomfortable as you discovered with Elven efficiency"

Lethira stopped.

The stream continued beneath them while she turned that sentence over. Then understanding sharpened the corners of her smile.

"Ah. So I am calming in one respect and causing practical difficulties in another."

Her arm tightened around his, drawing him a little more firmly against her side as they resumed walking.

"I can live with that distinction."

The path climbed gently from the stream, following roots broad enough to shape the route themselves. Lethira moved at the same shortened pace as before, apparently content to let their arms remain tangled even where the ground would have made walking separately easier.

After several steps she added, more quietly, "I understand what you meant. Being comfortable with someone is not the same as being unaffected by them. That seems preferable, actually."

Her shoulder brushed his again.

They passed beneath a low branch. Lethira ducked by habit; Ian barely needed to.

She noticed.

Her smile returned immediately.

"And there are occasional advantages to being the little one."

Ian smiled and blushed.

"I look forward to future advantages."

Lethira gave him a sidelong look.

"That sounds dangerously like encouragement."

Their arms remained linked as they followed the path away from the stream. The settlement rose around them in layers, lamplight appearing through branches above and below. Somewhere farther off, wood struck wood in a brief sequence that might have been training or somebody finishing work late.

Ian's attention shifted from her to the paths ahead.

"Is there anywhere in this world you've never been, but have wanted to?"

Lethira slowed.

That question took longer.

"Yes. The Great Peak."

Her eyes stayed ahead, though her expression had changed into something more thoughtful.

"I have seen mountains. I've crossed difficult country. I have spent more time than I wanted near borders where sensible travellers turn around. But I have never been to the eastern island."

She adjusted their linked arms as the path bent around a root.

"The Great Peak was famous long before Isha went there. Dwarven deep roads, old halls, mountains within mountains. Depending on which traveller is speaking, the summit either touches the sky, insults the sky, or is considerably smaller than the mountain belonging to that traveller's own ancestors. Dwarves are very reliable storytellers until mountains become involved."

The smile lingered before fading into quieter interest.

"Isha's account made me want to see it more, not less. The places beneath it as well. Irondeep. The old roads. Things built to remain when everyone who made them knew they would still be alive to see whether they had succeeded."

She was silent for a few paces.

"I could have travelled there, eventually. Probably. It is simply far away, and there has nearly always been something closer that needed doing."

That sounded less like regret than an old fact she had accepted.

Then her eyes narrowed slightly.

"I should perhaps be careful telling you this. You have an alarming tendency to hear *I would like to see somewhere* and interpret it as *please remove the intervening geography*."

Her shoulder pressed lightly against his.

"So yes. The Great Peak. But if this is secretly an invitation, ask me properly when you mean it. I am enjoying walking there with you."

"we could go. Now, or later. I like this. I was hoping the awe would mean I could get at least *one* snowball hit on an A-rank combatant"

Lethira stopped walking.

For a moment she simply stared at him.

Then she laughed, the sound carrying softly over the stream below.

"That is your plan? Show me a place I have wanted to see for longer than you have been alive, wait until I am overcome by wonder, then attack me with snow."

Her expression suggested the proposal had improved considerably during the explanation.

Lethira looked along the path they had been following. The settlement continued ahead in layers of old timber and living branches, familiar ground beneath familiar lights. Ian had offered to remove all the distance between here and the Great Peak with a sentence.

She could go.

The possibility was astonishing.

It did not make her want to abandon the stream.

"Later," she decided. "I want to see the Great Peak. Very much. But I also want to finish showing you this."

She gave him a small pull and resumed walking.

"The mountain has been there for an extremely long time. It can survive another date."

A few steps passed before the snowball returned to her thoughts.

Lethira glanced sideways.

"And awe will not make me helpless. Thomas's Status called me A-rank because it was attempting to describe something I had already spent a very long time learning. A mountain does not remove that because I find it beautiful."

She considered him.

"However... if you take me there properly, and if there is snow, I will give you one advantage. You may throw first."

A second finger joined the first.

"And you may not instruct your machine to improve your aim, slow me down, move the snowball, alter the wind, distract me with a dragon, or decide afterward that the snow was secretly following narrative intention. I want to discover how well the ordinary human does."

They rounded another bend in the path. Ahead, the trees opened slightly, revealing more sky between their upper branches.

Lethira leaned into him again.

"Though given what I learned about you this evening, perhaps I should be cautious. If I knock you into the snow and pin you there, you may decide you have won."

"I'd prefer to call it a draw."

Lethira's expression suggested she considered this an extremely generous interpretation.

"There are many things I'd like you to discover what the ordinary human does."

That caught her more effectively.

Her step slowed. She looked at him from the side, then let her gaze linger with considerably less innocence than before.

"Many things."

She repeated the phrase quietly.

Ian smiled at her.

"A second date at the Great Peak then?"

For a moment the teasing fell away.

Lethira had wanted to see the mountain for years enough that the number scarcely mattered anymore. It had existed in stories, in travellers' exaggerations, in Isha's memories, always sufficiently distant that *someday* had been an adequate answer. Ian was offering to turn it into somewhere she could actually stand.

This time he had also called it what it was.

A date.

Her smile returned slowly.

"Yes. A second date at the Great Peak."

There was a quiet pleasure in saying it aloud.

"We go because I want to see it. We take our time. You show me whatever impossible method of reaching it you think is appropriate, and I reserve the right to object if your idea of mountain travel involves appearing directly on the summit with no journey at all."

Her eyes narrowed slightly with amusement.

"And there will apparently be snow. I will honour the agreed rules. You throw first. No machine assistance."

Lethira leaned down just enough for the difference in their height to become deliberately noticeable.

"As for all the other things you would like me to discover about the ordinary human... I am beginning to think a second date may be useful."

She straightened and continued along the path, still smiling, still holding him close.

The Great Peak could wait.

For now there were more of her village paths ahead.

"agreed, lead on"

Ian smiled mischievously as Lethira guided them farther along the path.

"Am I naughty to want to see Aelira's face arriving intertwined."

His smile widened.

"As if..." He hesitated, the joke landing closer to something real than he had expected. "lovers."

Lethira's step slowed.

She did not immediately look at him.

That was almost worse.

They passed beneath another lamp before she finally turned her head, studying him from close beside her. Their arms were still linked; his body remained pressed lightly against hers. Nothing about the arrangement had changed except the word now attached to it.

"Lovers."

She tried it without mockery.

Then her mouth curved.

"That joke became considerably more dangerous halfway through."

Ian could see her thinking. Lethira did not untangle herself from him. If anything, her arm settled more comfortably around his.

"Aelira would notice us before we reached her door," she said. "She notices when somebody moves a chair. And after watching me bring you through the settlement like this, she would become very polite."

A quiet laugh escaped her.

"Which means she would ask nothing immediately, observe everything, and remember it until the most inconvenient possible moment."

They climbed another short section of timber walkway. Two elves approaching from above stepped aside to let them pass. Both greeted Lethira. One recognised Ian and performed a commendably unsuccessful attempt not to examine their linked arms.

Lethira waited until they were beyond hearing.

"See?"

She sounded pleased.

A few more steps passed before she returned to the word.

"I do not mind them wondering. I don't mind Aelira wondering either. But I would rather not announce that we are lovers because it makes her face entertaining. Especially when I have not decided whether that is what we are."

There was no retreat in the statement. Only precision.

Lethira glanced towards him again.

"Two dates. Holding hands. You have kissed my shoulder, admired my thigh with impressive sincerity, and discovered that being pinned by me creates difficulties with your trousers. We have substantial evidence."

She let that sit long enough to make the last few minutes of conversation considerably harder for him to ignore.

"But I like this. And I liked hearing you almost say it."

That admission seemed to cost her very little embarrassment, though a trace of colour appeared high on her face beneath the lamplight.

"So if we happen to walk past Aelira looking suspiciously affectionate, I see no reason to protect her from the experience. If she concludes something from what she sees, she may enjoy being uncertain for once."

Lethira resumed their earlier pace.

"Perhaps do not call us lovers in front of her yet. I would prefer that word to become true, if it does, because of us. Not because we committed to the joke."

"I realised half way through the joke ... Sorry"

Ian smiled at her.

Lethira watched him for a few steps before answering. The path had narrowed enough that their linked arms kept them close, and neither made any attempt to solve that particular inconvenience.

"You realised halfway through and stopped before turning it into a claim. That is a fairly good place to realise."

She looked ahead again. Lamps hung among the branches farther up, their light catching old timber rails and the pale edges of leaves.

"I wasn't offended. And I meant what I said. I liked hearing you almost call us that."

This time the colour that touched her face was easier to see.

Lethira responded to it by becoming slightly more interested in the path.

"I simply don't want to borrow the word before we know whether it belongs to us. Besides, if you truly want to make Aelira suffer, uncertainty will be far more effective. Imagine her trying to determine whether we are courting, flirting, conducting some incomprehensible human ritual, or merely walking very badly."

She glanced down at their entwined arms.

"We should give her nothing useful."

Then she smiled at him again.

"Except perhaps this."

"that sounds even better, I fully endorse this princess level mystery generation"

Lethira gave him a look of immediate approval.

"First Princess-level mystery generation," she corrected. "If we are going to be irresponsible, we should at least respect titles."

Her amusement grew as she considered the prospect.

"Aelira has spent most of her life making other people reveal more than they intended while she reveals exactly what she chooses. I think providing her with an unanswered question is practically a public service."

Their arms remained comfortably entwined. Lethira made no attempt to reduce the affection visible between them; if anything, she settled Ian more securely against her side before leading him onwards.

"But we do this properly. We do not stare at her waiting for a reaction. We do not explain ourselves. We do not behave differently when she notices."

A beat.

"We simply allow the First Princess of the Wood Elves to observe a human man leaving my home after dark, walking through the settlement attached to my arm, while neither of us supplies context."

Lethira's composure failed.

She laughed.

"Yes. That is much better. And the best part is that everything she sees will be true."

"is there a place we can see the moon clearly?"

Lethira looked upward through the branches.

From where they stood, only fragments of the sky appeared between leaves and timber platforms. A pale edge of moonlight showed briefly through one opening, then disappeared again as the path curved.

"Yes. The place near the ward line I mentioned. The trees open there."

She adjusted their linked arms and changed direction at the next fork, taking a narrower path that climbed away from the more inhabited platforms. The lamps grew farther apart. Underfoot, shaped timber gradually gave way to packed earth and broad roots polished by generations of feet.

"It is not far."

The settlement remained audible behind them for a while: voices, a closing door, somebody calling from one platform to another. Those sounds thinned as Lethira led him outward.

The forest itself grew darker around them, though the darkness was never empty. Ian could make out pale bark where moonlight found it, leaves moving high overhead, the occasional glimmer of water below the path. Lethira travelled through it with the same casual certainty she had shown everywhere else, keeping him comfortably against her side when the ground became uneven.

Then the trees separated.

It was not a clearing in the ordinary sense. No one had cut the forest away. The land simply rose towards a broad rocky shelf where several enormous trunks stood farther apart, leaving an opening overhead large enough that the sky finally became a thing rather than glimpses between branches.

The moon hung above them.

Not full. More than half illuminated, bright enough to throw soft pale light across the rock and pick silver edges from the surrounding leaves. Beyond the shelf, the forest canopy descended gradually into darkness, an immense uneven surface stretching farther than Ian could properly judge.

Lethira stopped.

"This one."

Her voice was quieter here.

She loosened her arm from his only enough to move closer to the edge of the shelf, then caught his hand instead and brought him with her.

"There are better views during winter, when some of the upper growth thins. But I like it now."

She tipped her head back.

Moonlight caught one side of her face, the ash-brown strands around her ear and the narrow silver cuff there. For once, she did not immediately turn the moment into a joke.

"I used to come here when I wanted the settlement near enough to return to and far enough away that nobody would ask me anything. That may be a very Elven definition of solitude."

She looked towards Ian again, still holding his hand.

"Clear enough?"

Ian stepped in front of her.

The movement changed the shape of the moment immediately. The moonlit shelf was broad, the forest immense around them, but standing face to face reduced it to the small space between their bodies.

He took one of Lethira's hands in each of his.

She let him.

At this distance the difference in their height became clear again. He had to tip his gaze slightly upward to meet hers; moonlight caught along one side of her face, traced the edge of a long ear and turned the silver cuff there almost white.

Ian stood close.

"May I?"

He did not specify.

He did not need to.

Lethira's eyes stayed on his.

For once there was no immediate joke, no deliberate effort to make him blush before answering. Her fingers curled around his hands.

"Yes. You may."

The word was quiet.

She stepped the last little distance closer, leaving scarcely any space between them. Her head inclined slightly towards his, ash-brown hair shifting over one shoulder.

Lethira waited.

Ian rose slightly onto his toes and leaned in.

The kiss was gentle.

Lethira's eyes closed as their lips met. For that brief moment there was none of the teasing she had used so freely all evening, no lesson hidden inside the contact and no contest of strength. She answered him with the same tenderness he offered, her hands warm and steady inside his.

Then Ian drew back and lowered his heels.

The small change restored the familiar two inches between them.

He smiled at her.

Lethira opened her eyes.

For several seconds she simply looked at him.

The moonlight caught the colour rising into her face more clearly than the lamps in her room had. Her usual composure remained, though it had become noticeably less useful at hiding how pleased she was.

Her fingers tightened gently around his.

"Well."

The word came out quieter than intended.

A smile slowly answered his.

Lethira glanced down at his feet, then back to his face.

"You stood on your toes."

There was affection in the observation rather than mockery.

She stepped closer again and lowered her forehead lightly against his, making the difference in height irrelevant by choice.

"I liked that."

Her eyes closed for another moment.

When she straightened, she kept both of his hands.

The forest below them remained dark and immense. The moon continued above the open canopy, entirely indifferent to whether a Wood Elf and a human from beyond her reality had finally stopped circling a particular possibility.

Lethira looked at Ian again.

Her smile returned, softer and a little astonished.

"Very much."

Ian leaned into her.

Lethira's arms came around him as his head settled against her chest. The embrace began easily, an extension of the closeness they had already found during the evening.

Then he tightened his hold.

More than before.

Lethira noticed.

Her own arms closed around him in answer. She did not make a joke about his height, or about the position he had chosen, or about surviving another advanced lesson in interspecies greetings. One hand rested broad and steady between his shoulders. The other came higher, fingers settling lightly against the back of his head.

Ian held on.

So did she.

The forest moved around them in small night sounds. Leaves shifted somewhere below the rocky shelf. Water could be heard distantly through the trees. Moonlight lay across the open ground and the upper edges of Lethira's hair.

There was no need to hurry the embrace merely because both of them understood it had become more meaningful than the earlier ones.

Eventually Ian loosened his arms and stepped back.

"I've had the nicest day since I came to this reality, and it's all due to you. I hope you enjoyed yourself too."

Lethira looked at him for a long moment.

"I did. Very much."

She kept one of his hands when the rest of the embrace ended.

"I liked the ridiculous food. I liked your terrible cultural defence. I liked walking with you. I particularly enjoyed discovering several extremely useful things about what embarrasses you."

The humour softened before it could take over.

"And I liked being here with you."

Her thumb moved slowly across his hand.

"You showed me worlds yesterday. Tonight you came to my room with pizza and let me show you a stream. I think I prefer that those can both matter."

She stepped nearer again, close enough that the height difference returned as an intimate inconvenience rather than a fact to observe.

"And Ian? You did not have a lovely day *because of me* as though I performed it for you."

She squeezed his hand.

"We had one together."

For a moment she simply stood with him beneath the moon.

Then the familiar mischief returned at the edges.

"Although I will accept a disproportionate amount of credit for the pinning."

"yes you are right, we did" Ian smiled. "Shall we return to your room?"

Lethira's eyebrows rose slightly.

Ian allowed the pause to become suspicious.

"And finish the pizza"

He grinned.

Lethira stared at him for a beat, then laughed.

"An excellent recovery. Yes. We should rescue what remains before it becomes a historical artefact. Although after all that talk beneath the moon, I admit *finish the pizza* was not the next sentence I expected."

They left the rocky shelf together.

The walk back felt shorter. Lethira knew every turn; Ian no longer needed to watch the ground quite so carefully, and their linked pace had settled into something that required little adjustment. Moonlight disappeared behind the canopy in stages until the settlement lamps took over again.

As the paths became busier, Lethira made no effort to create distance between them.

A pair of wardens passed and greeted her. One looked at Ian, then at their arms, then very carefully back at the path ahead. Lethira maintained impeccable composure until they were gone.

"Efficient," she murmured.

Farther in, the central tree came into view between the surrounding platforms.

Lethira slowed.

Someone was descending one of the higher walkways ahead of them: pale clothing beneath a darker outer layer, posture too composed to mistake even before the lamplight reached her face.

Aelira.

Lethira saw her at the same moment.

Her expression became perfectly innocent.

She did not release Ian's arm.

If anything, she settled fractionally closer.

Aelira continued down the walkway, noticed Lethira first, then Ian beside her, then the manner in which they were attached to one another.

Her step never broke.

Only the smallest pause entered her face.

"Lethira."

"Aelira."

Aelira's gaze moved to Ian.

"Ian."

No question followed.

Lethira inclined her head with the grave courtesy appropriate to a First Princess encountered while returning from a moonlit walk with a human man who had recently left her private room.

Then she led Ian onward.

They managed perhaps ten paces before Lethira's shoulders began to shake.

She kept walking.

"I told you," she said quietly. "Polite."

"Very, although I fear I may be the one in trouble from this one."

Ian glanced back along the path. Aelira was already continuing in the opposite direction with the composed pace of someone who had seen nothing requiring comment and would therefore remember every detail perfectly.

"Worth it"

He turned and gave Lethira a brief kiss on the cheek.

That stopped her for half a step.

Lethira's eyes came to him, surprised first, then pleased. Her arm tightened around his.

"Yes," she said. "Probably."

They continued towards her home.

No further princesses appeared to complicate the journey. A few people still moved through the settlement, and Ian suspected the amount of information reaching Aelira by morning would depend mostly on how imaginative everyone was prepared to be. Lethira seemed entirely unconcerned. She walked beside him with their arms still entwined until they reached her door.

Inside, the remains of their evening waited exactly where they had left them.

The impossible television was gone. The tablet remained on the low table, safely small again. Their glasses stood beside the open bottle of increasingly flat cola, and the pizza box contained the final evidence that Ian's earlier theory about how much food the man received had not favoured him.

Lethira removed her outer layer and sat.

Ian joined her.

The last pizza did not survive long.

Lethira took the final mushroom piece as though its ownership had never seriously been in dispute. Ian retained enough pepperoni to preserve dignity. The cola had lost much of its bite, which Lethira considered an improvement in drink and a failure in entertainment.

They did not restart the anime.

There was no need to fill the remaining time with something merely because the screen could provide it. They sat close instead, talking in the easier way that came after several hours together. The Great Peak existed now as a future date rather than an old place Lethira might someday visit. Aelira existed somewhere in the settlement with an unanswered question. The hidden tablet contained further crimes against elven clothing and forestry.

Eventually the empty pizza box sat between two empty glasses.

Ian looked at Lethira.

"I almost don't want to, but I should probably go now."

For a moment she said nothing.

The evening had begun with her listening for a knock. Somewhere between cola, bad archery, being asked permission to pin him, a stream, moonlight and a first kiss, his presence in the room had stopped feeling unusual.

Lethira reached over and took his hand.

"I almost don't want you to. But I think leaving while we still wish there were more evening left is probably better than staying until one of us begins resenting the hour."

Her mouth curved faintly.

"And you have already secured another date."

She stood, bringing him up with her by the hand. At full height she was once again those familiar two inches taller, though after the moonlit shelf neither of them seemed particularly concerned by the inconvenience.

Lethira stepped close.

This time she initiated the embrace.

Her arms went around him firmly, drawing him against her with the same controlled strength he had spent part of the evening discovering and considerably more tenderness than she had used while pinning him to the floor.

She held him there.

When she finally eased back, she did not release him completely.

"You may come back, Ian. Knock first."

The familiar smile returned.

"And next time, bring enough pizza to account for what you have learned about the woman."

"I shall leave you with this," Ian said.

A small stack of paper appeared on the low table.

Lethira looked over.

The sheets were exactly the right size for a private missive, thick and finely made, with narrow gilded edges that caught the lamplight whenever she moved. They were considerably more elegant than the brief messages Ian had been sending her required.

Ian gestured towards them.

"if you write on them, as before, they'll come to me. if you wish."

Lethira picked up the top sheet between two fingers and inspected the gold edge.

"Subtle."

There were enough pages for the arrangement to stop being a trick used for one conversation and become something she could choose to use herself. No need to wait for Ian to ask whether she was free. No need to involve Aelira, Kelda, Thomas or Isha merely because she wanted to tell one particular human that an anime had offended her professionally.

She set the sheet carefully back on the pile.

"I wish."

Ian smiled.

"Next time is the Great Peak, as opposed to the quite substantial peeks the director of that anime had. I look forward to it."

Lethira closed her eyes.

She had survived corrupted beasts, court politics, old wards, human prejudice and more than a century of people making poor decisions in dangerous places.

The pun still required effort.

When she opened her eyes again, Ian was waiting with the expression of a man entirely aware of what he had done.

"You kissed me beneath the moon and somehow still chose to end the evening with that. I should reconsider the mountain."

The threat lasted until her smile escaped.

Lethira stepped closer.

"No. I look forward to it too."

She placed her hands lightly against his shoulders and bent the small distance necessary to kiss him again.

This one was still gentle, though less tentative than the first. There was no question left about whether she wanted to do it. When she drew back, she remained close enough to see whatever embarrassment or happiness the decision caused him.

"That should sustain you until the Great Peak. And when we get there, remember that you asked for snow."

She walked him to the door.

At the threshold she looked once towards the low table: empty pizza box, glasses, hidden tablet and a ridiculous little stack of gold-edged interdimensional stationery.

Then back to Ian.

"Have a good day when you return to yours."

Her fingers briefly caught his hand.

"Come back when we arrange it."

She released him and opened the door.

Ian stepped outside.

Lethira remained there until he had cleared the threshold. Then she closed the door.

On the other side, Ian disappeared.

---

The room was quiet again.

Lethira rested her back against the door for several seconds, then laughed softly.

The sound was mostly at herself.

She crossed to the table and began putting the remains of the evening into some kind of order. The pizza box presented an immediate problem because it belonged nowhere in her room and had no local use compelling enough to justify keeping greasy cardboard from another reality. The glasses were Ian's. The cola bottle contained enough flat sweetness that she considered finishing it before deciding she had already performed sufficient cultural research for one night.

The tablet stayed.

So did the missives.

She gathered the gold-edged sheets and tapped their edges square against the table. There were more than she would need for any sensible amount of correspondence.

That assumption lasted perhaps three seconds.

Lethira put them beside the tablet.

She had kissed Ian.

More than once.

The fact was considerably simpler than thinking about it had been.

She touched her own lips once, then immediately found the gesture embarrassingly adolescent and lowered her hand.

That did not stop her smiling.

The word *lovers* returned briefly.

Still too soon.

The Great Peak was easier. A second date. Snow. A mountain she had wanted to see for longer than Ian had been alive. She found herself wondering whether he would choose a road, a door, a distant approach from which the mountain could be discovered gradually.

She hoped he would.

Then there was the more immediate problem of Aelira.

Lethira pictured the First Princess's face on the path.

Perfectly composed.

Perfectly polite.

Almost certainly unbearable by tomorrow.

She looked towards the hidden tablet.

At least Aelira did not know everything.

That restored some balance to the world.

Lethira extinguished the screen, leaving only the familiar lamplight of her room. Beyond the walls, the settlement had grown quieter. Through the window she could see a narrow piece of night sky between branches.

The moon was mostly hidden again.

She knew where to find it.

---

Aelira waited until the following morning.

This was worse than asking immediately.

Lethira had been in her chamber for nearly half an hour before the subject appeared. There were ordinary matters first: two messages from wardens farther south, a question about stores for an upcoming patrol, and a trader whose request to bring three assistants rather than the agreed two required somebody to explain that numbers remained numbers even when merchants found them inconvenient.

Aelira dealt with the last item and placed the page aside.

Only then did she look at Lethira.

"Did you enjoy your walk?"

Lethira had expected something more elaborate, which made the simplicity dangerous. "Very much."

Aelira nodded and picked up another page.

Lethira waited long enough to confirm that this was deliberate. "This is cruel."

"I asked whether you enjoyed your walk."

"You are pretending that is all you want to know."

Aelira's mouth moved almost imperceptibly. "I am exercising restraint."

"Badly."

That earned her the smallest visible concession. Aelira set the page down again and asked the question that belonged to her responsibilities first: whether Ian's future presence touched the settlement, the royal house, or anyone who had not agreed to be involved.

Lethira answered just as plainly. "He may visit me again. By invitation. He will knock. We intend to visit the Great Peak together at some point. No time has been chosen. His means, if we go. And if anything about it affects anyone else, I will tell you."

"Good."

Aelira reached for the page again.

Lethira narrowed her eyes. "That cannot possibly satisfy you."

"No." The answer was immediate. Aelira looked across the table at her. "The remainder does not appear to belong to my responsibilities."

For once Lethira had no joke ready.

Aelira's expression softened. "You looked happy."

"I was."

"I am glad."

That was all she offered.

Lethira remained on the other side of the table, watching her friend make a deliberate attempt to become interested in whether three assistants could somehow be reclassified as two. The attempt was impressive only because Aelira was usually better at pretending.

"You are insufferable."

Aelira kept her eyes on the page. "I have been told. Frequently, in fact."

"By me."

"Yes."

Lethira folded her arms.

That finally did it.

Aelira put the page down, leaned back and looked at her properly. The formal questions had served their purpose. Ian's future visits did not create an immediate problem; Lethira had not surrendered her judgement; the proposed journey involved no one else by default. What remained belonged to two women who had known one another far too long for silence to be mistaken for lack of curiosity.

Aelira's expression changed first. Not much. With her, it rarely needed to.

"So?"

Lethira laughed. "There you are."

"I have no idea what you mean."

"Of course not."

Aelira indicated the chair opposite her. Lethira had been standing beside it for most of the morning. She sat now, less like an attendant settling for work and more like someone prepared to stay after work had stopped mattering.

For several seconds she considered where to begin.

"It was a date."

Aelira's eyebrows rose. The surprise looked genuine, although perhaps more at the directness than the content. She asked who had called it that first.

"He did. At the end of the previous evening." Lethira's mouth curved at the memory. "Then he disappeared immediately afterward, which was cowardly but effective. Yesterday I agreed it was a date."

Aelira nodded once, inviting more by doing almost nothing.

Lethira narrowed her eyes. "You are enjoying this."

"Very much."

"At least you're admitting it."

"I learned from a friend."

That made Lethira smile despite herself.

Morning light came through leaves beyond the chamber window, catching the familiar carved edge of Aelira's desk. The previous night felt strangely close in memory: cola biting her tongue, pizza in a cardboard box, Ian's increasingly helpless expression beside a fictional elf's thighs, the stream, moonlight.

"We watched one of the Earth stories. It was ridiculous." Lethira caught Aelira's interest sharpen and left the means of watching it entirely alone. "Their idea of an elf woman involved very little practical clothing and a bow I would hesitate to give a child."

Aelira's mouth twitched. "An Earth story about elves?"

"Apparently they have many."

"Do they know elves exist?"

"No. They imagined us. Poorly."

That gave Aelira pause.

Lethira settled farther into the chair. "They also imagined the usual things. Long lives. Humans and elves arguing about how differently they experience time. Old wars. Forests humans should not enter."

"Without knowing."

"Yes."

Aelira considered that, then asked with complete seriousness, "And the clothing?"

"That part I refuse to attribute to prophecy."

Aelira laughed.

It changed the room. The First Princess who could sit through petitions without giving away more than she intended disappeared for a moment, leaving the woman Lethira had spent years provoking whenever court allowed it.

When she recovered, Aelira asked, "What else?"

There was the question. Not *what did Ian do*. Not *what has been agreed*. Simply the question one friend asked another when the answer was plainly going to be interesting.

Lethira obliged her. "We ate. We talked. I pinned him to the floor."

Aelira blinked.

The reaction was satisfying enough that Lethira waited for it.

"You what?"

"He asked."

Aelira's expression became more remarkable rather than less. "He asked you to pin him."

"Eventually. He likes that I am stronger than he is."

"I see."

Lethira gave her a flat look. "No, you don't."

Aelira's composure held. "I am rapidly learning."

Lethira managed almost five seconds before laughing. "It was not exactly subtle."

Aelira's brows lifted again, and Lethira decided that was quite enough detail on that particular point.

"He is an ordinary human when he is not using his machine," she said. "Or close enough for the distinction to matter. He noticed last night."

"You demonstrated."

"He requested a demonstration."

Aelira's gaze became very calm.

Lethira pointed at her. "Do not become royal about this."

"I am doing nothing."

"That face has negotiated border access."

"It has other uses."

They both laughed this time.

When it subsided, Aelira's expression gentled. "And the walk?"

Lethira glanced down at her hands. "We went to the inner stream. Then the shelf near the ward line."

"The moon shelf."

"Yes."

Aelira knew the place. Of course she did.

Lethira touched one thumb against the other, remembering Ian rising slightly onto his toes. "We kissed."

Aelira became still.

There was no triumph in her friend's face now. Only interest, affection, and something that made the admission easier to leave where it was.

"More than once," Lethira added.

Aelira smiled. "Did you like it?"

"Very much." The answer came too quickly to disguise, and Lethira made no attempt. "I like him."

Saying that aloud was different from teasing around it with Ian. Simpler, somehow.

Aelira waited.

"I don't know what it is yet. Last night he almost called us lovers as a joke. He realised halfway through that the word was closer than he expected and apologised. I told him I liked hearing it, but I don't want to claim it before it belongs to us."

"I agree."

Lethira studied her with mock suspicion. "That was disappointingly easy."

"You appear to have already done the difficult thinking yourself."

Lethira gave her a suspicious look. "I dislike when you become reasonable."

"I can stop."

"Please don't."

Aelira reached for the cup beside her and found the tea had gone cold. She drank it anyway. When she set it down, the next question came more gently.

"Do you trust him?"

Lethira had expected it eventually.

She looked towards the window again. "More than I did. I trust him to ask more often than he used to. I trust him to stop when he reaches a boundary he understands. I trust him to hear one when I give it."

She considered the wording before continuing. "Last night he reached towards my face without warning. I caught his wrist before I knew what I was doing."

Aelira's eyes flicked to her.

"He was wiping food from my face. He apologised. Later, when he wanted to touch me, he asked."

"And the journey?"

"He offered the Great Peak. I said later. He accepted later."

Lethira rested her forearms on the table. "I don't trust him as though his power has stopped being dangerous. That would be stupid. But I trust him more as a person than I did before."

Aelira nodded. "Enough for another date."

"Yes."

"And perhaps more."

Lethira met her eyes. "Perhaps."

Aelira left the word untouched.

For a while they sat with the comfortable silence of people who did not need to fill every admission with advice. Then Aelira's gaze drifted to Lethira's mouth.

Lethira caught it. "What?"

"Nothing."

Lethira narrowed her eyes. "You are lying."

"I am observing."

"That is usually worse."

Aelira's composure held for another second. "You keep smiling."

Lethira's hand rose instinctively towards her mouth and stopped halfway.

Aelira's expression became unbearably satisfied.

"Oh, be quiet."

"I said nothing."

Lethira leaned back and laughed. "You are the worst person I know."

"That seems unlikely after more than a century of field work."

When Lethira settled again, Aelira was still smiling at her.

It had been a long time since either of them had needed the distinction between princess and attendant explained. It existed, and there were rooms, decisions and duties where it mattered. This was not one of them.

Aelira reached across the table and took Lethira's hand. "I am glad."

Lethira looked down at their hands, then back at her. "So am I."

Aelira squeezed once. "And if he hurts you?"

The question was gentle enough that Lethira knew exactly which friend had asked it.

She smiled. "Emotionally?"

Aelira's eyes narrowed.

Lethira squeezed her hand. "I know. If he hurts me, I will tell you. If he irritates me, I will probably tell you much sooner."

"Better."

"Though I may preserve some things purely because your uncertainty has become entertaining."

Aelira withdrew her hand. "There it is."

Lethira's smile sharpened. "You walked into this."

"I walked past you."

"Intertwined. After dark."

Aelira held her gaze with perfect composure. "I noticed both."

"And said nothing."

"I was exercising restraint."

"You looked like someone trying to interrogate a locked chest by being more polite than it."

Aelira finally laughed again, quieter this time.

Lethira watched her and decided the unanswered question had been worth bringing home. There were still things Aelira did not know: a hidden tablet; exactly how much Ian had enjoyed being held down; the small private details of a moonlit shelf and a human man rising onto his toes. Lethira was happy to keep them that way.

Aelira recovered first and pulled the next page of morning work towards them. "The southern wardens."

Lethira groaned. "You've ruined everything."

"Apparently I remain employed."

"Tragic."

They bent over the report together. For several minutes the conversation returned to paths, stores and a damaged boundary marker.

Lethira was still smiling when Aelira asked for the second page.

This time neither of them mentioned it.