## Chapter 414 — The Great Peak

Lethira had discovered that waiting for an impossible man was considerably less dignified when he had given her stationery. Before the gold-edged missives, Ian's arrival had belonged to him. He knocked, appeared, sent something strange, or otherwise inserted himself into a day that had been proceeding perfectly well without him. Now a small stack of paper sat beside the hidden tablet in Lethira's room and created an irritating alternative. She could write first. This was useful. It was also why she had spent several local days deliberately not doing so.

The Great Peak had occupied part of her imagination for far longer than Ian had. It had been a white distance in travellers' accounts, a dwarven boast that survived being discounted for dwarven mountain arithmetic, a place Isha had eventually seen under circumstances complicated enough that *visit* was perhaps too cheerful a verb. The mountain itself rose roughly ten kilometres above the world, snow-capped even when lower country had forgotten winter, with the deep-dwarf capital and the King Beneath held within its stone. Lethira wanted to see it. She did not want to arrive at the summit between one breath and the next.

That part she and Ian had already settled. Their second date would contain some form of approach, exploration and actual distance, even if Ian's definition of distance was flexible enough to offend geography. There would also, apparently, be snow. Ian had negotiated the right to throw first, with no machine assistance to improve his aim or interfere with hers. Lethira considered that concession extremely generous. The local morning had been ordinary. A ward report from the southern edge. Two messages for Aelira. A disagreement over stores which became much easier once somebody counted the stores rather than discussing them. By late morning Lethira was free of anything requiring her personal presence. She returned to her room.

Her travelling clothes had already been laid out once, rejected as excessive, then laid out again in a less embarrassing arrangement. A heavy forest-green outer layer. Warm undershirt. Practical fitted trousers. Thick socks. Mountain-capable boots she had used in northern country before. Gloves. A weathered cloak that did not care whether snow considered itself picturesque. Her longbow rested near the wall. Lethira looked at it. The Great Peak was not an enemy. Neither were the deep dwarves. Ian could presumably remove danger with less effort than she required to string the bow. She took it anyway. Trust did not require becoming decorative.

A small travelling pack followed: water, ordinary trail food, spare gloves, cord, a compact repair roll and several things Ian could undoubtedly create in perfect form if asked. That was beside the point. They were her things, and she was going somewhere. Once packed, the room became quiet. Lethira sat beside the low table. The hidden tablet was under its cloth. She had watched enough Earth stories since their first date to establish several things about human imagination. Human fictional elves had very strong opinions about forests, insufficient opinions about footwear and an astonishing willingness to stand in exposed places while delivering emotional speeches. She had also discovered that Ian was correct about one thing. Anime was enjoyable. This remained information Aelira did not possess.

Lethira glanced towards the gold-edged paper. She could write.

*Are we going?*

Too impatient.

*I am free today.*

Too much like scheduling a patrol.

*I have located snowball-appropriate gloves.*

Tempting. She reached for the top sheet. Before her fingers touched it, another missive appeared beside the stack. Lethira stopped, then smiled.

"Of course."

The new sheet carried Ian's writing in clean Elven.

> Are you ready for a peek?

Lethira stared at the line. The mechanism had translated the joke. Not literally. Elven did not share Earth's coincidence between *peak* and *peek*. Instead the script had found something equally offensive: the common word for a high mountain crest and an old informal verb meaning to glance over or glimpse beyond an edge differed only by a small breath-mark. Ian's sentence sat deliberately between the two spellings. Lethira read it once, then again, because apparently irritation required verification.

"You impossible bastard."

She was laughing by the end of it. The machine could cross realities, alter language and apparently devote a portion of its unimaginable capability to preserving bad puns. There were ethical questions there Lethira did not intend to examine before lunch. She turned the sheet over.

> Yes.
>
> I am ready for the Peak.
>
> Unfortunately, your joke survived translation.
>
> Lethira

She signed her name. The missive vanished. Lethira stood, checked her pack once, slung it over one shoulder and settled the bow where it normally rode for travel. The knives at her belt required no special preparation. She tied her ash-brown hair back more securely than she had for their evening in her room, though several shorter strands refused the arrangement almost immediately. One silver ear cuff caught briefly against her hair before she freed it. Then she waited. Not long. A knock sounded at the door. Lethira looked towards it. Her smile returned before she reached the latch.

---

The door opened.

"Hey."

Lethira had just enough time to see Ian's smile before he leaned into her. He wore his usual black jeans, plain black T-shirt and black army boots. His short beard framed his mouth and jaw; the hair at the sides and back of his head was clipped close around the familiar bald crown.

She received the embrace without hesitation, one arm going around his shoulders and the other settling firmly across his back. Her travelling pack and bow changed the shape of it slightly from the embrace beneath the moon, but not enough to matter. She held him close, then loosened her arms when he began to draw back. Ian rose onto his toes. That earned the smallest flicker of amusement from her. He paused. Lethira saw what he was checking for. She stayed close, her hands still resting against him, and tilted her face down towards his. No objection. Ian kissed her.

This time there was less uncertainty in it. The tenderness remained, but the kiss deepened beyond the brief careful contact they had shared beneath the moon. Lethira answered him fully, one hand sliding higher behind his shoulder as she leaned into it, giving the moment time rather than treating it as a greeting to be completed. When they separated, she remained close.

"I missed you."

Something in Lethira's expression softened.

"I missed you too."

The admission came easily enough that she seemed faintly surprised by it herself. Ian laughed quietly. "I think your many years on me has turned me into a teenager instead of a man in his late 40s. I think I like it." Lethira looked at him for several seconds, then down at the slight difference in their height, then back to his face.

"I see. So my great age has restored your youth."

She sounded pleased by this interpretation.

"I shall add it to my list of accomplishments. Warden. Archer. Royal attendant. Corruption hunter. Rejuvenator of middle-aged human men."

Her fingers briefly adjusted the front of his shirt where the embrace had displaced it.

"Although if your evidence is blushing, bad jokes, kissing an older woman and becoming excited about throwing snow at her, I admit the diagnosis is strong."

She leaned down and kissed him again, this one shorter and entirely initiated by her. When she straightened, the mischief remained, but so did the pleasure beneath it.

"I like it too."

Lethira stepped back just far enough to let him properly see what she had prepared: travelling layers suitable for cold country, practical boots, pack, bow and knives. She had dressed for a mountain rather than for Ian's idea of a romantic expedition.

"I have brought my own things," she said. "Before you decide that being able to create anything means I should arrive at the Great Peak carrying nothing except trust and excellent hair."

One loose ash-brown strand had already escaped beside her ear. She ignored the evidence.

"And I remembered your snowball privilege. You still throw first."

Ian grinned. "I'm glad you've brought your own things, I don't want to us to just be omnipotence, pizza and sex, that sounds boring." Lethira's eyes narrowed slowly.

"One of those activities has not actually occurred. Your confidence in the itinerary is impressive."

Her smile ruined any attempt at severity. Ian continued before she could improve the accusation. "On the subject of omnipotence, I have a few questions about the trip? I don't want to ruin it for you, so best to check now." He reached down and took her hand. Lethira's fingers closed around his naturally. The Great Peak had been a distant wish for years; with Ian, distance was no longer the difficult part. The danger was that making everything possible could make the journey itself disappear.

"Good. I would rather answer awkward questions here than discover halfway through that your idea of showing me a mountain involves making the mountain behave."

She glanced towards the pack over her shoulder and the bow behind it.

"I want to walk. I want weather if there is weather. I want to become cold if I dress badly, tired if I walk too far, and annoyed if snow gets into my boots. I do not require frostbite, avalanches or death to authenticate the experience. You may prevent those."

She stepped closer, still holding his hand.

"And I already told you I do not want to appear at the summit and call that seeing the Great Peak. Beyond that, I am listening. Ask."

"I think you covered most of it, I wasn't sure how much of the potentially extreme weather to soften, but we'll go with what you said -- I know you're much, much stronger and agile than me, so my human limits ... well, if I was a normal human ... aren't a good comparison. Just let me know if it's too cold or whatever, I can shield you from it without altering the weather for everyone."

Lethira listened without interrupting. The distinction pleased her. A mountain whose wind and snow had been arranged around her would become something closer to scenery. A shield placed around one traveller after she asked for it was different. The Great Peak could remain itself.

"Good. If I become cold, I will tell you. You do not need to decide I must secretly be freezing because I am an elf and therefore too proud to admit it. I am quite capable of complaining."

Ian continued. "I think walking is good, but we can't walk the entire way. Why don't we fly and land part way up, or nearby to start with, whatever makes sense when we get there? You can see it from the ground, and the sky, and choose a good spot to walk from then, without it taking months." He said *fly* with approximately the same emphasis another person might have given *take the north road*. Lethira stared at him, then upward, then back at him.

"You say that word very casually."

Her fingers tightened around his hand.

"I have spent a considerable portion of my life accepting that mountains are inconvenient because they insist on having distance around them."

She thought about it. Approaching from the air would not erase the mountain. If anything, it offered a view no ordinary road could give her: the whole rise of it, the lesser peaks below, the island stretched beneath them, then the chance to choose where the impossible part ended and her own feet began.

"So we fly. We see it from below first. Then from the air. We choose somewhere sensible to land rather than appearing wherever your machine thinks would be most dramatic. And after that we walk. Properly."

She stepped closer.

"I like that. I have wanted to see the Great Peak for longer than you have been alive, Ian."

She looked towards the open doorway, then back at him.

"And apparently I am going to arrive by flying. That is absurd."

Her smile widened.

"Let's go."

Ian glanced at her pack. "Can I suggest your backpack goes via magical means - I think it might reduce the flying experience, it can just appear when we land then you can carry and walk with it as normal?" Lethira glanced over one shoulder at the pack. She had packed it because she wanted to arrive at the mountain as herself, carrying the things she would have taken if the journey had involved roads, boats and several regrettable camps. That did not mean every part of the journey needed to become an argument with straps. She considered the bow separately.

"Yes. The pack can travel ahead and return when we land."

She slipped it from her shoulder and held it out slightly, then stopped.

"The bow stays. If I am going to fly for the first time, I would prefer not to spend it discovering what loose cookware does at altitude. And I refuse to arrive before dwarves having misplaced all evidence that I know how to travel."

Then Ian added, with suspicious casualness, "Also, you'll have to hold me close to you, for you to be the one to fly." His face betrayed him before the sentence had properly finished. Lethira stared at him. Slowly, her eyes narrowed.

"I see."

There was perhaps a world in which Ian's method genuinely required close physical contact. Lethira was willing to believe reality had stranger rules than that. She was considerably less willing to believe *this* particular rule had arrived entirely innocent.

"You are a terrible liar."

Her voice contained no disapproval. The pack vanished once her decision had been made, leaving only the bow, knives and travelling clothes she had chosen for herself. Lethira stepped close. Very close.

"If the ancient laws governing flight insist that I must hold the handsome human tightly, I suppose I should respect them."

She released his hand only to slide both arms around him. One passed firmly around his back; the other settled higher across his shoulders, bringing their bodies together with little room left between them. At her full height, Ian fit against her differently than he had beneath the moon. She had enough reach to hold him with an ease which made the supposed safety requirement look even less convincing. Lethira adjusted her grip once. Firm. Secure. Possibly more secure than flight required. She looked down at him.

"Like this?"

The question came out before she could prevent it. Lethira immediately saw the problem with having asked it.

"No. Do not answer that. I can already see that you are about to tell me some critical aerodynamic principle requires another six inches of contact."

She tightened her arms a little more anyway.

"There. Whatever fraudulent rules you have invented, I am complying."

Ian looked up into her eyes from slightly below. "Oh I'm not flying, I have the most wonderful view I could expect. You'll be the one flying." For once, Lethira's answer took a moment. She had expected some version of being carried: a platform, invisible support, perhaps Ian making both of them weightless and pretending that counted. Instead he was apparently giving the impossible part to her body while reserving for himself the role of passenger. Her arms remained around him. The idea settled. Then her smile changed.

"That is considerably better. And very suspiciously convenient for you."

Lethira adjusted her hold again. One arm stayed secure around his back while the other shifted higher, drawing him against her chest with the effortless certainty of someone accustomed to controlling where another body was in relation to hers.

"If I am flying, then I suppose I am responsible for the passenger."

The open doorway showed only familiar forest beyond: the paths she knew, immense trunks, morning light broken through leaves. Nothing yet distinguished this moment from any departure she had made with a bow across her back. Except the human held against her. Lethira drew a breath. She had climbed trees before she was old enough to remember learning how. She had crossed suspended paths in storms, jumped ravines, fallen farther than was wise, trusted branches that bent beneath her and ropes tied by people whose work she knew. Height was familiar. Flight was not. Her fingers tightened slightly against Ian's back. Not fear exactly. Anticipation.

"You may keep your view. But if I am doing the flying, I intend to enjoy mine."

She settled her feet beneath herself and held him securely, bow close against her back, every part of her posture suddenly attentive to an experience for which none of her century of practical movement had supplied a habit.

"I am ready."

"Then you can fly."

The words were almost disappointingly simple. Lethira felt the change before she understood it. Nothing seized her or lifted her from the floor. Instead, some previously absolute part of the world became optional. Weight remained. Her boots still rested against the boards. Ian was still held securely against her. But *up* had become available. The sensation made her eyes widen. Ian added, "But maybe, do it from outside unless you want to redecorate." Lethira looked towards the ceiling.

"That may be the wisest thing you have said today."

"I don't mind being carried."

Her gaze came back down to him. That was a mistake on his part.

"Good."

Lethira shifted her grip. One arm moved behind his back; the other slid beneath his legs, and before the change in position had fully announced itself she lifted him cleanly from the floor. There was no strain in it. Ian ended up held against her in the unmistakable manner of someone being carried rather than merely supported for flight. Lethira adjusted him once, found the balance comfortable and looked down at him with considerable satisfaction.

"You should be more careful what you permit."

She carried him to the door. Outside, she paused long enough to check the nearby paths. Nobody was immediately present. The settlement was active elsewhere, but Lethira had no desire to introduce *the human from beyond reality has taught me to fly* as casual morning information before she had discovered what flying actually involved. She closed the door behind them and moved a short distance into a quieter opening between the great trunks. There was space above. Not much by the standards of sky, but enough to begin.

Lethira set Ian back onto his feet only long enough to change the arrangement. This time she kept him upright against her, both arms firmly around him, his body close against hers. The bow remained secure along her back. Her boots stood on familiar earth. She looked upward. Leaves. Branches. Narrow pieces of bright sky. Her pulse quickened. Then she thought, very deliberately:

*Up.*

Her heels left the ground. Lethira stopped breathing. Only for a moment. The ground dropped perhaps the width of her hand beneath her boots. She remained there. Perfectly still. Her body immediately tried to solve the situation as if it were a branch, a rope or a ledge. Ankles adjusted for footing that no longer existed. Her centre shifted. Her grip around Ian tightened automatically. Nothing went wrong. The unseen support followed her rather than holding her in one rigid orientation. When she leaned slightly, the rest of her body answered as naturally as if she had changed balance while running. Lethira looked down. Her boots were hanging in empty air.

"Oh."

The word came out very small. She rose another foot. Then another. A laugh escaped her. Not the amused laugh Ian usually earned. Something younger and much less controlled. Lethira moved sideways experimentally. The world obeyed. She stopped. Went back. Rose again, this time turning slowly in the air. The motion belonged to her. Ian's mechanism had supplied the impossible condition, but it was Lethira deciding where her body went inside it.

"That is..."

She failed to finish. For a woman usually capable of finishing sentences under much worse conditions, this appeared to offend her pride only slightly. She looked upward again. Then she accelerated. Not hard. Enough. Air moved over her face and through the loose strands of ash-brown hair around her ears. She felt it properly: the pressure, the coolness, the tug at clothing and bow. Her eyes remained clear. Her lungs worked normally. Ian stayed secure against her. The first branch approached. Lethira banked around it by instinct. Her whole body turned through the empty space with a precision that made running suddenly seem unnecessarily constrained. She passed between two broad limbs, corrected upward and found another gap in the canopy. The next rise was faster. Leaves rushed past. Light widened.

Then Lethira broke above the trees. She stopped. The Elven Woods spread beneath her. From the ground they had always been trunks, paths, streams, roots, branches and local knowledge. From orbit they had been a green part of an entire world, too vast to belong to daily experience. This was between those scales. The canopy rolled outward in every direction, alive with differences she had never seen assembled at once: darker old growth, lighter river corridors, the faint irregular openings around settlements and ward paths. Farther away, the forest became a green distance beneath a pale sky. Wind reached her properly here. It pulled at her cloak and pressed cool against her cheeks. Lethira laughed again. She tightened her arms around Ian and looked down at him.

"All right. This may be better than walking."

"I agree."

Ian paused.

"But I hadn't even noticed the flying bit."

He pressed his cheek against the line of Lethira's neck and chest, settling more fully into the embrace she already held around him. Her laugh was carried away almost immediately by the wind.

"If you get lost I can correct, but from the map I made of your world due east from here will bring us close to the Dwarven peaks."

Lethira looked east. From above the canopy, direction felt different. The forest paths by which she normally understood distance had disappeared beneath one continuous green surface. Rivers supplied broader lines. Far beyond them, haze concealed the country between the Elven Woods and the eastern sea. Ian wrapped both arms around her and squeezed. It was plainly affection rather than fear of falling.

"Enjoy the view and take your time."

Then he kissed her neck briefly. Lethira's flight faltered. Not dangerously. Her body simply rose several feet before she corrected the movement, as though the unfamiliar touch had somehow translated into *up*. She looked down at him.

"That was sabotage. During my first flight."

The accusation lacked force. A little colour had reached her face, and the smile she was attempting to suppress made the verdict worse.

"You are fortunate I like you."

Then she moved. Slowly at first. The settlement disappeared beneath the canopy within minutes. Lethira did not chase speed simply because speed had become available. She flew low enough to keep the landscape legible, following the broad direction Ian had given while letting familiar country become unfamiliar beneath her. Streams she knew separately joined one another. A road she had travelled for days became a pale interruption across woodland and field. The long eastern edge of the Elven Woods emerged gradually rather than as a boundary. Ancient forest thinned into managed margins, scattered farms and routes where human settlement had pressed against elven country for generations. From above, the old political argument looked remarkably poor at identifying where one world ended and another began. Lethira said nothing about that.

She banked towards a river instead. Flight began to make physical sense. Not in the way walking did. There was no ground reaction beneath her feet, no branch to test or slope to read, but movement still rewarded the things her body already understood. Leaning changed direction. Drawing herself narrower let her accelerate more cleanly. Extending a leg or shoulder altered balance. The wind gave continuous information against skin, clothes and ears. Her first turns had been cautious. The next were not.

Lethira descended towards the river until the trees rose on either side of her, then followed the water for several miles with Ian held securely against her. She climbed over a ridge rather than going around it, skimmed through a broad valley and rose again simply because there was nothing preventing her. She laughed when she realised she had done it.

"This is extremely unfair. I have spent years learning how to cross country properly."

She climbed higher.

"And this is better."

Eventually the forest gave way more decisively. Human roads and settlements became more frequent below. Fields lay in angular patches. Smoke rose from villages whose names Lethira might have known from maps without ever visiting them. She kept enough height that nobody beneath was likely to distinguish two people in the sky from anything worth reporting. Beyond them, the land flattened towards the eastern coast. The sea appeared as a line first. Then as breadth. Lethira slowed. She had crossed water by boat before. She had stood on shores and watched the horizon. None of that prepared her for seeing coastline from above: pale beaches, dark rock, river mouths spreading into the sea, settlements arranged around harbours and roads that suddenly stopped where land did.

She rose higher to see farther. Wind strengthened around them. Cold began to sharpen with altitude, though it remained tolerable beneath her travelling layers and whatever quiet margin Ian's mechanism supplied to keep the experience from becoming dangerous. Lethira looked down at him. He was still nestled against her, apparently receiving exactly the view he had claimed to prefer.

"You are missing quite a lot."

The sea stretched ahead. Somewhere beyond the horizon was Eastern Island. The Great Peak could not yet be seen. That pleased her. There was still distance left. Lethira angled upward and accelerated over the water. The coast receded behind them. For a time there was only sea beneath. She experimented with speed more seriously there, where there were no branches, roofs or startled travellers to avoid. The wind pressed harder against her clothes and pulled at the loose ends of her hair. Her bow remained secure along her back. Ian remained secure in her arms. The world below became movement. Lethira flew faster. Then faster again. A grin spread across her face. Eventually a darker line appeared ahead. Land. Lethira slowed before reaching it.

Eastern Island grew beneath them as they approached: western coast first, then rising country beyond it. Settlement and road gave way inland to highland forest, rougher ground and mountains that accumulated towards the north. One ridge rose behind another. Then another. Lethira climbed. The first snow appeared on distant summits. Her joking expression faded. She had heard dwarven travellers describe their mountains as though lesser ranges were simply mistakes committed by geology. She had assumed the usual adjustment was required. From the air, she began to understand why they spoke that way. The northern horizon had become stone. Not a line of mountains. Layers of them. Vast ridges and deep valleys rising into snow and cloud, with several peaks already taller than anything Lethira had seen closely in her life.

She gained more altitude. Cold sharpened considerably. The air thinned enough that the safety built into Ian's flight became perceptible through what *didn't* happen. Lethira could still breathe easily. Her eyes remained clear. Her fingers retained warmth and control. Yet the wind itself stayed cold, the air tasted different, and exposed skin knew perfectly well that they were somewhere no ordinary Wood Elf should have reached this way. Then cloud shifted. A white summit appeared beyond the lesser peaks. Lethira stopped moving. The Great Peak stood behind them all.

Distance made its true size difficult to understand at first. Nearby mountains seemed enormous until the eye followed their slopes and realised the white mass beyond continued upward long after the others had ended. Cloud wrapped part of its middle reaches. Above that, another immense section of mountain rose into clear sky. The summit seemed less like the top of a mountain than a separate piece of land placed impossibly high above the rest of the world. Lethira stared. Her arms tightened around Ian. This time not to control him.

"Isha saw that."

The words came quietly. She had known the fact for years. Seeing the mountain made it different. Lethira remained suspended in the open sky, letting the wind move around them while the Great Peak occupied more of the horizon than any traveller's description had managed. Eventually she breathed out.

"All right. The dwarves may have been understating it."

Ian looked towards the country beneath them. "Let's find somewhere to land, maybe along the Great Peak crest if you want to see it from part way up, or from one of the coastal lower lands?" Lethira kept her eyes on the mountain. The coastal country had its appeal. From there the Great Peak would remain a distant destination, something that grew slowly across days of walking until it occupied the sky. Under other circumstances she might have chosen exactly that. Today, it would turn Ian's solution to distance back into weeks of road.

"The crest. But not the Great Peak itself, and not one of the worked approaches."

The distinction mattered. The mountain was also a deep-dwarf capital, sacred ground, government, roads and inhabited stone. Isha's journey there had involved Granitethroat, Irondeep, witnesses, restrictions and finally an escorted route toward the Great Peak. Lethira had no intention of treating Ian's ability to ignore distance as permission to ignore everyone living underneath it.

She studied the country below. From the air, the broad geography made more sense than maps ever had. The Great Peak stood to the west of Irondeep, linked by an immense high spine of mountain whose lower folds descended southward into rough country. Farther east, the other lesser great peaks broke the horizon into separate masses. Rivers curved around the high country instead of obeying the neat lines travellers drew between named places. Lethira pointed.

"There."

Her finger indicated a broad shoulder along the Great Peak's eastern crest, well short of the summit and sufficiently west of the more obviously worked country around Irondeep. Snow lay in broken sheets across it, divided by exposed dark stone and low ridges. She could see no road, smoke, structure or regular cut in the slope.

"High enough that it feels like the mountain. Low enough that we still have somewhere to go. And far from anything that looks like it belongs to somebody."

That decided, she began descending. Lethira did not dive directly towards the chosen shoulder. She made a broad pass first, circling far enough out to see the terrain from several angles. The Great Peak changed every time she moved. What had looked like one continuous white slope resolved into valleys, hanging shelves of snow, cliffs, exposed stone ribs and ridges large enough to have been mountains elsewhere. She slowed when they crossed above the crest.

The wind became less abstract there. It came off the upper mountain hard and cold, carrying fine dry snow from somewhere higher. Lethira felt it strike her face and work at the edges of her cloak. Her hair pulled loose in several places despite the tie. The temperature had dropped far below anything in the Elven Woods that morning. She grinned.

"Better."

She flew lower. The snow below revealed texture: wind-carved ripples, hard glazed patches around stone, softer accumulation in the lee of ridges. Lethira changed her intended landing twice as the ground became clearer. The first shelf had a corniced edge she disliked. The second lay beneath a steep upper slope carrying too much snow. The third was broad, slightly rising and protected on one side by a long outcrop of dark stone. She chose it. The final descent was almost disappointingly easy. Lethira slowed until individual grains of blown snow were visible beneath her boots, then lowered herself through the last few feet. Her soles touched snow. For an instant she remained perfectly still.

Weight returned to familiar terms. Her boots sank several centimetres into the surface. Wind pushed at her from the west. The mountain rose ahead of them, far larger from here than it had been even from the air, the upper reaches vanishing through moving cloud before appearing again in fragments of brilliant white. Lethira loosened her hold on Ian. She did not immediately let go.

"That was worth waiting a century for."

Only when she was satisfied that the ground beneath them was sound did she release him fully. Her travelling pack appeared nearby on the snow exactly as agreed. Lethira laughed at the absurd neatness of it, retrieved the pack and settled it onto her shoulders. The weight changed her posture by a familiar amount. She adjusted the straps, checked her bow and gloves, then looked uphill. Now she had a mountain beneath her feet. No aerial view. No planetary distance. No impossible stillness above the world. Stone, snow, wind and an ascent.

She drew a deep breath. The air was cold enough to sting pleasantly in her nose. Whatever quiet protection Ian's mechanism supplied prevented altitude from making the first minute of their walk a medical emergency, but it had not removed the mountain from her senses. Lethira looked down the crest behind them. Eastern Island stretched away beneath broken cloud. Far beyond Irondeep's direction, other snowbound peaks stood against the horizon. To the west and above, the Great Peak dominated everything. She turned to Ian. Her smile became distinctly predatory when she noticed the clean snow around his boots.

"You chose well. And you still throw first."

---

Ian turned his back on her. Lethira's eyes narrowed immediately. He jumped forward through the snow, ran several paces and turned. The snowball was already in his hand. That earned him a fraction more respect. He threw. Lethira moved. Ian had aimed well enough that doing nothing would have put the snow across the upper part of her chest. Her hand came up almost lazily by comparison with the speed of the thing itself. The snowball struck her palm. Her fingers closed around it. For a moment she simply stood there, holding Ian's first attack intact. Wind pulled at her cloak. Fine snow crossed the slope behind her. The Great Peak rose in white and black above them. Lethira looked at the snowball, then at Ian.

Her expression became deeply satisfied.

"That was your advantage. Very respectable for an ordinary human."

The compliment lasted just long enough to be dangerous. Lethira bent. One hand plunged into the snow. She came up with another ball already forming between her palms, compacted with the quick efficiency of someone who had spent much of her life doing practical things in bad weather. The first remained in her other hand. Two. Her smile widened.

"I have decided catching it does not count as throwing first."

She moved. Not flight. Just Lethira. Three quick steps carried her sideways across the slope with startling speed despite the snow and pack. Her body stayed balanced where Ian's human instinct expected the surface to make somebody careful. The first snowball—the one he had thrown—left her hand. It came back at him considerably faster than it had arrived. The second followed from a different angle a heartbeat later. The first struck squarely against the centre of his chest. The second hit his shoulder almost simultaneously and burst into powder across his clothes. Lethira stopped several metres away. Her face was bright with triumph.

"One each. Plus interest."

Ian raised both hands in theatrical defeat. "I surrender, please have your way with me, conquering Elven warrior." Lethira stopped. The mountain wind pulled loose strands of ash-brown hair across her face while she considered the offer with considerably more seriousness than it deserved.

"Warrior?"

She walked towards him through the snow.

"I am a warden. And if you are going to surrender, you should really learn what sort of woman has captured you."

Ian's hands remained raised. That was generous of him. Lethira reached him, took one wrist, and used the smallest turn of hip and shoulder to remove the rest of his dignity. His feet left their reliable relationship with the mountain for a brief instant before he landed safely on his back in deep snow. She followed him down. One knee settled beside his hip, the other planted securely in the snow. She brought his captured wrist above his shoulder and held it there with one hand, reproducing the position from their first date with even less visible effort. The difference was the setting.

Above her rose the Great Peak. Wind drove fine snow over the ridge. Her travelling cloak shifted around her, bow and pack still secure, while Ian lay beneath a Wood Elf who appeared entirely comfortable having conquered him several thousand metres above the lowlands. Lethira looked down at him.

"Your surrender is accepted. Terms are severe. You will cease hostilities. You will acknowledge that your first-throw advantage was insufficient. And you will provide pizza again at some future date."

The seriousness cracked. She leaned closer, keeping his wrist pinned easily.

"As for having my way with you... I seem to recall you enjoying this part."

She gave his wrist a small demonstrative press, still comfortably short of pain. Then she bent and kissed him. The kiss was warmer than the air around them and more confident than either of those beneath the moon. Lethira lingered for several seconds before drawing back, close enough that her hair brushed his cheek. Her eyes met his.

"Conquest complete."

She released his wrist. For a moment she remained above him anyway, looking altogether too pleased with the outcome of the first military engagement of their second date. Then she offered him her hand.

"Come on, ordinary human. We have a mountain to walk."

Ian took it. "Yes my lady. Sorry for the warrior, it was a poor clichéd line. But after that sound defeat, I might try an attack again, losing never felt so good." He pointed towards the mountain ahead.

"Your next conquest."

Lethira followed his gesture. For a moment the snowball fight disappeared from her expression. The Great Peak rose above them in successive walls of snow and dark exposed stone, its upper reaches shifting in and out of cloud. From the air she had seen its scale. Standing on it produced something harder to understand. The crest beneath their boots was itself vast country, and what remained above still seemed capable of swallowing ordinary mountains whole. Then *my lady* caught up with her. She looked back at Ian.

"I think I prefer that to warrior. Although if you continue surrendering this enthusiastically, I may begin to suspect the battles are arranged."

She brushed the remaining snow from one knee and stood, taking a moment to settle her pack properly. Ian's snowballs had disturbed only a small patch around them. Beyond it the crest remained mostly untouched, wind working continuously across the surface and smoothing away whatever marks survived.

"Conquest is probably the wrong word for the mountain too. I would like to meet this one without defeating it."

That was as solemn as she allowed the thought to become. A few steps carried her onto firmer snow. She tested it with one boot, then another, reading the surface from habit. The mountain required unfamiliar judgement at this altitude, but snow itself was not new to her. Windward patches had hardened; sheltered hollows accumulated softer powder. Dark stone showed where the crest had been stripped bare. She glanced back at Ian.

"And you may attack again. Later. When I have stopped expecting it."

Lethira resumed walking. The first section rose gradually along the broad shoulder they had chosen. At human pace it would have been demanding almost immediately: altitude, snow, cold and uneven footing layered one on another. Lethira moved with considerably less trouble. Her stride shortened where the snow deepened, then lengthened again over exposed rock. The pack sat close against her back, and the bow scarcely moved despite the wind. She did not hurry. Flying had made distance easy. Walking restored detail.

A line that had looked like a dark mark from above became a seam of nearly black stone breaking through the snow. Ice had formed in shallow depressions along it, clear enough in places to show trapped bubbles beneath the surface. Farther upslope, the wind had sculpted the snow into repeated ridges no higher than a hand. Lethira crouched beside one.

"Look."

She ran two gloved fingers along the hardened edge. Snow grains streamed from the crest as the wind caught them, each tiny movement insignificant until the whole surface seemed to be travelling.

"I have seen drifts shaped by wind before. Never with this much room."

She straightened. The view behind them had widened with only a modest gain in height. Irondeep lay somewhere beyond the intervening ridges, hidden more often than visible. Farther east the lesser peaks divided the horizon, some with their own clouds gathered around them. The lower island beyond had become indistinct under haze. Lethira stood looking for a while. Then she turned towards Ian, remembered the snow still clinging to the front of his clothes from her counterattack, and smiled.

"My conquest appears to have begun better than yours. Though yours had advantages."

Her gaze rested on him with enough meaning that the earlier kiss in the snow required no explanation. Then she moved on. The slope steepened gradually. Lethira chose their route rather than following the easiest visible line by default. She avoided one wind-loaded hollow, crossed a band of bare stone where the footing was cleaner, and stopped once where the crest narrowed enough that the ground dropped sharply on both sides. There she stood almost motionless. Cloud moved below part of the ridge. Below them. That fact delighted her enough to produce another quiet laugh.

"I have spent my whole life climbing things to see over them. This mountain cheats."

She adjusted one glove and stepped farther onto the exposed section. Wind struck harder here. It pressed her cloak against her body and pulled at Ian's clothes. The cold had become serious, though still welcome. Lethira flexed her fingers once inside the gloves, checking herself rather than waiting for discomfort to become a problem. Still fine. The mechanism's safety remained quiet in the background. She could breathe. Her head was clear. Her limbs answered normally. Everything else—the cold, wind, snow underfoot, effort of walking uphill with a pack—still belonged to the mountain. That balance pleased her. Lethira looked ahead. A higher shoulder waited perhaps an hour's ordinary walking away, though distance was deceptive against slopes this large. Beyond it the ridge rose again into cloud. She grinned.

"Come on."

No title this time. No warden, warrior, lady or conqueror. She simply took Ian's hand. Then Lethira Dawnleaf, who had spent more than a century crossing difficult country with no expectation that the world would shorten itself for her, started up the Great Peak with a human man beside her and no particular need to reach the top. Ian followed, pleased by the uncomplicated joy the mountain seemed to be drawing out of her.

"You like this don't you... the bleakness, the scale, the extremes..."

Lethira looked back at him.

"I do."

The answer came quickly. Ian continued, "I wonder why that is? the difference to the woods? or maybe your ... very impressive .. physique is actually having to *work* just because of the terrain?" He shrugged, uncertain himself. Lethira's eyes narrowed at *very impressive physique*, though the smile that followed made clear she was filing the phrase somewhere useful.

"You may continue describing my physique whenever you feel the need. But I think you may also be partly right."

The crest had steepened enough that conversation naturally spread between breaths. Lethira planted one boot into a hard patch of snow, tested it, then crossed onto exposed stone before climbing back towards the white line above. The movement was still easy by any human comparison, but no longer effortless in the way walking through her own forest could become. The slope asked something from her calves and thighs. The pack pulled differently against her shoulders. Wind made every adjustment matter. She seemed to enjoy noticing that.

"The woods are difficult, but they are difficult in ways I understand before I think about them. Roots, wet branches, bad ground, narrow paths. I have spent so long moving through those things that most of the work happens before I notice I am doing it."

She stopped on a dark shelf of rock and looked back across the country beneath them. Here there were almost no trees. No shelter except what stone happened to provide. Snow and cloud reduced the world to white, grey and the deep blue of distant sky. The scale defeated the usual ways of judging distance; a ridge that looked nearby could require an hour to reach. Lethira breathed deeply, then smiled.

"This place does not know me. I have to look properly. The snow changes. The wind changes. The air feels wrong. Even walking asks more of me than walking usually does."

Her gaze dropped briefly to her own legs, then returned to Ian with amusement.

"And yes. My very impressive physique is being required to participate. I admit that has charm."

Then she looked uphill again.

"But it is also the emptiness. In the forest, there is always something nearby. A path somebody uses. A tree somebody knows. A stream with a name, even if only three people use it. Birds. Spirits. Someone who may appear around the next trunk."

She swept one gloved hand across the high country. Here, the nearest signs of inhabited dwarven civilisation were hidden behind ridges large enough to hold entire landscapes. Wind erased their footprints almost as soon as they made them. Cloud moved across slopes with no concern for roads or names.

"This feels as though the world continued for a very long time before deciding whether people were necessary."

Lethira stood with that for a few seconds, then glanced at Ian.

"That may be the part I like most. Although having a handsome man follow me up it while admiring my legs is improving the experience considerably."

She started walking again. A few paces later she added, "You should probably be warned that if this mountain succeeds in making me genuinely tired, I may become intolerably pleased with myself." Ian made an exaggerated show of looking away from her legs.

"There's a mountain?"

Lethira stopped so abruptly that one boot sank slightly deeper into the snow. She turned. The expression on her face began as disbelief and failed almost immediately. Her laugh came out into the wind, bright enough that she had to look away from him for a moment.

"Terrible. Also unconvincing."

A little farther up, Ian's voice changed.

"Do you want to experience it alone, for a little bit?"

Lethira slowed again. This time she did not answer immediately. The question reached somewhere the teasing had not. She looked uphill. The Great Peak rose into cloud ahead, its exposed stone dark against hard snow. Wind moved continuously over the crest, lifting a skin of powder and carrying it away. Behind them, Eastern Island had already become an arrangement of ridges and distant colour rather than places she could name. She had wanted to come here for years. Ian had made that possible. He had also understood that making something possible did not require standing inside every part of it. Lethira looked back at him.

"Yes. I think I would. Just for a little while."

She squeezed his hand once before releasing it. Then she turned uphill. Lethira walked alone. Not far at first. Twenty paces became fifty. The sound of her own boots compressing snow became more distinct as conversation fell away. She chose a line towards the higher shoulder they had been approaching, testing each patch of ground from habit and letting the slope dictate her pace. The mountain changed when nobody was beside her. Not because Ian had become unwelcome. His presence had been part of nearly every joyful thing about the day. But solitude sharpened different parts of it.

There was no need to make a remark because another person might enjoy it. No need to notice what her own expression was doing. She could stop because a band of dark stone interested her and stand there for as long as she wanted. So she did. The exposed rock was rougher than it had looked from below, broken into angular plates with ice caught in narrow seams. Lethira put one glove against it. Cold stone. Nothing answered. No spirit moved through it. No familiar forest mana gathered around root and stream. Whatever deep-dwarf understanding of mountains existed beneath these slopes was not hers merely because she had arrived. That pleased her too. She continued upward. The slope made her work now.

Her breathing deepened. Heat gathered beneath the inner layers of her clothes despite the cold wind against her face. Her thighs and calves had moved beyond effortless travel into sustained labour. She adjusted the pack once, found a steadier rhythm and kept climbing. Lethira smiled to herself. Ian had been right about that part. It was satisfying to possess a body capable of extraordinary things and still find a landscape large enough to demand something from it. She reached the shoulder. Beyond it, the ground dropped away sharply into a vast white basin. Cloud moved through the lower part of the hollow, concealing and revealing slopes in slow fragments. Across the basin another ridge rose, enormous and empty, yet reduced by the Great Peak above it to something almost modest.

Lethira stood at the edge. The wind pressed her cloak against her legs. For a long time she did nothing. A century of roads did not make every new road familiar. She thought briefly of Isha having come through this mountain country with Thomas and Kelda, under dwarven scrutiny and circumstances carrying far more weight than a private journey for pleasure. She did not try to reconstruct what Isha had felt. That belonged to Isha. This belonged to Lethira. She tilted her face towards the summit. Cloud parted just enough to reveal another impossible reach of white above. Her eyes stung. The wind was partly responsible. Lethira laughed softly at herself and wiped one cheek with the back of her glove.

Then she sat on a dark outcrop with her boots planted in the snow below. The mountain remained enormous. For once, that did not require her to do anything about it. A voice touched Lethira's ear. So close that, for one startled instant, she thought Ian had walked up behind her without making a sound.

"Think of me beside you, and I'll return, I want you to have the full experience of this."

Lethira turned. The slope behind her was empty. Snow crossed the line of her footprints in thin windblown threads. Farther down, the crest descended towards cloud and the distant country beneath it. Ian was gone. Lethira stared at the place where she had last seen him. Then she understood. Her expression softened.

"Oh."

There was no audience for the word. She turned back towards the basin. The absence felt different now. Ian had not merely waited somewhere behind her, politely pretending not to watch. He had removed himself from the experience as completely as he could while leaving her the means to end that solitude whenever she chose. Lethira sat again. For a while she watched cloud move through the basin below. It advanced against one ridge, dissolved, then gathered farther along as though the mountain were breathing through weather too large for people to matter. No one spoke. No one watched her face.

There was nobody to wonder whether she was cold, whether she wanted to go higher, whether a particular view was sufficiently impressive, or whether she had reached the point at which the gift had succeeded. She could simply be there. After several minutes, Lethira stood. She walked farther along the shoulder alone. The route narrowed before broadening again around an exposed buttress of dark stone. She crossed carefully, using her hands once where ice covered the safest footing. Her body worked harder as she climbed. Breath came deeper; warmth gathered beneath her layers; the muscles of her legs carried the sustained pull of the ascent. She enjoyed all of it. At a higher shelf she removed one glove and touched the rock again. It was painfully cold.

She left her palm there for only a moment before laughing and putting the glove back on. A century of practical experience had not apparently cured curiosity. She continued until she found a place where the crest bent westward and the summit emerged between two bands of cloud. There Lethira stopped. The Great Peak filled half the sky. From this angle she could no longer pretend to understand its scale. The upper mountain seemed impossibly close and impossibly distant at once. Wind carried snow across the face in streamers that looked delicate only because the distances involved were too large for the eye to read honestly. Lethira stood with her hands resting on the straps of her pack. She thought of no one for a while.

Not Isha. Not Aelira. Not the wardens, court, old roads, humans, dwarves, wars or corrupted things she had spent so much of her life pursuing. Not Ian. The mountain required none of them. Eventually she smiled. That was enough solitude. Not because it had become lonely. Because she wanted to share the next part. Lethira looked at the open place beside her. She did not say his name. She simply imagined him there: two inches shorter, probably pleased with himself, undoubtedly prepared to comment on her legs or the mountain with roughly equal seriousness.

*Beside me.*

The thought was deliberate. The empty space beside her stopped being empty.

"I'm here, my Lady."

Ian's voice came from exactly where she had imagined him. Lethira turned into the gentle embrace and wrapped her arms around him in return. For a moment she simply held him. The solitude had done what she wanted it to do. It had let the mountain exist without becoming part of a conversation, without requiring her to turn wonder into something shareable while she was still feeling it. Calling Ian back had not ended that experience. It had only changed what she wanted next. Her cheek rested briefly against the bare crown and close-clipped side of his head.

"My Lady again. I may become accustomed to this."

She loosened the embrace enough to look down at him. Her face was colder now, touched by the wind, several strands of ash-brown hair pulled free despite the careful tie. There was also a brightness in her eyes that had not been there lower on the mountain.

"I am glad you disappeared."

A pause.

"That sounds worse than I mean it. I wanted to know what this place felt like when nobody else was inside the moment with me."

Her hands remained around him.

"And then I wanted you back."

That admission settled more easily than she expected. Lethira gave him another brief squeeze before letting one arm fall away. Her other hand found his.

"I walked farther. The view improves. So does the climbing. Come. Walk with me."

Ian walked beside her in the same clothes he seemed to wear everywhere: ordinary boots, jeans and a plain black T-shirt. Lethira noticed almost immediately. The mountain wind was strong enough to pull at her cloak and drive fine snow across the ridge. She wore layered travelling clothes, gloves, proper boots and a pack chosen with cold country in mind. Ian looked as though he had stepped outside on a mild afternoon. He appeared entirely unconcerned. Lethira's gaze travelled from the snow around his boots to the bare skin of his arms, then to his face. She said nothing for several steps. Ian reached across and took her gloved hand. Her fingers closed around his.

The contrast made his clothing even more absurd. Her glove was thick enough for mountain travel; his hand was bare. Yet there was no stiffness in his fingers, no shivering, no change in his breathing. Whatever protection his machine gave him was quieter and considerably less committed to realism than the one he had arranged for her. Lethira looked at their joined hands.

"You are ridiculous."

There was affection in it. She lifted their hands slightly, examining his bare fingers as though the evidence might improve under closer inspection.

"I am dressed for a mountain. You are dressed for sitting indoors and eating pizza."

She gave his hand a squeeze. Ian's lack of response to the cold interested her more than it troubled her. He had already explained the difference between himself and the projected form walking beside her. She knew the body could be touched, held and kissed while the real Ian received the experience through description rather than the direct sensation she took for granted. Apparently it could also ignore weather. Lethira released their raised hands back between them and continued walking.

The higher route narrowed around the exposed stone buttress she had crossed alone. She took the outside line first, boots finding the places where wind had stripped the rock mostly clean of snow. Ian remained beside her, their hands linked, and she shortened her stride slightly where the footing became awkward. It was unnecessary in one sense. His machine would not let him fall into a ravine because his Earth footwear lacked mountain judgement. Lethira did it anyway. The crest broadened beyond the rocks. Windblown snow stretched ahead in a shallow rise towards another dark ridge. Above it, the Great Peak appeared and vanished through moving cloud, each glimpse revealing enough mountain to make their progress feel almost insulting. Lethira breathed deeply.

Her body had begun to register the climb properly now. Warmth gathered beneath her layers despite the cold. Her legs carried the pleasant heaviness of sustained effort, and she could feel her heartbeat more clearly when the slope steepened. Beside her, Ian remained physically untouched by any of it. Lethira looked at him, then smiled.

"I think this may be the first walk we have taken where I am the one suffering for realism."

She sounded pleased rather than aggrieved. Their hands remained together as they climbed. A gust crossed the ridge hard enough that Lethira turned one shoulder into it. Snow struck her cloak and hissed away across the exposed rock. Ian's T-shirt barely seemed to matter. She laughed under her breath.

"Your clothing is going to offend every dwarf we meet."

Another few paces.

"Good."

The pathless ridge rose ahead. Lethira tightened her fingers around his bare hand and kept walking. Ian glanced at their joined hands. "I don't think humans can survive here anyway, so I didn't think a pretend outfit would suit. Plus I'd not be able to feel you so easily." Lethira looked down at herself, then at him.

"You have a point about the costume. If you appeared in perfect mountain clothing that existed only because you told reality to dress you correctly, I am not certain that would be more honest."

She lifted their joined hands, his bare fingers enclosed in her glove. The second part of his explanation made her expression soften. She knew the limitation he lived with. The man holding her hand here could touch, kiss and be held; the Ian elsewhere received the experience through description rather than the direct sensation she took for granted. His choice of clothing could not solve that. Still, Lethira understood what he meant. Fabric would put another layer into even the representation of closeness.

"So this gives you a better account of me. I can accept vanity in the service of scholarship."

Ian continued. "I hope that was ok? I probably should've checked if you were ok for me to not experience the cold like you are." Lethira's pace slowed. That question mattered more than the clothing. She looked ahead at the ridge, where wind swept a fine veil of snow over dark stone. The cold had become part of the climb exactly as she had wanted. Her cheeks stung. Her legs were warm from effort while the air continually tried to steal that warmth back. Her breath deepened when the slope steepened. None of it had been turned into danger, and none of it had been polished away. Ian, beside her, experienced none of that physically. Lethira considered whether the difference bothered her.

"No. It was all right."

She squeezed his hand. They walked several more paces before she added, "I would have wanted you to ask if protecting yourself had changed *my* mountain. If the wind weakened around us because you did not like it, or the snow became easier because your boots were wrong, then yes." Her gaze moved over his T-shirt again.

"But you being immune to something while leaving it real for me does not take the cold away from my face. I don't need you to suffer because I am suffering. Especially when I am enjoying the suffering."

The slope demanded another step high enough that she planted her boot firmly, transferred her weight and pulled herself onto a shelf of exposed stone. The movement tightened her grip on Ian's hand for balance more from habit than necessity. Once there, she looked back at him.

"Next time, tell me first if you are changing something that affects what we experience differently. I like knowing the rules. But I don't want you pretending to be cold merely to make this fair."

A gust struck them, hard enough to drag at her cloak. Lethira turned into it and laughed quietly as loose strands of hair whipped across her cheek. Then she stepped closer to Ian and drew his bare hand beneath the edge of her cloak for a moment, pressing it against the warm layers at her side.

"Besides. If you insist on dressing like an idiot, I can still make use of you."

"I love being made use of."

Lethira's smile lingered as they climbed. Ian's voice changed. "The problem of being omnipotent is I am not all knowing, I'm barely knowing, it's hard to think of all the consequences of what you can do. In fact, it's impossible. That's what makes it sometimes so.. upsetting... but you." He blushed.

"You are so relaxed with me, it's not that don't try - I try very hard, but you let me, be me, and not something I cannot be... which I think is where I'm at with the others, sadly."

Lethira stopped walking. Wind moved past them and carried a skin of loose snow across the ridge. She turned towards him, keeping hold of his bare hand inside her gloved one. For a moment she said nothing. Then she stepped close.

"I can be relaxed with you because I have less to forgive you for. That matters."

Her gaze remained steady on his.

"Thomas and Isha have things between themselves and you that I do not. Kanno has things that belong to her. I would be a very poor friend if I enjoyed how easy this feels and then used that to decide they were making it unnecessarily difficult."

Lethira's thumb moved over his knuckles through the glove.

"But I am not pretending with you either."

She glanced briefly uphill, where cloud swept across the immense white face of the mountain, then back to him.

"I know you cannot think of every consequence. I certainly cannot. Aelira cannot. Nobody I have ever followed into danger could. The difference is that most of us cannot accidentally alter reality while being wrong."

She let him have that sentence without softening it. Then she drew his hand beneath her cloak again, pressing it against the warm layers at her side.

"What I need from you is smaller than knowing everything. Ask when you know there is something to ask. Listen when someone tells you what you missed. Stop when the answer is no. And when you make a mistake, do not become so fascinated by your own guilt that the other person has to care for you instead."

Her expression warmed.

"With me, lately, you have been doing rather well. I like that you are strange. I like that you make terrible jokes. I like that you wanted to show me a mountain and then disappeared from it because I said I wanted solitude."

A little colour appeared in her face despite the cold.

"I like that you become embarrassingly pleased when I pin you. And I like you when you are not performing omnipotence."

Lethira leaned down and kissed his forehead.

"So be Ian with me. The others get to decide what they need you to be with them. And if that is harder, it does not mean this is false."

The mountain wind struck them again. Lethira looked uphill. After a moment, her smile returned.

"Now come on. Your very relaxed elf would like to become more tired."

"Yes enough introspection, onward, and maybe we'll confuse the hell out of some dwarves."

Lethira laughed.

"That seems a much healthier objective."

She took his hand again and turned uphill. The next stretch gave her what she had asked for. The crest steepened into alternating snow and exposed stone, forcing them away from the broad easy shoulder and onto a route where every few minutes required a choice. Lethira chose by habit rather than speed: hard snow where it held, bare rock where ice did not glaze it, sheltered hollows only after checking what hung above them. Ian's machine made his own footing forgiving without changing hers. Lethira noticed the difference once when he crossed a patch that would have deserved more care from an ordinary human, then decided she had already approved the arrangement and returned her attention to the mountain. Her breathing had become visibly deeper. That pleased her.

She stopped twice because she wanted to look rather than because she needed rest. The third time was different. She reached a broad ledge beneath a dark wall of stone, planted both hands briefly on her thighs and drew several slow breaths while the wind pushed at her back. When she straightened, she was smiling.

"There. Actual fatigue."

Her cheeks had coloured from cold and exertion. Loose strands of ash-brown hair had escaped completely now, and the careful morning tie was losing a long argument with the mountain.

"I was beginning to think my impressive physique was going to disappoint you."

The path above bent around the rock wall. Lethira took it first. On the other side, the mountain unexpectedly became inhabited. Not heavily. A line cut across the slope several hundred metres ahead—not a natural shelf, once she looked properly, but an old traversing way carved and reinforced into the stone. Low markers emerged from snow at intervals. Some were little more than squared posts; others had been built directly into the rock face, dark blocks fitted together with the sort of precision Lethira associated immediately with dwarven work. She slowed.

"That is a road."

It was not one of the great approaches. Too narrow, too exposed, too lightly marked. A maintenance route perhaps, or an old high crossing between worked sections of the mountain. Movement appeared along it. Three figures. Lethira stopped again. Even at distance their proportions were obvious: short beside the scale of the stone, broad through shoulders and torso, each carrying more equipment than Ian's entire outfit possessed fabric. One had a long-handled tool across his back. Another carried a bundled load. The third walked slightly ahead. All three had stopped too. For several seconds, two groups stared at one another across the snow. Lethira looked down at herself. Wood Elf. Bow. Pack. Mountain clothing. Unusual, but interpretable. Then she looked at Ian.

Plain black T-shirt. Jeans. Bare arms. Several thousand metres up the Great Peak. She closed her eyes.

"Oh, this is going to be excellent."

The dwarves began approaching along the traversing path. Lethira did not move to meet them until the route joined their ridge. She remained where she was, keeping Ian beside her rather than behind her. The three dwarves reached the junction and slowed another few paces away. The leader was a broad woman with iron-grey hair braided close around her head. Her outer coat was thick, layered and marked with pale mineral dust. A bronze plate at one shoulder carried symbols Lethira recognised as deep-dwarf route authority, though not the exact office. The woman's eyes went first to Lethira's ears. Then her bow. Then Ian. Then Ian's arms. Her expression did something remarkable. Absolutely nothing.

The dwarf behind her failed more visibly. He stared at Ian's T-shirt, looked at the blowing snow, looked at his own layered coat, then checked the sky as though perhaps the weather had become a private disagreement. Lethira bit the inside of her cheek. The leader spoke in careful Common.

"Traveller."

Lethira inclined her head. "Warden Lethira Dawnleaf. Wood Elf. Visiting the high country." That answer produced a fractional narrowing of the dwarf's eyes, presumably at the phrase *visiting*. Lethira continued before the question could become unnecessarily complicated.

"We are not entering worked halls, restricted roads or settlements without permission. We landed on an unworked shoulder farther west and are walking."

The dwarf's gaze shifted to Ian again.

"Your companion."

Lethira followed it. Ian remained exactly as impossible-looking as before. She considered several accurate descriptions and chose the one least likely to create an administrative crisis.

"Human."

The second dwarf made a noise suspiciously close to a cough. The leader stared at Lethira.

"I can see that."

"Good."

Lethira's composure lasted another second. Then her mouth twitched. The dwarf looked at Ian's bare arms once more.

"Is he ill?"

Lethira lost the battle. She laughed.

"No. His circumstances are unusual. He is safe. The cold is not harming him."

That did not explain anything. The leader appeared to recognise this and, to Lethira's immediate approval, did not attempt to force an explanation merely because one existed. Instead she pointed along the route behind them.

"That shelf becomes worked ground eastward. West is old inspection stone. Above this line the weather cuts hard after midday."

Lethira nodded. "Thank you."

"The upper face is worse."

"I hoped so."

The dwarf looked at her. Lethira realised this answer had not improved matters. Behind the leader, the third dwarf was still staring at Ian. Finally he muttered something in Dwarven. Lethira did not know the language well enough to catch all of it, but she heard the Common loanword for *human* and something that sounded very much like *shirt*. The leader replied without looking back. The younger dwarf shut his mouth. Lethira's smile returned.

"Have we confused you?"

The leader regarded her with the composure of a woman who had probably spent decades dealing with miners, weather and people insisting a dangerous route was perfectly manageable.

"No."

A pause.

"Yes."

Lethira laughed again. The leader pointed west.

"Stay off marked cuts unless invited. If the cloud closes completely, the stone recess two markers back is public shelter."

"Understood."

No demand for names beyond what Lethira had volunteered. No attempt to confiscate a bow. No assertion that travellers had become dwarven responsibility merely by appearing on their mountain. Lethira liked them immediately. The three dwarves continued east. The younger one looked back once. Ian was still wearing the T-shirt. The dwarf nearly walked into his companion. Lethira waited until they were well beyond ordinary hearing. Then she turned towards Ian. Her expression was triumphant.

"We have achieved your objective. Completely confused dwarves. And apparently your shirt is more alarming than flying."

"I'm just glad I didn't have the manga dwarf on it, else we'd have to fly away, and that would *really* confuse them."

Lethira stopped walking. She looked at his black T-shirt, then down the route where the three dwarves were disappearing around a shoulder of stone. Her face became very still.

"Yes. Yes, I think flight would become the diplomatic option."

The image reached her properly then: Ian standing several thousand metres up the Great Peak, bare-armed in snow, wearing an Earth illustration of a fictional dwarf whose proportions, clothes or behaviour had been designed by people who did not know dwarves existed. Lethira covered her mouth. It did not help much.

"We would have to leave immediately. Not because they would attack you. That would almost be easier. They would ask questions."

The horror in the final word was entirely theatrical.

"And then somebody would want to know where the image came from, why humans in another world invented dwarves, whether the artist had ever seen proper stonework, and why your shirt had apparently chosen one particular dwarf to represent the species. By sunset we would be before a craft tribunal."

She glanced at him.

"And I would abandon you."

The mountain path rose ahead into hard white light where the cloud had thinned again. Behind them, the dwarven inspection road was already becoming another dark line against snow. Lethira's smile settled.

"Keep the black shirt. It is doing excellent work."

She leaned slightly against him as they walked.

---

"Where to now? I have another hour, before my reality catches up with me."

Lethira looked uphill. Ian looked at Lethira. The climb had changed her in small, temporary ways. Wind had pulled most of the neatness from her hair, leaving ash-brown strands against her cheeks and neck. Her breathing was deeper than it had been below, colour high in her face from cold and exertion. The mountain layers still hid most of her body, but movement drew the cloth close across her thighs and shoulders, revealing more definition than Ian usually saw in the relaxed, deceptively slight Wood Elf. When she shifted her pack, a lean line of muscle showed briefly along her forearm before disappearing again beneath the sleeve. He was making a serious attempt to look at the mountain. It was not entirely successful. Lethira caught him.

Her eyes travelled down his face with quiet amusement.

"You asked me where to go."

"I did."

"And then stopped looking at the available geography."

She let him suffer for only a moment before turning back to the ridge. Ahead, the high shoulder they had been following split around a broad outcrop. The route to the right continued upwards into thicker cloud. To the left, a narrower rise ended at a pale shelf beyond which the mountain appeared to fall away entirely. Lethira studied both.

"Not higher. There."

From where they stood it looked close. Experience on the Great Peak had already taught her to distrust that impression.

"I want to see what is beyond that edge. Then I think we should fly again. An hour in your world is a useful limit. I would rather finish wanting more mountain than discover you stayed too long because I wanted another ridge."

Her hand found his again. They started towards the pale shelf. The ground became harder underfoot as wind stripped the snow from exposed stone. Lethira's pace remained strong, though the hours of climbing had finally made effort visible in the way she planted each boot and drove through the slope. Nothing about it suggested weakness. It was simply work now. Ian's attention strayed again. Lethira did not look at him this time.

"You may stare. I have already established that I enjoy being admired. And after carrying you through the sky, defeating you militarily and climbing a mountain while you are dressed for lunch, I believe I have earned it."

The shelf took nearly twenty minutes to reach. Its final approach narrowed between two ribs of dark stone. Lethira went first, testing a glazed patch with one boot before stepping around it. The wind dropped unexpectedly when they passed between the rocks. Then the mountain opened. The shelf projected over an immense western face. Cloud lay below them in broken layers, bright where sunlight struck it and grey-blue where the mountain cast shadow. Through gaps, ridges descended so far that their lower slopes disappeared into haze. Farther south the land softened towards highland country. To the east, other lesser great peaks rose above the cloud like separate islands of stone. The Great Peak continued above and behind them. Lethira walked to a safe distance from the edge and stopped.

For several breaths she said nothing. Then she removed her pack. She set it carefully against the rock and rolled her shoulders once, relieved of the weight. Even through the heavier clothes, the movement briefly showed the conditioned structure beneath them: lean shoulders, strong back, no excess bulk despite a body that had just carried both mountain gear and a human through the sky. Lethira noticed Ian noticing. Again. Her smile appeared without turning fully towards him.

"Rare wildlife?"

She flexed one arm experimentally, producing rather less visible muscle than an Earth athlete of comparable capability might have shown.

"I am beginning to understand why this interests you. But come here."

The humour softened. She held out her hand. When Ian joined her, Lethira drew him close against her side and rested her head lightly against his.

"This is where I want the hour. We can stay for a while. Then I want to fly around the Peak once before we go home. Not over the summit. Around it."

A small smile.

"I want to see how enormous it is when I already know what walking on it feels like. And afterward you may return to your reality before it sends somebody looking for you."

The wind remained muted behind the stone. For once, Lethira did not tease him for looking at her. She simply stood beside him and let him.

"I'd like to come back with you, I think there's enough time. If that's ok?"

Lethira's answer came easily.

"Yes. I would like you to."

Ian continued, "Seeing you enjoying the flight was nice. And we could fly past Aelira's chamber." That earned him a slow, delighted smile.

"You want to return from the Great Peak by flying past Aelira's chamber while I carry a human man dressed for lunch. I support this plan."

Ian paused.

"And..."

Something in his expression changed. His gaze drifted briefly, and Lethira recognised the particular hesitation of a man who had reached the edge of a sentence and discovered the rest was probably incriminating. He abandoned it.

"Anyway, let's see what the Great Peak has left to offer before we depart."

Lethira watched him for another moment. Her smile sharpened.

"I have theories about the missing sentence. For later."

They stayed on the shelf first. Ian's hour belonged to another reality and provided no useful measure here, but the limit itself was clear enough. Lethira sat on the dark rock with her pack beside her and Ian close against one shoulder, watching cloud drift through the valleys beneath them. The mountain had stopped needing to astonish her continuously. That was perhaps the strangest part. After flying towards it, landing halfway into its enormous geography, climbing until her body finally had to work and then standing alone where cloud passed beneath her feet, the Great Peak had become a place. An absurdly large one, certainly. A place capable of making most other mountains look like preliminary attempts. Still a place. She liked it more for that.

Eventually Lethira stood and settled the pack again.

"I want one more climb."

The route she chose was not towards the summit. Instead she followed the shelf around the western face where a shallow rise promised another view across the high country. The next half-hour was harder than the previous walking. The snow deepened where the ridge sheltered it from the prevailing wind. Lethira sank nearly to mid-shin in several places and discovered that elven grace was less useful when the mountain simply swallowed the next step. Ian received considerable entertainment from this. Lethira knew because she caught him looking.

"Do not. You are floating through this experience under false pretences."

The accusation lacked conviction. She was smiling too much. Another hundred metres brought firmer ground and a final rise of exposed stone. Lethira climbed it with both hands once, bow and pack moving naturally with her body. At the top she remained crouched for a moment, breathing hard enough now that even she could not pretend the mountain had failed to challenge her. She straightened slowly. The view changed again. To the north and east, the lesser great peaks stood separately enough to distinguish their forms. Irondeep lay somewhere among the nearer mass of ridges, though she would not have claimed to identify its exact worked mountain from this angle. Farther away, snowbound summits rose beyond cloud, each one enormous by any normal measure.

Behind her, the Great Peak continued upward until perspective stopped being useful. Lethira put both hands on her hips.

"There. I may have found the mountain's greatest achievement. It has made my legs complain."

Her grin returned.

"You are forbidden from enjoying that sentence too much."

She gave the view another several minutes. Then she turned downhill.

"We fly from here."

Lethira removed the pack. It vanished according to the same arrangement as before, to return when they reached home. She kept her bow. This time she did not wait for Ian to negotiate the flight position. She stepped towards him, put one arm behind his back and the other beneath his legs, and lifted him. The movement was still easy despite the climb. Lethira noticed. Her expression became smug.

"Apparently the mountain has not defeated everything."

She held him securely against her and stepped from the ridge. The ground fell away. On the first flight she had learned what flying was. Now she knew enough to play with it. Lethira dropped several hundred feet before turning the fall into forward movement, laughing as the mountain face rushed past at a distance generous enough to remain safe. Then she climbed along the edge of a cloud bank, broke through its upper surface and emerged into clear sunlight with the Great Peak beside them. Not beneath. Beside. That made its size absurd again. She slowed. For the next part she flew around the mountain rather than towards anywhere else. The circuit was enormous.

Cliffs gave way to snow fields wide enough to contain valleys. Long stone ridges radiated outward from the summit mass. Cloud gathered against one face and tore apart along another. Here and there Lethira saw evidence of deep-dwarf civilisation: roads cut across impossible slopes, dark openings whose regular geometry betrayed worked entrances, distant structures built so completely into the mountain that distinguishing architecture from geology required knowing people had made them. She stayed well clear. This was sightseeing, not an inspection of somebody else's home. At one point the cloud cleared enough to reveal part of the summit. Lethira went silent. The highest white ridge stood above almost everything else in the world she knew. She did not fly over it.

She kept the promise she had made to herself before leaving home. Around. Not above. They passed along its side with blue sky on one side and the mountain occupying nearly the whole world on the other. Lethira held Ian closer.

"I understand the dwarves a little better now. If I lived inside that, I might also become unreasonable about mountains."

She completed enough of the circuit to see the western face again. Then she turned away. The Great Peak began to recede behind them. Lethira looked back several times. Each time it remained there, still enormous. Eventually she faced west.

"Home."

The word felt good. She accelerated. This time she knew where she was going. Eastern Island passed beneath them in broad pieces: mountains becoming highlands, highlands descending towards the western coast, then sea. Lethira did not retrace every curve of their outward journey. She flew higher, trusted Ian's broad westward correction where needed and allowed speed to turn country into movement. The sea vanished behind them. Human eastern lands followed. Then, far ahead, the Elven Woods became a green line. Lethira slowed as they approached. Her excitement returned in a different form. The forest spread beneath them again, familiar after the day's impossible scale. Streams became identifiable. Particular breaks in the canopy began to mean places rather than patterns. She descended. Not towards her room. Towards the upper settlement.

Lethira's smile became dangerous. Aelira's tree-city emerged through the canopy ahead, its platforms wrapped around immense trunks and connected by bridges whose height had once impressed Ian before he learned to fly. Lethira shifted him slightly higher in her arms.

"Your idea."

She sounded delighted. They passed through an open band above the settlement, low enough that any elf looking outward from the upper platforms would have no difficulty seeing them. A Wood Elf warden flew past carrying a black-T-shirted human man in her arms. Several people looked up. One stopped walking. Another pointed. Lethira's composure became heroic. Then Aelira stepped onto a balcony outside her chamber. The First Princess looked towards the movement. Saw Lethira. Saw Ian. Saw the manner in which he was being carried. Lethira lifted one hand from beneath his legs just long enough to wave. Her flight remained perfectly steady. Aelira did not wave back. She simply watched them pass with an expression so controlled that it constituted its own form of outrage.

Lethira made it another fifty metres. Then she began laughing so hard she had to climb above the nearest branches before continuing home.

"I think you may have enjoyed that better than I," Ian whispered into her ear from his warm place against her chest. "And I enjoyed that a lot."

Lethira's laughter, which had only just begun to settle, returned.

"Yes."

There was no dignity in denying it. She kept climbing until the upper branches were safely below them, then levelled out over the canopy. Ian remained held securely against her, his head tucked beneath her chin and his body supported with an ease that had become almost casual over the course of the day.

"I have known Aelira for a very long time. There are remarkably few opportunities to make her completely unable to respond. That was exceptional."

Her arms tightened around him with affectionate satisfaction.

"And you were useful as a visual aid."

The forest moved beneath them at a gentler pace now. After the scale of the Great Peak, flying over the canopy almost felt domestic. Lethira recognised the bends of streams, the higher platforms and eventually the paths surrounding her own part of the settlement. She descended gradually, enjoying the last few minutes rather than turning the journey home into transport.

Her body carried the day more visibly now. The flight itself cost her little, but the mountain remained in her legs and shoulders, a deep pleasant fatigue beneath layers warmed by exertion. Her hair had surrendered almost completely to wind and snow. Fine traces of dried moisture marked her boots and the lower edge of her cloak. She looked far less composed than when she had opened her door that morning. She seemed pleased about that too.

"Although I should warn you that Aelira is capable of patience on a scale you may not fully appreciate. She might wait a week before saying anything."

That possibility appeared to delight her nearly as much as the flyby itself. Lethira banked around one enormous trunk and dropped through a broad opening in the canopy. Familiar branches rose around them. A pair of elves on a nearby platform stopped their conversation as she passed. One looked at Ian. Then at Lethira carrying him. Then very deliberately at the sky. Lethira managed not to laugh until they were out of sight.

"The news may arrive before we do."

She slowed outside her home and lowered towards the ground. Her boots touched earth. The impossible freedom of flight withdrew into stillness, leaving weight and footing ordinary again. Lethira stood for a moment without putting Ian down. She looked at him in her arms. The mountain pack appeared beside the door exactly as promised. Her bow was still across her back. Her cloak smelled faintly of cold air and snow. Ian remained in his black T-shirt, apparently no more troubled by several thousand metres of altitude than he had been by being carried past a princess. Lethira's expression softened.

"I enjoyed all of it."

The Great Peak sat somewhere far beyond the horizon again: snow, black stone, cloud below her feet, muscles finally made to work, solitude when she wanted it, Ian returning the moment she chose him beside her. Then there had been dwarves. And Aelira. Her smile returned.

"But yes."

She leaned down and kissed the bare top of his head.

"I enjoyed that last part an unreasonable amount."

---

"I'm very happy. My face in the real world is a beaming smile."

The face in Lethira's arms matched it closely enough that she had no difficulty believing him.

"I really enjoyed it. Now to warm up, I think I should introduce you to apple crumble, with custard and cream, after you've perhaps changed out of Great Peak attire. If I may come in, that is?"

Lethira's expression softened.

"Yes. You may come in."

She finally put him down, though one hand remained at his waist for a moment after his boots reached the ground.

"And apple crumble has already benefited from being offered after a mountain rather than before one."

She collected the pack Ian's mechanism had returned beside the door and opened her home to him. Inside, the contrast was immediate. Still air. Familiar timber. No snow forcing itself into the edge of a boot, no wind pulling at her cloak, no enormous white mountain occupying half the world. Lethira set her bow in its usual place and lowered the pack beside it. Only then did the accumulated state of her clothing become properly visible. Her cloak carried dried snow along the lower edge. Her boots were damp. The hair she had tied so carefully that morning had become an argument of loose ash-brown strands, with the silver cuff on one ear repeatedly catching the lamplight through them. She looked down at herself.

"I appear to have brought part of the Great Peak home."

The outer cloak came off first. Then gloves. She flexed her fingers as warmth returned more freely to them and looked at Ian, still standing there in jeans and a black T-shirt as though nothing about his day had required different clothing.

"Do not become smug. I am going to change."

Lethira disappeared into the adjoining private space and returned a few minutes later in simpler indoor clothes: soft practical trousers and a loose green-brown top, her feet now bare. She had also given up on preserving the day's hairstyle. Her ash-brown hair fell more freely around her shoulders, still slightly disordered from wind despite a quick attempt to put it right. She looked considerably more comfortable. And tired. Not badly tired. The pleasant kind that remained in the legs after they had genuinely worked. Lethira lowered herself onto one of the cushions and stretched both legs out for a moment before drawing them back beneath her.

"That mountain has done something no corrupted beast has managed in years."

She rubbed one thigh through the fabric.

"My legs are tired."

Her smile made clear that this was a triumph. Then she looked towards Ian.

"Now. You promised warm food involving apples, custard *and* cream. I am prepared to continue my education."

A generous bowl appeared on the low table. The crumble was still hot enough that steam moved through the thick yellow custard already poured across most of its surface. A swirl of pale double cream had begun to soften at the edges where it met the heat. Beside it lay a spoon.

"Let me know what you think, this is from my home country."

Lethira leaned towards it. The smell reached her before she touched the spoon: cooked apple, butter, browned flour, sweetness and something warmer beneath it. After wind, snow and hours of mountain air, the bowl seemed almost offensively well chosen.

"This looks considerably more sensible than cola."

She picked up the spoon and broke through the crumble. The top resisted slightly before giving way into softer apple underneath. Custard ran into the opening at once, carrying some of the cream with it. Lethira watched that happen with approval. Her first spoonful contained all three. She tasted it. Then stopped. Ian had already learned enough of her reactions to recognise when silence was favourable. The apples still had texture rather than collapsing completely into sweetness. The crumble was buttery and crisp where the custard had not yet softened it, with enough salt to keep the whole thing from becoming cloying. The custard added warmth and richness; the cool cream changed it again wherever the spoon caught both. Lethira swallowed. She took another spoonful immediately.

"This is excellent. And dangerous."

She indicated the custard with the spoon.

"The apple by itself would already be good. Then somebody decided it required hot sweet cream. And apparently that was still insufficient."

Lethira tasted a section with more double cream. Her eyebrows rose.

"Oh. I understand why there are two."

The Great Peak was still present in her body as she ate. Her legs had that deep heaviness she had been so pleased to earn, and warmth was returning slowly to the tips of her ears and fingers. Her hair remained windswept despite changing clothes; one side had dried into a shape she would eventually have to do something about. The dessert suited all of it. Lethira settled deeper onto the cushion and continued at a pace suggesting the portion had not been overly generous after all.

"I think I like this more than pizza."

She paused with the spoon halfway back to the bowl.

"That may be unfair. Pizza had to compete with the first anime date. This has the advantage of arriving after I climbed the Great Peak."

She ate another bite and considered the distinction seriously.

"The custard is the best part."

Then she found a corner where the crumble had remained crisp beneath only a little custard.

"No. Perhaps that."

The next spoonful included apple, crumble, custard and cream together. Lethira closed her eyes briefly.

"This is becoming an unnecessarily complicated ranking."

Her legs stretched out in front of her again. She flexed one foot, then the other, feeling the remaining mountain fatigue as something pleasant and entirely earned. A few hours earlier she had been standing above clouds with nobody beside her. Later she had flown around the highest mountain she knew, confused three dwarves, carried Ian over her own settlement and reduced Aelira to perfect silence. Now she was barefoot in her room eating warm apples. Lethira smiled at the bowl.

"I approve of your country. Provisionally."

Another spoonful disappeared.

"The people who invented this may be forgiven for at least some of their fictional elves. Not the bow."

That remained beyond clemency. By the time she set the spoon down, very little remained except a thin layer of custard along one side of the bowl and several crumbs that she gathered with one final sweep. Lethira looked at the empty dish, then at Ian.

"That was extremely good. And exactly the right thing after today."

She leaned back, legs still comfortably tired, and let her shoulder rest against him. For a little while, the Great Peak could remain where mountains belonged. Far away. Ian moved from beside her to sit cross-legged at her feet. Lethira watched him with mild curiosity as he lifted one of her bare feet onto his leg. His thumb pressed experimentally into the sole. Her eyebrows rose. She did not pull away. The first few movements were cautious, more investigation than technique. Ian had none of the unconscious confidence she had shown while controlling his wrist or throwing him into snow. He worked slowly instead, paying attention to what happened beneath his hands. Lethira's foot shifted when the pressure was too light. He adjusted.

A firmer pass along the arch made her toes curl slightly. Ian noticed that too.

"Oh."

The sound came from Lethira this time. She settled farther back against the cushion.

"That one was good."

Ian repeated it with slightly different pressure until he found the version that made her shoulders loosen. The mountain had left its evidence in places she had barely noticed while moving. Her feet had spent hours stabilising against hard snow, angled stone and the subtle instability of slopes where every step required adjustment. Once she was sitting still, the accumulated tension became easier to find. Ian found it badly at first. Then less badly. Lethira smiled. There was something unexpectedly pleasant about watching him learn her body in such a mundane way. No reality changed to make him competent. No knowledge appeared because he wanted it. His hands moved, she reacted, and he corrected.

When his thumb wandered onto a tender point beneath the ball of her foot, Lethira inhaled sharply. He immediately eased away.

"Not injured," she said. "Just tired."

Ian returned more gently. Better. Her head rested against the wall behind the cushion. The touch travelled occasionally beyond her ankle. Ian's hand moved along her calf between passes, following the firm line beneath the fabric before returning to her foot. The muscle there was still carrying the day's work; each time his palm moved over it, Lethira became a little more conscious of how thoroughly the Great Peak had succeeded in making her body participate. She did not object. If anything, her leg became heavier across his lap. The room had grown very quiet.

Warm apple and custard still lingered in the air. Her travelling gear remained where she had left it near the door. The hidden tablet was under its cloth. Beyond the walls lay the settlement and, somewhere within it, Aelira presumably deciding how long to wait before making Lethira regret the flyby. None of that required attention yet. Ian's thumb worked into the arch again. Lethira exhaled slowly.

"You are improving. Do not become proud. The first few attempts were mediocre."

A faint smile followed. His next pass found the same place more accurately. Lethira's smile deepened.

"Unfortunately, that was much better."

Ian's hand moved up her calf once more, firmer this time where the muscle could tolerate it. Lethira stretched her leg slightly, giving him easier access without saying anything about the decision. The gesture was intimate in a way she had not expected. Not because feet carried some particular significance among Wood Elves. They did not. People who walked difficult country developed very practical relationships with aching feet. It was the attention. Ian had spent the day giving her impossible things: flight, distance, a mountain reached in hours instead of months. Now he was sitting on the floor trying to work out where her foot hurt after she had chosen to walk on it. Lethira looked down at him. The contrast amused her.

It also affected her more than she intended to announce. Eventually Ian lowered the first foot carefully and lifted the other onto his lap. Lethira cooperated without hesitation.

"This one is worse."

The admission came with no shame. Her second leg had taken more of the awkward work where the snow deepened on the final ascent. Ian began again. By now he had learned something. His initial pressure was closer to what she liked, his thumb tracing slowly from heel towards arch before returning. When Lethira's toes relaxed rather than tightening, he stayed there longer. Her eyes closed. A hand glided up her calf. She made a quiet sound of approval before apparently deciding it had escaped without authorisation. One eye opened. Ian was paying attention.

"Do not look so pleased."

The warning lacked almost every necessary component of a warning. Her eye closed again. Several minutes passed. Eventually Lethira's foot rested almost completely limp in his hands, trust expressed less dramatically than anything they had done on the mountain and perhaps more clearly for it. When Ian's hand moved up her calf again, she let it remain there briefly. Then Lethira opened her eyes and looked down at him.

"You know, for someone who claims to enjoy being made use of, you are becoming inconveniently useful."

Her expression softened. She flexed her toes once against his leg.

"I like this."

The words were simple. After the mountain, the flying, the snow and the kisses, apparently the second date still had room for one more discovery. Ian shifted from the floor onto his knees. One of Lethira's legs remained between his as he leaned towards her. She watched him come closer without moving away, the last traces of mountain fatigue still warm through her body. For a while he only looked at her. Lethira returned the gaze. Then Ian leaned in. The first kiss was brief, almost a repetition of the one beneath the moon: affectionate, careful, a question whose answer they already knew. The second was not.

Lethira met him as he deepened it, one hand rising to the side of his neck while the other settled against his shoulder. The room had none of the Great Peak's wind to steal breath or snow to turn touch into comedy. There was only the warmth they had brought back with them and the increasingly familiar fact of wanting one another. When the kiss broke, Ian sagged forward slightly and rested against her chest. Lethira's arms came around him. His position shifted as he settled. So did hers. Her thigh pressed between his legs. Ian went still. Lethira felt the reaction before she fully understood why. Then she did. His face disappeared farther into the side of her neck.

Colour rose immediately across what she could still see of him, and the evidence pressed against her thigh left very little room for an alternative explanation. Lethira became completely still. For perhaps two heartbeats. Then her mouth began to curve. Not cruelly. She had embarrassed him many times because his embarrassment was entertaining. This felt different. More exposed. The reaction was involuntary, and he was trying with remarkable futility to hide from her while burying himself against the very person responsible. Her hand moved slowly over his back.

"Ian."

No answer was required. She looked down at the part of his face still visible against her neck.

"You are hiding in a remarkably poor location."

The amusement in her voice was gentle. She did not press her thigh more firmly against him, nor did she jerk away as though his body's response had done something wrong. She simply remained where she was, letting the accidental contact stay ordinary until he decided what to do with himself. Her hand settled against the back of his head, fingertips brushing the close-clipped hair behind one ear. The realisation that he wanted her this plainly affected Lethira too. A faint flush remained in her own face from the kissing, no longer explainable by mountain wind or exertion. She had known he found her beautiful. She had watched him stare at her thighs, felt his surprise at her strength and teased him through the consequences.

Knowing was different from having the evidence held helplessly against her. Lethira's smile softened.

"You do realise I am not offended. If anything, this is extremely flattering."

She bent her head and kissed his bare crown.

"And after spending most of today looking at me as though the Great Peak had acquired competition... I cannot claim to be shocked."

She rested her cheek lightly against the side of his head, one hand still broad and steady across his back. For once, she did not try to extract him from his embarrassment. If he wanted to hide against her for another minute, she was perfectly happy to let him. Her tired leg remained where it was. Her arms stayed around him. Lethira looked towards the abandoned dessert bowl on the table, then down at the human folded into her embrace. The Great Peak had been less complicated. Ian sat up. The movement brought him a little more firmly against Lethira's thigh before he leaned in and kissed her again. This time she was ready for him.

Lethira's hand came to the side of his neck as their mouths met, answering the kiss with none of the earlier surprise. The tiredness in her body had made her pleasantly heavy against the cushions, but it had done very little to dull her attention to him. If anything, after the mountain and the warmth and the slow work of his hands on her feet, every point of contact seemed easier to notice. Ian's hand traced lightly around her face. His fingertips followed the line of her cheek, gentle enough that Lethira leaned fractionally into them. He passed near the base of one long ear, then let his touch travel behind her jaw and down the centre of the back of her neck. Lethira shivered. It was small. Very obvious.

Her eyes opened. Ian's fingers moved there again with just enough deliberateness to make accident implausible. Lethira broke the kiss by perhaps an inch.

"Oh."

The sound contained considerably less composure than she would have preferred. Her gaze narrowed.

"You found something."

There was no complaint in it. Ian's hand continued its slow path at the back of her neck, and Lethira's shoulders loosened beneath the touch even as a flush rose higher across her face. The reaction irritated and delighted her in almost equal measure. She had spent much of their time together discovering how easily Ian could be embarrassed by strength, height, thighs and direct affection. Apparently the investigation could proceed in both directions. She drew him back into the kiss. Deeper this time.

One arm went firmly around his waist, keeping him close against her. Her other hand curved around the back of his head, fingertips against the short hair at the sides and back as she kissed him with a confidence that had grown considerably since their first careful attempt beneath the moon. The pressure of him against her thigh remained impossible to ignore. Lethira was no longer pretending not to notice. She did not use it to tease him immediately. Instead, the knowledge sat inside the kiss as another piece of what was happening between them: his desire made unmistakable, hers becoming rather less theoretical by the second. When they finally separated, she kept him close. Her breathing was no longer entirely attributable to the Great Peak.

Lethira looked at him for several seconds, one hand still resting at the back of his head. Then she smiled. Slowly.

"Interesting. You spend an evening discovering that I am stronger than I look. And now I discover that the back of my neck is apparently willing to betray me."

She leaned forward and kissed him again, brief this time, almost testing whether she liked being the one to close the distance. She did. When she drew back, her forehead rested lightly against his. The day's disordered ash-brown hair fell around both of them, no longer tied neatly enough to stay out of the way. Lethira made no attempt to fix it. Her thigh remained between his legs. Her arm remained around his waist. Neither seemed accidental anymore.

"Careful, Ian."

The warning was softened by the colour still in her face and the unmistakable pleasure in her expression.

"You are learning which things make me less calm."

Ian smiled and shifted to sit beside her. The change eased the pressure between them without really restoring distance. His shoulder remained against hers. Lethira turned slightly towards him, watching as he leaned in and kissed the top of her shoulder. Then her cheek. The second kiss made her smile. The third did not arrive where she expected. Ian moved carefully, finding his way past loose ash-brown hair and the long angle of her ear. His lips traced along the side of her neck with enough patience that Lethira realised where he was going before he reached it. Her composure began failing in advance.

"Ian."

His mouth found the back of her neck. Lethira inhaled sharply. One hand closed around the edge of the cushion. The other landed on his thigh with considerably more force than intended, though still nowhere near enough to hurt him. Her head dipped forward. That exposed more of the very place he had discovered. She noticed this betrayal immediately and laughed once under her breath, the sound unsteady.

"Oh, that is unfair."

Ian's lips touched the sensitive line again. A visible shiver travelled through her shoulders. Lethira closed her eyes. For someone who had spent much of their previous evening teaching Ian that desire could coexist perfectly well with calm control, she was becoming increasingly poor evidence for her own argument. Her fingers relaxed on his thigh and then settled there more deliberately. The mountain fatigue had left her body warm and loose. The foot massage had taken the remaining tension from her legs. Now this quieter attention at the back of her neck seemed to bypass nearly every layer of practiced composure she possessed. Lethira turned her face slightly away, giving him easier access rather than less.

"Do that again."

There was no teasing in the instruction. When he did, she made another small sound and immediately pressed her lips together as if that might prevent future evidence. It did not improve her dignity. Lethira reached back, found Ian by the side of his neck and drew him closer. Her head tipped until her temple rested briefly against his.

"You have found an extremely effective weapon. Which is irritating, because I cannot even criticise your technique."

The familiar humour returned around the edges, though her breathing remained a little deeper than before. She turned enough to kiss his cheek, then the corner of his mouth. Her hand stayed on his thigh.

"I was enjoying being the dangerous one."

Ian placed his hand over hers. Lethira's fingers were still resting on his thigh. He moved them slowly higher, giving her every opportunity to resist. She noticed what he was doing. Her eyes opened, though she did not turn immediately. The hand beneath his remained relaxed. When he paused, Lethira let her fingers travel the last small distance herself. Permission given. The gesture produced a quiet satisfaction in her expression before Ian's attention returned to the back of her neck. His kisses there were almost absurdly light after everything the day had contained. Snow driven hard enough to sting. Wind above the clouds. Her own body working against the Great Peak. Now his lips touched her skin with barely more weight than the loose strands of hair moving across it.

Lethira shivered again. She was beginning to resent how easily he could produce that response. Ian eased some of her hair aside. His fingers found the upper edge of her loose indoor top and pressed it down only slightly, waiting as the fabric shifted. Lethira understood. Rather than pull it back into place, she reached behind herself, caught the cloth near one shoulder and loosened it a little farther. The back of her neck and the upper line between her shoulders opened to him.

"There."

Her voice was softer than before. Ian kissed the newly exposed skin. Lethira's breath caught. The muscle beneath his lips was lean and warm, much subtler than Earth-human strength might have suggested. After the mountain there was a rare trace of fatigue even there: shoulders that had carried her pack, held him through flight and worked against wind and balance for hours. He kissed along the upper line of her back, each touch brief and delicate. Her hand tightened on his thigh. This time she made no effort to conceal the reaction. The next kiss landed closer to one shoulder blade. Lethira tipped her head forward and closed her eyes.

"You are learning far too quickly."

The complaint lacked conviction. Ian continued, moving slowly enough that each new touch had time to register before the next arrived. Lethira's posture softened by degrees. The powerful, composed warden who had thrown him into snow earlier that day had become a woman sitting barefoot in her own room, hair loose, one shoulder of her top displaced and her body responding openly to a man's mouth against her skin. She seemed increasingly comfortable with the contrast. At one point Ian's lips returned to the base of her neck. Lethira's fingers closed sharply over his hand. Not to stop him. She held it there against her own hand for a moment, anchoring the contact while another shiver passed through her. Then she turned her face towards him.

Her expression had changed. The humour remained somewhere in it, but desire had moved much closer to the surface.

"You were very proud when you discovered my strength. I think I understand the appeal of discovering things now."

Her free hand rose to his face. She traced his cheek once, then drew him into a kiss. It began slowly and deepened almost at once. Lethira kept him there for several seconds before easing back. Her top remained loosened across one shoulder, ash-brown hair falling untidily over the other. The hand Ian had guided higher on his thigh stayed exactly where she had chosen to leave it. She looked at him. There was colour in her face now that had nothing to do with wind or climbing.

"I like your hands there. And your mouth."

Lethira turned slightly again, giving him the line of her neck and upper back with deliberate clarity.

"You may continue. But if you find another place that makes me make embarrassing noises, I reserve the right to retaliate."

After another quiet stretch of touch, Ian pulled back enough to look into her eyes.

"I am happy."

He smiled. The shine in his eyes made Lethira's expression change before the words had fully settled. There was too much genuine feeling in it for teasing to arrive first. He kissed her. Lethira answered softly, one hand coming to his cheek. When he drew away and lowered himself onto his side, resting his head across her lap, she shifted automatically to make the position easier for him. His excitement remained conspicuous through his jeans. Lethira noticed. Of course she noticed. This time she did not comment.

Ian's hand travelled slowly along the inside of her thigh, beginning close to where his face rested and moving down towards her knee. The touch was gentle, exploratory rather than grasping. Lethira followed it with her eyes for a moment, then rested one hand over his where it reached her knee. She did not remove it. Her other hand settled against the side and back of his head, thumb near his temple, fingertips brushing the short hair behind his ear.

"Very happy," Ian said.

Lethira looked down at him.

"I can see that."

The words carried affection rather than mischief. Her thumb traced lightly beside his temple. She had seen him cry before under circumstances that belonged to pain, remorse and people he feared losing. The near-tears now were something else, and she seemed unwilling to cheapen them by turning his body's more obvious response into the entire joke.

"I am happy too."

She let her palm rest over the smooth top of his head for a moment before returning to his temple.

"Today was..."

Lethira paused. There were too many possible answers. The flight. The Great Peak. Snow driven across black stone. Standing alone above cloud. Calling him back because she wanted him beside her. Dwarves staring at a human in a T-shirt. Aelira rendered almost perfectly speechless. Then this room afterward: warmth, apples, aching feet, kisses and the discovery that Ian could make the back of her neck betray more composure than corrupted beasts ever had. She smiled.

"Very good."

The simplicity apparently satisfied her more than trying to rank it. Ian's hand remained beneath hers at her knee. Lethira guided it back upward only a little, then stopped it at the lower part of her thigh and left it there beneath her palm. Not a rejection. A choice about where she wanted the touch for now. Her fingers tightened gently around his.

"You don't have to look as though happiness surprised you. But perhaps I understand why it did."

Her hand returned to the side of his head, fingertips moving slowly against the clipped hair at the back. Outside, the settlement had resumed its normal sounds. Someone crossed a nearby walkway. A door closed. Farther away, a voice called to another platform. Somewhere among those paths Aelira was carrying the memory of a Wood Elf flying past her chamber with a human man in her arms and, for reasons Lethira intended to enjoy later, had not yet appeared at the door. Lethira bent and kissed Ian's forehead.

"You gave me a mountain. Then you let me have part of it without you. And when I wanted you back, you came."

She looked at him for another quiet moment.

"I liked that more than the flying."

The admission surprised her slightly. Her gaze softened.

"Although the flying was exceptional."

There she was again. Lethira settled more comfortably against the cushions, letting Ian remain with his head in her lap. Her tired legs stretched beneath him, the ache from the Great Peak now muted by warmth and his earlier massage. She glanced once more at the visible evidence of his excitement. Her mouth twitched.

"I am exercising extraordinary restraint, by the way. You should appreciate the sacrifice."

Then she relaxed back, one hand still resting over his on her thigh. For once, she let the room grow quiet around them without trying to improve it. Ian looked down at himself.

"I guess my little peak is not quite so compelling, I can accept that."

A snigger escaped him before he could rescue the sentence. Lethira stared. Her eyes followed his glance. Then returned slowly to his face. For several seconds she displayed the expression of a woman deciding whether affection imposed any obligation to forgive a pun. Apparently it did not.

"That was dreadful."

The problem was that she was already smiling. Ian's head still rested in her lap, making the comparison especially difficult to ignore. Lethira looked down once more, considered the evidence with exaggerated seriousness, then glanced towards the distant direction in which the Great Peak existed beyond forest, sea and horizon.

"I admit the mountain has advantages. Scale. Snow. Several thousand years of geological dignity."

A pause.

"But I did not spend the end of the afternoon kissing the mountain. Nor did the mountain become visibly excited when I pinned it."

She leaned down and kissed him lightly. When she straightened, her expression had recovered most of its composure.

"So I would avoid comparisons. They may not favour the Great Peak as much as you think."

Ian sat up.

"It's almost time for me to go. As much as I want to stay, all night."

Lethira's hand remained lightly against the back of his head for a moment after he moved beyond it. The words *all night* lingered differently from his earlier jokes. She looked at him, then at the room around them: mountain clothes drying near the door, his impossible dessert bowl empty on the table, her hair still carrying the day's disorder, the hidden tablet beneath its cloth. She wanted him to stay. That answer came easily now. Lethira shifted closer until their knees touched.

"I know. And I would like you to."

There was enough openness in the admission that she did not immediately protect it with humour. She leaned forward and rested her forehead against his.

"But I think your other life is allowed to have you back. Occasionally."

Her thumb moved across his knuckles. The thought of an entire night with him was not unpleasant. Quite the opposite. It also felt like a different choice from stretching a date another hour because neither wanted it to end. Lethira had lived long enough to let anticipation remain anticipation when there was no reason to hurry. She kissed him slowly. When she drew back, she stayed close.

"Besides, I have learned something useful today. You come back."

She squeezed his hand.

"And I have paper."

The gold-edged missives sat within reach on the low table.

"So I no longer have to wait for you to become clever enough to visit."

She shifted nearer and wrapped both arms around him, drawing him into another embrace. It was firm, quiet, and longer than a goodbye needed to be. Her cheek rested against the side of his head. After a while she murmured, "Stay until you actually have to go." Then she held him there.

"I will come back. And maybe, if you'll have me, I might stay too."

Lethira went still against him. The meaning was not difficult to find. For a moment she kept her cheek against his head, arms still around him, while the possibility settled into the room beside everything else they had discovered about one another that day. Then she eased back far enough to see his face. There was colour in hers again.

"Maybe."

Her smile was quieter than usual.

"I think I would like that."

She let her fingers travel once along the side of his face, the same gentle exploration he had given her earlier.

"But when you stay, I want it to be because we both decided that is what the evening became. Not because neither of us was brave enough to leave."

The distinction seemed to satisfy her. Then the familiar mischief returned.

"And if you are imagining that staying overnight automatically gives you unrestricted access to all unexplored regions of the elf... that negotiation will be considerably more complicated than the Great Peak."

Lethira smiled at the effect of her own sentence, then leaned down and kissed him again. Slowly. When she drew away, she kept her forehead against his.

"But yes. Come back. And one day, if it feels right... stay."

Ian stood, still holding her hand.

"Until next time Lethira."

Lethira rose with him. The difference in their height returned with the motion, familiar now rather than newly noticed. She looked down at their joined hands, then at him.

"Until next time, Ian."

She stepped closer and kissed him once more. It was brief, but no longer tentative. When she drew back, her fingers stayed threaded through his for another moment.

"Try not to make me wait too long. Although I suppose I can write complaints now."

She squeezed his hand, then finally let it loosen between them. Behind her, the evidence of the day remained scattered through the room: damp mountain clothing, the empty crumble bowl, the hidden tablet, the gold-edged paper. Lethira looked at him again. She was still smiling. Ian's hand slipped from hers. Before the distance could become departure, the empty bowl on the low table filled again. Warm apple crumble settled beneath fresh custard, steam rising through another pale curl of cream. Lethira looked at it. Then at Ian. His smile was enormous. Not the mischievous grin he wore when preparing a bad joke or waiting for Aelira to suffer. This was simpler. Open. Content.

Lethira's own smile answered it before she could decide whether the second helping constituted generosity or an attempt to ensure she associated him permanently with excessive quantities of English dessert.

"You—"

Ian disappeared. The word had nowhere to go. Lethira stared at the space he had occupied. Then she looked at the replenished bowl. A quiet laugh escaped her.

"Of course."

She returned to the cushion and picked up the spoon. Her legs were still pleasantly heavy from the Great Peak. The back of her neck remained inconveniently aware of several discoveries Ian had made after they returned. His absence was noticeable now in a way it had not been before their first date. Beside the bowl sat the gold-edged missives. Lethira ate one warm spoonful of crumble and custard, looked at the stack of paper, and smiled again. She had no need to write yet. That did not mean she would wait very long.

---

Aelira waited until evening. Not the following morning this time. Lethira had finished most of the second crumble and was deciding whether sore legs justified eating the rest immediately when somebody knocked. She knew the rhythm.

"Come in."

Aelira entered. Her gaze moved across the room with the efficiency Lethira had expected: bow in its usual place, mountain pack unpacked but not yet put away, damp cloak hanging to dry, boots near the door, hair still demonstrating what several hours of wind had done to it. Then the bowl. Aelira looked at Lethira.

"Was it a successful expedition?"

Lethira set down the spoon.

"Extremely."

Aelira closed the door behind herself. For several seconds neither woman spoke. Then Aelira said, "You waved." Lethira's composure failed immediately.

"Yes."

Aelira's gaze stayed on her for one deliberate beat before moving to the next offence.

"You were flying."

"Yes."

"And carrying Ian."

Lethira's smile returned. "Yes."

Aelira took the chair opposite her.

"He was wearing a short-sleeved black shirt."

Lethira began laughing.

"That was apparently the most alarming part."

Aelira's expression sharpened. "Apparently?"

"We met dwarves."

That displaced the joke. Aelira leaned forward slightly. "Where?"

"On an old high inspection route. We did not enter a settlement, hall or marked restricted approach. I landed on an unworked shoulder west of the obvious approaches, and we walked from there."

Aelira listened while Lethira described the encounter: three travellers, a route-authority plate she had not recognised precisely, her own introduction as Warden Lethira Dawnleaf, the warning about worked ground and public shelter, and the younger dwarf's inability to reconcile Ian's shirt with the weather.

"You gave your name."

"Of course." Lethira knew what was coming next and folded her arms.

Aelira obliged her. "And your office."

"I was carrying a bow halfway up the Great Peak. Calling myself an unemployed tourist seemed less convincing."

Aelira's mouth twitched.

"Did they ask how you arrived?"

"No."

Aelira relaxed by a degree. "Good."

"They were sensible."

"Also good."

The practical questions ended there. Aelira looked at the drying cloak again, then at Lethira's face.

"You went to the Great Peak."

The words landed differently now. Lethira leaned back.

"Yes."

"What was it like?"

That question belonged to her friend. Lethira took longer.

"Too large."

Aelira waited.

"The lesser peaks looked enormous until I saw it behind them. Then we landed partway up and they became enormous again because I was standing on something larger." Lethira smiled faintly. "The wind was unpleasant. The snow was difficult. My legs are tired."

Aelira looked down.

"Your legs."

"Actually tired."

Aelira's eyebrows rose.

"I am very pleased."

"I can see that."

Lethira shifted one foot and felt the remaining ache in her calf.

"I flew there. Properly. Ian made flight possible, but I chose where I went. I could feel the wind and speed. I crossed the sea and saw the island from above."

Aelira's composure softened into open interest.

"And then?"

"We landed. I walked."

Aelira's eyes dropped briefly to Lethira's tired legs before returning to her face. "Why?"

"Because that was the point."

Lethira glanced at the window.

"For a while he walked with me. Then I asked whether I could experience some of it alone."

Aelira looked back at her.

"He left?"

"Completely. He told me I could bring him back by thinking of him beside me."

Lethira smiled at the memory.

"So I walked farther alone."

"And called him back."

Lethira smiled at the memory. "Eventually."

Aelira let the silence do most of the asking before adding, "Why?"

Lethira considered pretending not to understand the question. Aelira would have waited.

"Because I wanted him there."

There was no embarrassment in saying it now. Aelira nodded once.

"That sounds useful."

"The disappearing?"

"Knowing the difference."

Lethira looked at her.

"Do not become wise. I am trying to tell you about flying."

Aelira laughed. They moved from the table to the cushions shortly afterward, the way they had years ago whenever official conversation had outlived its excuse to exist. Lethira stretched her legs in front of her. Aelira noticed the movement.

"Truly sore?"

"Yes."

Aelira's sympathy lasted exactly as long as Lethira expected. "How tragic."

Lethira stretched one foot towards her. "Ian massaged my feet."

Aelira's eyes shifted towards her. Lethira smiled.

"Very well, actually."

"Did he."

"He learned."

Aelira knew her too well. The silence became interested. Lethira sighed.

"You may ask."

Aelira did not pretend uncertainty. "Did you kiss him again?"

"Yes."

The princess's expression became far too interested. "Once?"

"No."

Aelira's smile appeared.

"Did you enjoy that?"

Lethira gave her a flat look.

"I flew him past your chamber in my arms."

"I was attempting not to infer excessively."

"How restrained of you."

Aelira accepted this. Lethira pulled one cushion closer and rested an elbow on it.

"It went farther than last time."

Aelira said nothing. That made Lethira continue.

"Not all the way."

Aelira lifted both hands slightly. "I did not ask."

"You were going to."

"I was considering whether I needed to."

Lethira pointed at her. "You did not."

"Apparently not."

Lethira laughed and nudged Aelira's knee with her foot.

"We kissed. A lot. He discovered the back of my neck is..."

She stopped. Aelira's expression became unbearably attentive. Lethira closed her eyes.

"I regret beginning this sentence."

Aelira's composure became intolerably patient. "Please continue."

"No."

She waited.

"Lethira."

"Absolutely not."

Aelira began laughing. Lethira lasted perhaps three seconds.

"He found something I did not know was especially sensitive."

"Ah."

"That is all you receive."

Aelira's smile suggested it was already more than sufficient. Lethira pulled her foot back before her friend could become worse.

"He said something else before he left."

Aelira's humour settled.

"He wants to come back?"

"He will."

There was certainty in that.

"He said perhaps one day he might stay."

Aelira understood the meaning immediately.

"Do you want him to?"

Lethira looked down at her hands.

"Yes."

The answer surprised neither of them.

"Not automatically. Not because a date becomes late and neither of us says anything. I told him I want it to be a choice we make when the evening reaches that point."

Aelira nodded.

"And you are comfortable with where this is going?"

Lethira looked at her.

"I don't know where it is going."

"That was not my question."

Lethira smiled.

"Yes. I am."

Aelira's gaze stayed on her for a little longer.

"You look different."

"Because I have been attacked by a mountain."

"No."

Lethira waited. Aelira chose her words less carefully than she would have in council.

"You look happy in a way that is making you slightly stupid."

Lethira stared. Then she laughed so hard her tired abdomen objected.

"That is an appalling thing to say."

"It is also true."

Lethira sat up straighter in protest. "I am not stupid."

Aelira regarded her serenely. "You flew past my chamber."

"That was deliberate."

"Exactly."

Lethira reached for the nearest cushion. Aelira raised one hand.

"Before you throw that, remember I am your princess."

"We established this is not one of those conversations."

The cushion struck Aelira squarely in the shoulder. Aelira caught it after impact and placed it calmly in her lap. Neither woman managed to remain serious. When the laughter settled, Aelira looked towards the unfinished bowl on the table.

"What is that?"

Lethira followed her gaze.

"Apple crumble. From Ian's country. With custard and cream."

"Is it good?"

Lethira considered the remaining portion. Then considered friendship.

"Very."

Aelira waited. Lethira narrowed her eyes.

"You may have one bite."

Aelira's expression became perfectly composed.

"How generous."

"It is mine."

"Of course."

Lethira fetched the bowl and surrendered the spoon under protest. Aelira took one bite. She chewed. Paused. Looked at the bowl. Then at Lethira.

"You should ask him to bring this again."

Lethira took the spoon back.

"I was already going to."

Aelira smiled. The mountain clothes continued drying by the door while the two of them sat on the floor and argued over whether one bite had become two.