## Chapter 417 — What Crosses The day after Mars and Mercury was Kanno's birthday. That fact prevented Thomas from suggesting anything impossible. He and Isha saw her after work instead. There was dinner, a small present, and enough restraint that nobody produced a planet-themed cake or asked whether she wanted to spend the evening somewhere with no atmosphere. Kanno noticed the restraint, naturally, and declined to say whether she approved of it. By the time she went home, Mercury was still Mercury, Monday had remained Monday, and the paper bag in her hand contained something bought within walking distance of Sendai Station. On Tuesday, 18 April, the Hero-System passage was still waiting. It had been available since Thursday. Morishita's report had arrived that evening; Friday had been work, Sunday had become Mars, and Monday belonged to Kanno. Nothing in the established mechanism required Thomas and Isha to use an opening the first moment it became available. The outgoing Common page lay beneath the clear weight in the flexible room. They had drafted it the previous night. Thomas had first tried to mention everyone who had crossed for the reunion separately. Isha had read the result, taken his pencil and drawn a line through most of the paragraph. "They know who was there." Thomas had looked at the shortened page. "That is annoyingly persuasive." "Yes." Now they read the final version together. > Kelda, and everyone with you who receives these pages, > > The reunion happened. We returned safely, and we are well afterward. > > We are keeping the private conversations private. The rooms were arranged so people could speak to each other without making those moments belong to everyone else, and we want to keep that true after the meeting as well. > > We are very glad we saw you. > > Earth has continued around it. > > Isha's climbing centre has confirmed her first formal coaching course for 22 and 23 April. The required training is paid work, and her ordinary hours have been reduced that week so the course does not simply become extra work. > > Thomas's new university working group has begun. He has been given bounded work and, so far, has successfully avoided becoming the person who rewrites every other office's instructions for them. > > The large gold-bearing stone has now had its professional examination. The specialist says the visible gold and quartz are natural and consistent with repeated hot-fluid mineral formation through fractures. She cannot tell where it came from. Her recommendation is to keep the specimen intact, which is what we intend to do. > > Kanno's Small Works Weekend went well. Anything she wants said about her own meetings or work remains hers to say. > > We hope work, roads, family and whatever else is taking your time are going well. > > We love you. We miss you. > > — Thomas and Isha Isha's finger rested beside the paragraph about the reunion. "Still right?" Thomas read it once more. "Yes." She nodded. The physical arrangement for the passage had become less elaborate after two successful uses of Transfer 2.0. The timer and emergency instructions were still in the drawer. Their phones were nearby. Water sat against the wall. Isha remained beside Thomas because neither of them had found a reason to change that part. Thomas placed two fingers against the page. He brought Kelda to mind: the workshop, broad hands, the particular economy with which she could make concern sound like an accusation. Recognition settled. Grey-white interference crossed his vision. **TRANSFER 2.0 'BEST ELF' EDITION** Thomas sighed. Isha looked at him. "Still?" "Still." The pull followed. It no longer took his awareness with it. He felt the outgoing page cease to be beneath his fingers and saw a cream sheet appear almost in the same movement. **TRANSFER SENT** **TRANSFER RECEIVED** **30 CYCLES TILL NEXT PASSAGE** Then the interface cleared. Thomas remained sitting for a few seconds. "No headache," he said. "No nausea. No dizziness." Isha watched his face, then held out her hand. Thomas gave her his wrist. His pulse was ordinary beneath her fingers. "Good." He recorded the result before either of them read the returned sheet. **Outgoing: 20** **Incoming: 19** The numbers looked simple enough to disguise what had just happened. Thomas put the pen down. The cream page beside them could not be an answer to the one that had just disappeared. Whatever Kelda had chosen to send had already been written before their page reached her. The February swap had established that clearly when the reply arriving beside their invitation knew nothing of the invitation itself. A swap moved two prepared things at once. It did not turn thirty cycles into a conversation. Isha lifted Kelda's page. Her handwriting covered both sides. Thomas began to read. > Thomas. Isha. > > Everyone who crossed for the meeting has returned here. No one was stranded, and no one came back injured by the crossing. The station was not used for any part of it and remains as it was. > > I am not putting the private rooms into this page. If someone wants their own part written later, they can decide that themselves. > > Mira is well. She has resumed the work she abandoned to prepare for seeing you and claims this proves she is disciplined. Rowan says the abandoned work proves the opposite. Mara has declined to judge because she says both arguments are useful. Tessa laughed and therefore has not helped. > > Sereth is back to her own work. She is well. > > Ruvan says the arrangements did what they were supposed to do. He has not turned that into a general opinion about Ian, which I assume will surprise nobody. > > Aelira says the terms she agreed to were kept. She also says there is no reason to decide today what she would agree to another time. > > Lethira is well. She told me that sentence was sufficient and that being the person holding the pen does not make me responsible for improving it. > > We have had weather hard enough to damage part of the east road again. Nothing dramatic. Two drains needed clearing and one section of edge stone had shifted. The repair is already underway. > > Porridge continues to treat my workbench as an obstacle placed personally against him. > > Your house is as you left it. > > I am glad I saw you. > > That sentence is mine. > > Kelda Thomas reached the bottom and stopped. Isha took the page from him and read the last lines herself. For a while the flexible room held only the faint domestic sounds beyond the door: the refrigerator, a vehicle somewhere below, water moving in a pipe inside the building. Thomas looked again at the section about his family. "Mara has learned from Rowan." "She already knew." "That may be worse." Isha's mouth moved. She read Sereth's single line again and did not ask for more. Thomas turned to Kelda's sentence about the house. It was almost aggressively plain. No preservation language. No promise that nothing had moved. Just the fact that the place still existed and could be referred to as theirs. He touched the edge of the paper. "I like that she wrote it." "Yes." They archived the page in the usual way: photographs first, then the original into a fresh sleeve. Thomas added the date and the symptom-free result to the transfer log. He recorded only what they had observed. The line about Ian's modification remained labelled as Ian's explanation rather than the System's. The emergency sheet stayed in its drawer. Dinner was already late by the time they left the flexible room. Neither of them minded. --- Kanno raised Aelira the following evening. She had come to flat 202 after work and was sitting at the dining table with a convenience-store coffee she had bought on the way. Her work bag rested near her chair. There was no camera bag. Thomas was halfway through telling her that the new working group's terminology table had acquired another duplicated English phrase when Kanno said, "I think Aelira next." Thomas stopped. Isha, sitting opposite Kanno with her Coach 1 pack closed beside her, looked less surprised. "You still want to meet her," she said. "Yes." Kanno had wanted Lethira first. That choice had survived contact with the actual meeting: no fresh briefing, no camera, no attempt to turn a person from Thomas and Isha's old life into an assignment. Aelira had always been a different problem. Kanno knew the title. She knew the political shape Aelira had occupied in Thomas and Isha's stories, the decisions that had passed through her, the protections she had arranged and the risks she had weighed. She also knew that an earlier half-formed idea of an Elven-princess portrait had been exactly that—an idea in Kanno's head. Aelira had never agreed to be photographed. Thomas glanced once at the empty space beside Kanno's chair. "No camera?" "Not for a first meeting." Isha nodded. "Same neutral room?" "If Aelira wants that." "And briefing?" Kanno took a drink of coffee before answering. "No new one in either direction. She knows whatever she already knows. I know whatever I already know." Thomas leaned back. "Do you want us there?" "No." The answer came easily. Kanno looked between them. "I want to meet her, not meet her while watching both of you watch me meet her." Thomas considered objecting to the grammar and wisely did not. Isha's mouth curved slightly. "Direct return?" "Yes. No recording. No surprise photography opportunity. No arranging her clothing, location or mood because Ian thinks it would make a better meeting." Thomas nodded. "That sounds clear." Kanno took out her phone. The four-person chat remained where it always did: available, strange, and capable of becoming intrusive only when somebody chose to use it. She typed herself this time. `Kanno: Ian. I would like to meet Aelira, if she wants to meet me.` She paused, then continued. `Kanno: Same kind of arrangement as Lethira. No fresh briefing in either direction. Neutral place. Direct return. No recording. I am not bringing a camera this time.` Kanno read the two messages once before adding the part that mattered. `Kanno: Please ask Aelira first. Do nothing unless she agrees.` She sent it. The message remained at the bottom of the thread. Ian's reply appeared in the four-person thread soon afterward. `Ian: I will go check with her.` A second message followed. `Ian: And Kanno, Happy Birthday, sorry I missed it.` Kanno looked at the screen. Her birthday had been two days ago. The apology arrived without an impossible present attached to it, which she appreciated more than she intended to explain. `Kanno: You missed it by two days.` She let that sit for several seconds before adding: `Kanno: Thank you.` Isha, reading over her own phone, looked across the table at her. Kanno lifted one shoulder. "He apologised." Thomas checked the thread. "Concise." "Do not reward him too quickly." "I said nothing." "Good." Kanno put her phone face-down beside the coffee. There was nothing else for the three of them to arrange. Ian had said he would ask Aelira. Until he had, there was no meeting. --- In the Elven Woods, the sequence began elsewhere. Ian appeared outside Aelira's chamber and knocked. Inside, there was a brief movement before the door opened. Aelira stood on the other side, dressed in the practical layers she wore when no ceremony required anything more elaborate. Recognition crossed her face immediately. "Ian." Her attention went once past him to the corridor and back. She had known him long enough now that his appearing outside her door was no longer beyond comprehension. It was still sufficiently unusual to deserve explanation. "What brings you here?" "I am not here to ask for Elven female courtship advice, do not worry." Aelira's expression changed by degrees. First came comprehension. Then the brief narrowing of her eyes that usually preceded either a correction or amusement. The amusement won. "I was not worried until you felt the need to clarify." She opened the door a little farther but remained within her chamber rather than treating his arrival as an invitation to enter. "And if this concerns Lethira, I suspect she would object strongly to my providing instructions." Aelira's mouth curved. "Possibly before objecting to whichever instructions I gave." The humour settled. She regarded him more directly. "So. Why are you here?" "Kanno would like to meet you, it would be in another place, you could enter and leave at will, via using a door with intent as before. The rest is between you and her. I like Kanno, if that helps sway your decision at all. If you're free I'll message them now before departing." Aelira's amusement receded while he spoke. She did not answer immediately. Her gaze moved past him for a moment, towards the corridor, while she separated the pieces of the offer: Kanno had asked; the meeting would be elsewhere; return remained under Aelira's own control; Ian was offering transport and then removing himself from whatever followed. That last part seemed to matter. "I know enough of Kanno to have been curious about her for some time." Aelira looked back at Ian. "And Lethira's opinion of meeting her was favourable." She allowed a small pause. "Although Lethira's favourable opinions have recently become unusually adventurous, so I will not treat that as decisive evidence." The smile returned briefly. "As for your opinion—yes. It helps a little. Not because I expect you to choose my friends for me." Her tone made the distinction easy rather than corrective. "But because you know Kanno independently. That is useful information." Aelira glanced once into her chamber. Whatever she had been doing before the knock evidently did not require immediate rescue. "I am free." She stepped back from the threshold just enough to make clear that this was an answer, not an invitation for Ian to solve the next part without asking. "I would like to meet her. The arrangement you described is acceptable: another place, the door answers deliberate use, and I may leave whenever I choose." Her eyes settled on him. "You may tell them." Ian's message appeared while the three of them were still at the table. `Ian: I'm with her now and she agrees, I've outlined the mechanism and said the rest is for your to agree. Do you need anything else from me?` Kanno read it once. The important part was there. Aelira had been asked directly and had agreed. Ian had explained the door and return mechanism, and had left everything beyond that for the two women themselves. Kanno typed: `Kanno: No. That's enough.` She paused, then added: `Kanno: When the neutral room and intentional return are ready, tell us. After that you can leave us to it.` Thomas looked at his own phone. "Anything about duration?" Kanno shook her head. "We can decide that ourselves." Isha nodded. "And Aelira can leave whenever she wants." "Yes." Kanno put the phone down beside her coffee. There was nothing else she needed Ian to negotiate for her. Ian's reply reached the group chat. `Ian: Ok. It is done. Have fun. Tell me if you need anything.` Kanno read it, put her phone beside the coffee, and stood. On the other side of the arrangement, Ian looked at Aelira. "They're ready so go when you are." Then he hugged her. It was plainly meant as a friendly embrace. Aelira still went very still for the first fraction of it, surprised more by the spontaneity than the contact. One arm came around his back in a measured answer before he released her. Ian's expression changed almost immediately. The fact that he had just casually hugged the First Princess of the Wood Elves appeared to arrive several seconds after the act itself. "Anyway... Have fun.." Aelira watched the embarrassment spread across his face. Then the corner of her mouth lifted. "Ian." She let him suffer for one beat longer. "I understood that you were being friendly." Her composure improved nothing about his expression. "The realm has survived." Ian waved. Then he disappeared. Aelira stood alone outside her chamber for several seconds. "Remarkable man," she murmured. She turned back to the door. This time she approached it with deliberate intent. When she opened it, her chamber was no longer on the other side. --- The neutral room was much as Kanno remembered it. A small table. Chairs that belonged to no particular culture strongly enough to distract from their purpose. An open side looking onto a quiet garden whose provenance Kanno had never asked Ian to explain. She had arrived from flat 202 less than a minute earlier. Her camera was at home. That omission felt more conspicuous than carrying it usually did. The second door opened. Aelira stepped through and stopped. For a moment neither woman spoke. Kanno had seen images of elves, moving recordings made by other people, and enough indirect descriptions of Aelira to have assembled a provisional person in her head. The provisional version disappeared quickly. Aelira's clothes were practical and well made, appropriate to whatever part of her local day Ian had interrupted. Nothing about them seemed arranged for Kanno. Her bearing was more difficult to ignore. She occupied the room with the ease of somebody long accustomed to being noticed and equally accustomed to deciding which attention mattered. Kanno inclined her head. "Princess Aelira." "Kanno Emi." The language mechanism carried Aelira's words cleanly. Aelira considered the formality between them. "Aelira is sufficient here, if Kanno is." "Good." Kanno glanced around the neutral room. "I wasn't sure how much princess was going to come through the door." Aelira's eyebrows rose. "All of it, unfortunately. I have never found a reliable way to leave the title on a hook." Kanno smiled. They sat. Aelira's gaze moved once over Kanno's work clothes, the small bag she had brought, and her empty hands. "You really did leave the camera behind." "I said I would." "Yes." Aelira rested her hands loosely together. "Lethira told me you did the same when you met her." Kanno looked at her. "She told you about that?" "We are close friends." The answer contained no invitation to ask what else had been said. Kanno accepted it. "I didn't want the camera deciding what the meeting was for." Aelira studied her for a moment. "That is an unusual problem to assign to an object." "It's my problem. The camera just makes it easier to notice." The first silence after that was comfortable enough to survive. Aelira eventually said, "Lethira also told me that you wanted to meet her before me." "Yes." "Why?" Kanno had expected the question. She had not prepared an elegant answer. "Because she kept appearing in Thomas and Isha's stories as a person." Aelira waited. "You kept appearing as a decision." That produced a visible reaction. Not offence. Interest. Kanno continued. "Permission. Political risk. Protection. Who could know something. Where Thomas could go. What Isha was allowed to do. Even when they were telling me something kind about you, there was often a decision attached." Aelira leaned back slightly. "That is almost rude." "Probably." "Continue." Kanno looked towards the garden. "I wanted to meet somebody from that world before meeting one of the people who helped govern it. Lethira seemed easier to separate from the role Thomas and Isha had given her in the stories." "And now you have come to see whether there is a person left after removing my decisions." Kanno looked back at her. "Something like that." Aelira considered this with more amusement than Kanno had expected. "There is. She spends a disappointing amount of time reading reports." "That helps." "I suspected it might." Aelira asked about Kanno's work next. Not the impossible parts of it. The ordinary job. Kanno described production schedules, layouts, print limitations and clients who used *final* to mean *the version before the next corrections*. Aelira's familiarity with this category of human behaviour required no translation. "There are court officials who do exactly the same thing," she said. "They merely have seals." "That makes it worse." "It makes them believe it is finished." "Definitely worse." They talked long enough for Kanno to discover that Aelira's humour lived under more layers than Lethira's. Lethira seemed to enjoy placing a joke in the road and watching someone walk into it. Aelira preferred allowing a conversation to become respectable before moving one stone half an inch and waiting for the wheel to catch. Kanno liked that too. When Aelira asked what Kanno photographed for herself, the answer became slower. "Things that were supposed to disappear." Aelira waited. Kanno described the old temporary notices, tape shadows, patched walls, removed signs and surfaces where one system had ended without quite succeeding in erasing itself. She explained *Until Replaced* and the wall series that still refused to tell her what form it wanted. Aelira did not tell her what the work meant. That helped immediately. "So the failure to remove something may become the subject." "Sometimes." "And sometimes the repair." "Yes." Aelira looked out at the neutral garden. "In court records, an amendment can become more informative than the original order." Kanno's attention sharpened. "Because it shows what went wrong?" "Or what somebody later needed everyone to believe had gone wrong." Kanno considered that. "That's worse than a patched wall." "Usually." They smiled at one another. Eventually Aelira's attention returned to the subject Kanno had deliberately left in Sendai. "Do you photograph people often?" "Not as often." "Why?" "They object more intelligently." Aelira laughed. Kanno continued before the joke could substitute for the answer. "A wall doesn't care if I misunderstand it. A person might. And a photograph can make one version of somebody look more authoritative than it deserves." Aelira became still in a different way. "I have seen photographs." "I know." "I have never agreed to one of myself." "I know that too." Aelira's eyes stayed on her. Kanno could already see a photograph. That was the irritating part. Not a formal portrait. Aelira near the garden opening, perhaps, with the room providing no throne, crest or attendant to explain her. Or seated at the table with attention directed somewhere beyond the frame. Kanno's mind adjusted distance and light before she stopped it. Aelira noticed. "You just made one." Kanno blinked. "In my head." "Yes." "Three, actually." Aelira's smile appeared. "That quickly." "That's why the camera stayed home." The answer pleased her. Kanno could see it. "Does knowing I have never been photographed make you want to do it more?" "Yes." Aelira raised an eyebrow. "Photographically," Kanno added. "It also makes the social answer easier." "Which is?" "I don't take one unless you decide you want one." Aelira nodded. No further discussion was required. Kanno picked up the coffee she had brought through from Earth. It was now lukewarm. Aelira noticed the cup. "What is that?" "Coffee." "I know coffee." "Bad coffee." Aelira's expression suggested this had not improved the explanation. Kanno drank it anyway. "You know it is bad." "Yes." "And you continue." "I paid for it." Aelira stared at her. Kanno considered explaining convenience stores, commuting and the psychological distinction between wasting money and finishing a bad purchase. She decided against it. Aelira let the mystery remain. "What was the last thing you photographed?" Kanno lowered the cup. "Mercury." Aelira paused. "The metal?" "The planet." Another pause. Kanno almost wished she had brought the camera purely to record that expression. Almost. "A world near our sun," she said. "Smaller than Earth. Almost no atmosphere. Grey ground. Black sky." Aelira's attention had become complete. "You went there." "Sunday." "With Ian." "He arranged it. I went alone." Aelira took that in. "Why?" Kanno thought of the hard line between sunlight and shadow, the strange walking rhythm, the first badly exposed frame. "Because he offered me a ticket and I wanted to see it." She considered the answer and added, "And I wanted to know what my camera would do there." "Did it behave?" "Badly at first." Aelira smiled. "Good." Kanno looked at her. "If everything you made on another world was immediately perfect, I would suspect somebody had interfered." That answer landed closer to Kanno's own reasoning than she expected. "Yes." She rested both hands around the coffee cup. "The first frame was bad. The light was difficult. I had to change what I was doing." "And Ian did not correct it for you." "No." Aelira nodded once. "He told me before this meeting that he likes you." Kanno's eyes shifted towards her. "Did he." "He appeared to think it might improve my opinion of the proposal." "Did it?" "A little." Aelira's honesty was matter-of-fact. "He knows you separately from Thomas and Isha. That made his opinion information rather than merely enthusiasm." Kanno thought about Ian's belated birthday message. "He has plenty of enthusiasm." "I have noticed." Neither woman pursued that subject further. After a while Aelira asked, "You trusted him enough to go alone." Kanno looked down at the cup. "With Mercury, yes." Aelira waited. Kanno recognised that the precision had been heard. "I trusted the terms we'd agreed. Real place. My camera. No changing the site. No leaving a trace. I could return." "That is not quite the same as saying you trust him." "No." "Good." Kanno looked up. Aelira's expression had softened slightly. "I understand that answer better." It was the closest either of them came to discussing Ian's other relationships. Kanno did not ask about Lethira. Aelira did not volunteer her. The omission settled easily between them. Their conversation eventually returned to Thomas and Isha. Aelira asked how they seemed in ordinary life. Kanno considered the word. "Busy." Aelira smiled. "That sounds familiar." "Thomas is in a university working group and is currently very proud that he has not volunteered to rewrite everybody else's work." "That does sound like Thomas." "Isha is doing a coaching qualification this weekend. She has colour-coded the preparation." Aelira's eyebrows rose. "By importance?" "One colour means things she is suspicious of." Aelira laughed. Kanno drank the last of the bad coffee. "They're well." The simple statement changed Aelira more than the details had. "I'm glad." Kanno nodded. She could have asked how the reunion had felt from this side. She didn't. Aelira could have supplied an answer anyway. She didn't. There were other things to discuss. By the time the conversation thinned naturally, the light in the neutral garden had shifted, although neither woman knew whether that change represented time in Sendai, the Elven Woods or only the room itself. Aelira rose. Kanno followed. "This was useful," Aelira said. Kanno looked at her. "That sounds dangerously like a meeting report." "Then I withdraw it." "Good." Aelira's smile returned. "I would meet you again." "So would I." Aelira glanced once towards Kanno's empty hands. "Next time, you may bring your camera." Kanno waited. Aelira held the silence for just long enough. "That is permission to bring it." "Not permission to use it." "Correct." Kanno nodded. "Understood." Aelira looked satisfied. Each woman had her own door. Neither needed anyone else to open it. --- Kanno returned to flat 202 first. Earth evening waited on the other side: kitchen light, the faint smell of tea, Thomas at the table and Isha on the sofa with the Coach 1 material beside her. The door closed behind Kanno. Thomas looked up. "All right?" "Yes." Isha watched her for a moment. "You liked her." Kanno took off her jacket. "Yes." Thomas smiled. Kanno pointed at him. "Do not look pleased with yourself. You did nothing." "That is increasingly the goal." She considered this. "Fair." Neither Thomas nor Isha asked what the two women had discussed. Kanno sat down. After a minute she said, "We might meet again." Isha nodded. "And next time I might take the camera." Thomas looked towards her. Kanno added, "Permission to bring it. Not permission to photograph her." "Right." That was all she gave them. Thomas poured another cup of tea. --- At another local time, a gold-edged missive reached Lethira Dawnleaf. She recognised Ian's hand before reading the first word. Lethira sat at her low table and opened it. > Lethira, my Lady. When I'm finished work for the day, may I come over? For you it should be today or tomorrow She read the final sentence twice. Then she laughed quietly. "'Should.'" A man who could cross realities had apparently found the correct level of confidence for predicting whether tomorrow would happen before today. Lethira drew a fresh sheet towards herself. She did not need long. > Ian, > > Yes. Come when you finish work. > > If your today becomes my tomorrow, I expect both realities will survive my displeasure. > > I was going to write again if you made me wait much longer. > > I meant what I wrote before. I would like an ordinary evening with you. No mountain is required. Food, anime, a walk, or something we have not decided yet would all be acceptable. > > I have also kept thinking about what you said before you left. I still want you to stay with me sometime. I am not going to decide from a piece of paper whether this is that night. > > "My Lady" remains acceptable. > > Knock first. > > Lethira She read it once. Nothing needed removing. Lethira signed her name. The gold-edged page disappeared beneath her hand. The second missive arrived before Lethira had put the remaining paper away. She looked at it, then at the empty place where her own answer had vanished. "Effective distraction," she murmured. That was becoming mutual. Lethira opened the page. > You remain an incredibly effective distraction from work, even via missive. I'm happy to keep the omnipotentence .. pinned, and spend the evening how you wish. There are some things I'd like to do with you. I realise given our shared humour how that sounds, but other than _that_ category. I would like to explore some of your world with you, normally, on foot. Towns. Cities. Staying in taverns. Maybe some light adventuring if that isn't too much. Just a thought. I'd like to see some of the places Thomas went to with Isha, the ones probably boringly familiar to you, and maybe those less so. A tale of epic innuendo and confused bystanders, not demonic battles. She reached the end. Then went back to *other than that category*. Lethira smiled slowly. "Excellent recovery." It was not, in fact, an excellent recovery. The rest of the proposal deserved more consideration. The Great Peak had been an impossible journey to a real place. Ian had given her flight, safety, and access to a mountain she had wanted to see for years, then had done something perhaps harder for him: disappeared when she asked to experience part of it alone. This was different. Roads. Mud. Innkeepers. Rooms that smelled faintly of woodsmoke, spilled drink and whoever had occupied them before. Food chosen because that was what the kitchen had. Town gates. Market mornings. Finding somewhere to sleep before weather became unpleasant. Walking far enough that arriving somewhere mattered. Lethira had spent a great deal of her life travelling exactly that way. She found that she wanted to do it with him. Merrowford came first to mind. She knew it well enough, though *boringly familiar* was an accusation she could correct in person. Green Road had lived there for a significant part of its early life. Thomas and Isha had registered there, taken Guild work there, stayed in its inns, acquired rumours there and repeatedly returned carrying problems that had somehow become larger while they were away. Lethira herself had spent enough time in the town to remember several streets by the businesses that had occupied them then. After so many years, some of those businesses would be different. That made the idea better. Other places required more care. Thomas's family home was not a historical attraction. High Elf restricted ground remained restricted ground. Old sites connected to ancient systems, demonic attacks or private grief did not become destinations merely because Ian could reach them. But the roads between? The towns where Green Road had passed through and not changed history? Places Lethira herself knew only from duty, reports or a night spent waiting for rain to stop? Yes. She took another sheet. > Ian, > > You should know that "other than that category" has made that category considerably more noticeable. > > Your recovery was poor. > > The rest of the idea is very good. > > Yes. I would like to travel with you properly. > > Walking. Roads. Towns. Inns. Paying for rooms and discovering that the room described as quiet is directly above somebody who snores. Food we did not arrange in advance. Weather we are allowed to complain about. Getting somewhere because we actually crossed the distance to it. > > Merrowford would be an obvious place to begin at some point. It is familiar to me, though I reject "boringly." Thomas and Isha spent a great deal of their early life as Green Road there. I knew them there too. I would be curious to see what has changed, and I suspect you would enjoy seeing the places behind some of their stories. > > There are other roads they travelled that I know less well. That interests me more than I expected. > > There are also places from their history that I would not take you simply because we can reach them. Family homes, restricted places and sites that belong to someone else's grief or confidence remain theirs. > > As for light adventuring: yes, with one condition. We may accept the sort of problem travellers or wardens might genuinely encounter, or perhaps take some small legitimate work if it amuses us. You are not allowed to arrange bandits, monsters, collapsing dungeons or conveniently dramatic danger for atmosphere. > > If adventure finds us naturally, I reserve the right to blame you anyway. > > And if we are doing this properly, the omnipotence stays pinned except for whatever we explicitly agree is necessary for you to exist here safely and return home. You walk. You carry things. You suffer disappointing tavern breakfasts with me. > > I have spent a century becoming very good at roads. It might be entertaining to discover whether I am still good at them while distracted by you. > > "A tale of epic innuendo and confused bystanders" is, unfortunately, a realistic prediction. > > I want to do this. > > But come for our evening first. We do not need to turn tonight into the beginning of an expedition simply because we have invented one. > > Lethira She stopped. Read the letter. Then added one final line beneath her name. > P.S. I am still considering how best to pin the omnipotence. Lethira looked at that for several seconds. She decided it improved the letter. Her signature completed it, and the page vanished. This time she did put the stationery away. Then she crossed the room to a narrow shelf, pulled out an old folded road map, and opened it across the table. Another sheet appeared before Lethira had finished folding the road map. She opened it. > boringly familiar was not a great turn of phrase, I meant I'd probably spend 10 minutes looking at a tavern door you'd walked through twenty times. I want to visit the big places Thomas and Isha saw, towns, cities. Not the private ones. This is not a pilgrimage. I accept some places are not appropriate you can guide me on that. Lethira read it through, then smiled at the image of Ian studying a perfectly serviceable tavern entrance while she stood beside him wondering how long human fascination with hinges could reasonably last. The correction mattered more than the apology. He was not asking her to escort him around the remains of Thomas and Isha's life as though their history had become a collection of sacred sites. He wanted the world that had surrounded them: streets they had crossed, cities they had worked in, inns where people had eaten and argued before Green Road arrived and continued doing so after they left. That she understood. Some places would still require judgment. A public square could carry private memories. An ordinary road could end somewhere that was no longer Ian's business. There were towns where Lethira's knowledge was practical and old, and others she had passed through only on duty. There would also be places associated with Thomas and Isha that neither of them had any particular claim over at all. She liked that Ian was willing to let her make those distinctions locally rather than demanding a complete list in advance. Lethira pulled the paper back towards herself. > Ian, > > I understood what you meant after I stopped enjoying the phrase. > > The tavern door example is much better. > > I can absolutely imagine you staring at one for ten minutes while I explain that I have walked through it twenty times and there is nothing remarkable about it. I can also imagine discovering, while explaining this, that somebody replaced the door forty years ago and I have somehow failed to notice. > > That is closer to the journey I want. > > We can visit the large public places Thomas and Isha knew—the towns, cities, roads, Guild halls, markets, inns and other places that were part of the world around them rather than possessions of their private lives. Some will be very familiar to me. Some will not. Some I knew differently from them. > > I will tell you when somewhere feels inappropriate, and I trust you to accept it when I do. I do not expect you to know every boundary before you have even seen the road leading towards it. > > And yes. Not a pilgrimage. > > I would rather show you a city because it is alive than because Thomas once stood in it. > > If we happen to reach the tavern where he once did something particularly foolish, however, I reserve the right to tell you. > > Lethira She considered the final sentence and added beneath it: > Especially if I was there. Her name went beneath that. The page vanished. Lethira looked down at the old map still spread across her table. Several roads on it suddenly seemed less familiar than they had ten minutes earlier. A final missive appeared while the road map was still open. Lethira unfolded it. > I need to work now, I'll come visit as soon as I can. X She read it once, then again more slowly. The last mark received a brief, suspicious glance. Whatever Ian had intended by it, the rest required no answer. He had work. She had already distracted him from enough of it for one exchange, and sending another page merely to acknowledge that fact would defeat the purpose rather neatly. Lethira folded the missive and placed it beside the others she had kept. "Go and work, then." Her tone held no expectation that he could hear her. She returned to the map. Merrowford sat where it always had. Beyond it ran roads she knew from patrols, royal errands and older journeys whose details had blurred while the routes themselves remained familiar. Farther away were cities she had visited rarely, roads she had never travelled for pleasure, and whole stretches of country Ian would encounter without knowing which unremarkable bridge, inn yard or market corner had once mattered to somebody he knew. Her finger followed one road for a while, then another. Eventually she stopped planning. Tonight did not need an itinerary. Lethira folded the map along its old creases and returned it to the shelf. The missives remained on the table, the newest resting on top. She looked once towards the door. Then she went about the rest of her day.