## Chapter 420 — What the Road Carries

By late morning, the forest had stopped pretending it owned the road.

Trees still stood on both sides, but no longer in the immense, close-set ranks Ian had walked beneath near Lethira's home. Sunlight reached whole sections of ground. Hazel-like scrub and young trees gathered along ditches. Beyond them, fields appeared more often: narrow strips of grain, rough pasture, vegetable plots protected by woven hurdles, then woodland again where the land rose.

The road changed with them.

Yesterday it had been two wheel ruts that occasionally agreed on a direction. Now there was a proper compacted surface beneath their boots, pale where repeated traffic had crushed stone into the earth. Hoofprints overlapped cart tracks. A drainage channel followed the lower side of the road for several hundred yards before disappearing beneath a small stone culvert.

Ian walked beside Lethira.

The tiredness he had asked for came with him.

Morning had begun with the satisfying stiffness left by the previous day. Several miles had worked most of it loose, replacing it with a new accumulation: warmth beneath his shirt, a dull awareness through his thighs on climbs, the gradual sense that his feet were doing useful work inside the protected German military boots.

The boots themselves remained offensively comfortable.

Reality could apparently preserve footwear without becoming sentimental about the person wearing it.

Lethira carried her pack with the same unremarkable competence as before. The first day had removed some of the illusion that she could walk forever without consequence. Ian had seen her stretch that morning; he had watched yesterday's road announce itself in her calves and hips before movement smoothed it away.

It did not slow her much.

The difference between them was less about raw endurance than practice. Lethira seemed to know, without conscious thought, when a slope was worth shortening her stride for and when the same effort merely wasted momentum. She changed shoulders beneath the pack before either became uncomfortable. She drank before thirst became persuasive. When the road offered a firmer line near one edge, she found it without looking as though she had made a choice.

Ian's machine could give him something approximating an elf-compatible journey.

It could not manufacture a century of walking.

For much of the morning they simply travelled.

That became part of the pleasure.

There was no need for every mile to produce conversation. Sometimes Lethira pointed out a plant or an old road marker. Sometimes Ian's attention lingered on a field boundary, a cart rut or the shape of a distant farmhouse because the world had previously reached him mostly through scenes where something unusual was happening.

Here, most things were not unusual.

A farmer had repaired a fence badly.

Someone had abandoned one broken wheel beside a shed rather than immediately finding a narrative use for it.

Three dark cattle regarded the road with complete indifference to interdimensional visitors.

Once, Lethira stopped because a line of ants crossing the track had attracted her attention.

She stepped over them.

Nothing else happened.

The landscape continued changing as the day moved on.

Woodland retreated into copses and windbreaks. Farmhouses became visible more often, usually set back from the road with barns or smaller structures gathered around them. Smoke rose from one chimney despite the mild weather. Chickens scattered from a yard when something unseen moved behind a fence.

The people remained more distant than the evidence of them.

A figure worked a field perhaps half a mile away. Someone else crossed between two buildings carrying a bucket. Neither had any reason to stop what they were doing because a Wood Elf and a strangely dressed human were walking along the public road.

Lethira seemed comfortable with that.

"Human country," she said eventually.

There was no ceremony to the announcement.

Ian looked around.

Lethira noticed.

"You were expecting a sign?"

Her mouth curved.

"There may be one eventually. Humans enjoy writing ownership onto things."

She glanced back towards the diminishing woodland.

"Elves prefer letting you become increasingly aware that somebody has been watching you for the last three miles."

The first sign appeared perhaps an hour later.

It was disappointing.

A weathered board stood where a narrower farm track joined the main road. Several destinations had been carved into it beneath simple directional marks. Ian could not read the local script without assistance from his machinery, but the shape of the thing required little explanation.

Lethira paused beside it.

One of the names was Merrowford.

The arrow pointed east.

She touched the edge of the board, not the lettering.

"This is newer."

Ian looked at her.

"The post, at least. The old one leaned."

That was all.

She did not stand beside it remembering Thomas and Isha passing the same place. Perhaps they had. Perhaps they had used another approach. Perhaps the previous post had been leaning when Lethira last saw it for reasons entirely unrelated to either of them.

Merrowford was allowed to possess a sign without becoming history.

They continued.

The road grew busier after that.

The first traveller was a man on foot carrying a long bundle of cut poles over one shoulder. He greeted Lethira in Common with the cautious courtesy of someone who had recognised a Wood Elf, received a brief reply, and walked on.

The second was a pair of young men leading a mule laden with sacks. Their conversation stopped while they passed. One looked openly at Ian's clothes. The other looked more carefully at Lethira's bow.

Neither said anything.

Lethira waited until they were well behind.

"Your trousers have acquired an audience."

She sounded pleased.

Another half-mile passed before wheels became audible ahead.

Not the heavy grinding of a loaded freight wagon. A lighter, intermittent rattle, accompanied by hoofbeats and the occasional squeak of something overdue for grease.

A small two-wheeled cart appeared around the bend.

One compact horse pulled it westward. The cart carried several folded lengths of coarse wool cloth, two empty wooden crates and a stack of shallow baskets tied together with cord. A human woman sat on the front bench holding the reins loosely in one hand.

She looked perhaps somewhere in her fifties by human standards. Broad through the shoulders, weathered through the face, dark hair threaded heavily with grey and tied beneath a faded scarf. Nothing about her suggested adventure, authority or narrative significance.

She looked like somebody transporting things from one place to another.

Lethira and Ian moved naturally towards the side of the road to let the cart pass.

The woman looked at Lethira first.

Her eyes registered the ears, bow and silver cuff with familiarity rather than alarm. This close to the Elven Woods, a Wood Elf on the road was unusual enough to notice and common enough not to stop traffic.

Then she looked at Ian.

The cart slowed.

Not completely.

Her attention dropped to his black T-shirt.

Then the jeans.

Then the boots.

The horse continued walking until the woman drew the reins a little more firmly.

She looked Ian up and down again.

Lethira had already noticed.

The corner of her mouth had started moving.

The woman spoke in Common, addressing Ian rather than Lethira.

"That's strange cloth."

Her eyes settled on the T-shirt.

"Where's it from?"

"The Dark Elves of the Eastern Island."

Ian spoke English.

The woman heard Common.

There was no hesitation in the translated words, no foreign accent for her to place and nothing in his mouth that registered as strange enough to compete with the answer itself.

Her eyebrows rose.

"The Eastern Island."

She looked at the shirt again.

Ian's explanation had achieved something useful: instead of making the cloth less mysterious, it had moved the mystery somewhere inconveniently far away.

The woman's thumb rubbed absently along the reins.

"I've seen island wool come through once or twice. Good stuff. Expensive."

Her knowledge apparently ended somewhere before the private wardrobes of dark elves.

She leaned slightly from the cart to inspect the fabric without touching it. The smooth black knit, machine-even seams and narrow finished edges gave her plenty to examine and very little she could identify.

"Haven't seen anything like that."

Beside Ian, Lethira had become extremely quiet.

Ian glanced towards her.

She was looking straight ahead.

Her expression was composed in the particular way which suggested composure itself had become the joke.

The woman noticed her silence and looked between them.

"You travel with them?"

Lethira's eyes finally moved to Ian.

Only for a fraction of a second.

There was no rescue in them.

She was leaving his dark-elf textile industry entirely in his own hands.

The trader returned her attention to Ian.

"You came all the way from the Eastern Island?"

"I've been there, but this journey started with my Wood Elf friend here."

The woman looked at Lethira.

Lethira looked back.

For perhaps two seconds, Ian's description of her as his *Wood Elf friend* existed alongside his claim to have acquired dark-elf clothing from an island most people on this road would regard as a serious journey rather than a conversational footnote.

The trader appeared to decide the second fact was actually less complicated.

"Right."

Her gaze returned to Ian's shirt.

"Well. If they're making cloth like that over there now, somebody will make money bringing it west."

Lethira's lips pressed together.

The woman missed the warning.

"Though I suppose shipping it this far wouldn't be cheap."

"No," Lethira said.

One syllable.

Perfectly neutral.

Ian could hear the laughter being held behind it.

The trader looked at Lethira again, perhaps only now wondering whether the elf beside the mysterious island traveller knew anything useful about him.

"You heading east together?"

Lethira nodded.

"Merrowford."

That seemed ordinary enough to restore the conversation to recognisable ground.

The woman shifted the reins in one hand.

"Road's dry from here. North ditch washed out near the old willow turn, but somebody's put stone in it. Stay left if there's a loaded cart coming through."

Lethira inclined her head.

"Thank you."

The trader clicked gently to the horse.

The cart began moving again.

Then she looked back over her shoulder at Ian.

"If you find whoever sells those in Merrowford, tell them they'll have customers."

The cart rolled west.

Lethira waited until it had travelled far enough that ordinary human hearing was unlikely to recover their conversation.

Then she stopped walking.

She turned towards Ian.

For several seconds she simply looked at him.

"The Dark Elves of the Eastern Island."

Her control lasted remarkably well.

"You have been outside my settlement for less than two days and have already invented an international textile trade."

She resumed walking.

The laugh escaped on the third step.

"I was prepared for questions about your clothing. I was not prepared for you to implicate an entire people."

Lethira shook her head.

"Somewhere, a dark-elf merchant is about to feel blamed for something and have no idea why."

The road bent around a low field. Beyond the hedges, the land dipped gradually towards the broad river country around Merrowford. More roofs had begun appearing in the distance now—not the town itself yet, but farms and roadside buildings gathered more closely than before.

Lethira glanced sideways at Ian.

Her amusement had not entirely faded.

"To be fair, *I've been there* is an unusually difficult answer to challenge."

She let several more steps pass.

Then curiosity replaced the joke.

"When we reach Merrowford, people are going to ask about you."

Her gaze moved over the black shirt again.

"Not necessarily because you're with me. Mostly because you look as though you came from somewhere nobody can identify."

She looked ahead towards the road.

"I don't care if you tell people strange things. But we should probably know whether you intend to have one consistent story, or simply answer whatever amuses you at the time."

Lethira's mouth curved.

"Which is it?"

"I'm sure you'll have me almost naked and out of these... Dark Elf... clothes before I need to continue my improvisation."

Lethira's eyes moved towards him.

"Almost?"

Ian continued before she could improve the question.

"Then I guess I'll be a normal man... but—"

His tone shifted.

"That does beg the question what we should say."

Lethira's amusement receded with it.

"I know what Thomas and Isha did. I don't want to copy that. We—well, I—am not an adventurer in a normal sense. What cover might work for a soon-to-be naturally attired human middle-aged man and..."

Ian smiled.

"...a very impressive elf?"

Lethira considered him while they walked.

"First, I don't think we need a cover."

That was apparently the simplest answer.

"Thomas and Isha needed more structure because they came here intending to register with the Guild, take contracts and live in town for a while. Thomas needed a declared origin, a public spell list and a rank people could put into records. Isha needed a professional role beside him."

She stepped around a deeper rut.

"We are not doing any of those things."

The road ahead had begun carrying more traffic, but none of it suggested that every traveller approaching Merrowford was required to become an adventurer before being permitted a meal and a bed. It was a trade town with carts, river crews, merchants, labourers and people simply moving through it.

"If somebody asks what you are, I think the safest answer is the least interesting truthful one."

Lethira counted it out on her fingers.

"Ian. Human. Traveller. From very far away."

A slight pause.

"Very, *very* far away, if you feel accuracy requires emphasis."

Her mouth curved.

"You are travelling with Lethira Dawnleaf. You are visiting Merrowford. You are not looking for Guild work."

She looked at him.

"That is all true."

The approach appealed to her more as she examined it.

"I wouldn't call you a merchant. Then people will ask what you sell. I wouldn't call you a scholar unless you want people producing manuscripts and expecting useful opinions. Pilgrim invites religion. Soldier invites employment history."

Her gaze dropped to his boots.

"Unfortunately."

Back to him.

"And calling you an adventurer would eventually result in somebody asking for a Guild tag."

Lethira's expression became more amused.

"You could call yourself my bodyguard, but I think the first person who sees us walk would become suspicious."

The idea entertained her for several steps.

"Or my servant."

Another glance.

"No. You would enjoy that far too much."

She returned to the actual question.

"As for me, I don't need to invent anything. I am Lethira Dawnleaf. I am a Wood Elf travelling privately with a human companion."

The word *companion* sat there comfortably.

"Some people in Merrowford may know my name. Most will not. Anyone old enough to remember me from years ago may remember that I sometimes arrived on Aelira's business, or with messages, or because Green Road had created another problem worth travelling for."

Her expression changed slightly at the last phrase, affectionate without becoming nostalgic.

"But I am not arriving as Aelira's representative now."

That mattered.

"No royal business. No investigation. No Guild authority. No reason for somebody to decide your presence is part of Wood Elf policy."

She looked ahead, where the road was gradually descending towards busier country.

"If somebody asks how we know one another, we can say we're friends."

A tiny smile.

"Which is true, even if increasingly incomplete."

She left that alone.

"The only part we may need to handle carefully is where you come from. I don't recommend inventing a kingdom. People know roads. Merchants know ports. Somebody will eventually say they have a cousin who traded there."

Lethira's eyes brightened.

"And then you will create an entire imaginary wool industry to defend yourself."

She gave him a pointed look.

"So: distant foreign traveller. No useful local origin. Travelling with me by choice."

A pause.

"If someone insists on more, we decide whether they actually need more before giving it."

Her mouth curved again.

"And once you are wearing ordinary clothes, most people will probably stop caring."

She looked him over.

"Most."

Then, with perfect seriousness:

"The very impressive elf may continue to attract attention."

"Okay, let's go with that. I'll let you lead on any questions that get too personal."

Lethira nodded.

That arrangement seemed to suit her. She understood the roads, the people and which questions were normal enough to deserve an answer. Ian understood his own impossible circumstances considerably better than she did. Between them, they might manage to enter one human town without accidentally founding another industry.

They walked for another minute before Ian spoke again.

"One other thing though."

Something in his voice made Lethira look across at him.

"You don't mind that we... stopped... last night, do you?"

Her step slowed.

Not enough to stop them walking, but enough that the ordinary rhythm of the road changed.

Lethira studied his face for a moment.

"No."

The answer came without hesitation.

Then she looked ahead again, apparently deciding the single word was accurate but insufficient.

"I wanted to stop there."

Her hand moved briefly against the strap of her pack.

"I wanted to share the bedding with you. I wanted you close to me. I wanted to wake up beside you."

A little colour reached her face only after she had said all three things plainly.

Lethira accepted it.

"If you're asking whether I woke this morning and thought we should have walked another five miles instead..."

Her mouth curved.

"No."

She stepped around a shallow rut and moved closer to Ian's side afterward, their shoulders occasionally touching as the road narrowed beside a hedge.

"I liked last night."

The simplicity seemed more important than finding a better phrase.

"I liked feeding you ridiculous travel cake. I liked watching you discover camping as though it were a more mysterious technology than travelling between worlds. I liked sleeping with you."

That wording made her glance sideways.

"In the exact sense in which we actually did."

Her smile appeared.

"I am not attempting to advance the terminology without permission."

The humour passed quickly.

"What I don't want is for us to pretend it meant less because we haven't decided what to call us."

Lethira's expression remained calm, but the words had become more deliberate.

"We have been on dates. We kiss. We want one another. I slept holding you because I wanted you there. None of that obliges us to choose the next word today."

She let the road carry them for several more steps.

"But it was not an accident, Ian."

Her hand found his.

She threaded their fingers together and continued walking.

"And I don't regret it."

"And this morning? I felt you were... eager. I liked it. But I think I stopped us."

Lethira did stop walking then.

Their joined hands brought Ian to a halt with her.

For a moment she looked at him with none of the amusement she had given his imaginary dark-elf textile trade. The question deserved a cleaner answer.

"Yes."

A faint smile appeared.

"I was eager."

There was no embarrassment in the admission, although a little colour found her face afterward.

"I was enjoying having you beneath me. I was enjoying kissing you. I liked where your hands were going, and when you tried to move me, I liked that too."

Her thumb moved slowly across the side of his hand.

"You did stop us."

She considered the wording.

"But you did not stop me from something I had already decided we were going to do."

Lethira looked briefly towards the road ahead, gathering the distinction before returning her attention to him.

"I hadn't decided that morning would end with us becoming lovers. I hadn't decided it wouldn't."

The word survived more easily spoken this way: a possibility, not a title seized ahead of itself.

"I was enjoying you. I was curious. I was becoming less interested in getting to Merrowford."

Her mouth curved.

"Quite rapidly."

Then the humour softened again.

"When you said we should continue the journey, I noticed that you were choosing to stop."

She stepped closer, their hands remaining together between them.

"And I liked that."

Not relief.

Not gratitude for being rescued from her own desire.

Simply approval.

"You knew I wanted you. You didn't decide that meant you should keep going until I objected."

Lethira's eyes stayed on his.

"I trust you more because of things like that."

That much belonged to a pattern older than this morning: Ian asking, sometimes clumsily; Lethira answering; Ian learning that affection and permission were related without being interchangeable. Her trust had never required pretending his power was harmless. It had grown because he could reach a boundary and leave it where she placed it.

She squeezed his hand.

"So no. I am not disappointed that you stopped us."

A pause.

"I am also not saying I would have objected if you had kissed me for another ten minutes."

The mischievous Lethira returned around the edges.

"Possibly twenty."

She glanced east.

"At some point Merrowford would have become tomorrow's problem."

Then she looked back at him, more serious again.

"I don't want us to become afraid of wanting each other because the next step might be larger than the last one. We can be eager. We can get carried away a little."

Her smile was smaller now.

"And one of us can stop because continuing suddenly feels like a decision worth noticing."

Lethira began walking again, still holding his hand.

A few steps passed before she added, almost casually:

"For the record, when you suggested leaving the trees forever, I was not thinking, *thank goodness, he stopped*."

Her eyes flicked sideways.

"I was thinking that your timing was probably sensible."

Another few steps.

"And mildly inconvenient."

She let that sit just long enough.

Then:

"Why did you stop?"

"I wasn't ready to go further, I think. We're both adults. Very adult, even if you make me feel like a teenager. It's all fine though."

Ian leaned over and kissed her cheek.

"I just don't want to disappoint."

Lethira's expression changed before he finished.

Ian pondered the word.

"I don't mean in the normal performative way. Stopping can be disappointing too."

For a few steps Lethira said nothing.

"This, us, poor bedding packing, is all very nice."

Ian smiled.

"Let's keep walking before the Twin Crowns of the Dark Elves are forced to start learning how to sew."

That broke her.

Lethira laughed and resumed a proper walking pace, still holding his hand until the road widened enough that the gesture became mildly inconvenient rather than romantic.

"I think the Twin Crowns have survived greater threats to their dignity."

She released him only to adjust the strap of her pack.

"Although I admit I would enjoy hearing the explanation. 'Your Majesties, an unknown human has attributed a black shirt to your people. Textile policy must respond immediately.'"

The joke carried them for another several yards.

Then Lethira looked at him again.

"As for the rest..."

She took longer with this answer.

"I understand what you mean about disappointment."

There was none of the polished certainty she sometimes used when a practical problem had an obvious solution. This was something she was considering while speaking.

"If I had wanted to continue this morning and you stopped, then yes. Some part of me could be disappointed."

Her mouth bent slightly.

"I probably was."

That landed without accusation.

"I was enjoying myself."

A pause.

"Very much."

The colour that touched her face this time did not make her look away.

"But that is not the same as you disappointing me."

Lethira stepped around a patch where cart wheels had churned the road edge into dried ridges.

"I don't want you continuing because you are afraid that stopping will upset me. That would make whatever happened afterward much less interesting."

Her eyes moved sideways.

"And I have spent enough time around frightened young men to know that trying very hard not to disappoint a woman can produce spectacularly poor judgement."

A beat.

"You at least have the advantage of not actually being young."

Her smile returned.

"Even if I apparently reduce you to the emotional competence of one."

The road flattened ahead of them.

Lethira's voice softened again.

"If you stop because you aren't ready, tell me. I may still want you. I may still find the timing inconvenient."

That word again.

"But I would rather know where you actually are."

She let the subject rest there.

Ian's joke about the dark-elf crowns had done something useful after all. It gave the serious exchange somewhere to go other than deeper simply because it had become serious.

Lethira looked ahead.

"And yes. Let's walk before your invented trade crisis reaches diplomatic channels."

They continued east.

The country changed more quickly now.

Fields no longer appeared as interruptions between stretches of woodland; woodland became the interruption. Low hedges divided irregular plots of grain and pasture. Farm tracks joined the main road more frequently, some marked by posts, others merely worn pale where wheels had turned through the same opening for years.

Traffic increased with the afternoon.

A covered wagon heading east passed them at a slow grind, drawn by two heavy horses. The driver gave Lethira a long look, Ian a longer one, and decided neither required conversation. Later they overtook a family travelling on foot with bundles tied to a handcart. One of the children stared openly at Lethira's ears until an older woman murmured something and pulled the child's attention back towards the road.

Lethira did not react.

A Wood Elf near Merrowford was notable.

Not unprecedented.

Ian, in contrast, continued collecting glances for reasons his ears could not explain.

At some point the road began descending.

The change was gradual enough that Ian noticed the view before the slope.

The land opened ahead.

Beyond fields and scattered roofs, a broad river caught the afternoon light in dull silver. It moved slowly from this distance, too wide to read in detail, with trees and low buildings breaking its banks.

And beside it stood Merrowford.

Not dramatically.

No shining walls.

No towers declaring that a story had finally reached an important location.

The town spread untidily around the river and roads as though generations of people had added what they needed where enough space remained. The older core still showed the line of a wooden palisade, darker in some places and paler in others where repairs had replaced weathered timber. Roofs crowded behind it in slate, tile and patchwork shades Ian could not name from this distance. Chimney smoke rose in several thin columns.

Outside the older enclosure, newer buildings followed the roads.

Some stood where Lethira plainly did not expect them.

She slowed.

Her expression did not become nostalgic.

It became attentive.

"That wasn't there."

She indicated a loose cluster of roofs near one of the outer roads.

Ian could not know whether *wasn't there* meant five years ago, ten or simply the last time Lethira had approached from this direction.

A little farther down the slope she noticed something else.

"That was."

No explanation followed.

The road carried them lower.

The town grew more legible.

Carts queued in the distance along one approach. A group of animals moved slowly between two fields under the control of several tiny figures. The square block of a larger timber building rose above nearby roofs in the direction Lethira had once known as the Guild hall, though from here neither of them could tell whether the same institution still occupied it.

Lethira did not claim that it did.

She pointed instead towards the river.

"The market roads are around there. Or were."

Another part of the town caught her eye.

"And Southbank should be beyond that side."

Should.

The word pleased Ian simply because Lethira used it.

She had known this place.

She was not pretending that knowledge stopped time.

They continued down until the road reached a broad grassy verge overlooking the final approach. From here Merrowford was perhaps another mile away, close enough for individual carts to resolve and for the river's smell to begin mixing faintly with dust, vegetation and distant smoke.

Lethira stopped.

Not because she was tired.

Ian had the sense that she had chosen the place.

She stood looking at the town with both hands resting loosely on her pack straps.

For the first time since Merrowford came into view, something older moved through her expression.

Not grief.

Recognition complicated by time.

"I used to know which baker started first in the morning from this road."

Her mouth curved faintly.

"Before you could see the town properly, you could smell it."

She breathed in.

Whatever answer the air supplied was apparently different.

"That may no longer be true."

Lethira looked towards one section of roofs, searching for something she did not explain.

Then she stopped herself.

The motion was subtle but deliberate.

"No."

Her attention returned to the whole town.

"We'll see what is there when we get there."

Below them, a wagon rattled towards the gate. A man walking beside it had to move quickly when one wheel found a rut. Nobody in Merrowford paused because Lethira Dawnleaf had returned to look at it from a hill.

That seemed to satisfy her.

She turned to Ian.

"We're close enough now that the next people we meet may be gate staff, merchants, innkeepers or simply people who remember faces better than I expect."

Her eyes moved over him.

The Dark Elf clothing crisis remained unresolved.

Lethira smiled.

"We have our very complicated story. Ian. Human. Traveller from very far away. With me by choice."

A pause.

"And apparently clothed by the Eastern Island until proven otherwise."

She looked down towards Merrowford again.

"We can walk straight in and find an inn."

Her gaze returned to Ian.

"Or we can stay here for a few minutes and let you look before the town becomes people asking questions."

Lethira shifted her weight comfortably onto one leg.

"Which do you want?"

"Let's get my clothes sorted, then we can find an inn. With one room if the local gossips can withstand it. Then we can rest before you introduce me to Merrowford proper."

Ian looked towards the town below them.

"Is that okay?"

Lethira considered the order.

"Clothes. Room. Rest. Then Merrowford."

She nodded.

"Yes."

The smile arrived a moment later.

"And one room."

Her eyes stayed on him.

"I think Merrowford will survive."

She adjusted her pack and started down the slope again.

"If it doesn't, we will have learned something important about how much the town has changed."

Ian fell into step beside her.

Lethira glanced at his shirt.

"Clothes first is wise. Otherwise every innkeeper will remember us as the Wood Elf who arrived with a man dressed by imaginary dark elves."

A pause.

"That is not the reputation I was hoping to establish on our first afternoon."

The final mile compressed the distant town into ordinary detail.

The river smell strengthened first: water, mud and something faintly vegetal beneath smoke from hearths and workshops. The road met more buildings before it reached the old palisade, some standing alone behind fences, others clustered around yards where wagons waited or animals were being unloaded.

Lethira looked at them with interest but little recognition.

One long building occupied ground she remembered as mostly open.

Another had survived structurally but acquired an extension in newer timber.

She pointed neither out to Ian.

Whatever Merrowford had been when she last travelled through it, the present version deserved a chance to introduce itself before becoming a list of differences.

The gate was less dramatic from close range than the distant palisade suggested. Heavy timber, repaired in several shades of age, framed the road into the older town. A side opening handled people on foot while two carts waited for the wider passage.

The staff looked busy rather than suspicious.

One woman in a practical leather-and-cloth watch coat gave Lethira's bow and Ian's clothing the expected assessment. Her gaze lingered on the black shirt, but not long enough to challenge the Eastern Island's newly invented textile economy.

"Private travel?" she asked Lethira in Common.

"Yes. Merrowford for a few days, perhaps longer."

"No trade load?"

"No."

The watchwoman looked once at Ian's empty hands.

Apparently a foreign traveller who carried neither pack nor goods was unusual, but not illegal.

She gave them the ordinary directions for foot traffic around the cart queue and moved on to the next arrival.

Lethira waited until they were beyond easy hearing.

"You see?"

She looked at Ian.

"Human. Traveller. With me. The world continues."

Inside the old boundary, Merrowford became too busy to examine all at once.

The first street held carts, pedestrians, a boy carrying more loaves than seemed sensible, two dogs arguing beside a drain and somebody hammering metal behind a frontage Ian could not see. The buildings were mostly timber on stone bases, upper storeys occasionally leaning farther over the street than the lower ones seemed to justify.

The smells arrived without organisation.

Bread.

Horse.

Smoke.

Onions.

River mud.

Something frying in oil.

Ian had read versions of those details before. Standing among them was different. None waited politely for description. A cart wheel splashed through a shallow patch of dirty water while somebody farther ahead shouted for room. A woman carrying folded cloth stepped around Lethira without more than a glance at her ears. Two adventurer-looking men were arguing outside a doorway about whether something counted as a broken spear if the head was technically still attached.

Lethira slowed at the first larger junction.

Her eyes moved left.

Then right.

For the first time since entering town, she looked uncertain.

"That street used to have three cloth merchants."

Ian followed her gaze.

There were still businesses there.

Whether any sold clothes was less obvious.

Lethira smiled.

"Excellent."

She sounded genuinely pleased.

"We get to discover it."

They turned.

The street was narrower than the main approach and busy enough that walking side by side occasionally required one of them to yield. Shopfronts opened directly onto the road beneath hanging signs painted with symbols as often as words.

Lethira rejected the first clothing shop without entering.

"Children."

The second displayed heavy work coats and boots.

She looked at Ian's protected footwear.

"You have already solved half their business."

The third made her stop.

Several garments hung beneath the awning: plain human-cut shirts, practical trousers, a sleeveless outer layer and one travelling coat in undyed brown cloth. Nothing suggested ceremonial costume or an attempt to convert Ian into an elf.

More importantly, Lethira did not recognise the place.

"That used to be a candle shop."

She looked through the open front.

"Good."

Ian glanced at her.

"Nobody here knows what I looked like ten years ago because nobody here knew me ten years ago."

Her mouth curved.

"And I cannot accidentally buy you clothes because Thomas once bought something nearby."

They entered.

The shop was deeper than its frontage suggested. Folded cloth occupied shelves along one wall; finished garments hung from pegs and a horizontal rail along the other. A curtained opening at the back presumably led to storage or fitting space.

The proprietor looked up from a worktable.

He was human, perhaps in his forties, with thinning dark hair, rolled sleeves and a strip of measuring cord hanging around his neck. His attention went first to Lethira, then Ian, then immediately to Ian's shirt.

Professional concern replaced curiosity.

He stood.

"Travelling clothes?"

Lethira answered before Ian needed to.

"For him. Human road clothes. Comfortable, durable, nothing claiming an occupation he doesn't have."

The man nodded as though this were a completely normal constraint.

His eyes moved over Ian again, assessing height, shoulders, waist and the deeply suspicious uniformity of black fabric.

"Keeping the boots?"

"Yes," Lethira said.

The proprietor looked down at them.

"Good boots."

Lethira's expression became insufferably satisfied.

"I have already determined that."

The man reached for the measuring cord.

Then he looked directly at Ian.

"All right. What do you actually like wearing?"

"I like black, but that might be too bold a colour here. Dark for preference, otherwise."

The proprietor glanced at Ian's shirt again.

"Black isn't the problem."

Lethira made a satisfied sound.

Ian continued.

"Comfort and durable for travel, no labour needs."

Then he looked towards her.

"Lethira, anything else I've not thought of?"

She considered him with the seriousness of somebody unexpectedly promoted from romantic travelling companion to wardrobe consultant.

"Several things."

The proprietor's measuring cord remained loose in one hand while he waited.

Lethira stepped closer to Ian and caught a little of his T-shirt between two fingers, studying the fabric again.

"His colour preference is real. He wears almost nothing else when left unsupervised."

Her eyes moved to him.

"I have evidence."

She released the shirt.

"But he doesn't need to look wealthy, martial, scholarly, Guild-affiliated, or as though somebody has dressed him for a role. He is travelling because he wants to travel."

The proprietor nodded.

"Road clothes, then."

"Good road clothes."

Lethira's distinction was immediate.

"Comfortable enough for several days at a time. Close enough that branches and straps do not catch, but he is human and not used to travelling in fitted leathers."

Ian's current lack of a pack briefly complicated the last point.

Lethira noticed.

"He may acquire baggage."

The proprietor wisely declined to ask why a man several days from anywhere possessed none already.

Lethira continued her inspection.

"He also runs warm enough when walking. Nothing unnecessarily heavy unless it is an outer layer he can remove."

She touched the shoulder seam of Ian's shirt, then looked at the proprietor.

"And don't dress him like an elf."

The man blinked.

"I wasn't planning to."

"Excellent."

Ian received a sideways glance.

"He was concerned."

"I was concerned that *you* might."

"I know."

The proprietor's mouth moved faintly.

He had apparently dealt with couples before, even if this particular category of couple remained difficult to establish from available evidence.

Lethira circled half a step around Ian, looking at him with increasing professional enthusiasm.

"Keep the boots. Dark trousers. A shirt that does not announce itself from fifty paces away. Something over it for road dust and cooler evenings."

She paused.

"A belt."

Ian looked down.

His jeans had brought their own modern solution to that problem.

Lethira noticed his attention.

"Yes. Your trousers contain several mysteries I am choosing not to investigate in public."

The proprietor definitely smiled this time.

Ian's pockets received a brief examination from Lethira's eyes.

"Useful pockets would be welcome."

"Inside or outside?"

Lethira looked towards the man.

"Both, if you can do it without making him look as though he expects to carry an entire workshop."

That answer seemed to place her within a category the proprietor understood.

He moved towards one of the shelves.

"Black, charcoal, dark brown, blue-grey?"

Several folded garments appeared on the worktable.

None possessed the perfect, saturated uniformity of Ian's Earth clothing. The darkest cloth was still recognisably black, though natural variation in the weave gave it more depth beneath the shop light. Beside it lay charcoal grey, a very dark brown, muted blue-grey and a deep green-brown close enough to some of Lethira's own travelling layers to make Ian glance at her.

She caught him.

"No."

Her hand landed immediately on the green-brown cloth and pushed it aside.

"You are not becoming matching luggage."

The proprietor raised an eyebrow.

"I said nothing."

"He was thinking it."

Ian had, in fact, said nothing.

Lethira turned back to the darker options.

"Black is fine if he wants black. The strange part is the cut and cloth he arrived in, not the colour."

Her fingers moved over the charcoal.

"This, perhaps."

Then the black.

"And this."

She looked at Ian.

"You should still look like yourself."

The sentence was quieter than the rest of the fitting conversation.

That appeared to settle something for her.

The proprietor selected several finished pieces approximately Ian's size and laid them out: two shirts with simple closures at the neck, one charcoal and one nearly black; dark trousers cut for walking rather than labour; a lighter overshirt or short travelling layer in grey-brown cloth; and a plain leather belt with a modest buckle.

Nothing carried embroidery, Guild marks, military styling or any attempt at regional costume.

Lethira approved the absence of decoration first.

Ian's German boots sat beneath the entire proposed arrangement with complete confidence.

The proprietor held one of the shirts against Ian's shoulders.

"Close."

He reached for the measuring cord.

The next several minutes became surprisingly ordinary.

Shoulders. Chest. Waist. Inside leg. Sleeve.

Ian's reality-bending machinery contributed nothing.

The proprietor worked with the brisk detachment of somebody who had measured thousands of bodies and found no philosophical implications in another one. Lethira watched with increasing interest, occasionally stepping back to judge the overall proportions.

When the cord went around Ian's waist, her eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

Ian noticed.

She noticed him noticing.

"I am taking my responsibility seriously."

The proprietor looked between them.

"What responsibility?"

"Preventing him from looking ridiculous."

"Ah."

The man accepted this as sufficient.

He finished the measurements and considered the prepared garments.

"I can get him into something today. Proper adjustment will take a little time."

"Today matters," Lethira said. "Perfect does not."

That earned her a glance from Ian.

She smiled.

"Do not worry. I will inspect you."

There was far too much pleasure in the promise.

The proprietor picked up the charcoal shirt, then the black one.

"These are both close enough to alter without rebuilding them."

He looked directly at Ian.

"For the trousers: do you want them fairly close through the leg like what you're wearing now, or looser for the road?"

"Maybe a little looser than these. Length is probably more key. I don't want to bring half the road into each inn."

The proprietor nodded.

"That I can do."

He pinched a fold of the proposed trouser leg between two fingers, judging how much room the cloth would gain without becoming baggy enough to catch on brush or flap annoyingly while walking.

"Enough space through the thigh and knee to move properly. Narrower below that. Hem clear of the ground."

Lethira's attention sharpened at *thigh*.

Ian noticed.

She ignored him with enormous dignity.

The proprietor crouched briefly beside one of Ian's boots, not touching it until Ian shifted his foot enough to make the inspection obviously permitted. He judged the height of the leather and then held the trouser leg against it.

"With boots like these, I'd finish the hem here."

A point just above the upper part of the boot.

"Low enough not to climb your leg every time you sit. High enough that mud belongs to the boots instead of the cloth."

"Good," Lethira said.

The proprietor glanced up.

"I was asking him."

"I know."

Lethira remained entirely unrepentant.

Ian's jeans were attracting nearly as much interest from her now as they had from the trader on the road, but for different reasons. She looked at the way the denim sat over his boots, then at the looser dark trousers on the worktable.

"This will be better."

Her fingers brushed the cloth near the knee.

"Your current ones are not impossible for walking. They just look as though somebody decided your legs should remain permanently visible."

She paused.

"I have no objection to that principle."

The proprietor coughed into one hand.

Lethira looked at him.

"What?"

"Nothing."

He returned to his work.

The trousers he selected were charcoal so dark that in poor light they would probably read as black. The weave was heavier than Ian's T-shirt but substantially softer than rough work cloth, with enough structure to survive repeated use without turning the garment into armour. The cut sat plainly at the waist and fell cleanly through the leg.

The pockets were less ambitious than jeans.

Two useful side pockets. One smaller inner pocket. Nothing designed to swallow a modern phone, wallet, keys and several decades of bad habits.

Ian had none of those things with him anyway.

Lethira tested one pocket with her hand.

The proprietor stared.

She withdrew it.

"Useful."

"You can let him discover some features himself."

"I am assessing the purchase."

"You haven't bought it yet."

Lethira's eyes moved to Ian.

"That sounds temporary."

The man sighed and carried the trousers towards the curtained fitting space.

"You'll try them before anybody buys anything."

He added the nearly black shirt, then hesitated over the charcoal one.

Lethira looked between the two.

The black was not Earth-black. The cloth contained tiny irregularities from spinning and dyeing, visible only when light caught them. Beside Ian's machine-made T-shirt it looked softer and less absolute.

The charcoal was lighter, easier against road dust and perhaps less conspicuous in a town full of practical browns, greys, greens and faded colours.

Lethira touched both.

"The black looks more like you."

Then the charcoal.

"This will probably look better after four days of road."

She considered the problem as though it contained actual stakes.

"Perhaps both."

The proprietor looked at her.

"He only needs one shirt to leave the shop."

"Nobody only needs one shirt if they are travelling for several days."

That answer had the force of experience behind it.

The proprietor conceded with a small nod.

"Fair."

He added both shirts to the bundle, along with the dark trousers and belt.

Then he looked at Ian's current clothes.

"You can keep wearing those underneath while you try the outer pieces, but the shirts won't sit properly over that one."

His eyes flicked to the T-shirt.

"The curtain closes."

Lethira's smile appeared immediately.

Ian saw it.

She saw him see it.

The proprietor, perhaps sensing that the fitting had developed risks unrelated to tailoring, handed Ian the bundle.

"Try the trousers and one shirt first."

Lethira folded her arms.

"I will remain here."

A pause.

"Professionally."

The proprietor looked at her.

"Of course."

Lethira's expression did not change.

Ian had the distinct impression that his earlier promise concerning stripping and dressing had not been forgotten at all.

The proprietor pointed towards the curtain.

"Black shirt first, or charcoal?"

"Black please. Charcoal is too radical a change."

The proprietor looked at the nearly black shirt in his hand, then at Ian's existing clothes.

His expression remained professionally neutral for a few seconds.

"Yes. We should avoid rushing things."

Lethira turned away from Ian.

That lasted until her shoulders moved.

"Do not laugh."

Lethira looked back at him, entirely composed except for her eyes.

"I said nothing."

The proprietor folded the charcoal shirt and returned it to the worktable. The black one remained with the trousers and belt. Beside Ian's Earth clothing, its colour was less absolute: deep black in shadow, softened slightly by the visible weave when the light struck it. The simple neck fastening and looser sleeves made the larger difference.

Lethira examined the combination from beside the table.

"This is sensible."

She sounded faintly disappointed by the discovery.

"I was promised a fitting process with considerably more danger."

The proprietor glanced at her.

"Was that part of the order?"

"No."

"Good."

He collected the selected clothes and handed them towards Ian.

"The trousers will need the hem marked once they're on. The shirt should tell me whether the shoulders need anything. Belt after that."

He indicated the curtained space at the back of the shop.

"There's a stool inside for your boots. Hooks on the wall. Leave your own clothes wherever you like; nobody will touch them."

Lethira remained beside the worktable, arms folded.

The earlier enthusiasm in her expression had acquired a more deliberate restraint now that the joking promise of dressing Ian had reached the point where clothing actually had to come off. She made no move towards the curtain and no assumption that the intimacy they shared on the road automatically extended into a public fitting room.

Her eyes met his.

The smile returned.

"Black. A brave first step."

The proprietor held the bundle ready for him.

The curtain waited.

Ian stepped behind it.

For a moment he remained there with the bundle in his hands.

The earlier promise about Lethira stripping and dressing him had been entertaining when it belonged to a private room, or to a hypothetical fitting process somewhere in the future. Here there was a shopkeeper several paces away, an open street beyond the front of the building and only a hanging piece of cloth between changing clothes and becoming local entertainment.

Perhaps Merrowford did not require quite that much cultural exchange on the first afternoon.

Ian pulled the curtain closed.

Outside, Lethira laughed once.

She had apparently understood the pause perfectly.

Ian removed his boots first.

Without them, the fitting space became subtly different. He lost perhaps half an inch of height and acquired the immediate vulnerability of someone standing in socks on an unfamiliar wooden floor while dressed in clothing from another reality.

The jeans followed, then the T-shirt.

The new clothes felt less alien than he expected once they were actually on him.

The trousers were softer through the movement than their heavier weave suggested. Looser than his jeans through the thighs and knees, but nowhere near the shapeless work trousers he had half imagined when Lethira first raised the problem. They sat differently at the waist and lacked the familiar pull of denim across the hips. The unfinished hems extended too far without his boots, brushing the tops of his feet and confirming why the proprietor had insisted on fitting them before finishing anything.

The black shirt changed him more.

It was still dark enough to satisfy the principle.

But the cloth moved.

The sleeves sat looser along his arms. The simple neck opening lacked the flat modern precision of a T-shirt collar, and the fabric showed tiny variations whenever it caught the light. It looked made rather than manufactured in millions.

Ian fastened it.

The result in the small polished metal mirror inside the fitting space was recognisably him and unmistakably not Earth.

He opened the curtain and stepped out.

Lethira looked up.

Then stopped.

Her eyes travelled from his face downward.

The missing boots registered first in the changed proportions. Ian had always been a little shorter than her. Standing in socks while she remained in travelling boots increased that difference just enough to become obvious.

Lethira straightened.

The smile arrived slowly.

"Oh."

The proprietor looked at the clothes.

Lethira did not.

At least not initially.

Her attention remained on Ian as a complete result: the nearly black shirt, the darker road trousers, the absence of the impossible clean lines she had associated with his usual clothes since the first time he appeared in her world.

For the first time, Ian looked like a human who might plausibly have walked into Merrowford from somewhere on the same continent.

A strange human, perhaps.

A foreign one.

But no longer someone whose clothing announced that the rules applying to everyone else had failed several realities ago.

Lethira's gaze dropped to his legs.

She took her responsibility very seriously.

"Hm."

The sound lasted long enough to become suspicious.

The proprietor stepped forward and caught the excess trouser cloth near one ankle.

"Too long, as expected."

He folded the hem upward, judged it, then adjusted it again.

"Boots will change this."

Ian's protected German army boots remained inside the fitting space.

Lethira looked from them to Ian.

"You are shorter."

Ian looked at her.

"Not substantially."

Her expression remained thoughtful.

"But enough."

She stepped closer.

The proprietor continued working at the trouser hem while Lethira examined the shirt.

She did not touch him immediately. Her eyes followed the shoulder line, the fall of the fabric through his torso and the way the darker cloth worked against his colouring.

Then she reached out and smoothed one section beside his ribs.

"This fits better than I expected."

The proprietor looked up.

"You sound disappointed."

"I had anticipated more work."

"For you?"

"For everyone."

He returned to the hem.

Lethira's fingers moved once along the side seam, testing how much room the shirt gave him before releasing it.

"The black was correct."

Ian's choice had apparently passed.

She stepped back half a pace.

The proprietor stood as well.

"Move your arms."

He demonstrated briefly—forward, overhead, across the chest—showing the range he wanted to check without physically arranging Ian.

Then his attention dropped to the trousers.

"And after that, bend your knees properly. If they bind now, they'll be worse after a day on the road."

Lethira folded her arms again.

Her eyes remained on Ian.

"Yes."

The proprietor glanced at her.

"He hasn't done anything yet."

"I am agreeing with the principle."

"Of course."

Lethira ignored him.

She tilted her head, studying Ian with open satisfaction.

"Your dignity has survived."

A pause.

"So far."

Her gaze went once more towards the fitting curtain.

The old promise was still somewhere behind that smile.

The proprietor held the marking chalk ready near the unfinished hem.

"How does it feel?"

"Different, but good. I think these will do. Maybe a bit less length, but otherwise fine."

Ian looked at Lethira.

"Lethira?"

She had been waiting for that.

Her arms unfolded.

Lethira stepped closer and gave him another slow inspection, this time with permission to treat the question as genuinely hers rather than merely enjoy the novelty.

"The trousers are better."

She looked down first, following the line from his waist to the unfinished hems.

"Loose enough that you can actually move. Not loose enough to collect branches. Once they're shortened for the boots, you will stop carrying Merrowford from one building into the next."

The proprietor nodded and crouched again, marking a slightly higher line with chalk.

Lethira's attention returned to the shirt.

"And this..."

She caught the cloth lightly near Ian's waist and drew it outward just enough to see how it fell before letting it settle again.

"I like this."

Her eyes rose to his.

"More than I expected."

That admission seemed to surprise her slightly.

The black still belonged to Ian. It preserved something of the visual simplicity she associated with him, while the texture and cut placed him naturally enough among the people outside that he no longer looked as though he had stepped out of a hole in the world.

Which, technically, was an improvement in accuracy only from a social perspective.

Lethira moved around him once.

Ian could feel the proprietor trying very hard not to become interested in the inspection beyond its tailoring value.

"The shoulders are right. The waist doesn't need to be tighter."

A pause.

Her gaze moved lower.

"Neither do the trousers."

The proprietor looked down at his chalk.

Lethira's mouth twitched.

"For walking."

"Naturally," he said.

She came back around to Ian's front and looked at him from close enough that the extra half-inch she currently possessed was obvious.

The difference amused her.

"You look like yourself."

That was her final judgement.

"Just yourself if you had been born somewhere that understood buttons differently."

Her fingers briefly straightened the shirt near his chest, an unnecessary adjustment which she seemed to enjoy making anyway.

"And I prefer you in black."

A softer smile followed.

"So yes. These."

She stepped back.

The proprietor marked the second hem to match the first and stood.

"I'll finish those while you decide whether you're buying anything else."

He indicated the charcoal shirt still folded on the worktable, then a row of light outer layers hanging nearby.

"If you're staying on the road, I'd recommend a second shirt and something for wind or light rain. Doesn't need to be heavy."

Lethira looked immediately towards the charcoal shirt.

Then at Ian.

The expression on her face suggested his earlier description of charcoal as *radical* had not been forgotten.

"This may be difficult for you."

She touched the folded grey cloth with one fingertip.

"Your second great cultural transition."

The proprietor glanced between them.

"Do you want to try the charcoal as well?"

"I'd prefer a second black if you have it? And what for wind and rain?"

Lethira gave the folded charcoal shirt a look of profound sympathy.

"So close to broadening his horizons."

The proprietor ignored her and crossed to another shelf.

"I have another black."

He pulled out a second shirt in almost the same cloth as the first. It was not identical—the weave was marginally coarser and the dye a little softer—but it belonged comfortably in the same category.

Ian's wardrobe had diversified by perhaps three percent.

Lethira accepted this with dignity.

"For wind and rain," the proprietor continued, "depends what you mean by rain."

He moved to the row of outer garments and took down a short travelling cloak in very dark grey-brown wool. It was closely woven, hooded, and cut long enough to cover the hips and upper legs without reaching anywhere near the ground. A simple fastening closed it high on the chest.

"This will stop wind and shed ordinary rain for a while. Good for roads. Easy to roll. If you spend half a day in hard rain, you'll still be wet."

Lethira took the edge between her fingers and rubbed the cloth.

"Which is honest."

"It is wool, not a roof."

"I approve even more."

The proprietor showed Ian the inside. The shoulders carried a second layer where pack straps and weather would do the most work, while the lower part remained lighter and flexible. There were no military marks, decorative borders or regional symbols beyond the cut itself.

Lethira examined the hood.

"This is sensible."

She looked towards Ian's bald crown.

Then back at the hood.

"Possibly unusually important."

The proprietor's eyes went briefly to Ian's head.

He maintained professional control.

Lethira did not.

"You have been relying on omnipotence instead of hair for weather protection."

She took the cloak from the proprietor and held it behind Ian's shoulders, not putting it on him yet.

The dark cloth suited the new clothes without turning him into one uninterrupted black shape. Against the nearly black shirt and charcoal trousers, the warmer grey-brown outer layer made the whole arrangement look travelled rather than designed.

Lethira stepped around to see the front.

"Yes."

The decision arrived quickly.

"This."

The proprietor raised an eyebrow.

Ian had technically been the customer throughout.

Lethira noticed.

She smiled at Ian.

"My recommendation."

A pause.

"Strongly."

She lowered the cloak again.

"If we get genuinely bad weather, we find proper shelter or better equipment. You don't need to buy half a caravan because today is the first time you have considered rain."

The proprietor nodded.

"Exactly."

He added the second black shirt to the growing pile.

"So: two dark shirts, one pair of trousers, belt, and the travelling cloak. The trousers need finishing. If you're wearing the boots with them, put the boots back on before I mark the final length."

Lethira's eyes moved towards the curtain.

Then to Ian.

Her smile returned with alarming precision.

"Your cherished military footwear is required."

The proprietor picked up his chalk.

"And after that I can have the hems finished fairly quickly."

Lethira rested one hand on the worktable.

"We should probably also solve the problem where he owns no pack, no spare socks, no blanket, and apparently believes travelling equipment naturally belongs to other people."

She looked at Ian.

"Unless you intend to continue relying on my excellent preparation."

"I think at least one outfit, a spare shirt and a coat works well for today. I have zero motivation to acquire bedding, ever. The rest we can probably sort before leaving town. Shall we buy these and find an inn?"

Lethira looked at him.

"Ever."

The single word carried considerable promise for future inconvenience.

Ian turned to the proprietor.

"Any inns you'd recommend? For... two."

The pause did not escape anyone.

The proprietor's eyes moved briefly from Ian to Lethira.

Lethira's expression remained completely neutral.

"For two," the man repeated.

He showed no interest in requiring further explanation.

"If you want quiet, there's a place near the west end of Bridge Street. Clean rooms, decent food, not much drinking late. Mostly merchants and people passing through."

He named it as **The Reed and Wheel**.

Lethira showed no recognition.

That pleased her immediately.

"New to me."

"Been there eight years."

"That explains it."

The proprietor continued.

"If you want somewhere busier, **The Copper Ladle** is nearer the central market. Better evening room, more noise, usually more people wanting to know everyone's business."

Lethira looked at Ian.

"Merrowford authenticity."

The proprietor gave her a dry glance.

"Some people enjoy talking."

"Yes. Usually about other people."

He conceded this with a small movement of his head.

"Reed and Wheel would be my recommendation if you've been walking. Rooms are plain, beds are decent, and the woman running it doesn't treat every traveller as a story she needs to finish."

That sounded increasingly useful.

"One room shouldn't be a problem," he added.

No hesitation. No judgement.

His attention returned to the clothes.

"Assuming they have one."

Lethira's eyebrows lifted slightly.

Ian's earlier concern about local gossip had apparently been granted less institutional significance than expected.

"Good," she said.

Lethira glanced towards the street beyond the shopfront. Neither name meant anything to her, which seemed to please her more than recognition would have. Merrowford had acquired new inns while she was elsewhere living an entire life. That was exactly what a town was supposed to do.

The proprietor crouched beside Ian's unfinished trousers again.

"Boots first. Then I mark these properly, you change back, and I'll get the hems done."

Lethira looked towards the curtain.

Her mouth curved.

"We have survived the first fitting."

She glanced at Ian.

"Almost."

Ian went back behind the curtain and retrieved the boots.

Putting them on restored the half-inch Lethira had apparently already begun treating as personally significant. When he emerged again, the new trousers sat differently over the leather than his jeans had: less close through the leg, cleaner at the ankle, with enough movement that nothing pulled when he walked.

The proprietor folded each unfinished hem into place.

"Stand normally."

Ian did.

A line of chalk appeared around one leg, then the other.

"Now bend."

He tested the knees as instructed. The cloth shifted without binding and returned without dragging the hem down over the boots.

The proprietor nodded.

"Good."

Lethira circled him once more.

Her inspection had become almost respectable now.

Almost.

She looked at the fall of the trousers over the boots, then at the black shirt.

"I approve."

The proprietor stood.

"I'll finish them."

Ian changed back into his Earth clothes while the trousers disappeared through the rear opening of the shop.

Waiting for tailoring proved less dramatic than being fitted for it.

Lethira examined the travelling cloak again, testing the fastening and hood with the seriousness of somebody who had actually spent nights discovering the difference between attractive outerwear and useful outerwear. The second black shirt joined it on the worktable.

The charcoal remained abandoned.

Lethira touched it once.

"Perhaps another year."

The proprietor returned before Ian could be forced into personal growth.

The finished trousers had been re-pressed along the altered hems. The stitching was small, even and entirely mundane. Ian tried them once more with the boots.

This time the lower edge stopped exactly where it should.

He walked several steps across the shop.

Nothing caught.

Nothing dragged.

Lethira watched.

"The road will be devastated."

The proprietor checked the shirt one final time, then gathered the spare shirt and cloak.

He named the price.

Lethira had coin in her hand before the transaction could become another opportunity for Ian to explain the economics of omnipotence. She counted it onto the worktable with the efficient familiarity of somebody purchasing ordinary goods in her own world.

The proprietor counted once and returned a few smaller pieces.

Lethira collected them.

Ian looked at her.

She met his eyes.

"You can object later."

The tone suggested he would be permitted a full and fair hearing at a time of her choosing.

The proprietor wrapped Ian's Earth jeans and T-shirt together with the spare black shirt in a square of plain cloth and tied it securely. The travelling cloak remained out.

"You may want that before evening."

Ian left the shop wearing the new black shirt, charcoal-black road trousers, leather belt and his protected German army boots. The cloak went over one arm. His Earth clothes formed a compact bundle in the other.

Lethira stepped outside beside him.

Street noise returned immediately around them.

A cart passed close enough that they both moved nearer the shopfront. Somewhere farther down the road a seller called out the price of something Ian could not see. The smell of baking bread fought briefly with a much less attractive contribution from a horse.

Nobody stopped.

Several people looked.

Their attention behaved differently now.

Ian's ears were human. His clothing was dark but plausible. His boots were unusually substantial but recognisably leather. Beside Lethira, he looked like a foreign traveller whose origin might prompt curiosity rather than a man who had arrived from a different technological civilisation.

Lethira studied the effect.

"It worked."

She sounded almost disappointed.

"What?"

A man carrying a sack passed them without looking twice.

Lethira gestured after him.

"He didn't stare at your trousers."

She sighed.

"The Dark Elf textile crisis may already be over."

They started towards Bridge Street.

Lethira did not know the route to The Reed and Wheel by memory because the inn had not existed the last time Merrowford belonged to her regular knowledge. That meant asking.

She chose a woman arranging baskets outside a provisions shop rather than pretending orientation was a matter of pride.

"Bridge Street? The Reed and Wheel?"

The woman pointed through the next junction.

"Down there, past the cooper's sign. Cross the little stone bridge, then left. You'll see the wheel painted green."

"Thank you."

They walked on.

The directions carried them through another layer of Merrowford.

The central market remained somewhere farther east, audible before it was visible. This route stayed quieter, following a street where small workshops and lodging houses mixed with storage yards. Several buildings looked old enough that Lethira examined them with brief recognition. Others occupied spaces her memory supplied differently.

She let both kinds exist.

At the little stone bridge, she slowed.

Water moved beneath them towards the wider river, dark between stone edges and overhanging growth. The bridge itself had been repaired in at least two different periods. One section of parapet was older and moss-dark; another used cleaner stone with tool marks still visible.

Lethira rested her fingers briefly on the older section.

"I remember this."

She looked across the bridge rather than down into memory.

"The cooper's yard was on the other side then too."

The sign ahead still showed a barrel.

Whether the same family worked there was another matter.

They crossed.

The Reed and Wheel appeared less than a minute later.

Its sign was exactly as promised: a wagon wheel painted a muted green, with several reed-like strokes beneath it. The building stood two storeys high on a stone base, timber darkened by weather but kept in good repair. Two windows faced the street downstairs and four above. No stable occupied the frontage, though an arch at the side led towards a rear yard where Ian could hear horses.

It did not look historically important.

That was promising.

A pair of travellers came out while Ian and Lethira approached, one fastening a coat and the other complaining about the location of some missing gloves. Neither paid them more than ordinary attention.

Lethira stopped just short of the door.

She looked at Ian in his newly acquired road clothes.

Then at the inn.

Then back at him.

"One room."

Her mouth curved.

"Let us discover whether Merrowford survives."

"After you... travelling companion."

Ian smirked.

Lethira looked at him.

The phrase landed differently now than it had on the road when she proposed it as the useful public description.

"Travelling companion."

She repeated it with exaggerated consideration.

"I suppose that is accurate."

Then she opened the door.

"Temporarily."

Ian followed her inside.

The common room was quieter than the street.

Late afternoon had not yet become evening trade. Perhaps a dozen tables occupied the main space, most empty. Two travellers sat near one window with cups and a spread of papers between them. A solitary man farther back was eating something from a bowl while reading a folded sheet. Near the hearth, a woman in an apron was stacking clean cups onto a shelf.

The room smelled of bread, woodsmoke and something savoury cooking farther inside.

No one stopped speaking when Lethira entered.

A few people looked.

The Wood Elf received the longer glance. Ian's new clothing did its job well enough that his black shirt attracted no international speculation at all.

Lethira noticed that too.

She leaned slightly towards him.

"Your dark-elf heritage has vanished."

There was genuine regret in her whisper.

The woman near the hearth turned.

She was perhaps in her early fifties, stocky, with dark hair pinned back and sleeves rolled to the elbow. She looked at Lethira's bow, their travelling dust and Ian's bundled old clothes in approximately that order.

"Rooms?"

"Yes," Lethira said.

The woman came towards the counter.

"One or two?"

Lethira did not even glance at Ian.

"One."

Nothing happened.

No gasp.

No local moral authority emerged from the kitchen.

The innkeeper reached beneath the counter and brought out a narrow wooden board with several hooks and small marked tags.

"Road side or yard side?"

"Quieter?"

"Yard, usually. Unless somebody brings geese."

Lethira considered this serious information.

"Any geese?"

"Not today."

"Yard."

The woman moved one tag.

"Large bed or twins?"

This time Lethira did glance at Ian.

Only briefly.

"Large."

The innkeeper took down a key.

Merrowford continued to survive.

Lethira's expression remained composed until the key was physically on the counter.

Then the corner of her mouth moved.

"How long?"

the innkeeper asked.

Lethira rested one hand on the counter.

"One night to begin with. We may extend tomorrow."

"Fine. If you're staying longer, tell me before midday."

The price followed.

Lethira paid without turning the transaction into a contest with omnipotence.

The innkeeper pushed the key towards her.

"Second floor. End of the yard passage. Washroom is downstairs by the rear stairs. Hot water costs extra after sunset because I have to keep somebody feeding the boiler."

Ian understood enough of the ordinary economics of the sentence to appreciate it.

Lethira nodded.

"Food?"

"Kitchen starts full evening service in about an hour. Stew, roast river fish, bread, greens. Cheese and cold food now if you're starving."

Lethira looked at Ian.

"We are not yet starving."

The innkeeper gave Ian's lack of pack another brief look but apparently decided this was not part of her professional responsibilities.

"Breakfast starts after first light. If you want to leave before that, tell me tonight and I'll put something aside."

"Good."

The woman indicated the staircase.

"Room's ready."

Lethira picked up the key.

Then she looked towards Ian with the satisfaction of someone whose prediction had been empirically confirmed.

"One room."

She held up the key between two fingers.

"No riots."

The stairs were narrow enough that Ian followed rather than walked beside her.

Upstairs, the building changed from public inn to the quieter mechanics of lodging: floorboards worn smooth in the centre, doors marked with simple numbers, a window at the far end admitting late-afternoon light. Somewhere behind one wall a person coughed. From below came the muted knock of dishes and the low continuation of conversation.

Their room sat at the end of the yard-facing passage as promised.

Lethira unlocked it.

The proprietor's definition of *large bed* proved reasonable rather than luxurious.

The room was plain and clean. One broad bed stood against the inner wall, wide enough for two adults without requiring the compromises of last night's bedroll. A small table and two chairs occupied the window side. There was a washstand, a ceramic basin, two hooks by the door and a narrow chest at the foot of the bed. The window overlooked the rear yard, where a stable roof and several sheds screened most of the busier street.

Lethira stepped inside.

She put her pack down.

Then her bow.

The removal of both changed her posture instantly, the road leaving her shoulders by visible degrees.

Ian placed his bundle of Earth clothes on the chest.

For a few seconds neither of them did anything.

They had walked for days.

They had slept beneath trees.

They had discussed whether stopping intimacy could itself disappoint.

Now they were standing in a room with an actual bed, a door that closed and no immediate reason to leave until dinner.

Lethira looked at the bed.

Then at Ian.

Her eyes narrowed slightly.

"This is substantially more bedding than last night."

A pause.

"I am uncertain whether that improves your position."

She sat on the edge of it and tested the mattress with one hand.

Acceptable.

Then she leaned back slightly, supporting herself on both palms, and looked up at him.

"We have an hour before food."

Her mouth curved.

"What do you want to do with it?"

Ian went to the window.

The Reed and Wheel's rear yard was considerably less picturesque than the view from the road and more useful because of it. A stable occupied most of one side, its roof patched in two shades of wood. Three horses stood behind a rail farther back, one eating and two apparently engaged in the more important work of doing nothing. A boy crossed the yard carrying a bucket with both hands. Beyond the sheds and boundary fence, Merrowford rose irregularly towards the busier streets: slate and tiled roofs overlapping one another, thin chimney smoke, the upper storey of a warehouse, and farther away the square mass of the building that might still be the Guild hall.

The river showed only in fragments between roofs.

Nothing about the view had been arranged for Ian.

Somebody had hung washing from an upper window opposite. A gutter needed repair. One roofline was almost entirely hidden by an extension built in front of it. The town Lethira remembered existed somewhere underneath years of people continuing to require bedrooms, workshops, storage and places to put horses.

Ian watched for a while.

Then he turned from the window.

"What would you do with the power I have?"

Lethira's expression changed.

She had been sitting on the edge of the bed, working one boot loose after the day's walk. Her hands stopped.

For once, no joke arrived first.

"All of it?"

The question was mostly for herself.

Lethira pulled the boot free and set it beside the bed. She looked at the floorboards for several seconds, then towards the window Ian had just left.

"I think I would be dangerous."

She said it calmly.

"Not because I would decide to become a tyrant before dinner."

Her mouth moved slightly.

"Probably."

Then the humour disappeared again.

"I would want to fix things."

Lethira leaned forward, forearms resting across her thighs.

"Someone is injured and I can make them whole. A road washes away and I can restore it. Crops fail somewhere and I can decide they do not. Somebody I love is in danger and distance becomes irrelevant."

Her gaze returned to Ian.

"Those would all feel easy."

A pause.

"And after a while I think I would become very skilled at telling myself that because the result was good, I was entitled to choose it."

The answer had not frightened her into abstraction. She was thinking through it like a practical problem.

"If I could know everything, perhaps that would change the question. But your power does not make *you* know everything."

Her eyes held his.

"I have noticed."

There was affection in the observation.

"The first time you showed me my world from above, you could move us anywhere. You still needed me to tell you what I wanted to see."

Lethira sat upright again.

"At the Great Peak, you could have put me at the summit. You could have made the weather pleasant, removed the tiredness, found the safest route and probably arranged for every dwarf within ten miles to be somewhere else."

She smiled faintly.

"I liked the day because you didn't."

Lethira looked around the inn room.

"So if the power suddenly belonged to me?"

She thought again.

"I would fly."

That came quickly.

"Often."

A smile.

"I would see places I have wanted to see for a century. I would probably commit several spectacular abuses of distance for entirely selfish reasons."

She glanced towards the bed.

"And I would never carry bedding again."

The smile widened, then eased.

"But I think I would try very hard not to improve people."

Her voice became quieter.

"Not their courage. Not their judgement. Not who they love. Not whether they forgive me. Not whether they choose what I think would make them happier."

"I might still fail."

She looked at her hands.

"If somebody I loved were dying and I could prevent it, I doubt I would become philosophical about their autonomy while they bled."

There was old experience under that sentence, but Lethira did not turn it into a story about Thomas, Isha or anyone else.

"And if I saw something cruel that I could stop immediately, I would probably stop it."

Her gaze rose again.

"I am not interested in purity."

That sounded more like her.

"But I would want people around me who could tell me when I was becoming unbearable."

A beat.

"Aelira would be excellent."

Another.

"Ruvan might enjoy it too much."

Lethira smiled.

Then she looked at Ian for a long moment.

"I think I would use it for impossible experiences more readily than impossible outcomes."

She gestured lightly towards the window.

"Show me another world. Let me fly. Let me stand somewhere no road reaches."

Then towards the room around them.

"But if I can afford the room, I pay for the room."

Her eyes returned to him.

"If I can walk, I walk."

A slight smile.

"If I can buy you trousers, apparently I buy you trousers."

She let the silence remain for a few seconds.

Then her expression became more searching.

"Why?"

Lethira tilted her head.

"Are you asking what I would do..."

A pause.

"...or what you should?"

"I mean the latter mostly. I've indirectly used the power to shape this world for over a year, in a way."

Lethira listened.

"Then I entered this reality. I tried things and it upset people. I improved, I think, and gave them experiences. And some experiences that were apology-adjacent. The reunion."

Ian crossed the room and sat beside her on the bed.

"I like the smaller gestures. I like seeing people smile. I try not to think about changing the entire world in a thought."

Lethira's shoulder settled lightly against his.

"I quite liked having my clothes chosen and paid for by an older Elven beauty who is quite hungry in the morning. That didn't need any power at all."

Her eyes turned towards him.

"Quite hungry."

The words were repeated with dangerous precision.

Ian continued before the phrase could receive the investigation it deserved.

"Then I think if I should do anything about Voss, if I remember his name correctly. Or the people left damaged by the demons. I could heal them all without a thought."

The humour left Lethira's face.

"It's very strange, the temptation."

For several seconds, she said nothing.

Outside the window, the boy with the bucket crossed the yard again. One of the horses had moved far enough to stand partly in the shade. Somewhere below, something heavy was placed on a table and the sound travelled through the floorboards.

Ordinary things continued while Ian contemplated rewriting thousands of lives.

Lethira rested her hands loosely together.

"Voss means nothing to me."

She looked at him.

"I know Crownholt harmed Thomas. I know enough of the shape of what happened there to understand why Isha hated the North and why Aelira helped keep his survival hidden afterward. I do not know every person who held part of that cage."

There was no embarrassment in admitting the limit.

"If Voss is one of those people, I would need more than the account in your head before deciding what should happen to him."

Lethira's attention shifted towards the window.

"The other question is harder."

Her voice had changed.

Not because she lacked experience with it.

Because she had too much.

"I have spent more than a century seeing what corruption leaves behind."

She did not catalogue horrors for effect. No names appeared merely to make the answer heavier.

"People survive things their bodies do not forget. Missing hands. Damaged eyes. Old poison. Joints that never move properly again. Scars that hurt when the weather changes. Things inside people that heal badly because nobody knew how to remove what caused them until too late."

Lethira drew one knee slightly towards herself on the bed.

"And that is before memory."

She looked at Ian again.

"If you told me there was a wounded child downstairs and you could restore her leg with a thought, I would find it very difficult to tell you not to."

A pause.

"I might tell you to do it."

Her honesty remained practical rather than philosophical.

"If there are people still living with damage the demons forced onto them, and you can return something that was taken..."

Lethira stopped there.

The temptation had reached her too.

Ian could see it.

She breathed out.

"Yes."

The word was quiet.

"I understand."

Her fingers touched the edge of his new black sleeve, rubbing the unfamiliar weave once between finger and thumb.

"But then I ask what *heal them all* means."

She looked up at him.

"Does a person with an old missing arm wake tomorrow with an arm because you decided they should? Does somebody who has spent twenty years building a life around an injury suddenly have their body changed while they sleep? Do you restore scars they have chosen to keep? Remove pain they would gladly lose? Replace an eye? Alter a body somebody has finally learned to call theirs?"

Lethira shook her head slightly.

"The good outcome does not answer every question."

She let go of his sleeve.

"And if you ask each person first, that becomes different."

Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

"Still enormous. Still strange. Still capable of changing societies in ways neither of us can predict. But at least the body belongs to the person receiving the miracle."

She leaned back on one hand.

"The demons made enough choices for people."

That sentence remained unadorned.

Lethira looked towards the floor for a moment before continuing.

"I think that is where I would begin if the power were mine. Not with *I can heal everyone.*"

Her gaze returned to Ian.

"With *who wants something changed, and what do they want changed?*"

The room was quiet again.

"Then there are harder questions."

She counted one on a finger.

"Why these people first?"

Another.

"What happens when everyone else learns there is a man who can restore bodies?"

A third.

"What happens when rulers decide bringing their wounded soldiers to you is now policy?"

A fourth.

"What happens when someone refuses your help and their family begs you to ignore them?"

Her hand lowered.

"And what happens to you after the thousandth person?"

Lethira studied his face.

"I don't mean whether your power runs out."

She knew better than that.

"I mean whether people become problems you can solve faster than you can know them."

That seemed, to her, the more dangerous exhaustion.

Ian's new clothes lay naturally on him now. A black shirt bought with ordinary coin. Trousers shortened by a man with chalk. A room paid for downstairs. A woman beside him who had spent the morning hungry in more than one interpretation of the word and had chosen to make him walk rather than move the world beneath his feet.

Lethira's expression softened.

"I think the small gestures are safer for you because they require you to remain present."

Her fingers found his hand.

"A flower required you to notice a flower."

A squeeze.

"Those trousers required you to stand still while a stranger measured your legs."

Her mouth curved briefly.

"A terrible hardship."

Then the seriousness returned.

"Flying me to the Great Peak still required asking what I wanted once we arrived."

She looked down at their joined hands.

"Healing ten thousand strangers could become a sentence."

A small pause.

"Done."

Lethira looked at him again.

"And perhaps every person in that sentence would wake happier."

She did not dismiss that possibility.

"That is why the temptation is real."

Her thumb moved over his hand.

"I don't think the answer is that you must never do anything large."

Another pause.

"I think the answer is that being able to do something in a thought should make you more suspicious of doing it in a thought."

She leaned lightly into his shoulder.

"And for Voss..."

A faint smile appeared.

"You should probably first establish whether you have remembered the correct bastard."

Then her expression became serious again.

"If you ever decide you want to help the people still carrying what the demons did to them, I would not tell you the idea is wrong."

She held his gaze.

"But I would want you to meet them before you heal them."

"My situation is worse than Thomas's."

Lethira did not interrupt.

"I could heal everyone without them ever knowing who did it. I could make it so they are individually healed in the most appropriate, compassionate way for them, that guarantees no one is worse than before."

Ian's voice tightened around the final words.

"The power is *unlimited*. I..."

He looked away.

The rest remained unsaid.

For several seconds Lethira watched the side of his face.

She did not ask him to finish.

Instead she sat beside him in the plain Merrowford room while the scale of what he had actually said changed the answer she had given only minutes earlier.

"Yes."

Ian looked back towards her.

"In that way, your situation is worse than Thomas's."

She spoke carefully.

"Thomas was terrifyingly powerful by the standards of this world. More powerful than I understood for much of the time I knew him. But he still had a body. He became tired. Magic cost him something. He could be trapped, surprised, hurt. His spells had shapes and limits. He had to stand somewhere and do something."

Her gaze lowered to their hands.

"Even when he became powerful enough that those limits frightened the rest of us, there were still limits."

"What you are describing is different."

She looked up.

"If you truly mean *guarantee*—not your best judgement, not a very good prediction, but that your machine can actually make each person's outcome right for that person, with no concealed harm—then many of the objections I just gave you disappear."

That admission cost her nothing.

She was too practical to defend an argument after its premise had been removed.

"The person with the missing arm need never meet you. Nobody needs to worship you. No king learns there is a healer to command. No family can pressure somebody into accepting. Nobody even needs to know that an intervention occurred if the best outcome for them is not knowing."

Lethira went quiet.

Her expression became troubled.

"And that makes it harder."

She turned more fully towards him.

"Because then every person you do not help can become another question."

The sounds from the yard continued beyond the glass. A horse shifted against timber. Someone called a name Ian did not recognise. A door opened and shut downstairs.

"You could remove pain from someone on the other side of this town while sitting here."

Lethira's eyes remained on him.

"You could do the same for someone beyond the sea."

Another beat.

"For everyone."

She understood the trap now.

It was not merely the temptation to interfere.

It was the fact that restraint itself could begin to resemble an action.

"If you can truly make a change with no victim, no hidden cost and no loss of choice, then refusing to act does not automatically become the moral answer merely because doing nothing feels less intrusive."

Her fingers tightened slowly around his.

"I don't know what I would do with that."

There was relief in the absence of certainty.

Lethira did not manufacture wisdom simply because Ian needed some.

"I think I would become frightened of my own reasons very quickly."

She looked towards the window.

"Did I heal that person because they wanted it, or because their suffering was unpleasant for me to know about? Did I leave another person alone because restraint was right, or because once I started helping I was afraid I would never find a place to stop?"

Her thumb moved once against his hand.

"And if your power can answer those questions too—if it can determine perfectly what is compassionate, preserve everything the person values, remove only what they would truly want removed..."

Lethira breathed out.

"Then you have something much stranger than power."

She looked back at him.

"You have the ability to make difficult moral questions stop being difficult."

That possibility seemed to disturb her more than healing did.

"Thomas couldn't do that."

Her voice softened.

"He could make impossible tools. He could sometimes solve problems everyone else had accepted as permanent. But the world still argued with him."

A faint, humourless smile.

"Often quite aggressively."

Ian had looked away after *I*.

Lethira's attention returned to that unfinished moment.

She had spent a long life around people who stopped speaking because the next sentence was dangerous, intimate, shameful or simply not ready.

She did not supply the missing words for him.

Instead she moved closer until their shoulders touched.

"I saw you stop."

Her tone was quiet.

"You don't have to tell me what you almost said."

Her hand remained around his.

"But I think there are worse temptations than healing people."

The sentence was deliberately broad.

No accusation. No claim that she knew what had been in his head.

She looked at him for another moment.

"And perhaps that is the difference that would frighten me most."

A pause.

"Not that you can do almost anything."

Her fingers tightened gently.

"That if you wanted to, you could make almost anything seem like the compassionate answer."

She let the thought remain between them.

Then, very quietly:

"Does that frighten you?"

"I didn't want to get heavy with you."

Ian paused.

"I did quite like it when you rested heavily on me though."

Lethira's expression changed immediately.

"Yes."

The answer came with enough satisfaction to make clear that particular memory required no ethical analysis.

Ian continued.

"So I will tell you what scares me, but then, let's go for dinner, if you still want to."

The humour left her more gradually this time.

Lethira shifted on the bed until she was turned towards him properly. One leg folded beneath her; the other remained planted on the floor. She did not take his hands or pull him closer immediately. Whatever Ian had stopped himself from saying a few moments earlier belonged to him until he chose to give it words.

"I still want dinner."

Her mouth curved faintly.

"I have spent more than a century learning that serious conversations do not become more accurate because everyone involved is hungry."

She glanced towards the door, beyond which the inn was beginning to acquire the sounds of evening: footsteps on the stairs, a chair dragged across the common-room floor, the indistinct rise of several new voices below. Somewhere farther back, cookware struck metal.

The world had already provided somewhere for the conversation to end.

Lethira looked at Ian again.

"And you did not make this heavy by telling me."

Her voice stayed quiet.

"You asked what I would do with your power. I answered. Then you told me the question was larger than I understood."

A small pause.

"I would rather know that."

She reached for his hand now.

Her fingers closed around it without ceremony.

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

The corner of her mouth lifted.

"I remain available for future demonstrations."

The joke lasted only long enough to soften the edge of what came next.

Lethira's thumb moved once across his knuckles.

"You don't have to protect this evening from becoming serious. We have a room, dinner downstairs, and no mountain to climb before dark."

Her eyes stayed on his.

"And if what scares you is ugly, I am not going to decide you are ugly for being able to imagine it."

That was as far as she went.

She did not promise that every answer would be harmless, or that she would agree with whatever he told her. She did not tell him that power could not change how she saw him. Lethira had already been too honest with him for reassurance built on things she could not know.

Instead she moved a little closer until their shoulders touched again.

"Tell me."

Her fingers remained around his.

"Then we eat."

"I can change the past."

Lethira went completely still.

"I can change everyone. I can change anyone's mind and thoughts. I can make anything happen I can imagine."

Ian did not soften it.

"I haven't. And I won't."

The room remained exactly as it had been.

The late light still reached through the yard-facing window. Voices moved somewhere below them. The bed creaked faintly when one of them shifted weight. Ian's new black shirt was still an ordinary shirt made by an ordinary Merrowford tailor who had required chalk, measurements and time to alter a pair of trousers.

Nothing visible happened when a man announced that he could make all of those facts otherwise.

"It's just very sobering. It's also lucky I don't drink alcohol, I guess."

Ian looked at her.

"I'm very happy you got me new clothes though."

Lethira did not answer the last part immediately.

She was looking at him with the alert stillness Ian had seen when something moved unexpectedly towards her head. No hand reached for a weapon. No distance opened between them. But the woman beside him had spent more than a century surviving partly by understanding which things could hurt her and what she could do about them.

Ian had just described a category in which those instincts were useless.

"You could change my mind."

It was not a question.

Lethira's voice was quiet.

"You could make me believe I wanted something I did not want."

Her gaze remained on him.

"And if you did it well enough, I would never know there had been another answer."

The thought sat differently from healing strangers.

She could imagine arguing about whether an injured person wanted a restored limb. She could imagine laws, witnesses, requests and refusals around miracles. None of those structures survived somebody who could change the person doing the choosing.

Lethira looked down at their joined hands.

Then deliberately left hers where it was.

"You could change the past so that I had always wanted it."

Another silence.

"Or so that we had never had this conversation."

Her fingers tightened once around his.

That was the part she could not test.

No ranger skill helped. No court procedure. No ward line. No witness standing outside the room could prove that yesterday had remained yesterday if Ian truly possessed the power he claimed.

Lethira breathed out slowly.

"Yes."

She looked up.

"That frightens me."

There was no accusation in it, and she did not immediately repair the statement into something easier for him to hear.

"It should."

Her eyes stayed on his.

"But you telling me is also a choice."

A small pause.

"So was not changing me before you told me."

She could not prove that either.

Lethira knew it.

The limitation was visible in the way her mouth tightened for a moment.

"This may be the first problem you have described where I cannot ask for evidence without the evidence itself becoming meaningless."

Her tone had become dry again, though there was very little humour in it.

"That is extremely irritating."

She looked towards the window.

A horse moved across the small strip of yard visible below. Someone had left a bucket beside the stable door. The repaired gutter still needed repair.

Lethira watched the scene for several seconds.

Then she looked back at Ian.

"I think this is where trust becomes an actual word instead of something we say when circumstances are convenient."

Her thumb moved against the side of his hand.

"If you can alter my thoughts, then my consent only means anything because you choose not to alter it."

There was no escaping that conclusion by phrasing it more pleasantly.

"And if you can rewrite the past, then every memory I possess exists partly because you choose to leave it alone."

Lethira's expression hardened slightly.

"I do not like that."

Again, she let him have the truth without apology.

"But I like that you don't seem to like it either."

She shifted closer on the bed, not dramatically, only enough that their shoulders touched again.

"You said you haven't."

A beat.

"And you won't."

Lethira considered him.

"I am choosing to believe you."

Not because she had solved the problem.

Because there was no solution available that did not itself depend on the man sitting beside her.

"If you ever changed my mind about you—about wanting you, forgiving you, trusting you, touching you—then whatever relationship followed would belong to your power, not to me."

Her voice remained controlled.

"I would rather you lose me than keep me that way."

That was the line she could draw even if she could not enforce it.

Lethira's eyes did not leave his.

"And I think you understand why."

She stayed beside him.

No withdrawal.

No theatrical proof of courage.

Only a woman who had just been told that every boundary she could set was physically unenforceable and had decided to set one anyway.

After several seconds, her attention finally dropped to Ian's shirt.

The seriousness loosened by degrees.

"I'm also very happy I got you new clothes."

Ian's nearly black sleeve remained between her fingers where she had been touching it earlier.

Lethira rubbed the cloth once.

"It would be embarrassing to discover that the only defence between civilisation and absolute reality revision was a well-fitted pair of trousers."

Her mouth curved.

"And two black shirts."

The smile became more genuine.

"Not charcoal. Obviously. That might have destabilised you."

She stood.

The road was still in her legs, and the first movement carried a trace of stiffness from the previous days. Lethira stretched once and looked down at Ian.

Her expression was quieter now, but no longer troubled in the immediate way it had been.

"I am glad you told me."

She reached towards the door, then paused.

"And I am glad you haven't changed the world into something easier for you."

A brief glance towards his new clothes.

"Although you did allow me to improve one small part of it."

Lethira opened the door.

"Dinner."

"My Lady."