## Chapter 423 — The Rest of the Day

By the time they returned to the Reed and Wheel after lunch, the room had warmed with the afternoon. Light reached across the floorboards from the yard-side window and caught on the buckles of Lethira's gear as she unshouldered her bow and set it where it would not be knocked. Her cloak followed, then the belt carrying her knives. She sat on the edge of the bed to pull off her boots and flexed her feet against the floor.

The morning's reward purse landed on the small table with a light clink.

"B-rank," she said, looking at it. "Defeated by two sheep and a dog."

The joke stayed in her voice. The morning had given them mud, two sheep, a dog, a modest reward and lunch; the smallness of it still seemed to please her.

Ian asked whether she wanted to stay a few days. Lethira looked towards the window, then back at the room they had already slept in once. "How many?"

"let's start with two, tonight and tomorrow, and then see how it goes. As you are already seductively without boots, I’ll go down and tell her, if that’s ok?"

Her toes curled once against the boards. "You have discovered my strategy."

The amusement stayed in her face when she nodded. "Yes. Two more nights. Go and secure our future before I remove something even more administratively powerful."

Ian went downstairs. The same yard-side room was free for tonight and tomorrow night, and the innkeeper extended the booking without ceremony. Breakfast would be as before. If they intended to leave early on the morning after the second additional night, she wanted to know the evening beforehand.

When Ian returned, Lethira had not progressed beyond boots in her campaign against the inn's administration. She had stretched out farther on the bed instead, one leg crossed over the other.

His return with the booking extended was answer enough. "Good." Lethira looked at his own boots. "Then I should warn you that mine are not the entire arsenal."

Ian told her that he liked leather boots too, though he declined to elaborate, and removed his own footwear before sitting beside her. For a few moments the room settled around them: distant conversation from downstairs, cart wheels outside, and the faint smell of cooked onions drifting up from the inn kitchen.

Then he asked whether she wanted to see his garden in a photograph. Lethira turned towards him at once.

The print that appeared was five by seven inches, a real photograph rather than one of the machine's approximations. She took it carefully by the edges.

A broad lawn filled most of the foreground. Trees framed both sides, and thick, high hedges closed much of the far boundary. A small black shed stood beyond the grass. Past the garden, where the gaps allowed it, wooded slopes rose beneath a pale grey sky with fields and distant houses scattered along them.

"This was this morning, the sun has appeared and warmed up the day since then. I'm lucky to be in the middle of a town but you can't easily tell the warehouse hidden behind the tall hedge."

Lethira studied the hedge again. "No," she said. "I would not have guessed there was a warehouse there."

She turned the photograph a fraction as though another angle might reveal it. The picture remained stubbornly flat.

"Your garden feels gentler than I expected. Held, somehow." She pointed to the small dark building. "What is that? And are you out here often?"

Ian explained that the shed held shelves and the dirty or wet things used for looking after the garden and trees. His own study was inside the main house. That was where his real body was now, even while his projected presence sat beside her in Merrowford.

Lethira's eyes returned to the photograph. "So not a workshop." A smile came with the thought. "Kelda would object if I called it one. It lacks sufficient evidence of hammering."

The mention of his study connected more easily. Years earlier, through one of Ian's impossible doorways, Lethira had seen that room with Kelda and Aelira. They had not crossed into it. The view had been enough to establish a desk, walls, the strange furnishings of another world and the fact that Ian's life existed somewhere beyond the opening.

Now the garden gave that remembered room surroundings. "I like knowing what is around it," she said. "Before, your study was a room through a door. This makes it part of a house."

Ian offered another photograph. The second print showed the house from the garden: broad stone walls beneath a single-sloping roof, the higher side facing the lawn. Large windows and glazed doors reflected the daylight. Plants and ordinary outdoor things softened the hard geometry near the walls.

Ian identified the second upper window from the right as his study.

Lethira brought the first photograph beside the second and worked out the angle between them.

"There." Her fingertip stopped just below the study window without touching the image itself. "That one." She looked from the roofline back to the garden. "Your house was built to look out. Or to catch the sun. Probably both."

Her shoulders stayed loose as she examined the stone house and its large windows. After another few seconds she asked, "Do you see much of the garden from where you sit?"

"Let me take a picture this very second ... one moment."

Lethira waited until a third print appeared.

This one carried a different day inside it despite having been made only hours after the first. Blue showed between broken white clouds. Sunlight reached the garden and the trees, bringing out stronger greens across the lawn and hedge. Distant roofs sat beneath a wooded ridge. The black shed was partly hidden by foliage now that the view came from above, and a lower section of roof occupied the foreground beneath the window.

"This, is now. Well just about now."

Lethira held the morning garden beside the new view. Grey sky against blue. The same trees under different light. The same hedge concealing the warehouse. The small shed, now seen from the other side and higher up.

Her attention shifted to Ian. "Your now." The words were quiet. Cross-reality time had never behaved well enough to become a clock between worlds, but the photograph did not need to solve that. It showed the view from Ian's study at the moment he had chosen to make it.

She looked at all three again. Ian said, “Please keep them. I think reality can handle that.” He kissed her.

Lethira accepted the kiss and, when it ended, gathered the photographs together with unusual care. "I want them."

She found a place among her travelling things where they could lie between flat sheets of paper rather than against buckles or the edge of a knife sheath. The three prints disappeared safely into the pack.

Ian smiled. “Now, lets get your B-rank token thing, and go get you properly registered.”

He lowered his voice. “unless you don't want to, that is always implied.”

Lethira looked at him for a moment, then at the place where she had stored the photographs.

"I know." Her expression softened. "And I like hearing it sometimes."

The old Guild tag was at home in the Wood Elf settlement. That was an inconvenience measured in days by road and considerably less by Ian's machine. Lethira considered the difference before giving him terms.

"The actual tag only. As it is. No cleaning it, repairing it or replacing it with what the machine thinks I ought to have. If finding it requires searching through my belongings in a way I would object to, leave it there."

She held his gaze long enough to make the conditions clear, then extended one hand. "Bring me my tag, Ian Kirk."

Ian answered, "Hold out your hand and wish it here, and it will arrive."

Her hand was already open. Lethira looked down at her palm, wished for her old Guild tag, and something small and wooden settled into her hand.

There was no flash and no newly polished surface. The tag was darkened by age and handling, its edges rounded from years against cloth and leather. Scratches crossed the wood. The old Guild mark remained visible, as did her name and the B-rank designation that the Merrowford archive had confirmed that morning.

Lethira's fingers closed around it. "That is mine." She turned it over once. The worn object needed no improvement to be recognisable.

She set it beside the newer things on the bed and reached for her boots.

"Actual tag. Archived record. Living owner." She pulled one boot on. "I believe this constitutes an administrative victory." The second boot followed. "Your fate as an aide remains undecided."

Ian rose and put his own boots back on. "absolutely, but first the guild hall." He followed her downstairs.

Merrowford's afternoon had become busier near the market. The morning contract board no longer drew the same cluster, but the Guild hall still carried a steady traffic of messengers, local workers and adventurers with business too small to justify ceremony. The same record clerk sat behind the counter, cropped brown-grey hair unchanged and one finger still marked with ink.

Recognition arrived when Lethira placed the old tag on the wood.

"You found it."

"Apparently."

The clerk took the tag and examined the stamp, carved mark and old branch notation against the archive entry she had already retrieved that morning. She did not treat age as authenticity by itself. Two older reference marks were checked before she seemed satisfied. "This is consistent with the record."

Lethira rested her forearms lightly against the counter. "I was hoping the scratches would establish my professional authority."

"They establish that wood can be scratched."

"A severe branch." The clerk pulled the current register closer.

The process was shorter than the morning's archive search. Lethira gave her current occupation as warden. When the clerk asked whether that meant Wood Elf crown service, she answered yes, then added that she was travelling privately. She had no current injury or condition preventing field work. No Guild suspension, unpaid judgement or restriction appeared against her record. The completed E-rank contract from that morning provided current branch evidence that she could work safely under present procedures rather than merely having possessed an old rank decades ago.

The clerk read the old entry again, then looked up. "Your B-rank remains your recorded rank. I can restore current identity at B."

Lethira waited. There was, predictably, more.

"For contracts issued through this branch, authority will be C and below until a senior field assessment confirms current B-level practice. That is a local contracting restriction, not a rank reduction. If you never take the assessment, you remain B with C-and-below authority here."

"That is less insulting than I expected."

"We try." The clerk wrote the restriction into the current record and produced a new wooden tag. It looked almost indecent beside the old one: pale wood, sharp edges, a fresh Merrowford branch mark and Lethira Dawnleaf's name with B stamped clearly beneath it. The reverse carried the local limitation pending assessment.

Lethira held old and new beside one another. "This one looks unemployed."

"Give it time." Ian's aide status remained exactly what it had been that morning: contract-specific and subordinate to the registered adventurer, not a rank of his own. No new job was attached to the registration, and Lethira did not reach for the board on the way out.

Outside, she slid the old tag away separately from the new one.

Ian asked what a senior assessor actually did: whether the test meant arrows into targets or being watched on a job.

Lethira considered the question while they moved away from the entrance. "B-rank is not target shooting. They may want to see weapons, but the field part matters more. Tracking. Identifying the threat before you commit to it. Choosing an approach. Knowing where other people are before you loose an arrow. Knowing when leaving is the correct answer."

Her mouth tightened faintly. "The assessment I remember involved a senior adventurer watching enough real work to decide whether my judgement matched the rank. I disliked being watched. Present procedure may be different."

She touched the edge of the new tag through the fabric where she had put it.

"They might attach an assessor to a suitable C contract, or use a field exercise and weapons work. I would ask before assuming."

There was no urgency behind it. C-and-below authority gave them more work than they were likely to need for an ordinary road journey.

Ian said, “Of course, I shall hold back on the Dragon summoning until you've decided.”

Lethira stopped just long enough to look at him. "No dragons before the assessor signs the form. Preferably none afterwards either."

She resumed walking, then took his hand for several paces. "If one appears anyway, the report will state very clearly that it was your fault." A beat passed. "B-rank privilege."

Ian said, “Wait, are dragons actually a thing here? There was a Magnog, although you possibly didn't know that, but several people saw it. Then all the demons, but they are all gone. What else, goblins, ghouls, something called a reed-backed crawler” His face took on the particular distracted concentration that meant he was reading text invisible to her. “Dragons sound cool.”

Lethira's amusement faded into attention at the unfamiliar word. "Magnog means nothing to me."

She continued with what she did know.

"Goblins are real. Ghouls are real. Reed-backed crawlers are real, unfortunately for anyone who mistakes six legs for an improvement."

Dragons required more care. "Dragons are in stories. Wood Elf stories too. Children like them because they improve almost any tale until somebody has to explain livestock losses."

She looked ahead along the street. "I have never seen a living dragon. I have never seen a dead one, tracks I trusted as dragon tracks, or met anyone whose account convinced me they had seen one."

That left a large world between *fiction* and *confirmed animal*, and Lethira seemed comfortable leaving it there. "So you are forbidden from summoning one, requesting one, or asking your machine to check behind the nearest mountain."

A smile returned. "If we find naturally convincing evidence while travelling, I will be interested from a respectful distance. Preferably after lunch."

Ian said, “Maybe we should travel the land trying to find out if Dragons are real via testing a selection of hot springs and baths. And avoiding Elementals from the depths of the earth made of living magma.”

Lethira gave him a long look. "Your proposed dragon research has acquired an impressive bathing requirement."

They turned onto a broader street where afternoon traffic forced them nearer the edge. A cart passed with bundled reeds stacked above the driver's head.

"As for elementals from the depths of the earth made of living magma, I know only what you just told me. I already knew there were things deep underground I had no wish to meet. Your description has strengthened the preference."

Her expression turned thoughtful. "But the journey itself sounds good. Towns. Roads. Work when we want it. People telling us mutually impossible dragon stories with complete confidence. Local baths."

She glanced towards him. "By the third hot spring I will suspect that your scientific standards have become compromised."

Ian laughed. "Understood."

They walked a little farther before he asked, "Shall we take another job tomorrow?"

Lethira considered it while they moved with the traffic. "Yes. I'd like to."

The ease of her answer seemed to please her. "We can look after breakfast. E or D would be simple. C if it is genuinely suitable and doesn't require a larger party."

She glanced back towards the Guild quarter, then forward again. "I enjoyed having something real to do with you this morning. We don't have to turn it into a profession." A small smile appeared. "And if the board is terrible, we can abandon adventuring for the day and continue dragon research through bathing."

Her hand found his briefly as they walked. Ian asked, "And for the rest of the day? Your choice."

Lethira took several paces to decide. With the Guild behind them and two more nights already paid for, there was very little the afternoon had to accomplish. "The river."

She looked towards the streets descending away from the market. "I want to see what Merrowford has done with it."

Ian reached out, held her hand and walked with her towards the river, letting Lethira choose the route.

She accepted the hand without looking down at it. Her fingers threaded through his, and the first part of the walk became an argument between memory and urban development.

A warehouse stood where she remembered an open timber yard. "Rude." The next turning survived exactly where she expected it. "Better."

Closer to the water, larger yards opened between buildings. Rope hung drying beneath eaves. Barrels and stacked baskets occupied places where they would have blocked traffic uphill. The air gained river mud, fish and wet timber beneath the smells of bread, animals and smoke.

Lethira slowed at one junction. "There used to be a baker along here."

Three doors later they found a cooper, a narrow lodging house and a shop selling dried river herbs.

She nodded with satisfaction. "No baker. They have successfully continued existing without preserving my lunch options."

The river appeared first between buildings: wide, slow and brown-green under the afternoon light. Barges sat low against the quays. Farther downstream a ferry crossed at an unhurried pace. The old palisade met the water awkwardly where older Merrowford still insisted on its former boundary, while newer buildings had spread beyond the clean idea of where the town ought to end.

Lethira stopped when the view opened properly and watched the water for a while.

A loaded boat turned into the current. Somebody on the bank shouted an instruction. The first version was ignored; the louder second one achieved success. Lethira smiled. "That part is familiar."

They followed the river road downstream. At one place she pointed out a stretch of old retaining stone that might have survived from her earlier visits. At another she paused beside a new timber landing and examined the braces with the casual attention of a warden who had spent too much of her life around roads and repairs to ignore competent construction.

Farther on, broad stone steps descended into the water. "This used to be mud." The lowest steps vanished beneath the river. Lethira inspected them from above. "Improvement." That completed her civic judgement.

A little farther downstream, a seller worked beneath a patched awning with fried dough, skewered river fish, onions cooked soft and sweet, and small cakes made from crushed nuts and something close to honey. Lethira bought two of the cakes from what remained of the Guild reward. The first bite made her slow down and reconsider it.

"This is good." She took another bite. "Possibly contract-reward worthy."

The busier quays gradually fell behind. Warehouses became smaller yards and houses with sheds facing the bank. The road narrowed until two carts would have needed negotiation. Willows and low riverside growth appeared in the spaces between buildings, and foot traffic thinned to fishermen, children carrying baskets, and an elderly man who gave Lethira's bow a single glance before returning to his own concerns.

She led Ian onto a narrower path above the river. "This survived." It curved behind a stand of trees and dropped to a small grassy bank, flattened by use but otherwise unremarkable. No shrine or marker claimed it. A tree leaned towards the water enough to shade part of the ground.

Lethira looked upstream, then down. "I used to sit somewhere along this stretch. Possibly here."

Her smile widened. "Possibly fifty paces away and now underneath someone's warehouse."

She did not search for proof. Still holding Ian's hand, she walked down onto the grass and stopped beneath the tree, close enough to the bank for the water to fill most of the view.

For several minutes Lethira watched the river. A barge moved upstream near the opposite bank. Its wake reached the near side long after the boat had passed. Merrowford remained audible behind the trees, but distance softened individual voices into a general murmur.

Lethira's thumb moved once across Ian's hand. "I like this town better today than I did yesterday."

A small branch revolved slowly in an eddy near the bank.

"Yesterday I was measuring it against what I remembered. Today I have new things to remember."

Her mouth curved. "That ridiculous dog." Moss needed no further explanation.

After a while she leaned lightly against Ian's shoulder. She stayed there through another passing boat and the shifting light on the water.

Eventually she lifted their joined hands and inspected them. "This is a very inefficient way for a B-rank adventurer to spend an afternoon."

She lowered their hands again with a smile. Ian continued alongside her as she followed the path farther downstream, taking pleasure in her company and in the brightness still in her eyes.

"Efficiency is overrated."

Lethira looked across at him. "Careful. You said that after making my hair presentable in seconds, washing our clothes by rewriting reality and retrieving a Guild tag from another part of the world without leaving the room."

She let the contradiction travel with them for several steps. "I think you mean efficiency is overrated when the inefficient part is pleasant."

The river path curved beneath another line of trees. On the far side, reeds and low growth interrupted the bank more often than buildings now. Behind them, the working town had receded to occasional hammering and distant voices.

Lethira squeezed his hand. "That I agree with."

She stopped where the trees opened onto a broad upstream view. Clouds divided the light into bright and dull stretches across the water. A narrow boat passed in the distance. "This morning we spent several hours solving a problem your machine could probably have ended before breakfast."

Her eyes followed the boat. "And I enjoyed every part of it. Even the mud." A smile returned. "Especially being out-thought by a sheepdog."

They continued with no destination beyond the next bend. Lethira left the path once to examine a flowering shrub close to the water and returned without taking anything from it. Farther along, exposed stones had collected at the bank. She studied them, chose one flat enough to satisfy some private standard and slipped it into her pocket. No explanation was offered.

Ian stopped and took Lethira's other hand. She turned towards him as the river moved behind her, and he kissed her deeply.

Lethira answered almost at once. Her fingers tightened around his, and she stepped close enough that the space between them disappeared. The kiss was unhurried and certain, carrying none of the bathhouse's deliberate teasing. She met what he offered and stayed there with him until breath eventually required attention.

When she drew back, their hands were still joined. "That was extremely inefficient." She squeezed his fingers. "I approve."

Ian looked at her face, his happiness visible in his own. His eyes followed the long line and shape of her ears, one marked by the narrow silver cuff she had worn since their first date. "What is the romantic etiquette with Elf ears?"

Lethira became more aware of his attention than embarrassed by it. She touched the cuffed ear lightly.

"That depends heavily on what you intend to do with them."

She considered the question with more seriousness than the teasing opening suggested.

"They aren't sacred. Friends touch hair. Family might move an ear out of the way to treat an injury or untangle something. Children pull them until they learn why they should stop."

Her mouth curved. "Deliberately stroking one because you find it attractive would usually be understood. Kissing one is less ambiguous."

A little colour had reached the ear Ian was watching. Lethira noticed and gave him a look that suggested this was inconvenient evidence.

She touched the silver cuff again. "And don't catch the jewellery. That is not etiquette. It hurts."

The river moved steadily below them. "I was never issued a Wood Elf rulebook for this," she added. "For me, ask the first time. After that, pay attention."

She tipped her head slightly, bringing the nearer ear more clearly out from beneath her ash-brown hair. "And since you were wondering romantically... yes. I would notice."

Ian held his hand up, the back of his fingers near her ear. "May I?"

Lethira's eyes moved from his face to the hand hovering beside her. "Yes. Gently. And mind the cuff."

She tipped her head a fraction towards him and moved a few strands of hair clear. The long outer edge of the ear remained within easy reach while the silver cuff stayed visible.

There was a little more colour there now. "You asked," she murmured. Her smile deepened. "Now find out."

Ian ever-so gently brushed the backs of his index and middle fingers along the edge of Lethira's ear, avoiding the cuff. He moved slowly, watching the tiny, nearly invisible hairs along the outer edge respond to the passage of his fingers.

Lethira became very still. Her eyes stayed on his face at first, then softened as the touch followed the line towards the tip. Her breathing changed slightly. The colour along the ear deepened.

At the tip, Ian turned his hand so the fronts of his fingers replaced the backs and brought them slowly down again towards her neck. He traced a line along the side of it until his fingers reached the top of her clothes, then leaned in and kissed her neck.

Lethira inhaled sharply. One hand closed around his upper arm with more strength than she needed for balance. Her head tipped away from the kiss, giving him room, and the tension through her shoulder eased as the moment continued.

When he drew back, she let out a slow breath. "That was much less ambiguous." Her hand loosened without leaving him. The ear beneath the cuff remained warm with colour. "You were very careful."

Approval sat plainly in her face. She slid her hand down to his wrist and guided his palm to rest lightly against her cheek. "I think field research has produced a useful result." Her smile returned at one corner. "Try not to become unbearable about it."

Ian smiled and looked at her. "I shall try." He kissed her again, less deeply this time.

Lethira met it without trying to turn the smaller kiss into the larger one that had preceded it. When they separated, she remained close, their hands hanging loosely between them.

Ian's expression had changed into something she found easy to read.

"I feel very fuzzy."

Lethira's eyebrows lifted. "This is a good thing."

She waited.

"Warm, happy, content."

A pause.

"Fuzzy."

The final repetition made her laugh softly. "Fuzzy." She tried the word as though Common had presented her with a category requiring field verification. "You use that for cloth. Animals. Things that are unclear."

Her eyes travelled over his face. "And now happiness."

She did not press him for a better definition. Her thumb passed once over the back of his hand.

"I think I understand. Not sharp. Nothing demanding attention. Just warm."

The teasing faded into a quieter smile. "I like you fuzzy."

She leaned in and kissed the corner of his mouth, then stayed against his shoulder when they began walking again.

Several steps later, the colour in her ears had not entirely disappeared. "If touching my ear caused this condition, I should probably record it as a hazard." Her mouth curved. "Very dangerous B-rank elf."

They kept walking.

The river path narrowed and widened with the bank, sometimes close enough to the water that reeds brushed its edge, then rising where old retaining stones held the ground above it. The afternoon had begun to soften. Sunlight came and went behind larger clouds, and Merrowford's working noises gradually shifted towards evening: carts returning, shutters moving, cooking beginning behind open windows.

Lethira stayed beside Ian. They kept their hands linked whenever the path allowed it.

At one point she glanced at him, amusement returning. "Still fuzzy?" The question did not require immediate treatment.

They passed a man repairing a fishing basket beside the bank, then two women washing vegetables in a shallow channel diverted through stones. Farther on, children threw flat pieces of wood into the river and argued loudly over which would reach a bend first.

Lethira watched until the path carried them past. "I remember doing something similar. Ours involved leaves." She frowned thoughtfully. "And I am fairly sure Aelira cheated."

No evidence survived.

They found another stretch of old stonework farther on. Lethira ran her free hand along one weathered edge as they passed, then left it behind with the rest of the town.

Eventually they turned back. There was no event announcing the decision. They had walked far enough, and the Reed and Wheel existed in the other direction.

Their return took them through streets Ian had not seen that morning. A yard held three men repairing nets. A small stone shrine occupied a recess in one wall with fresh flowers beneath it. Lethira noticed it, slowed briefly, and continued. Nearer the market she bought two small cups of something cold and lightly sweet from a street seller using what remained of their Guild reward.

Halfway through hers she gave the drink the same measured consideration she had given the nut cake earlier. "This is also good."

By the time the Reed and Wheel appeared ahead, warmer light had begun to gather against its upper windows. Lethira stopped outside for a moment and looked back along the street, then towards Ian. The brightness he had noticed earlier was still in her face, quieter now after the long walk.

She squeezed his hand once before releasing it so they could go inside.

The common room was beginning to fill for dinner. Lamps had been lit despite the remaining daylight, and the smell of bread and onions mixed with something roasting in the kitchen. Lethira looked towards the tables, then the stairs. "No decisions yet. We can become hungry later."

They went upstairs to the room they now had for two more nights.

Nothing had moved while they were away. Lethira's bow returned to its place by the wall. The diminished reward purse sat on the table. Three photographs from Ian's real home lay protected among her travelling papers. The old Guild tag and the sharp-edged new Merrowford tag now belonged to the same day.

Lethira closed the door, set down her bow and removed her boots again.

This time she flexed her toes against the floor while looking directly at Ian. "Seductive." She seemed satisfied with the callback.

Then she sat on the bed and leaned back on her hands. The room held the fading afternoon light and the first muffled voices of dinner below.

Lethira looked towards the window. "Sheep. Guild bureaucracy. Your garden." Her fingers touched one ear briefly. "The river."

A small smile settled across her face. "Good day."