## Chapter 428 — Names on Paper

Ian opened the door to the room at the Reed and Wheel and found Lethira standing near the table.

Isha's reply had already been folded away among her personal things. Nothing of it remained visible except the warmth Lethira had not quite managed to lose from her face, complicated by the knowledge that *good love morning you* had now crossed realities and entered the permanent memory of an old friend.

She turned at the sound of the door.

Ian walked straight up to her. Lethira's smile became curiosity when he came unusually close and rose onto his toes.

It was not enough.

Ian dropped back onto his heels, considered the problem, then made a small jump and gently kissed the end of one of her long ears.

Lethira froze.

"Shall we go see some clerks my love?"

For two full breaths she did nothing. Then one hand rose slowly to the ear he had kissed.

"You jumped."

There was no indignation in it. Her eyes narrowed while several competing reactions attempted to become dignity.

"You actually jumped."

Her fingers touched the very end of her ear as though confirming where the event had occurred. Then she laughed, quietly at first, until she had to look away from him. By the time she recovered, colour had spread along both ears.

"I have spent more than a century acquiring dignity, and apparently all it required to defeat it was one human with insufficient reach."

She stepped closer and solved the height difference herself, bending enough to kiss his forehead.

"My love, I would be delighted to go and see some clerks."

The absurdity of the sentence pleased her almost as much as the endearment.

She collected her current Guild tag and checked the local coin they carried. Before reaching the door she paused beside her belongings.

"Isha replied. She is happy for us."

The smile returned.

"And she believes a B-rank adventurer should be tested against three sheep next time. Thomas saw the letter too. The pillow incident is therefore spreading."

She accepted this setback with a sigh and opened the door.

Ian followed her out. "I'm glad Isha is happy for you."

Lethira slowed on the stairs and looked back at him.

"For us, I think. But yes. I am glad too."

The Reed and Wheel was quieter than it had been at breakfast. Most travellers had already left for the road, market or work. Caswick moved between counter and kitchen with the pace of someone whose busiest hour had passed without making the day less busy.

Lethira continued downstairs, one hand brushing the rail. "I didn't need Isha's approval. But there are people whose happiness matters even when their permission doesn't. She knew me when I was very good at having opinions about her relationship and rather less occupied with my own."

Outside, Bridge Street was fully awake. A handcart creaked past beneath sacks that smelled faintly of onions. Two apprentices carried a long timber between them with more argument than coordination. A woman swept grit from her threshold while a passing horse patiently restored some of it.

Lethira stepped beside Ian rather than ahead of him. "Receiving *you have my happiness* from her felt... good."

The simplicity seemed enough.

She looked towards the market square. "For our thrilling administrative expedition, I think we start with Brannock. Not because I expect the Guild to sell us land, but she knows current Merrowford procedure and, unlike me, has spent the recent portion of her life here. Also, she already believes you exist. One bureaucratic obstacle defeated before we begin."

Ian smiled. "excellent, onward to administration!"

"There. That's the proper spirit."

They crossed the late-morning market towards the Guild. Near an onion stall Lethira glanced once at Ian.

"No."

Nothing more was required.

The Guild hall was less crowded than on their earlier visits. A pair of adventurers compared contracts near one board while another sat at a long table repairing a strap with the absorbed irritation of someone who had already tried twice.

Brannock looked up from behind the counter, recognised them, and gave the faintest downward glance towards Lethira's current tag.

"No sheep today, I hope."

Lethira rested one hand on the counter. "We're trying something more dangerous. Property."

Brannock's face remained impressively neutral. "Ah."

Lethira explained that they might want land near Merrowford, perhaps with a house already on it, perhaps somewhere they could build. They did not yet know. What they wanted first was to know whether both their names could legally appear on it.

The clerk's attention moved between them once.

"Guild doesn't register land," Brannock said.

Lethira acknowledged that they had assumed as much. Brannock's gaze went once to the note and then back to them. They had come because she already had both names in front of her, and Lethira confirmed it. The answer seemed to earn a fraction more professional respect.

Brannock folded her hands on the counter. "Your Guild record establishes you easily. His aide entry establishes that a person by his name appeared, signed and was witnessed here. That's not necessarily the same as whatever a land office wants for long-term ownership."

Lethira asked whether it could support one. Brannock thought it probably could. Property inside Merrowford's recognised holdings went through town record clerks; farther out, the answer depended on who held the land. Some farms were town-chartered, some belonged through village or family holding, and some answered to larger estates. Being foreign was not automatically a prohibition. Being impossible to identify might be.

Lethira's mouth twitched. "He has that problem."

"I gathered."

Brannock pulled a scrap sheet towards herself and wrote several lines.

"If you're only looking, don't begin with deeds. Start with the town record room. Ask what categories they permit for joint purchase, what identification they accept and where town authority ends. Find out whether you have a problem before solving the wrong one."

She slid the note across.

Lethira read it, then looked at Ian with far too much pleasure. "We have been referred to another clerk."

Brannock had already returned to her ledger. "That's usually how administration works."

Ian smiled at her. "Does solving this level of administration guarantee E-rank?"

Brannock stopped writing.

The pause was just long enough for Lethira to recognise that the clerk had decided to answer seriously enough to make the joke worse.

"No. E-rank requires field judgement, completion of suitable work, and evidence that you are not a danger to yourself, your employer, or everyone standing nearby. Successfully locating the correct office demonstrates persistence."

Lethira lowered her head, shoulders moving once.

Brannock continued, "If you return with properly witnessed land-transfer documents, I may be willing to record that you can follow written directions."

That finished Lethira's composure. She laughed openly against the counter.

"Careful. At this rate he'll become overqualified."

"I remain willing to prevent that."

Brannock reclaimed the note long enough to add a mark beside the address. "There. Proof you received instructions from a competent source."

One adventurer by the board had stopped pretending not to listen. His gaze went from Ian to Lethira's B-rank tag and back again, apparently considering whether administration was an obscure senior training method.

Brannock noticed him.

"It isn't."

He returned to the contracts.

Lethira folded the note with exaggerated care. "This is becoming a formidable portfolio."

"Try not to accidentally purchase anything before you know whose land it is."

Outside again, Lethira touched Ian's arm as they turned towards the civic offices.

"No E-rank for paperwork. Although if you successfully survive joint ownership law, I may petition for special consideration."

Ian followed her as they continued.

The building Brannock had indicated was less impressive than the Guild and considerably less interested in appearing so. Two adjoining structures shared a stone lower wall and a covered entrance, with faded painted boards identifying kinds of town business. People came and went carrying bundles of paper, wooden tally tablets, sealed letters and, in one man's case, a chicken in a basket for reasons Lethira declined to investigate.

Inside, the air smelled of ink, old paper and damp wool.

Brannock's note saved them from one queue and placed them in another narrower one beside a wall of tied record bundles. The wait was long enough for Lethira to read several notices and quietly confirm that none involved sheep.

Eventually a clerk beckoned them forward. She was a human woman somewhere around middle age, with greying hair pinned tightly at the back and polished lenses balanced low on her nose. She had the patient manner of someone accustomed to people arriving with only the vaguest idea which question they actually needed answered.

Lethira placed the Guild note on the desk.

"We're considering buying land near Merrowford. Possibly with a house, possibly somewhere we could build one. Before we look seriously, we want to know whether both our names could legally be on it."

The clerk looked first at Lethira, then at Ian, then back to the note.

"Married?"

"No. Together."

The colour at Lethira's ears appeared and was ignored by everyone except Ian.

"Doesn't matter for title."

That disposed of one anticipated complication so quickly Lethira blinked.

The clerk pulled a blank example deed from beneath the counter and turned it around. There were spaces for more than one named holder.

"Two people can hold the same parcel. Three can, if they enjoy future arguments. Marriage changes inheritance assumptions in some places; it isn't required for joint ownership."

Lethira leaned closer. "So both names can be equal?"

"They can. Or shares can be stated if they're unequal. If nothing else is written, the local presumption is equal interest among the named holders."

That was close enough to what Ian had described from his own world that her expression brightened.

Then the clerk tapped the page.

"The difficulty is proving who the names belong to. You have an active Guild identity, historic record, current tag and recognised branch standing. Easy. Your companion has a Guild aide entry. That's evidence that someone by that name appeared, signed and was witnessed by Guild staff. For a small contract or ordinary debt, probably enough. Land is meant to outlive the people at the desk."

The distinction was practical. A deed might sit in a record room for eighty years before another clerk needed to reconstruct who had bought what from whom.

"If he's foreign, that's not a problem by itself. We record foreign merchants, craftsmen, retired soldiers, caravan people. What matters is a traceable identity."

"What would satisfy you?" Lethira asked.

The clerk counted possibilities with the end of her pen. "A Guild identity with longer standing. A recognised household or settlement willing to witness him. A noble or royal attestation. In some cases two local guarantors with property of their own. Depends on value and location."

Lethira's mouth curved at *royal attestation*.

"Convenient."

The clerk looked over her lenses. "Royal friends?"

"One."

"That usually helps."

There was no awe in the answer, only administrative appreciation for a strong document.

Before they reached that stage, the clerk explained, they needed land. Town-held parcels, private sales and village holdings followed different routes. A place near town with trees and privacy would probably take them beyond the dense holding boundary.

She added another instruction to Brannock's increasingly burdened scrap: outer-hold register, current private-sale notices, village jurisdiction where relevant, flood and water-right records if anything touched the river.

"Don't assume a sale notice means the description is accurate. Walk the land. Ask neighbours where the water goes in heavy rain. Ask who uses the track. Ask whether anyone has been grazing animals through it for thirty years and has decided that makes the path theirs."

Lethira nodded with increasing approval. "That sounds more like fieldwork."

"It is. Only the monsters have seals."

The clerk dried the ink with sand and handed the note back.

She looked directly at Ian. "For the identity question, I only need one thing from you before I tell you which route is simplest. Do you intend to own the property jointly with her, in your own name?"

"Jointly, or her name if there is no easy mechanism for joint. Royal attestation is possible, so I'm hopeful for joint."

The clerk nodded. "Then don't put it solely in her name yet. If joint ownership is what you actually want, solve the identity question first. Changing one owner into two later is possible, but it creates another transfer, another set of witnesses, and usually another fee. There is no virtue in doing the simple thing twice."

Lethira gave Ian a sidelong look. "I like her even more."

"That often passes."

The clerk drew a line beneath the note concerning Ian's identity. "If you can produce a royal attestation identifying him by the same name used in the Guild record, stating that he is personally known to the issuing authority and that the authority stands behind that identification, I would expect the town record office to accept it. For ordinary land."

The qualification mattered. Old fortified holdings, chartered mills or land carrying hereditary office might bring different rules.

"Don't buy something interesting," the clerk said.

Lethira folded her arms. "Define interesting."

"Anything whose previous owner begins the description with 'technically'."

Someone at the neighbouring desk laughed quietly.

The clerk ignored it and continued through equal title, notice rules, and the point at which inheritance should be written separately rather than left to custom.

Lethira absorbed that without embarrassment. Yesterday they had imagined land beside a river. Today a stranger with polished lenses had reached death and inheritance before they had even seen a field.

"We'll ask about that if we find somewhere," she said.

The clerk turned Brannock's scrap over and wrote directions to a second room in the same civic complex, where current sale notices and outer-holding maps could be inspected. Below that she listed two local people who regularly handled private land transfers and knew which owners were genuinely selling and which boundary descriptions had not been updated since someone's grandfather moved a hedge.

"Get the royal attestation before signing anything. You don't need it merely to inspect land or discuss a price."

"So we can begin looking today."

"If you want. Although if you're looking for trees, privacy and walking distance from town, allow more time than people selling land will tell you. Everything is 'a short walk' when someone wants your money."

They left the desk and moved towards the next room.

Halfway along the narrow corridor, Ian leaned closer. "this is starting to feel quite real."

He squeezed her hand.

Lethira slowed. For a few steps she said nothing. Joint title, equal interest, inheritance and identity records had stopped being hypothetical details around an emotional idea beside the river.

"Yes," she said. "It is. Yesterday it was a lovely idea we had while crying beside a river. Today a clerk has told us not to buy a mill and advised us about inheritance. I think that qualifies as real."

She resumed walking closer to him than before.

"I like it. Not the inheritance discussion specifically. Although I suppose I should be grateful she mentioned it before we accidentally own something for eighty years and discover the paperwork assumed one of us would eventually die in a convenient order."

Her dry tone could not hide the tenderness of the subject. She had lived long enough for seventy-year recordkeeping to feel practical rather than historical. Ian had told Aelira that one day he would die. Neither of them needed to make that fact the centre of a morning about a house.

She squeezed his hand once more.

"But both names. I want that."

The next room was broader, with long tables and a wall almost entirely occupied by rolled maps, tied bundles and wooden drawers labelled by road or district. Two clerks worked behind a counter while visitors leaned over parcel sketches or copied notices.

A board near the entrance carried current sale offerings.

Some were little more than a field and boundary description. Others included houses, orchard strips, workshops or woodland. Several had been amended in different inks as prices changed or owners withdrew part of a holding.

Lethira stopped in front of it.

"Well. We may have created a problem."

Her shoulder touched Ian's.

"There are choices."

Ian studied them. "Building will take a long time." He pondered. "Or no-time at all."

Lethira looked at him. She knew what the second possibility meant.

"taking an existing property as-is, or restoring, repairing, altering -- can be done at leisure, and we can more quickly move .. "

He paused, speaking slowly.

"..in ...together"

For several seconds the notices stopped mattering.

Lethira looked at him. The phrase had none of the grandeur of *our home*. It was smaller than the riverbank promise, smaller even than two names on a deed. Perhaps that was why it reached her so effectively.

Move in together.

Wake in the same place because it belonged to both of them. Leave their things there. Discover which side of a room each naturally occupied when nobody was a guest. Argue about where something useful should be stored. Come back after work or travel and recognise the same door.

Her ears coloured.

"Oh."

She looked back at the sale board without reading it.

"Yes. I like that. I think I like that more than building immediately. A new house could be beautiful. We could choose everything."

She glanced at Ian. "And with you involved, apparently we could choose everything *instantly*, which feels suspicious."

A small smile appeared.

"But if we bought somewhere that already existed, we would have to meet it as it is. A roof somebody already built. Trees that grew there without us choosing where they should stand. A room that is annoyingly small. A path that goes somewhere slightly stupid."

The idea plainly appealed to her.

"We could live in it first. Then change things because we discover we actually want them changed."

Across the room an elderly man was arguing with a clerk about whether a boundary followed an old ditch or a newer fence. Someone else copied a parcel number with exquisite care.

Lethira leaned closer to the sale board and began reading properly.

Several notices disappeared immediately from consideration. One was mostly arable land with no house and almost no tree cover. Another had a workshop and yard close to the town road but sounded more commercial than private. A third mentioned riverside grazing, substantially less romantic after the warnings about flood history and access rights.

Then she stopped at a notice lower down.

It was not grand.

A small existing dwelling outside the denser western holding, with several acres of mixed land, mature trees, an old kitchen garden and a narrow stream or drainage course depending on how generously the seller described it. The building was habitable but needed roof and hearth work. Walking distance from the western gate was given in the usual optimistic language.

Lethira read it twice.

She did not call it theirs.

She touched the edge of the notice with one finger. "This one sounds imperfect. That may be a recommendation."

She looked at Ian. "And if we hate it, we leave and look at another."

The words were simple. She looked extraordinarily pleased by them.

There were choices. Not one perfect house waiting for destiny to reveal it. Places they could visit and reject. Places they could disagree about. Perhaps one place where, eventually, they would put both names on paper and carry their things through the door.

Her thumb moved against Ian's hand.

"Moving in together. I really like saying that."

"Lets ask about it, in case there are any administrative traps, or just mild inconveniences, then see how we can go see it?"

Lethira nodded at once. "Yes. No falling in love with the wording. Especially *mature trees*."

They took the parcel number to the nearest free clerk. He was younger than the woman who had explained joint ownership but old enough to have acquired the same suspicion of anyone arriving excited about land. He accepted the number, opened one of the wooden drawers and disappeared into a row of tied records.

When he returned, he carried a thin bundle and a map sheet reinforced along its folds.

"West outer holding. Private freeholding. Seller is the current sole owner."

The parcel lay outside denser western development but remained connected by an established public track. The house stood well back from it, with most of the land behind and to one side. A narrow watercourse crossed one corner.

Lethira asked about it.

"Seasonal feeder into an older drainage line," the clerk said. "Seller calls it a stream because that sounds better."

"The previous clerk warned us about sellers."

"She was correct."

The house sat above the marked wet ground. The lower corner flooded in heavy spring runoff, but the last three recorded declarations and two boundary inspections did not place that flooding at the dwelling.

There was a shared cart track along the northern edge, with a recorded right of passage for the neighbouring holding. Several large trees beside the watercourse could not be cut without notifying the local drainage authority because their roots stabilised the bank. The kitchen garden genuinely belonged to the holding. A low stone boundary on the eastern side no longer matched the legal line exactly, but the discrepancy was mapped and undisputed.

The roof repairs were real. The south-west section leaked in sustained rain. The hearth drew poorly in certain winds, and the chimney needed inspection before winter use. One outbuilding had collapsed three winters earlier; the footings remained.

"Anything worse?" Lethira asked.

"No debt registered against the parcel. No tax arrears. No active boundary dispute. No tenancy. No grazing lease."

Her glance at Ian suggested the traps were proving disappointingly mild.

The final access track was earth and gravel, maintained but unpleasant after prolonged rain. The sale notice's walking estimate was optimistic.

"Perhaps forty minutes if you walk like people who actually walk," the clerk said. "An hour if you stop to inspect every tree."

Lethira looked pleased. "I inspect trees."

"Then an hour."

They could view the exterior and land freely under the sale permission, but needed a key from the property intermediary to enter the house. The clerk gave them a name and directions to a records-and-contract shop near the western market road.

"You do not need to make an offer to view it. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise."

Lethira folded Brannock's increasingly burdened note around the new directions.

Outside the records room she stopped in the corridor.

There was a little excitement in her face now that no amount of professional caution was going to suppress.

"Forty minutes from town. Trees. Existing house. Bad roof. Difficult hearth. Mud. My love, it sounds increasingly promising."

The records-and-contract shop stood close to the western market road between a cobbler and a narrow storefront selling lamp oil, cord and household fittings. Its sign was modest: a painted rolled deed crossed by a key.

Inside, shelves carried tied bundles of copied records, blank forms, wax and small wooden cases. A woman with dark-grey hair braided tightly down her back sat behind a broad desk, comparing two boundary sketches while a younger assistant copied something into a ledger.

Lethira gave her the parcel mark.

The woman read it and looked at both of them. She asked whether they were viewing or buying. Lethira answered that they were certainly viewing and possibly buying.

"Good answer."

She fetched a small wooden viewing token from a drawer and a heavy iron key on a plain cord. The owner, she explained, had moved into town with her sister at the end of winter. The house had been mostly empty since then.

"The roof leak is real. So is the poor hearth draw. Don't let the sale notice turn either into poetry."

Lethira smiled. "We've been thoroughly warned against romance by the civic clerks."

"They're improving."

The intermediary showed them the public track, the shared northern access, the house and kitchen garden, the lower wet corner and the rough position of the collapsed outbuilding. She warned them that the northern neighbour was usually around and possessed many opinions, not all of which should be mistaken for title law.

The key had to return before evening unless she told them otherwise. They were not to cross the lower watercourse if it was running high or climb the roof.

Lethira glanced at the key. "I had no plans to."

"Everyone says that before seeing a roof."

They left with the token, key and another copied scrap of directions.

Once beyond the western gate, Merrowford loosened quickly. Buildings spread apart into workshops, gardens and yards, then fields divided by hedges, low stonework and drainage ditches. The road remained busy enough to feel connected to town, but after they turned onto the smaller public track carts became occasional and conversation no longer had to compete with market noise.

Lethira did, as predicted, inspect trees.

The track climbed gently, then levelled through mixed farmland. The final section was earth and gravel, firm today but deeply rutted where rain had once held carts longer than their drivers intended. Lethira crouched once beside a ditch, pressed two fingers into the soil and looked towards the lie of the fields.

"Drainage is doing something sensible here."

Farther on, they found the marker. The public track continued north; a narrower lane turned away between an old hedge and a line of trees, broad enough for a cart but softened by grass through the centre.

Lethira checked the sketch.

"This is it."

They followed the lane.

The house did not appear immediately.

That pleased her.

The ground rose just enough to screen it behind the first trees, and the lane curved around a broad old trunk before the holding opened.

A low house of pale-grey stone and dark timber sat back from the track beneath several mature trees. One section of roof showed newer patching that did not quite match the older material. The chimney leaned only enough to make the warning about inspection feel sensible rather than alarming. Beyond the house, an untidy kitchen garden had escaped its beds and begun negotiating with the surrounding grass.

The collapsed outbuilding was visible farther back as a low scatter of stone and darkened beams.

Behind all of it, through gaps in the trees, the land continued.

Not manicured. Not perfect.

Lethira stopped.

For once she did not immediately inspect anything.

Wind moved through the leaves above them. Somewhere out of sight, water made a faint irregular sound.

Her grip closed slowly around the key.

"Oh."

Ian kissed her cheek. "I know this is ... human ... but, i hope there is enough nature for you."

Lethira turned into the kiss slightly, then looked back over the holding.

The house was unmistakably human: stone walls in deliberate lines, a chimney needing work, a kitchen garden whose straight beds had been abandoned by the plants inside them. The lane had been cut for carts. The boundary had been measured, disputed somewhere in its history, then measured again.

But someone had built around several older trees rather than clearing them. One broad trunk stood close to the lane, roots lifting the soil in long shallow ridges. Behind the house the ground fell towards rougher grass and undergrowth before rising beneath mixed woodland. The faint water sound came from somewhere beyond the garden, hidden by alder and low brush.

"I don't need the Elven Woods copied around me," she said. "I already have the Woods. If we bought a place and tried to make it into a little imitation of my home, I think I would notice everything it wasn't."

She took a slow breath.

"This is human. I like that. There are trees. Real ones, not planted yesterday because somebody thought an Elf might purchase the property. There is water somewhere. The garden has lost an argument with the grass. I can hear birds. And nobody has trimmed everything into obedience."

The practical questions returned naturally. She wanted to know what the woodland contained, whether the water dried entirely in summer, how wet the lower ground became, and whether neighbours treated the lane as communal whenever it suited them.

"But no. I am not standing here thinking there is too little nature. I am wondering whether that tree outside the house shades the room too much in winter, whether the kitchen garden can be rescued, and whether the stream is close enough that we'll hear it from bed when the windows are open."

The last thought caught her after she had said it. Her ears coloured.

"That was very domestic."

She raised the iron key between them. "We should probably find out whether the inside destroys the entire fantasy. Bad roof. Difficult hearth. Possibly terrible rooms. I am suddenly hoping at least one thing is genuinely awful."

Ian smiled, mostly joking. "I did not expect you to become domestic so suddenly. I hadn't asked, and maybe because it's not the done thing, if you'd ever had something. "

He squeezed her hand.

".. like this "

His gesture took in both of them, the pale stone house, the unruly kitchen garden and the trees beyond.

Lethira's attention stayed on the house a moment longer.

"Domestic," she repeated, suspiciously amused.

The question itself took longer.

"I have had homes. And I've had relationships. Lovers. People I cared about. People whose rooms I stayed in often enough that some of my things gradually stopped travelling home with me."

There was no confession in her tone. The past belonged to her without apology.

"But no. Nothing quite like this. I never bought land with someone. Never chose a house together and said it belonged equally to both of us. I never built a household with a lover."

She walked to the neglected garden and touched one of the old bed stones with her fingertips.

"Among my people that isn't the only way a relationship becomes serious. Someone may live with a partner's family, or keep their own place and spend most nights elsewhere, or move between homes for decades before anyone bothers deciding whether a new household needs recognising. Long lives give us considerable opportunity to postpone administration."

Her work had made the question easy to avoid. She had somewhere she belonged. She travelled. She returned. Relationships found whatever shape suited them until they did not.

She looked towards the house again.

"I've never stood beside someone and wanted *this*. A place chosen together. Both names. Somewhere I would come back to and know that you might come back to it too."

Her fingers closed more firmly around his.

"So perhaps I have become domestic very suddenly. Or perhaps I have spent a very long time being entirely capable of it and simply never met the right house."

A quieter smile.

"Or the right person."

The key turned between her fingers.

Ian said, "Yes, lets go on."

The lock resisted at first. Lethira withdrew the key, looked into it and tried again with slight upward pressure. The mechanism turned with a heavy click.

"Already demanding specialist knowledge."

She opened the door.

The house had the cool closed smell of somewhere unoccupied for several months: old hearth ash, timber, stone, dust and a faint dry trace of herbs. Light entered through shuttered windows in narrow bars.

The front room was larger than the exterior suggested, though not grand. Thick walls narrowed the windows and made the room feel sheltered. A broad hearth occupied one side, with an iron hook above the empty fire space. Most furniture had gone, leaving pale marks on the floor where a table, benches and perhaps a chest had stood for years.

At the far end, an open doorway showed part of another room and a staircase rising beside the inner wall. Dark ceiling beams crossed above them. One had been patched.

Lethira tilted her head. "That looks deliberate, at least."

She tested the floorboards near the entrance before trusting them with her full weight. Nothing complained beyond an ordinary creak.

Someone had lived here. Cooked here. Returned through this door wet. Maintained the roof until maintaining it became someone else's problem. Planted the kitchen garden and watched it become established enough to survive neglect.

The house did not feel abandoned so much as recently left.

Lethira ran her fingers over the old hearthstone. "There's soot where there should be soot. No obvious damp smell in this room. The roof leak must be farther back, or upstairs."

She opened a front shutter, then wrestled the window itself until the frame gave with a scrape. Cool air entered, carrying leaves and the faint sound of water from behind the house.

Her face changed.

"There."

She listened.

Then her attention moved around the room again.

"If this were ours... I'd put the main table near that window. Not against it. Enough room to walk past. Something beside the hearth for wet cloaks and boots, otherwise we'll carry half the road across the floor every time we come home."

*Come home* caught her too.

She laughed under her breath. "This house is dangerous."

The adjoining kitchen had a smaller hearth sharing the chimney structure with the main room, a stone preparation surface, old shelving, a deep ceramic wash basin and a back door marked by years of mud and boots.

Lethira opened it.

The kitchen garden spread immediately beyond. More importantly, the sound of water became distinct. The stream lay twenty or thirty paces away under alder and brush, narrow enough that sunlight reached parts of it through the leaves.

Lethira stood in the doorway.

"I still want to find something awful. Because I am beginning to like it far too much before we've even seen upstairs."

From behind, Ian embraced her, wrapping his arms around her waist and pressing his body into hers.

"I'm hoping we find sufficient awfulness".

Lethira settled back against him, placing her hands over his forearms while she looked towards the alder and the narrow brightness of water.

"I am trying very hard to remain professionally pessimistic. You're making it difficult."

Ian let go after a moment, and they continued.

The staircase rose steeply beside the inner wall, its treads worn more deeply towards the centre. Halfway up, one complained loudly enough that Lethira stopped and looked down.

"Promising."

The upper floor tucked beneath the roof. A short landing gave onto three rooms. The first was plainly the source of at least part of the reported leak. A dark stain spread across one corner of the ceiling and down the plaster. The patch was dry now, but the surface had bubbled and flaked where repeated damp had reached it. Someone had left an old ceramic bowl on the floor; a mineral ring showed that it had earned its place.

Lethira crouched beside it.

"There. Actual awfulness."

Not catastrophic awfulness, unfortunately. The floor felt firm. No mushrooms had colonised the wall. The roof had not collapsed into the room.

Still, it was a flaw they could dislike honestly.

"I feel much safer now."

The next room was narrow enough that a large bed would dominate it. Its single window faced the lane and old tree.

"Guest room, perhaps."

The last room was the largest upstairs space. The roof rose higher here, and two windows faced different directions, one towards the land behind the house and another across the garden. The ceiling showed older patching but no obvious active stain. An old built-in chest sat beneath one wall.

Lethira opened the rear window.

The sound of the stream came in immediately, low beneath the leaves and birdsong.

She did not speak for a while.

Beyond the garden, the ground dipped towards the watercourse, then rose into scattered trees before the holding ended somewhere beyond sight. Nothing in the view was dramatic. No mountains framed it. No ancient tree held a village in its branches.

It was simply green, lived beside rather than arranged.

"The roof is bad. The hearth is apparently vindictive. The road will be mud. One room is too small. The garden has abandoned civilisation."

A smile appeared.

"And I can hear the water from here."

Ian laughed to himself. "I am imagining Aelira and a royal entourage attempting to stay in the 'guest room'."

Lethira looked across the landing towards the narrow room and pictured it: Aelira trying to conduct royal business with a bed occupying most of the floor, wardens stacked down the staircase, somebody important discovering that opening the door required moving a chair.

"I would put Aelira in this room and tell the entourage to camp. She would complain. Then secretly enjoy having an excuse to send everyone away."

Ian's attention moved back outside. "The building that collapsed, would it suit a bathhouse?"

That caught Lethira immediately.

"Possibly. We'd need to look at it properly."

They went back downstairs and crossed the garden to the ruin. Up close, the building had failed more completely than the sale notice suggested. Most of the timber structure had come down and later been partly cleared, leaving stacked beams and exposed stone footings. One short wall survived to around waist height. Moss occupied the shaded stone.

Lethira walked the perimeter before stepping inside.

"Not a house. Probably storage, workshop, perhaps animals. No proper hearth base that I can see."

The ruin sat far enough from the main house to give privacy without turning winter travel between them into a journey. The stream was nearby without running against the foundation.

"A bathhouse wants water, drainage, heat and a foundation that doesn't object to all three. We should not simply take water because it happens to cross our land. The clerk mentioned rights for a reason. But assuming we are allowed a reasonable household draw, or can collect and carry what we need..."

She looked over the footprint again.

"A separate bathhouse would keep the wet and heat out of the main house. We could build the floor properly for drainage instead of trying to force one of those upstairs rooms to become something it was never designed to be."

She gestured towards one end. "Enough room for a changing space."

Then she looked at Ian.

"And a bath. A proper one."

The private stone bath in Merrowford had established a demanding benchmark.

"If the foundations are sound, we could reuse them. If they're not, we rebuild properly rather than pretending old stone is automatically good stone. And we'd need to know whether rebuilding on the same footprint requires permission. It may be simple. It may also summon another clerk."

Her mouth curved.

"Our adventure continues."

She stood in the middle of the ruin, slowly turning as walls appeared in imagination where only grass and stone remained.

"Bath there. Large enough for two without one person having to sit sideways. Bench here. Towels and clothes somewhere they don't become damp merely because the room exists. High window. Perhaps a roof vent."

Then she caught herself planning and laughed.

"We have been here less than an hour and I am already rebuilding the ruin. This is becoming dangerous again."

Ian said, "I like this danger"

Then, looking across the holding, he added, "Is there room for your to train, or practice, your warden skills? archery. i might be naive if you even need to after the years you've had"

Lethira studied the land differently.

"I still practise. Years do not eventually produce a moment where the bow declares you complete. Less than when I was younger, perhaps, and differently. I don't need to spend every morning discovering where my fingers belong. But judgement goes stale. Bodies change. Equipment changes. Wind remains rude."

The land immediately behind the house was too broken by trees and water for careless shooting. Farther across the holding, beyond the garden and a stand of younger trees, a long uneven strip opened before rising towards the parcel boundary.

Lethira pointed. "That side may work. I would need to walk it. Know exactly where the legal boundary runs. Check whether any path or neighbouring access crosses behind it. And I would not shoot towards the stream."

That was self-evident to her.

"Archery, yes. Movement practice, certainly. Tracking exercises if I become sufficiently desperate to manufacture work on my own property. Warden skills are not one thing. Much of what keeps them useful is simply remaining observant. Walking unfamiliar ground. Noticing changes. Practising quietly enough that competence does not become memory of competence."

Having somewhere she could shoot without arranging a formal training ground plainly appealed to her.

She stepped closer and took Ian's hand again.

"And you are not naive. You have watched me do one sheep contract. Your available evidence is poor."

A smile.

"If we buy this place, you may eventually discover that I can do things besides manage livestock and interrogate gods. Although I admit, a private practice line makes this property significantly more attractive. Which means we have discovered another administrative danger. I am beginning to want it."

"Me too"

Ian looked over the land again.

"It doesn't need to be perfect. We can always change our minds and sell it, if it dents your wealth we can always save more sheep. We should consider the more practical problems than preference, anything around rights or restrictions... and perhaps identity."

That last word drew Lethira back from the imagined bathhouse and practice line to the less attractive business of owning them.

"As for my wealth, if buying one modest rural holding near Merrowford causes a financial crisis, I have managed my life very badly."

A smile.

"We may save more sheep anyway. For professional development."

She deliberately tried to see what enthusiasm might have blurred: the shared track, the wet lower ground, the restricted trees beside the water, the unknown permission status of a rebuilt bathhouse.

"The identity problem sounds nearly solved. Aelira's attestation, your Guild entry, and the same name on both should give the town a record they can follow later. We should obtain the attestation before signing anything, exactly as the clerk said."

She pointed towards the stream. "Then I want exact water rights. Whether rebuilding there is permitted. Shared track rights. Taxes or local obligations. Anything nobody thought to mention yet. And someone who understands roofs and chimneys needs to inspect those before we decide a leak is charming."

The boundary itself mattered too.

"I want to walk it. Not because I distrust the map. Because I would like to know what we're buying with my feet rather than only with ink."

She returned to Ian and took his hand.

"I think preference has already answered. I could live here. With you."

The words still had enough novelty to warm her face.

"So now we try to make the place fail. If the rights are awkward, the structure is worse than advertised, the neighbours are intolerable, the stream vanishes half the year, or the price is ridiculous, then we walk away. And if none of those things are bad enough..."

She looked towards the pale stone house beneath the trees.

"Then I think we may have found something."

"Yes." Ian hesitated. "How much do you want me to ... help."

He glanced at the roof.

"some things can be .. made safe, made stable, made waterproof. with *ease*"

Lethira followed his gaze.

"i don't want to magic a fantasy castle for my beautiful older, wiser, "

He stood briefly on his toes.

Lethira's mouth twitched.

"taller elf, but some of the basics, the foundations, i could."

He paused.

"resolve."

Lethira looked at the house, then the ruin, then back at him.

"I think I want your help. But I don't want us to skip knowing what we have. I want someone to inspect the roof first. I want to know whether that beam is failing or merely old. I want to know what the chimney actually needs and whether water is entering somewhere we haven't noticed."

She stepped closer and rested one hand against his chest.

"Then, if we buy it, I would be very happy for you to make sure the roof will not fall on us in the night. Stable foundation. Sound structure. Waterproof where it is supposed to be waterproof. Chimney that will not kill us. Things where failure mostly means danger or damage."

Her gaze moved towards the garden.

"But I want to repair some things. I want us to discover that the back door sticks and decide whether it bothers us enough to fix it. I want to choose what goes in the kitchen because we've cooked there and learned what's annoying. If we build the bathhouse, I want to decide where the bench goes after standing inside the space."

She laughed softly.

"And if the garden is terrible, I want the opportunity to be terrible at gardening before we solve it."

The distinction settled easily.

Ian's power did not need to remain outside their home for the home to count as real. It simply did not need to arrive first and erase every rough edge before either of them had touched it.

"You can make the bones safe," Lethira said. "Then we live in it. And if six months later I discover that I passionately hate one of the walls, you may remind me that I insisted on authenticity before making it disappear."

Her eyes brightened.

"Also, for the record, *beautiful older, wiser, taller elf* is acceptable terminology. Especially taller."

She bent enough to kiss his forehead.

Ian said, "I am happy to be the tool in your powerful grip"

He started laughing under his breath at his own innuendo.

Lethira stared at him.

"You heard yourself. You absolutely heard yourself before you finished saying it."

She stepped closer and took his wrist in one hand, not restraining him so much as making the joke materially worse.

"Powerful grip. I suppose I should be grateful you left *tool* undefined."

That finished her composure. She laughed, released him and turned towards the house as though the patched roof offered somewhere safer to look. The colour in her ears made the attempt unconvincing.

"You know, I was trying to have a thoughtful conversation about how your impossible abilities might belong inside our ordinary life. Now I am going to remember that sentence every time you repair anything."

She returned and rested her hands lightly at his waist.

"But the principle stands. I want you involved. I don't want you pretending your power is something shameful that has to remain outside the door for the house to count as ours. I just want us to choose when it is a tool."

A pause.

"And apparently who is gripping it."

Her eyes brightened as soon as she said it.

Lethira lasted half a second before laughing again.

"That one was deliberate."

Ian looked from the house towards the land. "So, more clerks, or a further survey of the outside and land?"

Then: "And shall I send a missive to Aelira asking her to prepare the attestation? Or you can write it, if you prefer, my love."

Lethira looked towards the lane, then past the ruin to the trees.

"Land first. We've learned enough administration to know what questions remain. I would rather walk the boundary while we're actually here than return to town and discover tomorrow that the southern half is a swamp populated entirely by hostile geese. Although I admit that would improve your Guild prospects."

Her hand slipped back into his.

"As for Aelira, I think you should write to her. It's your identity she's attesting. I can ask her for favours, but this isn't really a favour to me."

She glanced towards the house.

"Well. It is partly."

A small smile.

"But if your name is going to sit beside mine on the deed, I like the idea that the chain begins with you saying: this is who I am; will you stand behind that? Aelira has already said yes in principle. You aren't putting her in an awkward position. And we don't need the attestation this instant. We aren't signing today."

A faint note of self-discipline entered the last word.

"Probably."

Ian said, "After you."

Lethira's smile sharpened. "Gladly."

She took the boundary seriously.

The first stretch ran along higher ground behind the prospective practice line. The markers were modest: old stones set low into the earth, one nearly swallowed by grass, another carrying a shallow cut matching the parcel sketch. Lethira moved from one to the next without hurry, occasionally looking back along the line rather than trusting only the stone beneath her feet.

The rise behind the open strip pleased her more once she saw what lay beyond it. The ground continued upward before falling away outside the holding; there was no hidden path, cottage or grazing lane immediately behind the proposed target direction.

"This is much better than it looked from below. I could make a safe practice line here without turning half the property into a range."

The western edge took them beneath older trees. The boundary followed a shallow bank and a line of stones that might once have supported a hedge. Several trees stood upon or just inside it, their roots having long since made the original geometry approximate.

Lethira laid a palm against a broad trunk.

"This one is older than the house. Possibly much older."

No possessive language followed. The fact that the tree might legally become theirs did not seem to change what it was.

Farther down, the land became wetter. Reeds appeared among the grass. Soil darkened beneath their boots. Small runoff channels converged towards the stream.

Lethira crouched and pressed her fingers into the earth.

"This is honest wet ground. Not a hidden problem. The records said it floods, and the land agrees. I wouldn't build anything important down here. Perhaps plant something that enjoys being miserable."

They followed the stream along part of the southern edge. At one place two mature alders spread their roots into the bank.

"These will be among the trees the clerk meant. I wouldn't want to cut them anyway."

The stream widened briefly into a shallow pool, clear enough to show gravel and several tiny fish holding themselves against the current.

Lethira stared at them for a moment, then glanced towards Ian.

"No divine intervention required."

The northern boundary brought them to the shared cart track. Wheel ruts crossed the edge of the holding and continued towards the neighbouring property exactly as the record said. The track was broad enough that regular use would be noticeable but far enough from the house that carts would not pass under the windows.

Lethira stood in the ruts and looked both ways.

"I can live with this. We would hear carts sometimes. Probably know the neighbour eventually whether we intended to or not."

The final stretch returned them towards the lane and the old entrance tree.

By then they had seen the holding from every side. It was not large enough to disappear into, nor so small that every activity crowded the next. There was woodland, rough grass, wet ground, the possible practice strip, garden, stream and enough distance from the road for the house to feel private.

Lethira stopped beneath the old tree.

"I have attempted to dislike it. The road will be unpleasant in rain. The lower corner is wet. We share access with a neighbour we haven't met. The roof needs work. The chimney needs work. The garden needs everything. The stream may become disappointing in summer. We still need to know the price isn't absurd, whether rebuilding the outbuilding as a bathhouse is permitted, the exact water rights, taxes, and what a proper structural inspection says."

She looked at Ian.

"I still want it. I think you can write to Aelira."

Ian sent a missive to Aelira:

"We think we've found something, Lethira has walked the boundaries and the buildings. It needs work, but it's good. There are trees and a stream. I'd very much like that attestation if you're still willing to write one. You can reply on the back of this it will return to me after signing your name. If you are able to attest, will it to me and it will appear. There's no obligation on you, of course."

The missive vanished.

"It's sent."

Ian looked back towards the house. "Shall we enquire on cost and other matters whilst we wait for her? We also need to return the key, for now"

Lethira looked down at the heavy iron key hanging from its cord.

"For now," she repeated.

The words pleased her more than she wanted to admit.

They took the lane back towards the public track at an easier pace. Lethira looked back only twice. The first time was practical, checking how much of the house remained visible from the road. The second had no such excuse.

By the time they reached the western market road she had organised the remaining questions.

"Price first. Then taxes and continuing obligations. Water rights. Rebuilding the outbuilding. Structural inspection. And I want to know whether the seller has rejected previous offers, if we're allowed to know that. Not because I want to bargain her into misery. I want to know whether the stated price is expectation or dream."

The records-and-contract shop was busier when they returned. Lethira waited with the key resting in her palm.

When their turn came she placed token and key on the counter.

The grey-haired intermediary looked at them and then at the key. "You came back."

Lethira told her they had survived the roof. The woman's first concern was whether either of them had climbed it; when Lethira said no, she pronounced that an improvement.

Lethira smiled. "We like the property."

That altered the woman's attention just enough for her to retrieve the parcel file again.

She named the asking price and explained what it represented: the dwelling in its present condition, existing outbuilding footprint, garden, mixed land and recorded rights. It was not priced as a renovated house and did not pretend the repairs had already been done.

Lethira listened without showing much at the number.

The ongoing land dues were modest but real. The shared track carried no special payment beyond keeping their own entrance usable. Ordinary household use of the stream was permitted, including drawing water, while altering its course, building across it or making substantial diversion required approval. The bank-stabilising trees remained restricted.

"And rebuilding the collapsed structure?"

"Same footprint and similar ordinary household use is straightforward. Different footprint, larger building, commercial use, anything interfering with drainage—you ask first."

"Bathhouse?"

The intermediary considered. "Private household bathhouse?"

"Yes."

"Likely straightforward. You'll still file the intended work because of water and drainage. If you plan to discharge directly into the stream, expect refusal."

"We wouldn't."

The woman gave them two names for rural building inspectors who did not also sell the repairs: roof, chimney, visible structure, damp and accessible foundations, with no promise about what remained hidden inside unopened walls.

Lethira asked about the price itself.

The seller expected a serious offer but not necessarily the full asking price. She had already refused one low offer from someone interested more in the land than the house. Recent comparable rural holdings put the asking figure in a sensible range despite the repairs: somewhat hopeful, not absurd.

The intermediary suggested a figure likely to be taken seriously without pretending to know the seller's answer.

Lethira looked towards Ian.

There was a real number now. A real owner somewhere in Merrowford. A real possibility that paper might become the beginning of a transfer.

Her hand found his.

"This has become alarmingly close to purchasing a home."

Ian asked, "where I'm from, we make an offer and after initial, non-binding acceptance we tend to do all the detailed checks that tonight cost coin. Is that the same here?"

The intermediary nodded before he had quite finished.

"Broadly. You can make an offer first. If the owner accepts in principle, that does not transfer the land and does not bind either of you to complete the purchase. Usually there is a short written memorandum saying what was offered, what was provisionally accepted and what still needs checking. Structure, boundaries if there is doubt, rights, debts, whatever matters to the buyer. If something significant is wrong or materially different from the records, you can withdraw or renegotiate."

"And if we simply change our minds?" Lethira asked.

"Before the binding transfer, you can walk away. So can the seller. People dislike having their time wasted. That is different from being legally trapped."

The buyer normally paid for their own inspection unless negotiated otherwise. The final deed came only after both sides were satisfied with the checks and identity documents were in order.

The intermediary's eyes moved towards Ian. "In your case, I would not make the final transfer until the royal attestation exists."

Lethira squeezed his hand.

"That sounds reassuringly familiar."

The woman pulled a blank offer memorandum from beneath the counter and placed it nearby rather than in front of them.

The small gesture changed the atmosphere more than anything dramatic could have.

There was now a real piece of paper waiting for two people who had started the day wondering whether Ian existed enough to own land.

Lethira looked at him.

"We can actually do this."

"Yes, we can"

Ian tried not to look inadequate when the question of funding and who would pay came up.

Lethira noticed.

She did not rescue him from the feeling with a speech. She turned back to the intermediary.

"From my funds, assuming we agree a price and the inspection is satisfactory."

"And title jointly?"

"Yes."

The woman made a note. "Payment source and ownership share need not match. The deed records who owns the land. It does not require each holder to prove they supplied half the coin."

That information pleased Lethira.

Only while the clerk turned to retrieve the asking sheet did she lean slightly towards Ian.

"Don't. I saw your face."

Her voice stayed between them.

"You told me two nights ago that you rather liked being the kept one. I believed you."

The intermediary returned before the thought required elaboration.

Lethira studied the comparable sales and asking figure. She did not treat the amount casually, but neither did she flinch from it.

"I can afford it," she said quietly to Ian. "And if we buy it jointly, it is still ours. If, someday, you desperately need to restore balance to the universe by paying for a roof tile, I will consider allowing it. But I don't want us to put only my name on our home because I happen to possess the local coin. We already solved that problem."

The intermediary arranged the offer form and either did not hear or had sufficient experience to become temporarily deaf around couples discussing money.

The parcel number sat at the top. Beneath it were spaces for two prospective buyers.

Lethira looked at the empty lines for a long moment.

"Shall we make them an offer?"

"Yes. Definitely yes."

The intermediary's pen moved.

She copied the parcel number, the seller's name and the proposed figure. There was no performance around it. Ink on paper did not make the house theirs. It merely gave the owner something definite to answer.

Lethira watched every line.

The intermediary entered **Lethira Dawnleaf** beneath prospective purchasers, then Ian's name beside it, leaving supporting identification open for the royal attestation.

"Joint purchase intended. Equal interest if the final deed proceeds. Offer provisional, subject to inspection and verification of recorded rights."

Lethira leaned closer. "Include the roof, chimney and structural inspection specifically. And water rights, including household draw and permission requirements for the old outbuilding if rebuilt as a bathhouse."

The intermediary gave the faintest glance over her lenses. "You decided quickly."

"We have not built it."

"Good."

The memorandum gained another line, then another: the parcel had to match recorded boundary and access rights, with no undisclosed tenancy, debt or conflicting claim before transfer.

The proposed price was below asking but not insulting. Enough that an owner who wanted the full number could counter without treating the offer as mockery.

Lethira read the completed terms slowly.

"I think that's fair."

"It is an offer," the intermediary said.

A useful distinction.

"Quite."

The woman turned the memorandum around and indicated the places where the prospective purchasers' acknowledgement belonged.

Lethira took the pen.

For one moment she looked at her own name already written there, with Ian's beside it.

Then she signed.

No ceremonial flourish. No pause long enough to make the act promise more than the document did.

She put the pen down.

The intermediary sanded the fresh ink and turned the paper towards Ian.

Lethira looked at him.

"Your turn, my love."

Ian signed, the same as when he had signed at the Guild: his native signature as an unusual mark.

The intermediary's pen paused when she saw it. She compared the mark with the copied Guild record attached to his aide registration.

"Same hand. Good. Keep using it. I don't need to be able to read a signature. I need to be able to recognise that the same person keeps making it."

That settled the matter entirely for her.

Lethira, however, continued looking.

She had watched Ian sign at the Guild when he was becoming her unranked aide for one missing-sheep contract. Then the mark had been strange, another little piece of the world he came from.

Here it sat beside hers on an offer for a house.

Same mark.

Different consequence.

Her fingers reached the edge of the memorandum, stopping short of the wet ink.

"I like that."

The intermediary glanced at her. "The signature?"

Lethira smiled faintly. "Yes."

The woman had enough experience not to ask why.

After checking both signatures and the stated conditions, she folded the memorandum along its guide crease and applied her business mark. The seller was staying in town; she expected to put it before her that day. An answer might come today or tomorrow. Nothing was binding yet. Inspection, title verification and Ian's identity attestation all remained ahead.

Outside again, Lethira stopped beneath the shop awning and took Ian's hand.

"You signed. I know we spent the entire morning talking about doing exactly that, but seeing your strange little mark beside mine..."

She looked back through the window towards the desk where the memorandum had disappeared.

"I liked it. Very much."

The possible house remained where they had left it: roof leaking when rain came from the wrong direction, garden slowly becoming meadow, stream continuing whether anyone purchased the land or not.

Nothing about it had changed.

Somewhere behind them was now a sheet stating that Lethira Dawnleaf and Ian wanted, provisionally and together, to buy it.

Ian kissed her.

"We should add a few more days to our stay at the inn, maybe a week? And go book the inspections, assuming they'll take provisional bookings. And, hopefully have an attestation back at the Inn."

He glanced towards the market.

"Then dinner, unless i've lost track of time completely."

Lethira kissed him back and considered the sequence with more seriousness than it deserved.

"A week. Yes. I don't want to discover that we need three days for an inspector and then spend those three days repeatedly buying single nights because neither of us planned ahead."

She looked towards the sky beyond the awning, then at the street.

"And you have lost track of time. Not catastrophically. It is still closer to midday than dinner. We have time to organise the inspections before everyone sensible decides they have done enough work."

They returned first to the records-and-contract shop. Lethira explained that they had submitted the provisional offer and wanted to arrange the structural inspection now rather than lose a day waiting for the seller's answer.

"Provisional booking is fine," the intermediary said. "Tell the inspector the offer isn't accepted yet. They won't inspect without the owner's permission, but they can hold a time."

Of the two names she had given them, one was unavailable for several days. The other, a man who worked through farmhouses, workshops and old rural holdings, could potentially attend the following afternoon if access was approved by then.

Lethira took the slot.

"Roof, chimney, structure, damp and visible foundation. And the old outbuilding footing."

"He'll tell you whether it looks reusable. He won't tell you whether the town permits the bathhouse. That's a different clerk."

Lethira sighed with satisfaction. "Excellent. Administrative purity."

By the time they left, the inspection existed as a tentative appointment dependent upon the seller allowing access.

The Reed and Wheel came next.

Caswick was behind the counter sorting a delivery tally when Lethira asked whether their room was available for another week.

"Same room?"

"Please."

Caswick checked her bookings and named the additional cost. No special significance attached itself to the request. Two travellers had decided to remain in town longer. Merrowford accommodated that every day.

Lethira paid.

Halfway up the stairs she looked at Ian.

"A week. We have now booked lodging because we may be buying a house."

The thought made her smile again.

Their room was almost as they had left it.

A folded sheet lay on the table.

Lethira stopped at the doorway.

The paper was finer than anything belonging to the Reed and Wheel, and the seal on the fold was immediately familiar.

Aelira.

Beside it lay the returned missive Ian had sent, now carrying writing on the back as promised.

Lethira brightened. "That was quick. I think your identity has arrived."

She crossed to the table but did not open the attestation. It was addressed to Ian.

"Lets eat, i just want to read this first."

Ian read the returned missive first.

Aelira's reply was brief enough to look almost lost against the size of the parchment.

> Ian,
>
> Yes. I am still willing.
>
> Trees and a stream are persuasive evidence that Lethira was allowed to choose the property.
>
> The attestation is separate. I have written only what I can personally stand behind: that I know you, recognise you as the same person with whom I have repeatedly met and spoken, and place the authority of my office behind that identification. I have not invented origin, lineage, citizenship or history for you.
>
> If Merrowford requires different wording, tell me what they require and I will decide whether I can truthfully provide it.
>
> I hope the roof is less alarming than Lethira will eventually claim it was.
>
> Aelira

Lethira read over his shoulder only as far as the line about the trees before her mouth curved.

"She is going to become unbearable about this."

The attestation itself was more formal. Aelira had written it in clear Common for human clerks rather than either recipient. Her personal seal sat beneath the text, accompanied by the mark of her office as First Princess of the Wood Elves.

It identified Ian by the name under which Aelira personally knew him and stated that he was a living human individual personally known to her through repeated direct meetings and conversations; that she recognised him as the same individual represented by the accompanying signature; and that, under her authority as First Princess, she stood as royal witness to that identity for ordinary civil contracts, ownership records and similar dealings.

A specimen signature had not been invented. The document left a short witnessed line where his actual mark could be placed before the relevant clerk if required, allowing the Guild record and his own hand to establish that part of the chain.

The final paragraph was narrower still. The attestation granted no Wood Elf lineage, household membership, inheritance right, title, citizenship or permanent standing. It was exactly what Aelira had promised: a royal person saying, in durable terms, *I know this man; he is real; this is the person I mean.*

Ian finished reading and turned to Lethira.

"Where for food?"

Lethira was still looking at the attestation.

"She wrote it properly."

That mattered. Aelira had not made Ian easier to register by manufacturing a convenient history. She had taken the strange fact of him and placed her own reputation behind it.

Lethira folded the attestation carefully along its existing crease and handed it back.

"For food... we have been walking, inspecting, signing things and accidentally planning a bathhouse since breakfast. I vote for something substantial."

The Reed and Wheel could feed them easily, but she shook her head before settling on it.

"Not downstairs. We have paid for another week. We will have plenty of opportunities to eat Caswick's food. There's a row of cookshops near the western market road. We passed one earlier that smelled of roasted pork, onions and something with beans in it."

Her eyes moved to Ian.

"And since you have already demonstrated dangerous tendencies around unattended onions, I think supervision is appropriate."

She opened the door.

"Then perhaps we can spend one meal discussing something completely sensible. Like whether our hypothetical bathhouse needs one enormous bath or two merely large ones."

Ian looked shocked.

"one, of course"

He smiled.

"lead on"

Lethira regarded him with solemn approval. "Good. I was beginning to worry property ownership had damaged your judgement."

She led them back outside into a Merrowford that had crossed fully into midday. Morning traffic had changed character: fewer travellers moving with deliberate urgency, more workers stopping to eat, shopkeepers taking turns away from counters, carts drawn aside wherever there was enough room to leave them without starting an argument. Smoke from cookfires hung low between buildings, carrying pork fat, onions, hot bread and competing spices.

The cookshop Lethira had noticed earlier occupied the open front of a narrow building, with a covered row of benches beside it and larger tables under an awning. A broad iron plate hissed behind the counter. Pork browned beside onions and sliced roots, while a deep pot held beans cooked down with herbs and something smoky enough that the smell reached the street before the sign did.

Lethira stopped. "This. I am exercising field authority."

The place was busy but not crowded. They found space at the end of a long table, close enough to the open front that the street remained part of the meal without every passer-by brushing their shoulders.

Once the food arrived and the first hunger had been dealt with, some of the urgency left her.

For most of the morning there had always been another thing: another clerk, another record, another boundary stone, another question real enough to require an answer. Here there was only a wooden bowl, warm bread torn by hand, and Ian beside her while the market went on around them.

Lethira ate several bites before speaking.

"I keep thinking about the upstairs window. Not the bad room. The other one."

She dipped bread into the bean broth.

"And the old tree at the lane. And the bathhouse we don't own. And apparently our one enormous bath."

The last words came with enough satisfaction that the matter appeared settled despite the absence of property, planning permission, drainage design or walls.

She looked down at her bowl.

"We made an offer on a house today. A house with both our names. Yesterday morning I did not know I was going to tell you I loved you. Now Aelira has written a royal document proving that you exist because we may need it to buy property together."

She shook her head slightly.

"My life has become very strange."

Her fingers rested briefly on the edge of the table near Ian's hand.

"We have done enough administration for one day. The seller may answer. Aelira's attestation is waiting. The inspector is provisionally booked. The roof will still be leaking tomorrow whether we stare at it or not. So for the rest of lunch, I refuse to discuss deeds, taxes, gods, Guild rank or the structural integrity of chimneys. Baths remain permitted."

Ian looked at her.

"It's not too much is it Lethira? Not too fast? I know that my human scale: time, money, and so on; doesn't give me a reliable reference"

Lethira stopped with a piece of bread halfway to the remaining sauce and set it down.

This time she did not answer quickly.

Outside the awning, Merrowford carried on through lunch: a cart rattled over uneven stones; someone argued cheerfully over the price of beans; a young man at a nearby table attempted to balance too many bowls and eventually accepted that gravity had opinions.

Lethira looked at Ian.

"It is fast. The house part especially. Yesterday we were sitting beside the river talking about somewhere that might be ours. Today we have walked around one, discussed a bathhouse, imagined where I might practise, and put our names on an offer. By any sensible standard, that is fast."

She reached across the table and rested her hand over his.

"But we haven't bought it. We made a provisional offer. We can withdraw. The seller can refuse. The roof inspector may tell us the entire thing is held together by optimism and moss. We may learn that the stream disappears every summer and the neighbour drives pigs along our shared track at sunrise."

A small smile.

"I am not frightened by moving quickly while the decisions remain easy to reverse."

Her thumb moved over his hand.

"And money is different for me than it is for you. I have had a very long working life. Royal service has fed and housed me often enough that I have not spent everything I earned, and I have never had much interest in becoming rich merely to prove that I could. This property is meaningful coin. I would notice spending it. I would be annoyed if we lost a large portion through stupidity. It is not enough to endanger me."

The question of time took longer.

"I think you may be imagining that because I have lived much longer, I should naturally take much longer to decide. Sometimes I do. I have postponed decisions for years because there was no reason not to. Elves are extremely capable of turning patience into procrastination."

Her expression softened.

"But living longer does not make every feeling slower. I knew quickly that I wanted to travel with you. I knew when I loved you. I knew when we stood at that house that I could imagine living there with you. If we were making ourselves unable to change course because we were afraid that slowing down might make the feeling disappear, I would worry."

She looked towards their bowls.

"But we're doing inspections. We have spent half the day asking clerks how to escape our own decisions."

She leaned closer.

"So yes, my love. It is fast. And I am still happy with the pace."

Ian thought about that.

"I wasn't sure on the being older, living longer thing. being slow is one view, the other is... decisions matter less, mistakes are not for life as they can be for humans. for me, having to work another 20 years to pay for a mistake would be terrible, for you, it's not the same. So, i think i understand. And I'm happy as well."

Lethira considered it, then nodded slowly.

"Yes. That's closer. A bad decision does not automatically consume the rest of my life in the way it might consume a large part of yours. If I spent ten years repairing a financial mistake, I would dislike those ten years. They would still be ten years of my life. But they would not mean I had lost nearly everything between now and old age."

She looked towards the market for a moment.

"And some mistakes matter more when you live longer. A feud can survive long enough to become tradition. A bad promise can follow you for a century. A household mistake can involve people who remember exactly who made it long after a human family might have turned it into a story. So we are not naturally wiser because consequences are cheaper."

She picked up the piece of bread she had set down.

"Money, though... yes. That is different. If this house proves foolish and we sell it badly, I will be irritated. Perhaps very irritated."

A pause.

"I may make you recover several hundred sheep."

The smile widened briefly.

"But I will not spend the rest of my life thinking that one purchase destroyed my future. That may be part of why I am comfortable moving quickly. We are not deciding whether to spend your next twenty years repairing something you cannot afford. We are deciding whether to spend some of my accumulated coin on a place we both want, knowing we can change our minds later."

She looked down at their joined hands.

"I think the larger difference is not that mistakes matter less to me. I have had more time to learn that very few decisions deserve to pretend they are permanent merely because they feel important. Love can be real without promising that every choice we make while in love must survive forever."

The statement did not trouble her. If anything, it made the possible house feel safer.

"We might live there for five years. Or fifty. Or discover after one winter that we both hate the mud. I would still rather have spent that time living there with you than refused because we could not prove it was the correct house for the next century."

She finally ate the bread.

Then her foot found his beneath the table.

"And I'm happy too. So I think we continue exactly as we are. Slow enough to inspect the roof. Fast enough to enjoy wanting it."