## Chapter 439 - Current Practice

By the time breakfast was finished, Lethira had decided that the optional assessment was annoying enough to be worth doing.

The restriction on her new Guild tag had never changed the rank written on it. She was B-rank in the archive and on the fresh Merrowford wood; the branch simply limited her local contracting authority to C and below until somebody senior had watched enough current work to decide that the old grade still described the woman carrying it. She could have ignored the assessment indefinitely. There was more ordinary work below B than she and Ian were likely to need.

That was part of why she wanted it settled.

Ian had his own day. After the intensity of the last stretch—road, gods, love, sex, house papers, cooking lessons and the strange speed with which a shared life had become real—Lethira found that the idea of walking into the Guild alone pleased her. She kissed him goodbye at home, took her bow and went into Merrowford as herself rather than half of a pair.

Brannock heard the request without ceremony. The cropped brown-grey hair and ink-marked finger were unchanged; the clerk merely checked the board, disappeared into the back office and returned with a contract sheet and the practical expression of someone who had found a suitable administrative problem to attach to a field problem.

A C-rank notice had been held from general issue that morning. Greybacks had been harrying the north-west approach where two charcoal crews used the same stretch of wooded road. Six or seven had been reported. One mule was dead, no people were, and the road had been marked closed rather than waiting for the first human casualty. The reports mentioned an unusually large older female among them.

The objective was equally practical: confirm the pack, locate its den if possible, and remove the immediate threat to the road. Nobody was paying for extermination merely because wolves with worse tempers had learned an inconvenient habit.

"Suitable," Brannock said. "Senior observer is Garran Holt. He'll meet you outside."

Lethira glanced at the contract. "Human?"

Brannock looked up. "Is that a problem?"

"No. I was deciding how much entertainment to expect."

"Less than you hope."

Garran Holt proved to be a human somewhere in his late fifties, broad enough through the shoulders that age had not made him look fragile, dressed in weathered field clothes with a short sword, a working knife and none of the ornamental equipment that sometimes appeared on assessors who expected to spend more time near a Guild hall than a threat. Grey ran through his beard and at both temples. He read Lethira's tag, read her face and did not seem impressed by either.

That improved her opinion of him immediately.

He explained the assessment while they walked out of town. Lethira remained contract lead. He was there to observe current judgement, communication and field competence at the grade she already held. He would intervene for immediate danger. If he had to intervene because she had made a bad decision, the assessment would fail even if the contract itself succeeded.

"I'm not testing whether an Elf is faster than me," he added once the road narrowed towards the north-west woods. "I'm not marking you down for being quieter, seeing sign I miss, using trees, or anything else you've spent longer learning than I've been alive. I am marking whether you remember you're working with another person. If you vanish into the forest and expect the human behind you to infer the plan, that's your mistake, not mine."

Lethira gave him a sidelong look. "You have assessed Elves before."

"Enough."

The first correction arrived embarrassingly soon.

The old woodland began less than an hour beyond the last occupied plots, and Lethira's body recognised it before her habits did. The road sign was obvious: churned verge, old paw marks around a drainage hollow, one patch of dried mule blood beneath leaves. She moved off the road to read the ground more cleanly, found a fresher line under hazel and followed it. Her pace opened without conscious decision. A fallen trunk became a hand on bark and one light step over it; a bank became a short climb; the next patch of sign lay far enough ahead that she was already reaching for it when Garran spoke from behind.

"Dawnleaf."

She stopped.

He was not struggling. That made the rebuke worse. He simply stood thirty paces back and waited for her to recognise what she had done.

Lethira returned through the trees. "Too far."

"And without telling me whether you were ranging, circling or following."

"Yes."

There was no useful defence. Ian had altered one of her travelling habits without either of them noticing. He could appear beside her when she called him, could not be surprised by an ordinary predator in any meaningful sense, and had spent enough road time protected by impossible circumstances that Lethira had softened the constant awareness of a companion's safe movement envelope. Garran could not simply become present at her shoulder because she had found something interesting.

She told him exactly what she would do next: range no more than a stated distance, return before changing direction beyond sight, and call any sign worth committing to. Garran nodded once. The assessment resumed.

After that, the forest became enjoyable.

Lethira stopped matching herself to an ordinary walking companion and instead worked within the limits they had agreed. She ranged fast, returned fast, used slopes and trunks where they were useful and let old Elven movement back into her legs. She was nowhere near the full performance she could sustain in a forest with no human observer to account for, but she was much closer to it than she had been on the road with Ian. The ground did not become easy; it became legible. Damp leaves held weight differently from dry ones. A broken fern was recent enough to matter. Hair on rough bark sat too high for a fox and too coarse for a dog.

Six greybacks, not seven.

The largest was female. Her right foreleg landed badly and had done for some time: not useless, but old injury had changed the pressure of the paw and shortened one part of her stride. The pack had crossed the road repeatedly and returned to the same deeper cover. Their interest in the charcoal crews was learned behaviour rather than random movement. People, mules and predictable food had become easier to harry than woodland prey.

Lethira found no cub sign. She found the rough shelter they had been using beneath roots and broken stone, then returned to Garran and gave him the shape of the problem before she acted on it.

"Leader first," she said. "Then the mature animal nearest the road side. If the other four break north-west, I let them go and confirm they keep going. The contract is the road. I'm not chasing a whole pack deeper into its own range for the satisfaction of making the number zero."

Garran's only answer was, "Your contract."

The wind was favourable. The first arrow ended the old female before the pack understood that the quiet between the trees had changed. The second mature greyback did not run with the others. It came across the broken ground towards the source of the shot, fast enough to punish a human archer who expected distance to remain theirs.

Lethira did not.

She moved sideways, planted one foot against a root, used the trunk behind it to change height and direction, and let the animal commit to where she had been. The close engagement lasted only seconds. Garran never reached for his weapon.

The remaining four fled north-west.

Lethira let them.

They followed at distance for roughly a mile, enough to confirm that the survivors were not circling towards the road again. When Lethira finally turned back, the pleasure in her body was almost indecent. Her breathing was deeper, her legs pleasantly worked, and the familiar attention of forest movement had returned without needing a crisis to justify it.

Garran waited until they were on the road before giving the result.

"Pass. Tracking, threat identification and engagement are B-standard. Communication was poor for the first twenty minutes and good after correction."

Lethira accepted that without complaint.

He looked at her once, then at the wooded slope she had just descended with irritating ease. "Movement is annoying."

Her smile appeared. "I'll put that on the tag."

"Don't. And I'm not assessing your upper limit. I was asked whether you're currently fit for B practice, not whether I can make an Elf show off until one of us gets bored."

"If you decide you need somebody to tell you how impressive you are, find a tavern."

"I have a human at home for that."

Garran glanced at her. "Does he charge?"

"Constantly."

Brannock recorded the result when they returned. The local restriction came off Lethira's current entry. Her rank had not changed; the branch's confidence in the current practice behind it had. Lethira left the Guild with the same B on the tag and no parenthetical limit attached to what she could accept locally.

She was pleased by the result. More than that, she was pleased that the morning had belonged to her. There was a bad foreleg to tell Ian about, an assessor who had called her movement annoying, an embarrassing correction about habits she had acquired around him, and the simple pleasure of having moved through trees much closer to the way her body remembered.

While Lethira was north-west of Merrowford with her assessor, Ian had decided to go and see the Lifegiver.

He swapped into his Earth clothes for once. There was no need to hide here. Then he simply appeared in her realm, a respectful distance from wherever she was.

The garden was still impossible in its abundance, but it no longer looked as though every empty space had offended its owner. A fallen branch lay where it had come down. Moss had spread across one edge of the path. Two shrubs crowded each other beneath a taller tree without being separated for their own good. The small bare patch of earth Ian had seen at the end of his previous visit remained bare.

The Lifegiver was kneeling beside a stream with both hands muddy around the roots of a small plant she was moving. A shallow basket of ordinary hand tools sat beside her. She noticed Ian, sat back on her heels and looked at him for a moment before wiping her hands on the living green of her clothes rather than cleansing them with a thought.

"Ian."

Her gaze travelled over the Earth clothes without probing beneath them. An uncertain smile followed. "You came back."

She rose and crossed the garden until only several comfortable paces separated them. "Were you worried about me?"

"I was, of course. I brought you something."

Curiosity displaced some of the uncertainty. The Lifegiver glanced at his hands as though the object might already be there.

"You brought me something."

She looked briefly back towards the plant by the stream. "I've been trying what you said. Less work. Or perhaps less *interference* disguised as work. I notice the urge now, sometimes, before I obey it. I am not very good at that yet."

Her attention returned to Ian. "What did you bring me?"

Ian held out a glass of apple juice, the nice kind, misty rather than clear. It had not been there before. A paper straw leaned against the rim. This juice had been made from apples taken from the Waykeeper's old tree after Ian and Lethira met her.

"Apple juice, from your sister's tree. It's really nice, please try it."

The Lifegiver accepted the glass with both hands. Recognition arrived before she drank.

"Her tree."

The paper straw received nearly as much inspection as the juice. She touched it once, frowned at its texture, then watched the liquid rise when she tried it. The first mouthful stopped the investigation.

"Oh. That is good."

Nothing divine happened. No road opened. No ancient memory became a spell. It was only juice made from exceptionally good apples, cloudy and sweet with enough sharpness to keep it from becoming syrupy.

The Lifegiver drank again. "Sister," she said quietly, and the word carried more history than the glass did. "I haven't tasted fruit from that tree in a very long time. Did she give you the apples?"

"We took a few when we met her. It's good to see you. And don't worry about not being good at it yet, you had aeons to ... get to where you were, it's only been a blink of a eye since I was here last."

Some of the tension left her shoulders. She looked down at the juice again, then back at him.

"That is fair. I keep expecting recovery to be another thing I should already know how to do."

The admission embarrassed her slightly once it existed outside her head.

"Can I give you a hug?"

The Lifegiver went still for a heartbeat. The question itself seemed to reach her before the offered contact did.

"Yes," she said. Then, more quietly, "I would like that."

Ian gave her a hug. It was tender, but neither romantic nor sexual: a friend's embrace, or something close to one.

The Lifegiver held the glass awkwardly to one side for the first second. Then her free arm came around him. No hidden examination travelled through the contact; she did not reach beneath skin or thought for a diagnosis. Her hold simply strengthened a little, and Ian felt her breathe out against him.

"I understand the difference now," she said quietly. When the embrace ended she kept one hand lightly against his arm. "Last time you hugged me because I had fallen apart. This time you asked because you wanted to."

A small smile appeared. "I think I prefer this one."

She took another drink through the paper straw, apparently deciding that its indignity was outweighed by the juice. "I have been examining myself every day. Not fixing. Examining. Would you like to hear what I've found?"

"Of course, lets sit down"

A large two-seater sofa appeared on the grass. Its upholstery carried a subtle pattern of trees and flowers, quiet enough that it did not compete with the real garden around it. Ian sat and called her over.

"tell me."

The Lifegiver looked at the sofa, then at him. "You make very strange things seem normal."

She sat beside him with less space between them than the size of the sofa required, the glass held loosely between both hands. The stream moved past stones below them, carrying one fallen leaf in a slow circle before releasing it downstream.

"Knowing what is wrong does not stop me doing it," she began. There was almost irritation in the discovery. "Yesterday a small creature near the eastern water had an infection in its blood. It had lived less than a season. It could not understand refusal, consent, future consequence or any of the principles you and Lethira forced me to examine. I could remove the infection without harming anything else I could perceive."

She had healed it. Afterwards, instead of allowing the successful outcome to end the question, she had spent hours asking why. Healing was good. She also could not tolerate standing beside a preventable death. Both things were true, and she disliked that answer because it denied her the cleanliness of a single motive.

The older pattern became easier to see once she looked for it. Scale had protected her from judgement: a plague, a starving people, a bloodline vanishing, suffering large enough that asking whether she had the right to act felt almost obscene. Yet the great number had always been made of individuals. She had known that in language while behaving as though catastrophe suspended the need to ask it.

"I found anger too," she said, watching the current. "I am still angry at people I saved who hated me for it. I can explain why gratitude was never owed. I can explain why their survival did not make the choice mine. I can know those things and remain angry."

Her thumb moved across the damp side of the glass. "So I have stopped treating the feeling as evidence. I can be angry and still be wrong."

The most frightening experiment had come later. She had tried to examine the compulsion itself as though it were a diseased structure she might separate from the rest. It refused to resolve into something alien. The urge to intervene was woven through love of life, fear of loss, memory, responsibility, pride, habit, grief, the pleasure of helping and the relief of preventing pain. None of those strands could simply be cut without cutting the person who carried them.

"So I stopped," she said. "I am capable of changing myself. That is not comforting when I do not trust myself to decide which pieces of me deserve changing."

For the first time since she began, she looked directly at Ian. "I think that may be the first useful thing I have learned. Not that I know how to fix myself. That perhaps I should not begin by assuming I am entitled to."

"I think, that you asked yourself the question, about the creature, before and after. That is excellent progress"

Ian briefly touched her arm.

"you should be proud."

The Lifegiver looked at the place his fingers had touched. Pride seemed to require almost as much practice as restraint.

Ian paused.

"You are your history and your emotions, you can't cut them out. You shouldn't cut them out *they are you*, what matters is what you do next, not what you were doing. I am insecure, weak, self-deprecating, apparently in love with an Elf, and giving advice to the god of Lifegiving."

That startled a laugh out of her, small but clean enough to interrupt the solemnity.

"Apparently?"

"In the real world, i used to be very overweight. I am not now. It took a long time. I didn't have it cut out, or take drugs. I walked. Every day. I was able to walk faster, it took years, and, gradually, the weight changed. But more importantly, it stayed changed. I still walk everyday. I didn't snap my fingers and fix it."

The Lifegiver listened with the intense attention she had once reserved for symptoms. This time the example contained no miracle, only repetition. A walk made again the next day. Years during which a body changed because a man kept choosing an ordinary act he could sustain.

"Just take each day as it comes. Keep asking yourself the questions. You will figure it out"

The stream continued beside them. Somewhere farther into the garden, something small moved through leaves and was permitted to do so without being summoned, improved or named.

"And, if you want, I'll come back and see you."

The offer remained between them.

"But only if you want."

The Lifegiver closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them there were tears in them, though her voice remained steady.

"I want."

She looked down at the apple juice. "But I don't want you to come because you think I am another thing you must keep alive. I think I would like you to come because you are my friend."

Her gaze lifted again. "If that is what we are."

"I am not in the businesses of keeping things alive."

Ian pondered.

"especially"

The Lifegiver's mouth twitched.

"We're not quite friends yet, but i have attachment and i care, we can become friends, i'm sure. a day at a time."

She took that answer more carefully than an easy declaration. After a while she looked back out over the garden.

"A day at a time," she repeated. "I think I have spent rather too much of my existence deciding what things must become before they have had time to become anything at all."

Her fingers turned the glass slowly. "Then I will not decide that we are friends because I want the comfort of having one. But I would like to find out if we become them."

A small pause passed before she added, with faint embarrassment, "And I am attached to you too. I don't know whether I should be. You arrived, accused me of being unwell, made me diagnose several aeons of accumulated damage, put a child's plaster on my forehead and left. It is not how I imagined acquiring an attachment."

"I'm sorry about the plaster, it seemed nice at the time. It might have been a bit condescending. But, I doubt many have given you that feeling, so hopefully it was an ... experience"

Ian smiled at her.

The Lifegiver stared for a moment, then laughed properly.

"It was extremely condescending."

She took another drink through the paper straw, which did little for whatever divine dignity the statement might have recovered. "And yes. It was also an experience. No one has ever treated me like a child who had been brave at the healer. I was offended."

Her smile widened. "Then I kept it on for three days."

She had eventually removed it only after the adhesive began to fail. The little purple plaster had become ridiculous long before then, but she had liked seeing it. Someone had looked at her, decided something was wrong and chosen care over correction.

"So perhaps you may be forgiven for the condescension," she said. "Eventually."

"Thank you"

Ian paused.

"Force is an easy answer for me. You saw what I was, what I can do. When there is no limit, no limit at all. If I can think it, it happens. It is.. interesting."

The Lifegiver's amusement faded. She had seen beyond the projected human presence during his last visit, through the reach of an authority her categories could not contain, and farther still to the finite biological man beyond it.

Ian waited briefly.

"So what stops me?"

He continued before she supplied an answer for him.

"I'm a human male, there are plenty of things I could will into existence. Force people to do things. Debase myself. Destroy the universe. Make everything pink."

The Lifegiver's gaze flicked involuntarily across the garden. For one absurd instant she appeared to imagine the last possibility. The corner of her mouth almost moved.

"I care for people. Thoughtless use of power upsets them. It makes me stop and think now. I don't like people that i like being upset."

That she understood. Care could slow a hand which capability alone would never stop.

"Of course I have used the power. I used it on your brother. I didn't like him, he was not nice. But even then... I stopped. I thought. Maybe I got it wrong."

Ian sighed.

"Don't do everything I tell you, i'm a bit of an idiot."

For several seconds the Lifegiver said nothing. Then she gave a faint, incredulous laugh.

"I am trying to imagine anyone else who could destroy the universe describing himself as 'a bit of an idiot.'"

Her expression became thoughtful again. "I think I understand part of it. You have no external limit strong enough to matter, so some of the limits have to be made from attachment. Affection. Remembering that another person has an interior life which remains theirs even when you could overwrite it."

She did not let the answer become comfortable. "But that frightens me too. You said thoughtless power upsets people you like. Then you told me you used power on my brother because you did not like him. I know enough about my brother to understand why someone might hate him."

Her fingers became still around the glass. "What stops you when you don't care about them?"

"My anger at him hurting people, people I like, doesn't give me the right to unilaterally murder him. It's not self-defense when he's in a prison, is it? Maybe I was wrong to even strip his power, but at least if he ever gets out, somehow, he can't hurt people like he did. I think that makes it OK."

The Lifegiver listened without moving. Ian's uncertainty appeared to matter to her more than the defence itself.

"And, lets take you."

Ian stopped.

"I could've removed your power. Or worse. I didn't know you. I wouldn't have known you. I do, a little bit. And I like you, a little bit. I wouldn't have had that would I?"

He smiled at her.

The Lifegiver looked at the half-finished juice, then at the imperfect garden beyond it.

"No," she said eventually. "If you had made me into the person you believed I ought to be, you would never have met the person who might become her."

"Don't over think it. Day by day. Ask the question."

A small laugh escaped her. "You tell the goddess who spent aeons building a philosophy around every possible death not to overthink."

She accepted the rebuke anyway. "Day by day. I knew that being able to act and being entitled to act were different propositions. I am beginning to understand that the gap between them has to become a habit."

A faint smile. "That may take me rather longer than a day."

A sheet of paper appeared in Ian's hand. Three circles overlapped across it in the classic Venn diagram. He handed it to her.

"When -- and i don't think when is soon, but it's your choice -- feel like going into the real world, i would focus on the people in the middle of these three circles: those that want"

He pointed to the first circle.

"those that need"

He pointed to the second.

"and, those that ask - that ask *you*"... then, ask yourself  the question 'should I?' for whoever is in the middle."

The Lifegiver studied the page. Her eyes moved through the three circles and returned to the small central overlap.

Want.

Need.

Ask *you*.

And even there: *Should I?*

Ian looked down.

"I am not good at this, i'm sorry. You need someone more skilled, but it was something I thought might help, at the right time."

"You can keep the paper"

Then Ian ruffled her hair a little.

The Lifegiver froze in astonishment. One hand rose halfway towards her hair and stopped.

Ian had now, across two visits, placed a child's plaster on the forehead of an ancient builder and ruffled her hair like somebody's younger sister.

Her mouth opened, then closed. She looked down at the three circles instead.

"I think you may be underestimating this. Not because it answers everything. It doesn't."

That seemed, unexpectedly, to please her. She traced the first circle with one fingertip, then the second and third. "If I make it a law, I will only build another doctrine and eventually find reasons why every exception proves the doctrine inadequate. But this is a place to start looking."

Her fingertip returned to the centre. "It would exclude almost everyone I once believed I had an obvious right to interfere with."

The old reflex immediately produced exceptions. A child. An animal. Someone unconscious. She began to ask what *ask* meant for someone unable to do it, then stopped herself.

"No. I don't need to solve that now. I can ask the question when the person exists."

She folded the paper carefully, once and then again, avoiding the drawn centre. She was keeping it, not canonising it.

Only after the page was put safely away did she touch the place where Ian had disturbed her hair.

"And I am not certain whether ruffling the hair of a goddess is part of your therapeutic method."

Her smile returned. "Apparently I am learning to tolerate indignities."

"I am feeling a little big brother here, the emotion overcame me, i'm sorry."

Ian smiled at her and stood.

"It was with affection and not malice."

The Lifegiver remained seated for another second with the emptying juice in her hands, looking up at him with a mixture of disbelief and reluctant amusement.

"I need to go now, I shall come back ..."

Ian opened his arms a little.

".. little sis"

Her eyes widened.

"Oh, absolutely not."

She was smiling when she set the glass aside and stood. "For the record, I am older than your species. So your claim to seniority is ridiculous."

She stepped into his open arms anyway. This embrace came more easily than the first. She held him briefly and firmly, then drew back with her hands still resting lightly on his arms.

"But I think I understand what you meant."

The garden behind her remained imperfect: branch down, soil bare, plants competing for the same light.

"Come back when you want to see me, Ian. Not because you think you should."

Her smile returned fully. "And if you call me little sister again, bring more apple juice."

Ian waved, and he was gone, back home. He waited for Lethira, if she was not there already, while undressing and changing out of his Earth clothes.

The timing was perfect.

The front door opened downstairs before he had finished. Lethira's voice carried through the house, followed by her steps on the stairs. She appeared in the bedroom doorway while Ian was midway through changing and stopped there with the pleased expression of somebody who had returned home carrying news.

Her eyes travelled over him. One ear tilted.

"Well. I had an entire entrance planned. This is better."

The assessment tag was still at her belt. The local limitation was not.

"I passed."

Ian laughed. "perfect timing" As he put his earthly undergarments back on, he asked, "How was your morning?"

"Good," Lethira said, and the satisfaction in the word needed no embellishment. She unfastened the tag and held it up between two fingers. "My assessor described my movement as *annoying*, which I am choosing to interpret as the highest praise a human has ever given an Elf."

She set the tag down and gave him the shorter version of the morning: six greybacks, the old female with the bad right foreleg, the second mature animal that had chosen the wrong close engagement, and four survivors driven north-west and checked far enough to know they had not circled towards the road.

Then she admitted the correction.

"I ranged too far ahead at the beginning. I've become used to travelling with someone who can appear beside me whenever he likes and who is almost impossible to ambush. Apparently that is not an acceptable habit when your companion is a fifty-something human assessor who has to use his legs."

Her amusement softened into genuine pleasure as she described the part she had enjoyed most. "After that I remembered how to behave. I moved properly through the trees again. Not as fast as I could have, but much closer. I had forgotten how good that feels."

She looked over his partly changed clothes. "And you?"

"I went to see the Lifegiver"

Then Ian added quickly:

"Fully clothed, I might add. I am not intending to collect a harem of gods, one B-rank (unrestricted) Elf is more than enough for a middle-aged human."

Lethira stared at him for a beat, then raised one eyebrow.

"Good. Because this B-rank, unrestricted Elf has only just finished proving that she remains professionally dangerous, and discovering that she has somehow acquired competition from a pantheon would be inconvenient."

She stepped close enough to tap two fingers lightly against his chest. "Also, I am taller than you, better with a bow, better in a forest, and now officially certified to be annoying."

The list clearly satisfied her. The next question did not belong to the joke.

"How was she? You were worried about her."

"I think i'm possibly her friend now. She was ... ok, i think. Talking to her helped. She seemed.. a whole lot less arrogant."

Lethira listened, attention settling.

"She kept the plaster on for 3 days."

"Three days?"

The delight in Lethira's voice was immediate.

"We talked for a while, I hope I helped her a bit. I said i'd go back. I also took her some apple juice from her sister, that really seemed to help. I gave her a stupid diagram to try and give her some kind of framework if she ventures into the world again, it was the best I could think of."

Ian produced a copy of the diagram. This version had the words written into the circles and the question placed at the overlap.

Lethira took it.

"Want. Need. Ask."

Her fingertip found the middle. "And then *should I?*"

She read it again. "That's not stupid. It is simple enough to remember when she is frightened and tempted to make everything complicated, and it still leaves her a question instead of an instruction."

"She felt a bit, needy. I wouldn't say she had a crush on me, but she seemed to want a connection.. i recognised that a bit hard. So, I think i'm now her big brother."

Lethira lowered the paper and studied him. The joke did not arrive immediately.

"Recognising it probably mattered. Wanting somebody to choose you badly enough that the first kindness starts to feel larger than it is can make people careless. You didn't use it. You even told her you weren't quite friends yet."

Then her mouth curved.

"But I need one thing made absolutely clear. If you are now the Lifegiver's big brother, does that make me her sister-in-law?"

"Oh know what have I done."

Ian waited. Colour rose into his face.

"Did cutting onions trigger an Elven marriage ceremony? "

For perhaps two seconds Lethira maintained perfect seriousness. Then she laughed.

"No. There is no secret onion-based Elven marriage rite."

She stepped nearer, taking shameless advantage of being taller. "Although now I regret telling you immediately. I could have had several enjoyable minutes. You are not accidentally married to me because I taught you to cook, because we bought a house together, because we sleep together, or because you have apparently begun adopting members of the pantheon into an extended family."

Her smile sharpened. "So no, I am not technically the Lifegiver's sister-in-law. Yet your blush suggests that wasn't actually the part of the sentence that frightened you."

"It was you being her sister-in-law."

"Us getting married is less worrisome"

For once Lethira had no immediate answer. Her ears went very still, and when she looked away towards the window there was colour high on her cheeks.

"Less worrisome," she repeated. The phrase landed with more weight than either of them had put into the original joke. When she looked back, her smile was smaller. "That is a remarkably dangerous thing to say to an Elf you have bought a house with. I was trying to embarrass you. I appear to have made a tactical error."

She placed the diagram beside her assessment tag. "For clarity, I am not proposing anything. But I am also finding that the idea does not frighten me nearly as much as I would have expected."

Ian changed the subject.

"More importantly, how come I get to miss you being 'super-elf warden' shooting arrows and running and whatever else happened. This is so unfair. I bet you started running up trees and leaping entire forests and everything."

Lethira's embarrassment vanished beneath satisfaction.

"Oh, now you're interested. For the record, I did not leap an entire forest. Only the particularly inconvenient parts."

Her expression made the truth of the second sentence impossible to judge.

"I tracked six greybacks, identified the injured leader from sign before seeing her, put an arrow where I wanted it, killed another at close range, and moved quickly enough that Garran Holt became personally offended by the concept of Elven legs. And you missed all of it."

She let him suffer that before adding, "There were roots. Fallen trunks. Narrow branches. One slope I barely touched on the way down. I might even have run up a tree."

Then the boast softened into the thing beneath it. "I really did need one morning without my indestructible human beside me. I liked it, Ian. Really liked it. I haven't moved through a forest like that in a long time."

The mischief returned. "And yes. You should be jealous."

"Then some day soon we're going to a forest and I want you to unleash. I don't want you to always be stuck at human level, and I would love to see you at peak performance."

Ian proceeded to pretend to elf-parkour his way over to her. There was an unnecessary sidestep around an imaginary root, a turn with no obvious function and something that might generously have been called clearing a fallen branch. He completed the performance by embracing her tightly.

Lethira watched the approach with increasing disbelief. "You realise I have actually seen Elves move?"

"I'm so happy you had a good day and got your B-rank back, I look forward to the A soon"

Ian smiled.

The mockery disappeared from Lethira's face. Her arms closed around him just as firmly.

"Thank you. And yes, we are absolutely doing that. Somewhere properly wooded. No road to keep pace with. No human assessor whose continued possession of functioning knees I am expected to consider."

She eased back enough to look at him. "You may regret asking for peak performance. Watching it and keeping up with it are different things."

At the mention of A-rank, she touched the branch mark at her belt. "B was proving that I am still what I already claimed to be. A would mean proving something more."

One ear tilted. "I'm not saying no."

"I just hope you bring the unbridled strength, agility, pose, grace and precision back into our bedroom."

Lethira went very still in his arms. One ear slowly angled towards him.

"That is an extraordinarily ambitious interpretation of professional development."

Her smile said she was not objecting.

"But, seriously, I had a good day, you had a good day. I think it was nice to do things separate and come back, as it has been a bit intense."

Ian tightened their embrace a little.

"You do elf warden stuff, I do metaphysical god-entity big-brother stuff, we both come home, you exploit your tracking skills to catch me naked. A good day."

Lethira laughed against him. "That last part was not tracking. You were in our bedroom with half your clothes off. Even a human could have solved that trail."

She settled more comfortably into the embrace. "But yes. I liked today. I liked going somewhere without you. I liked knowing you were somewhere doing something that mattered to you. And I liked coming back and finding you here."

Her hold tightened. "We have spent a lot of time becoming *us* very quickly. I don't want that to mean we stop being ourselves."

Then her mouth curved again. "Although if being ourselves includes you returning from conversations with gods and me returning from the forest professionally certified as annoying, I think our domestic life may remain unusual. And I reserve the right to exploit future tracking opportunities."

Ian looked at his bracer, curious as to the time. He lifted the leather enough to see the small analogue face beneath it.

13:47, Merrowford local time.

Early afternoon.

Lethira followed his glance. "Oh no. You have consulted the tiny foreign authority."

She stayed comfortably inside his arms. "Am I about to discover we have somehow missed lunch while separately achieving professional advancement and adopting gods?"

"Do we still have the room at the Inn?"

Lethira considered it for only a moment.

"Yes. We paid Caswick for the extra week, and we never checked out. Buying the house didn't magically return the remaining nights to her. Our room should still be ours."

She glanced in the general direction of Merrowford, then back at Ian. "Why? You have the expression of a man who has remembered a resource."

"Well, firstly I should make our stuff there, appear here."

Lethira nodded. "That would save us carrying it back like ordinary people."

"Then, I should make you and I, appear in that room"

Her eyes narrowed with amusement. "Entirely unnecessary. Therefore obviously desirable."

"And, after that display, we should go downstairs and investigate their lunch, as living here I don't think precludes eating out"

Lethira gave the proposal exaggerated consideration. "No. I believe home ownership requires us to remain inside indefinitely, eating only things you have personally chopped under supervision."

She broke into a smile. "I would like lunch at the Reed and Wheel. Appearing in our old room without walking there has the additional advantage that Caswick may spend the rest of the afternoon trying to work out when we came in."

She held out a hand. "Empty the room, then impress me."

Their remaining possessions at the Reed and Wheel appeared back at the house, mysteriously folded, packed, tidy and arranged in neat piles.

Lethira stared at them long enough for the offence to sink in.

"That is offensive."

She picked up the corner of one perfectly folded garment and inspected it. "I spent years learning how to pack efficiently. This is better than I do it."

After that had properly registered, Ian and Lethira appeared in their now mostly empty room at the Reed and Wheel. The bed, washstand and furniture remained; the accumulation that had made the room theirs did not. Without their clothes, papers and equipment, the room already looked like somewhere they were passing through.

Ian turned to her.

"Lunch my Lady?"

Lethira gave him a small formal inclination of the head. "Why, certainly. Although if you call me *my Lady* downstairs, I may tell Caswick you have finally accepted your position as my human attendant."

Her hand settled on the latch. "And after the morning I've had, I intend to order enough food to make that explanation convincing."

"I, in all seriousness, would love to be your attendant"

Ian kissed her, then followed her downstairs.

Lethira caught lightly at his side before he moved away. "I know. But only if I get to be yours sometimes."

The common room had settled into the later part of lunch. Enough tables were occupied to keep it alive without the evening crush, and the kitchen smelled of browned meat, onions and fresh bread. Caswick stood behind the bar.

Her eyes went to the stairs when Lethira appeared, then to Ian behind her.

"You two were upstairs?" Caswick asked. "Apparently," Lethira said. Caswick frowned. "I didn't see you come in."

"No," Lethira replied, offering nothing more. Caswick narrowed her eyes, but then noticed the unrestricted branch mark at Lethira's belt and abandoned the more confusing question for one she could actually solve. "Oh. You passed?"

"I was described as annoying." Caswick nodded gravely. "Congratulations."

Lethira looked delighted.

Caswick turned to Ian. "And what did you accomplish this morning while she was out terrorising assessors?"

"I went .. to .. see ... my adopted little sister."

Ian smiled, pleased with his defence.

Caswick stared at him. Beside him Lethira made a very small sound and converted it into a cough.

"Your adopted little sister," Caswick repeated.

"Apparently," Lethira said with remarkable composure.

Caswick looked between them. "You've been gone from this inn for barely any time at all and you've bought a house, she's got her unrestricted B-rank back, and you've acquired a sister. I feel as though I'm falling behind."

"It happened quickly," Lethira said, and had to look away.

Caswick caught the movement. "Why do I get the feeling there's a story here? So. This little sister of yours. Where exactly did you find her?"

"She's actually older than me, little sister is a bit of a joke. She has been unwell, so I went to try and cheer her up. I think I helped a bit."

The suspicion in Caswick's expression stopped being playful. "Ah. Then good."

Lethira glanced at Ian, warmth briefly overtaking her amusement.

Caswick was not finished. "Older than you, though?"

"Considerably," Lethira said.

Ian's explanation became more dangerous by the second.

Caswick's eyes narrowed. "How considerably?"

Lethira's face became perfectly innocent. "Ian should probably answer that."

She walked towards an empty table.

Caswick watched her go. "That was the expression of someone deliberately abandoning you in danger. So? How old is your little sister?"

"It's rude to ask a lady her age, so I don't know how old she really is, i am, after all, a gentleman."

Caswick stared at him. Across the room Lethira stopped beside the table and turned around to enjoy the result.

"A gentleman," Caswick repeated, with enough disbelief to supply several tables.

"He has moments," Lethira offered.

"Fine. Mysterious older adopted little sister. Unwell. Cheered up. Age protected by gentlemanly principle." Caswick counted the points on her fingers. "That's almost an explanation."

She jerked her chin towards the table. "Go sit down before you accidentally acquire another relative."

"Too late," Lethira called. "He has me."

Caswick looked between them. "I'm not asking what that means."

"Wise."

"Lunch."

They sat and dined.

Caswick brought simple inn food suited to the hour: thick slices of warm bread, butter, roasted vegetables and generous portions of meat cooked in a dark onion gravy. Lethira ate with the appetite of somebody who had spent the morning travelling quickly through woodland and killing things. For several minutes the conversation thinned into the ordinary sounds of plates, bread tearing and a common room carrying on around them.

The Reed and Wheel felt different now. Their table was familiar. Caswick still moved between the bar and kitchen. Someone near the far wall laughed too loudly. The smells of smoke, food and road-wet clothing belonged exactly where they had before. Upstairs, however, the room was almost empty, and their packed belongings were waiting at the house.

Lethira used a piece of bread to collect the last of the gravy from her plate. "This is strange. I spent so long thinking of this place as where we came back to. Now we're eating here because we chose to come out for lunch."

A small smile followed. "I like that difference. I like knowing that when we're finished, we go home."

Her eyes narrowed at Ian. "To the house where my mysteriously folded possessions are waiting. I am still offended by that."

"You were a big tease there," Ian said, playfully kicking her leg under the table.

Lethira's eyes narrowed. Her boot found his ankle and nudged it back, just enough to answer without starting a real battle.

"Oh, *I* was? You told Caswick you had acquired an adopted little sister, refused to explain her age on grounds of gentlemanly honour, and then stood there looking pleased with yourself while I had to keep a straight face. I was displaying heroic restraint."

She tore off another piece of bread. "Also, you deserved to be abandoned when she asked how old the Lifegiver was. I wanted to see how far your defence would survive without me rescuing you."

Her smile turned satisfied. "It survived surprisingly well."

"Amateur tracking, cutting onions, thinking on my feet with landlady's... surely i'm ranked E by now."

Lethira regarded him over the table. "Absolutely not. Your tracking remains appalling, one successful onion does not constitute culinary competence, and surviving Caswick's questions is not an adventuring discipline."

Caswick happened to be passing close enough to hear the last part.

"It should be."

Lethira considered this. "Fair."

Caswick continued on.

Lethira turned back to Ian. "I might allow F. Provisional. Subject to assessment."

She leaned slightly closer. "I will personally supervise the tracking portion. And unlike Garran Holt, I am willing to fail you purely for my own entertainment."

Ian laughed. "Mean, oh who will rescue the poor human attendant from the unnatural urges of the Wood Elf warden, hungry from a day of high-rank adventure and combat"

Lethira stopped with her cup halfway to her mouth. Very slowly, she lowered it.

"No one, I should think. The poor human attendant appears to have placed himself in this situation voluntarily."

One foot found his under the table and rested lightly against his ankle.

"And after all that talk about Elven strength, agility, poise, grace and precision, it would be terribly disappointing not to demonstrate proper professional standards."

She picked up her cup and drank as though she had said nothing of consequence.

"Finish your lunch."

"yes my lady"

Ian finished his lunch slightly more swiftly than normal.

Lethira noticed. Of course she noticed. She continued at exactly the same unhurried pace as before, betrayed only by the slight lift at one corner of her mouth. When she finally set down her fork, Ian's plate had been empty for some time.

"Excellent. Motivation appears to improve human performance considerably."

From behind the bar, Caswick glanced over. "Do I want to know?"

"No," Lethira said immediately.

Caswick considered that answer. "Good."

Lethira stood and held out her hand. "Come along, attendant."

Her ears gave away the composure of the rest of her face.

Ian took her hand and followed.

They crossed the common room together. Caswick noticed their joined hands and said nothing, which was somehow worse than comment. Lethira maintained perfect Warden dignity until they reached the landing.

"Your landlady is judging you," she murmured. "Possibly me as well."

She opened the door to their mostly empty room and stepped inside, still holding Ian's hand. Once the door was closed, she turned towards him. The woman who had spent the morning running through woodland, tracking predators and proving her current rank wore a very particular smile.

"So. You were saying something downstairs about unnatural urges."

Ian faced her.

"I am at my Lady's disposal, as she sees fit."

Lethira's eyes sharpened. She let the invitation settle before she moved closer.

"Careful. That is an enormous amount of authority to grant a Wood Elf who has spent all morning being reminded what she can do."

One hand rested against his chest, the other behind his neck. She kissed him without hurry, confident enough that nothing in it could be mistaken for uncertainty. When she drew back, her forehead rested briefly against his.

"I think my attendant requires a practical demonstration of strength, agility, poise, grace and precision. Strictly for professional development."

Ian rose on his toes and whispered in her ear.

"Do what thou wilt, I am yours, I trust you with all of me"

Then he kissed the edge of her ear.

Lethira drew a sharp breath. The playfulness in her expression deepened rather than disappearing. Her hand moved to his jaw and held him there while she looked at him.

"All of you is rather a lot. And I intend to be careful with it."

Her thumb brushed his cheek. "Trust doesn't mean you stop having a choice."

Ian answered her.

"I choose to surrender to your whim. Fully."

Lethira held his gaze for another quiet moment.

"Then I accept what you're giving me. If you change your mind, even for a moment, you tell me. Trusting me does not trap you."

She kissed him once, slowly, before the Warden's smile returned.

"And since you have now made your position extremely clear, I think my poor human attendant is about to discover exactly how much energy a Wood Elf has left after a successful field assessment."

The door stayed closed.

Whatever followed belonged to them.