## Chapter 455 — Two Lunches

Wednesday, 17 May, reached lunchtime without requiring anyone to save anything.

Thomas regarded this as a success.

The morning in the international-support office had contained three student questions, one corrected attachment and a telephone call which belonged to another office and had successfully remained there. The terminology problem that had survived Golden Week had finally produced its second answer as well. Central records preferred one English term; the faculty was willing to use it in the shared guide while leaving its own public page alone until the next scheduled revision.

Thomas recorded the decision and did not improve anybody else's page for them.

At eleven fifty-eight his phone vibrated beside the keyboard.

**Isha:** We are outside.

A second message appeared.

**Kanno:** This building is wrong.

Thomas looked through the office window towards a piece of campus containing several buildings capable of being wrong in almost identical ways.

**Thomas:** Stay there. I know which wrong building you mean.

Sugiyama glanced across from her desk. Thomas explained that his wife and Kanno had become misplaced somewhere on campus. Sugiyama considered the university's collection of administrative rectangles and judged this reasonable.

Thomas saved his work, locked the screen and took his wallet.

Outside, the middle of May had filled the campus with green. Cherry blossom had long since left the branches; shade now pooled beneath trees which had offered almost none through winter. He found Isha and Kanno beside a directory board. Kanno was studying it with the expression of someone who had established that the map was probably accurate and disliked it anyway.

Isha saw him first. Thomas walked into the embrace she offered, kissed her, and felt one of her hands settle briefly against his back before she released him.

"Your university has too many rectangles," Kanno said.

"That's how we stop students finding the correct office."

Isha pointed to one building behind them. "We thought that was yours."

"Different administrative department."

Kanno folded the paper map she had acquired somewhere along the way. "I no longer care."

They had not come to inspect Thomas's workplace. Lunch had been the arrangement, and a small set-meal place across the road from campus had won because Thomas could reach it within his break and neither woman required the university cafeteria as an experience.

The restaurant was narrow, busy enough to justify itself and quiet enough that nobody needed to raise their voice. A handwritten lunch board stood beside the door. They were given a table at the back. Isha chose grilled chicken; Kanno ordered cold noodles with vegetables and a small rice bowl; Thomas picked the day's grilled fish after spending long enough studying the board that continuing to think would have become an affectation.

Tea arrived first.

Kanno took one drink. "Did your word problem ever end?"

Thomas knew which one she meant. "This morning. Both offices agreed to use central records' term in this guide. The faculty page stays as it is until they revise it normally."

Isha nodded. "So the guide can finish without Thomas inheriting the faculty page."

"Exactly."

Kanno looked mildly disappointed by the absence of institutional disaster, then returned to her tea.

The food arrived before the subject could acquire a second life. The three trays occupied most of the table. Thomas's fish had crisped skin and grated daikon beside it; Isha's chicken came with cabbage, miso soup and rice; Kanno's noodles were arranged with considerably more care than the speed of lunch service suggested.

Conversation became intermittent for several minutes.

That suited all three of them. Isha adjusted a little dish of sauce nearer her hand. Kanno separated a clump of noodles which had become committed to one another. Thomas discovered that the fish skin was better than the flesh and saved the second crisp section until later.

When Kanno asked how the newer coaching duties were going, Isha answered, "Normal."

Kanno waited.

Isha looked back at her. "That was the answer. Some people want height. Some don't. Some want to understand the equipment. Some want one movement to stop feeling impossible. I watch more before saying anything now."

Thomas ate his fish. Kanno asked whether the work was still tiring sometimes; Isha said yes, and the conversation moved on.

The coming Hero-System opening entered the meal only because Kanno checked the date on her phone.

"Isn't it around now?"

Thomas knew what *it* meant. "Tomorrow, roughly."

"Around tomorrow," Isha corrected. The old System had proved regular enough to predict and imprecise enough that nobody sensible treated the calendar as an appointment.

Kanno put the phone down. "Have you prepared something?"

"No," Thomas said. "We have things we could write. We haven't decided what belongs on this page."

Isha continued eating. "We'll decide at home."

Kanno nodded once and returned to her noodles.

A few minutes later Isha reached for the last piece of pickle on Thomas's tray at exactly the moment his chopsticks moved towards it.

Their hands stopped.

Thomas looked at the pickle. "You had your own."

"I ate mine."

"That sounds like a planning failure."

"Yes."

She took his.

Kanno drank her tea and declined to intervene in the marriage.

They paid, stepped back into the May sun and separated at the crossing. Isha caught the front of Thomas's shirt lightly and kissed him before he returned to work. Kanno lifted one hand in farewell. The expected passage remained roughly a day away; Thomas's afternoon contained a spreadsheet, two students and a meeting at three.

He went upstairs.

---

At an unrelated local noon in another world, Ian and Lethira were leaving Merrowford's civic offices with the southern parcel and river route newly carrying both their names.

Lethira kept hold of Ian's hand while the market streets gathered towards lunch. Somewhere nearby onions were frying; farther down, the broad river put a little dampness into the warmer air.

She had inspected several possibilities during the morning: a baker with small savoury pies, a place with bowls painted on its sign, and a stall towards Southbank selling fried river fish in flatbread. She had deliberately chosen none of them.

"Which sounds good?" she asked.

"I love pies. They are perhaps my main weakness, after serving wardens. So I'd like to try there, please."

Lethira considered the hierarchy with due seriousness. "I am relieved to know I remain ahead of pastry."

The baker occupied a narrow frontage between a cloth merchant and a shop whose window contained more varieties of buckle than Ian had previously realised civilisation required. Heat reached them before the door did, carrying browned pastry, meat, onions and something sharper beneath it.

Two trays held the lunch trade. One was marked beef and onion. The other showed chicken, leek and pale sauce at the seam of a pie that had split slightly in the oven.

"Chicken and leek, I think," Ian said. "And for you?"

"Beef and onion."

They ordered, and Ian awaited the pie summoning.

No divine mechanism answered. The baker disappeared through the open doorway behind the counter and returned with two small pies on thick pottery plates. Ian's carried a paler patch where sauce had baked against the crust; Lethira's top had been cut twice to vent steam.

They found a small table by the wall. Ian answered the arrival of his lunch by starting to eat.

The crust broke cleanly, releasing chicken, leek and pale savoury sauce. The filling had been packed densely enough to remain mostly where the baker intended.

"It's good. What about yours?"

Lethira tried a second bite before answering. "Very good. More onion than I expected, and enough pepper that the beef tastes like something rather than merely being present."

"Two places to dine in... we're spoilt."

"Careful. At this rate we'll become people with preferences."

They ate for a while. The bakery's lunch trade moved around them without particular interest in the Wood Elf and her human companion. Plates came out; empty plates went back. It was exactly the sort of place that might become familiar without anyone deciding it should.

Ian smiled at Lethira. "I have been mapping again."

Her fork stopped halfway to her mouth.

"I've started on Merrowford, there is something relaxing about it. I also updated our expansive property portfolio."

"Our expansive portfolio," Lethira repeated. "One house, one adjoining parcel and a route across land we don't own. We are becoming intolerably grand."

Ian asked, "Would you like to see?"

"Very much."

He handed her an ordinary-looking sheet of paper bearing his working map.

The broad built-up area of Merrowford was washed pink rather than divided into invented plots and buildings. The western gate and main street sat against a rough town boundary; the Reed and Wheel, civic offices, central market and Adventurers' Guild were marked where Ian had enough confidence to place them. The old Green Road inn appeared as a historical point rather than a current business. Bridges crossed the broad river, and farther south were markers for Southbank Lower, Amma's old tailor shop and the small square, but Ian explained that several of those southern positions were placeholders. The colour meant *town here*, not *every structure known*. Other points remained provisional for the same reason.

Lethira moved the pie away from the page before leaning over it.

She studied the west first, then traced the road inward with a fingertip held just above the paper. The historical inn held her for a moment. So did the places she had visited that morning. What had been a small mark on Ian's wider maps now had streets, crossings and the beginnings of a lived shape.

"I like that you've left uncertainty visible," she said. "Some of this is clearly 'somewhere around here' instead of a neat drawing pretending to know everything."

"Very much so."

Ian looked down at the map with her. "And for our place, do you want to do anything with the new land beyond a lovely path?"

Lethira sat back. She did not want to decide a piece of woodland from a bakery table. A path, yes; somewhere to sit near the river once they knew the approved line properly. Beyond that she liked that the southern parcel was rough: wet woodland, grazing, stream and ground that had not been persuaded into garden.

"I might want a few useful trees eventually," she said. "Fruit, perhaps. Or one part made easier to walk. But mostly I want to spend time there first. See where we keep going and what is pleasant in different weather."

"Just walking down to the river in moonlight with you." Ian paused. "Unless that turns you into a night elf."

He sniggered at his own terrible joke.

Lethira stared at him until the corner of her mouth betrayed her. "For that joke, you may have your moonlit walk. If moonlight changes my species, you're explaining it to Aelira."

The map remained between them as the conversation turned to the longer woodland on the new parcel.

"Is the longer run of woodland any help to you for training? Agility, sprinting, difficult terrain, leaping trees using Elf powers, etc.?"

Lethira considered it more seriously. Straight running needed little beyond ground, but roots, slopes, fallen trunks, wet patches and changes of height were useful. So were climbing, jumping between holds and moving without announcing herself to everything nearby. Much of that had been ordinary life before anyone called it training.

"I'd rather keep most of it rough," she said. "Actual ground is more useful than building myself obstacles."

"I would very much love to see you go at it full speed. I'm very curious about what the physical range of an Elf is, compared to a human. If that's okay with you. For once, this is not just about seeing your arse in leather."

"For once," Lethira said.

Then she nodded. She could show him *her*, but she could not turn herself into a racial measurement. A century of forest movement, archery, climbing and Warden work sat on top of whatever Wood Elf physiology gave her.

"I know you're a lot stronger than a human, for example, and I assume that extends to speed, agility, athletic ability, and probably sight and hearing." Ian paused. "The High Elves had to get their superiority from *somewhere*."

He let the joke sit for a beat before adding, "So far I've seen it in various... pinning... guises, but not outdoors."

Lethira threatened to preserve the High Elf sentence for any future negotiation with one. Then she answered the useful part: stronger than most humans, faster than most, certainly better hearing; sight was harder to reduce to a single claim. Agility was still more tangled with experience.

"It's also the fact it's *you* with that experience; it's hard for me to comprehend, with my eighty, ninety, whatever years I'll have. Some of the"—Ian hesitated on the word—"stories about Isha had her moving quite acrobatically in combat, far beyond what a human could manage. I imagined you'd surpass that."

He squeezed Lethira's hand. "Sorry. That sounded rather like a request for a demonstration."

"It was," Lethira said, turning her hand beneath his. "Fortunately, I enjoy running."

Her mouth curved. "You being distracted by my arse can remain an incidental consequence."

"I fear the arse reference will pass into Merrowford lore and survive the ages now," Ian said, lowering his eyes to his pie.

"Only if you continue announcing it in public eating houses. At present the witness circle is one Wood Elf and a pie."

The last of the pies disappeared more slowly while they talked about people instead of land.

"I was thinking of having a dinner with people over when the house is a bit more ready for it. Which then begged the question of whom—Aelira, Kanno, the Lifegiver and, maybe, the Waykeeper—although I'd have to spend some time with her to decide if I trust her. I think Kanno's face and camera itch would be quite amusing, if nothing else, when I explain who the guests really are. What do you think?"

Lethira did not answer immediately. Aelira was easy. Kanno too, although everyone would need to know before arrival if a camera was coming; Kanno herself would insist on that. The Lifegiver required a different thought.

"Yes, perhaps," Lethira said. "But because we want *her* there. Not because dinner at our house is treatment."

The Waykeeper earned the longest pause. Lethira had liked parts of her and distrusted parts of her. The road might change nothing, or much; until she returned, there was no person to invite.

"Spend time with her first," Lethira said. "Then we'll know whether we want her at our table."

The imagined table made her smile despite herself: Aelira, Kanno, a builder-god, perhaps another, and the two of them around their scarred wood.

"But I think we should wait until we have all six chairs."

"And I'm going to prevent any godly chair damage after waiting so long. I do consider the Lifegiver almost a friend. I actually have quite a small list of people here, really."

Lethira thought the Lifegiver was becoming Ian's friend too. His local circle was small: Lethira, Aelira, the Lifegiver perhaps, and people he knew well enough to enjoy without yet inviting into their home.

"Does that bother you?" she asked.

"It might. Not yet. A whirlwind romance consumes you a lot, then as you settle into something nice, something wonderful, a bit more space appears... I think I might find that needs something to fill."

Ian continued, "But I have friends in my reality too, and work, so it's not quite the same."

Then he asked, "What about you?"

Lethira counted the people who had actually been part of her recent life. She knew Wardens, Guild people, court people and old travelling companions; some were still friends despite years without seeing one another, but they were not presently part of her days.

"In recent times? Aelira. Isha. Thomas. Kanno is becoming someone I'd choose to spend time with even without impossible circumstances giving us a reason. After that are people I still think of as friends, but haven't seen in far too long."

She looked down at their joined hands. The first days with Ian had been crowded: dates, roads, gods, house-buying, sex, clerks, another impossible thing before the previous one had cooled. Now she could spend a morning arranging dirt and know she would meet him for lunch.

"I like noticing the rest of my life again," she said. "People I haven't seen. Work I might want. Places I might visit just because I want to."

"I'd like to meet some of your other friends."

Lethira's eyebrows rose, then her expression softened.

"I'd like you to."

Two names came first. Mirelen Brookshade, a Wood Elf Warden with a quieter manner than Lethira and an unfortunate memory for things Lethira preferred forgotten; and Vaelor Fernward, a former Warden who now helped manage an outer settlement and had developed a professional talent for complaining about administration.

"I like both of them," Lethira said. "Neither knows anything important about you beyond what I decide to tell them. Meeting you as the man I love seems a reasonable start."

"Any reason not to go now?"

Only practical ones. Lethira did not know exactly where either friend was that day.

"We could use the usual landing," Ian said, "then ask normally."

"The landing," Lethira agreed.

Ian stood, keeping her hand. "Let's find a nice quiet alley first to avoid becoming worshipped for performing miracles."

Lethira folded the map carefully and took it with them. A narrow service passage behind the shops gave them brick, baskets, a rain barrel and nobody looking their way.

"This should do," she said.

And they were there.

The Merrowford alley gave way to filtered green light, living wood and the familiar screened landing near Aelira's rooms. From there, Lethira led him into the settlement paths. The difference from Merrowford was immediate: buildings fitted among trunks and roots rather than pushing them aside, and Wood Elf movement passed above as often as along the ground.

At the first occupied Warden post Lethira recognised, she asked whether Mirelen was around. The woman sorting field markers said Mirelen had returned from a western circuit that morning and was probably near the lower practice trees.

The route downward became less architectural as they went. Platforms thinned. Warden use showed in worn landing places, narrow paths and old target marks on timber. Lethira explained that the lower practice trees were less a formal range than a place where people could make mistakes without collecting an audience.

Movement crossed above them.

A Wood Elf dropped from one branch to another, caught a lower limb with one hand and let her momentum carry her around it before releasing into the leaf-covered ground. She landed in a crouch, straightened, and recognised Lethira.

Mirelen was a little shorter and more lightly built than Lethira, with dark brown hair knotted high and field clothes repaired often enough that the seams no longer tried to hide their history. A short bow rested against a nearby trunk.

"Dawnleaf."

"Mirelen."

They embraced without ceremony. When they separated, Mirelen kept both hands briefly on Lethira's upper arms and looked her over.

"You've been gone long enough to become interesting again."

Only then did she look properly at Ian, then at the hand Lethira had resumed holding.

Lethira smiled. "Mirelen, this is Ian Kirk. The man I love."

Mirelen became very still.

"Ah. So you're *that* Ian."

The recognition was second-hand. Someone at the Warden post had mentioned, when Mirelen returned that morning, that Dawnleaf's recent visits sometimes included a foreign human named Ian. They had supplied no explanation beyond that.

"Should I be worried?" Ian asked in English.

What reached Mirelen was fluent local Elven. Her eyebrows rose before the meaning of the question seemed to catch up with the sound.

"Probably not. But you have just spoken my dialect better than most humans speak Common while holding Dawnleaf's hand after she introduced you as the man she loves. I think I'm entitled to curiosity."

"I wouldn't want to make any mistakes on Elven etiquette, so Lethira can handle your curiosity. At least to start with."

Mirelen looked at Lethira. "Sensible."

Lethira gave the smallest explanation available: Ian was extremely foreign, the language was behaving strangely, and he was not secretly fluent. Mirelen accepted that for the moment.

"If that is your way, interrogation can be scheduled in. After some of the people I've met with Lethira, that sounds a delight."

Ian looked slightly crestfallen as the two women led him towards a shaded platform built around one of the broader trunks.

"Don't worry," Lethira said. "I'm sure she can find something cruel later."

"I said I wouldn't *begin* with anything cruel," Mirelen replied.

They sat. Mirelen's first questions went to Lethira.

Lethira described the beginning without trying to compress the impossible parts into romance. She had agreed to meet Ian because Aelira asked whether she wanted to. He had been strange, polite where she expected arrogance, alarming where he seemed to think he was reassuring. Later he came back, knocked, and asked whether she wanted to go somewhere with him. He showed her her world from a place she had never imagined seeing it, then another world, and eventually asked whether he could see her again.

"Another world," Mirelen repeated.

"That is a longer explanation," Lethira said.

"I imagine it is." Mirelen looked from Lethira to Ian. "But the part where he came back and asked properly is considerably more romantic than the version that reached the Warden post."

"Annoyingly," Lethira conceded.

Ian sat and listened as the reunion found its own rhythm. They established that Lethira's recent visits to the settlement and Mirelen's western circuits had repeatedly failed to overlap. Mirelen held Lethira responsible; Lethira objected that this was not how distance worked. The house came next: old stone and timber west of Merrowford, stream behind it, garden returning slowly from weeds, roof still waiting for its repair window, and a new southern parcel put into both names that morning.

Mirelen listened until the shape beneath the property details became clear.

"You like it there."

"Very much."

Mirelen watched her for a moment, then tipped her head towards the absent house as though narrowing the question.

"The house?"

"Yes. And the life around it."

Mirelen was quiet for a moment, watching Lethira rather than the absent house. Then she asked whether Lethira was becoming respectable.

"No," Lethira said.

"Good."

Ian looked at Mirelen. "How did you meet Lethira? Was it a long time ago, at least by my inadequate measure of time?"

Mirelen glanced at Lethira before answering. By Ian's measure, yes: more than a century ago. They had both already been Wardens, though neither had accumulated quite so many reasons to believe she knew what she was doing. A storm had put them on the same outer circuit, checking fallen trees, damaged markers and whether anything unpleasant had used the disruption to come farther into the woods.

Mirelen had known Lethira by reputation before then: capable archer, occasional royal work, entirely too willing to talk while Mirelen was trying to listen. On the second day they disagreed over corrupted tracks. Lethira had been right. On the third they were wet, tired and dealing with animals dangerous enough to matter without becoming a legend. By the walk home, Mirelen no longer minded being assigned with her again.

"Then you repeat that often enough," Mirelen said. "Patrols. Training. People getting hurt. People recovering. Long stretches where nothing happens except rain and walking. Eventually somebody has been part of your life for longer than several human lives and neither of you remembers agreeing to it."

Lethira nudged her shoulder. "That was almost affectionate."

"Do not tell anyone."

Ian smiled. "Your secret is safe with me. I'm a trusted aide of the Wardens and your First Princess."

Mirelen looked at Lethira. "Trusted aide."

"Apparently."

"And the First Princess?"

"Also apparently."

Mirelen shook her head. "I leave you unattended for a few decades and this happens."

Ian bowed his head slightly.

Mirelen regarded the gesture. "He has better manners than you."

"That is an extremely low bar," Lethira said.

The easy silence that followed belonged to old friendship more than introduction. Somewhere beyond the practice trees an arrow struck wood. Leaves shifted overhead as another Warden crossed between branches.

Mirelen looked to Lethira. "Are you staying awhile?"

"For a while, yes," Lethira said. "We came to find you. I didn't arrange anything beyond that, and nothing else is demanding us this afternoon."

"Good," Mirelen said. "Then I don't have to become interesting quickly."

Mirelen eventually asked where Lethira's current work had gone. Lethira told her about the restored B-rank, Garran Holt's assessment and the Reed-Mauler drainage contract. Mirelen heard the details as another Warden would: one correction deserved, one shot Lethira disliked, one bank problem that mattered beyond the animals.

In return, Mirelen described her western circuit and several younger Wardens now taking paths she and Lethira had once covered automatically. She was senior enough to be expected to teach them while continuing to deny that age had made her an example.

Their conversation wandered into the archery range, then the rough woodland on the new parcel. Mirelen's interest sharpened when Lethira admitted she had not yet tested the longer stretch properly.

A branch curved across the practice ground perhaps twice a person's height above them. Another trunk stood several strides beyond it; a lower branch crossed back towards the ground. The route existed because somebody who knew trees could see it.

"You still use the upper turn?" Mirelen asked.

"Of course."

Mirelen remembered Lethira losing half a stride after the second trunk thirty-seven years earlier. Lethira remembered the history differently. Mirelen stood before the dispute could settle.

"Then perhaps you should demonstrate the correct one."

"Yes, my love, I think you should."

Lethira turned towards Ian with an expression that weighed affection against betrayal.

"Of course you do."

Mirelen laughed and moved towards the start.

Ian remained seated while the prose he experienced followed the run. His projected body stayed on the bench beside Mirelen's abandoned pack, but the narration carried the whole route, including the stretches hidden from any ordinary spectator by trunks, leaves and changes of height. Nothing about the course or the two women was altered to make that possible.

"I couldn't possibly keep up, being a lowly human. Good luck."

Ian left it ambiguous to whom he had wished the luck.

The two Wood Elves did not crouch like human sprinters waiting for a signal. They stood loose and upright, looked towards the first tree, and moved.

For Ian, the first surprise was how little either woman resembled a person trying to run quickly. There was no frantic acceleration. Lethira crossed the open ground in several long, economical strides and went upward almost as part of the same motion. One foot met the rising root of the first tree, the next found bark higher than Ian would have considered a step, and her hand touched the branch above only long enough to redirect momentum.

Mirelen reached it fractionally ahead of her.

Neither stopped.

The race passed into the trees.

Mirelen took the first heavy branch along its length, body lowering beneath an obstruction before she drove from its final few feet into the gap beyond. Lethira chose more height. She caught the same branch farther in, ran only two steps along it and launched towards the neighbouring trunk.

For a moment there was nothing beneath her but air.

She met the trunk feet-first. Her body compressed, changed direction and left it again almost immediately.

Ian had encountered Isha moving with extraordinary competence in the stories available to him. This was different. No opponent shaped the choices and no danger demanded efficiency. Lethira was simply moving through an environment her body and experience understood intimately.

The century in her showed less as caution than as an absence of hesitation. A branch bent and she already knew how much. A patch of bark darkened with damp and her foot landed somewhere else. A gap which looked too large from below became one stride, one hand, a swing of the hips and another landing.

Mirelen remained close.

She was quieter through the branches than Lethira, less inclined to spend height when a lower line remained available. At the disputed second trunk she dropped abruptly, caught the lower branch with both hands and let her whole body swing beneath it.

Lethira saw what she was doing.

"No."

Mirelen released at the far side. "It counts."

Lethira laughed while moving.

She did not follow. Instead she drove higher. One foot struck a branch above Mirelen's route. Her hand closed around another. For an instant she seemed almost suspended between them, body turned sideways through a space Ian would have approached with both hands and a careful discussion about gravity.

Then she was beyond it.

The final stretch descended.

Here the difference between them narrowed to almost nothing. Mirelen used the ground first, landing into a run through leaves and roots. Lethira stayed above for another heartbeat before dropping from a branch high enough that Ian's human instincts objected to the shortcut.

She landed lightly enough that the impact scarcely interrupted her stride.

The pale scar on the finishing trunk waited ahead.

Mirelen reached for it.

Lethira's hand struck the bark first.

By very little.

Both women ran several more strides before turning their speed into a stop. Mirelen bent forward with her hands on her thighs, breathing harder now, and looked sideways at Lethira. Lethira's breathing was quicker too as she pushed loose hair away from her face.

"You cheated the upper branch," Mirelen said.

"There was no intended line."

For half a second Mirelen simply stared.

Then both women began laughing.

Ian briefly applauded before realising he might look a bit silly.

"That was—" He corrected himself for the benefit of the people who had every reason to assume his view had been limited by the trees. "The small amount of it I could see was amazing."

The women returned at an easier pace.

"It looked very close to me."

"It was," Mirelen said. "Half a stride, perhaps less. She had the faster finish. I had the better middle."

Lethira disagreed with the word *better*. Mirelen disagreed with Lethira's definition of the route. The argument had clearly existed longer than Ian had.

He looked at Mirelen. "Your century of tolerance is finally receiving the recognition it deserves."

Mirelen lifted her flask in recognition. "At last."

Ian sat back, curious where the reunion would go next.

That proved dangerous for Lethira. Mirelen supplied the story of a spring patrol, a dead birch over a stream, and Lethira insisting a branch had been structurally sound until it ceased to be so beneath her. Lethira maintained that her feet had landed. Mirelen maintained that the feet had landed in the stream. Both agreed the bow had remained dry.

The laughter softened afterwards.

"I've missed this," Mirelen said.

"So have I."

Mirelen let the quiet last before mentioning Vaelor. He would, she said, become unbearable when he learned she had met Ian first.

"Why will he be unbearable? Maybe I should stay here," Ian began jokingly, "for my own safety. I'm sure Mirelen has many, many things to tell me about you."

"My love," he added quickly.

Mirelen explained that Vaelor treated any interesting news she heard first as evidence of a long campaign against him. She was visibly looking forward to the consequences. She also confirmed that she did, in fact, have many stories about Lethira.

"I can probably arrange them chronologically," she said.

Lethira objected.

Mirelen mentioned trousers in a thorn tree.

Lethira went still.

"I had forgotten about that."

"I hadn't."

"Oh, this is going to be great. I will have to come and visit when you're doing important adventure stuff, Lethira."

Lethira stared at Ian. Mirelen approved the division of labour.

Ian laughed. "The alternative is I take the B-rank jobs."

He opened his arms to indicate the current absence of B-rank field competence. "After helping to find a sheep, I'm sure it's easy to scale up."

Lethira assessed him with professional gravity. Sheep first, then Reed Maulers, then something with claws. Mirelen learned that Ian's contribution to the sheep job had mostly involved being present while Lethira found them and decided this was an excellent foundation for rapid advancement.

Ian pushed back. "Then we should take on the quest of meeting Vaelor. Mirelen, you should come and visit our home. Lethira has been gradually domesticating me; I can cut onions now."

"Onions," Mirelen repeated.

"Under supervision," Lethira said.

Mirelen accepted the invitation warmly enough beneath the joke. She wanted to see the house that had persuaded Lethira to own furniture. Vaelor, she added, was attached to an outer settlement and she knew where to find him.

"Lead on, Senior Warden Mirelen."

Mirelen objected to the invented promotion while fastening her bow at her shoulder. Lethira warned her that Ian had access to paperwork. Mirelen formally rejected all advancement.

Ian took Lethira's hand. "I'll try not to slow you down in discovering more dead trees."

"That happened once."

Mirelen began up the path. "Once that we're telling him about."

The route climbed. Platforms and broad living branches carried them above ground for stretches long enough that Ian's human body had to work harder than either woman seemed to notice. The slope itself remained manageable, but repeated rises, uneven footing and shallow climbs deepened his breathing.

Lethira noticed before Mirelen did. She did not announce it; her pace simply eased. When Mirelen later glanced back and registered the spacing, she slowed as well.

Ian smiled and nodded to them both.

The paths descended towards an outer settlement gathered among older trunks. There Ian saw a Wood Elf man beside a waist-high worktable, examining split timber as if two pieces had already disappointed him.

Mirelen called, "Vaelor."

He looked up. Recognition reached Lethira first, then Mirelen, then the unfamiliar human holding Lethira's hand.

Lethira introduced him simply. "Vaelor, this is Ian Kirk. The man I love."

Ian gave him something between a nod and a bow. "Pleased to meet you."

Vaelor's attention sharpened briefly at the flawless Elven that reached him from Ian's English, but he did not begin there.

"And you. Welcome, Ian Kirk."

Ian smiled and looked to Lethira.

She took the explanation. They had been eating lunch, Ian had said he wanted to meet some of her friends, and Mirelen had immediately begun damaging Lethira's reputation.

"Preserving history," Mirelen corrected.

Vaelor brightened.

Lethira pointed at him. "No."

"I've learnt a lot so far about"—Ian coughed—"Elven culture and traditions."

Vaelor looked towards Mirelen. "That sentence concerns me."

Ian raised one hand. "I'm still waiting to hear about the trouser incident, but I believe that is for a future lesson."

Vaelor stopped smiling, looked at Mirelen, then Lethira, and finally laughed when recognition arrived.

"You told him about the trousers?"

"I mentioned the existence of the trousers. Details remain preserved for later."

Ian attempted to look innocent, lowly, and of a lesser species.

Lethira watched the performance. "No."

Vaelor's eyebrows rose.

"He does that when he thinks being human should excuse him," Lethira explained.

Ian took her hand. "I'm learning."

"Slowly."

Vaelor moved them to a shaded table beyond the work awning before his afternoon disappeared entirely into the introduction. Ian and Lethira sat together on the low bench; Mirelen took a stool; Vaelor sat opposite.

Vaelor began with Lethira.

"How serious is this?"

"Very."

Lethira did not defend the answer with volume. She told him they had bought a home together and were building a life there. She was happy.

Vaelor absorbed that, then asked about the house. The answer told him nearly as much as the first one. Lethira spoke about the stream, the garden, the roof, chairs and mattress, and the scarred table she liked enough that Mirelen had apparently heard about it already.

Vaelor eventually asked what Ian did there.

"Maps things," Lethira said. "Learns useful skills. Occasionally buys land and then helps me put my name on it."

She added, almost as an afterthought, "And he works as a gardener."

Vaelor looked at Ian. "For whom?"

Ian pondered, searching for the right words.

"An older lady."

He explained only the gardening itself: beds cleared by hand, roots worked from soil instead of made to disappear, compost carried and mixed, plants set, and work that could occupy most of a morning when the ground was allowed to resist. He said nothing about the employer's identity or the financial arrangement.

Vaelor summarised the visible result: maps, land, cooking lessons and voluntary gardening for an older woman.

"I am not sure humans are *quite* feral." Ian considered some of them. "Although maybe some are."

Vaelor, who had met enough humans, accepted the qualification. Mirelen observed that enough Elves deserved it as well.

"I am but a humble human man."

Vaelor looked at Ian, then Lethira. "Is he always like this?"

"Frequently."

Mirelen had known him for only part of an afternoon but had already concluded that the humility became strongest whenever it was least credible.

"I might even learn the language one day."

Ian realised the mistake as his English became perfect Elven at the table. He covered his mouth.

Vaelor stared. "You don't actually speak Elven?"

"A very low-level magic spell, 'Pleasure of the Tongues.' Very unfortunate name. Very handy, though, as you can tell. Barely registers on the rank scale."

There was a beat of silence.

Mirelen failed first and laughed into one hand. Vaelor repeated the supposed spell name carefully, uncertain whether the magic, the name or Ian himself was the joke. Lethira said nothing to rescue him.

"And this supposedly insignificant spell gives you flawless local Elven?" Vaelor asked.

Ian shrugged and attempted again to look innocent and lowly.

"I reserve the right to become suspicious," Vaelor said, "if your other low-rank talents are equally convenient."

"I did manage to track a badger. With help."

Lethira supplied the bounded truth of the old Guild job: grain shed, tracks, coarse fur and an established sett, with Ian following the signs to the right category while she handled the field judgement.

Mirelen rearranged his developing curriculum aloud: language, badgers, onions.

Ian chuckled. "I do love her, though."

He squeezed Lethira's arm.

The humour around the table softened. Lethira turned to him, put her hand over his and said, "I know."

Mirelen lifted her flask to hide a small smile. Vaelor's gaze rested briefly on their overlapping hands before the conversation turned towards older news.

For a while Vaelor and Mirelen spoke with Lethira about people whose positions had changed over the decades. A Warden with an old knee had finally accepted less field work. An impatient apprentice now had apprentices. One route had shifted after years of repairs finally lost an argument with the hillside. The years showed themselves less through declarations than through names quietly moving from one role to another.

Then Vaelor turned back to Ian.

"You've told us that you love her. What do you want your life with her to look like?"

Ian took the question seriously.

"I'd be happy with every day being like almost any of the ones we've had: walks, adventuring, food, meeting interesting people..." He smirked a bit. "...waking up together, doing our own things."

His expression sobered.

"My life is short; it's probably half gone already. I don't want her to have regretted it when I'm gone, and I want her to remember it fondly for a very long time."

He looked towards Lethira. "So I'll do my best to make it memorable. And fun."

The table became quiet.

Lethira's fingers tightened around his. "I'll miss you," she said. "That isn't the same as regretting you." Her thumb moved once over his hand. "I knew you were human when I chose you. Don't spend the next forty years trying to pay future me in memories."

"I know I don't owe you; it's what I want for me as well as you. That memory you'll have means we both had a wonderful time."

Lethira's shoulder rested against his.

For a few breaths nobody spoke. Mirelen turned her flask between her hands. Vaelor looked out through the trees.

Only then did Ian's mouth curve. "I'm just hoping I can get to E-rank in anything other than vegetables."

The change of subject made Vaelor laugh. Mirelen suggested that vegetables were more dangerous than Ian understood.

"I'm slightly concerned by the courgettes; they sound D-rank."

Mirelen told him about one summer when somebody had planted too many beside a communal kitchen and the settlement had ended with courgettes being left anonymously outside other people's doors.

"That is not a monster classification," Lethira said.

"It is how infestations begin."

Ian looked at Vaelor. "Vaelor, you should come and visit us as well."

The direct invitation surprised him. He looked to Lethira; she smiled and confirmed it without hesitation.

"I'd like that," Vaelor said. "Give us enough warning that I don't arrive while you're still waiting for chairs."

"We may need more chairs at this rate..."

Lethira looked briefly alarmed. "We have waited this long for six. I intend to enjoy having six before you turn hospitality into infrastructure. After that, we can discuss benches."

Ian turned back to Vaelor. "How did you meet Lethira?"

Vaelor's expression changed immediately.

"No," Lethira said.

Ian had already asked.

Vaelor began with the important fact, according to him, that he had met Lethira before Mirelen did. Mirelen objected that he mentioned this every time. The story itself was less dramatic: an outer settlement, a footbridge partly lost to flood, and an upstream path people needed checked before improvised shortcuts became a second problem.

Lethira had arrived from another circuit, looked at the broken bridge and asked why nobody had put a warning marker farther back.

"She was right," Vaelor admitted.

Lethira brightened.

"I disliked her immediately."

The rest involved an overgrown alternate route, an argument about one slope, a usable line found before dark, and another day making the diversion obvious enough that children and people carrying loads would not take the damaged bridge by habit.

Vaelor said Lethira had asked whether he wanted to share the next circuit. Lethira said he had asked her. His remembered wording—*if you're travelling east tomorrow, we might as well use the same road*—did not settle the dispute.

Mirelen looked at Ian. "This is why they became friends. Neither will surrender a minor factual point after a century."

The talk wandered into routes, old work and the speed with which Wood Elf institutions could change after only sixty years of disagreement. Lethira told them in return about Merrowford: streets still familiar in shape, shops changed, the Guild recognisable with different people behind its counter, and a town she had once used as a base becoming the nearest town to home.

Vaelor asked whether she would visit more often now.

"I think so," Lethira said. "Not because I live closer. Because I've realised I want to."

"Good."

A breeze moved loose cord on the worktable. Farther into the settlement someone called that a meal was nearly ready.

Vaelor glanced towards the sound. "We're eating soon. If neither of you is in a hurry, stay."

"I'd like that," Ian said.

Lethira smiled. "So would I."

Vaelor said he would tell them there were three more. Mirelen, whose responsibilities had apparently ended that morning, would stay too.

"I'm sure it will be fine; the gods are on my side," Ian said. "Well, one of them."

Vaelor stopped arranging the basket. Mirelen looked at Ian. Both turned to Lethira.

She closed her eyes briefly. "That is an excellent example of why introducing him gradually was sensible."

Vaelor asked whether Ian had meant the phrase literally.

"Just a figure of speech from my home country."

"Convenient country," Vaelor said.

Lethira squeezed Ian's hand once beneath the table and let the cover stand.

Ian walked with his Elven hosts deeper into the settlement.

The paths here were lower and broader than those between settlements. Homes and work spaces gathered among immense trunks without forming rigid streets. Smoke from cooking fires drifted into the canopy. People noticed a human walking hand in hand with Lethira, but curiosity remained mostly a second glance.

Vaelor took them to a broad open shelter where tables stood beneath a roof woven through living branches. Food was already arriving: pots, baskets of bread, bowls of greens, roasted roots, and browned meat from the cooking fire.

"I think I'm ready for whatever—an inquisition of a human that would make the High Elves wince, or scandalous tales from before my birth of Lethira's errant youth." Ian glanced towards the meal. "Or maybe just some food involving leaves, or whatever you eat."

Mirelen gave him a long look. "Leaves."

The evidence against him accumulated openly across the tables.

Ian leaned close enough that only Lethira could hear. "I do enjoy the practical side of the education."

Her expression changed by almost nothing. "I know."

Ian went to the table and chose to sit next to Mirelen. Mirelen immediately noticed the empty place on her other side, then looked across at Lethira. Lethira simply took the place on Ian's opposite side.

"Interesting," Mirelen said.

"He's been making ambitious decisions all day," Lethira replied.

Ian waited for the others to begin before serving himself. Bread was torn by hand or taken in cut pieces. Roasted roots travelled in broad dishes. The stew answered its own protocol when Mirelen filled her bowl with the ladle, returned it to the pot and pushed the pot towards him.

"No hidden ritual," she said. "Take what you intend to eat. More later if you want it."

"Thank you."

Ian took a ladle of stew, favouring the meat, as was the way.

Mirelen noticed the selection. "So the human strategy is to leave the vegetables for everyone else."

Ian watched a little longer before deciding what to do with the bread. Dipping proved entirely normal; Vaelor had already pressed one edge into his stew to gather broth and beans. Ian copied him, then tried the other things on his place in the same way as those around him.

The meal loosened around the unfamiliar guest. Conversation overlapped farther down the table.

"It takes more than a few weeks to domesticate a human."

Ian bared his teeth at a piece of meat before eating it.

Mirelen watched. "Early stages."

"And occasionally ear appreciation," Ian said with a perfectly innocent expression and another, more intimate meaning hidden in the tone.

Lethira stopped with bread halfway to her bowl.

Mirelen looked between them. Vaelor, farther across, asked whether he wanted context.

"No," Lethira said.

Mirelen immediately did.

Ian attempted to subdue a rather aggressive root and left Lethira to take this one.

"He likes my ears," Lethira said. "That is all the context you're getting."

Mirelen's eyebrows climbed. Vaelor became interested in his stew. A faint warmth reached the tips of the ears under discussion.

Lethira nudged Ian lightly with her shoulder. "Continue fighting your vegetable, my love."

"They didn't teach me how to defeat Elven cooking at"—Ian paused—"aide college."

"There is no aide college," Lethira said.

Mirelen thought there should be. Vaelor suggested its curriculum already seemed extensive.

The communal meal widened around them. Someone complained about a roof brace; two younger Wood Elves compared patrol routes; an older woman objected to the amount of salt in the greens. For several minutes Ian was simply another person eating at the table.

When Mirelen eventually asked when they were bringing her to the house, Lethira said, "When the chairs arrive."

Vaelor laughed. Mirelen accepted the condition as if friendship had always depended on furniture.

Ian continued eating until he had his fill. The stew went first, assisted by bread whenever broth remained to justify it. The roasted roots proved less hostile than their reputation. Empty bowls gradually migrated towards one end of the table as afternoon leaned towards evening.

"Let's head back," Ian said. Then to Vaelor and Mirelen: "It's been lovely to meet you both."

Mirelen rose and embraced Lethira before looking back at Ian. "You too. And you may visit again even if Dawnleaf is inconveniently elsewhere."

Lethira looked betrayed.

Vaelor's farewell was quieter. "I'm glad she brought you."

Then Mirelen added, "Next time, trousers."

"Goodbye, Mirelen," Lethira said.

They left to laughter.

The walk back through the settlement stayed at the easier pace established earlier. By the time they reached the familiar screened landing, the voices behind them had faded into forest.

Lethira stopped beside Ian. "Well. You've met my friends."

"Shall we return home, my Lady?"

"Yes, my aide. I've had enough Elven history used against me for one afternoon."

She stepped closer and took his hand properly.

"Take me home."

And they were home.

The familiar front room returned around them: scarred table, quiet house, western holding beyond the walls. After a few moments Ian embraced her.

"I enjoyed meeting your friends. Thank you for taking me."

Lethira's arms came around him at once. "I'm glad you wanted to meet them."

She rested her cheek against him. The afternoon had reminded her how much she had missed people who knew her before gods, impossible humans and property deeds. Now those people knew Ian too.

"I liked that," she said.

"I'd like to see them again. And I can... speed up... your journey if you want to go see them yourself."

Lethira considered the offer while remaining in his arms.

"Sometimes. I don't want every visit to become a doorway merely because walking takes longer. The journey is part of seeing people too."

Then she smiled. "But if distance is the only reason I don't spend a day with Mirelen or Vaelor, I may occasionally abuse my access to an extremely accommodating aide."

Ian checked the concealed analogue face beneath his bracer. The hands sat a little past **VII**: a little after seven in the evening, Merrowford-local time.

"A walk in our extensive grounds?"

"Our vast estate," Lethira said.

She glanced towards the rear of the house, where the stream and jointly owned southern parcel waited beyond the garden.

"Yes. Let's go south. No surveying. No deciding what anything should become. Just walk while the light lasts."

Ian walked next to her and whispered, "I am fond of your ears—at least, of how you respond when I touch them."

He linked his arm through hers.

Lethira looked sideways at him. "You are becoming dangerously well educated in that subject."

The slight warmth at the edge of one ear betrayed her. She drew his linked arm closer.

They continued to walk.

Beyond the garden, household attention fell away. Grass grew unevenly beside the stream. The easiest line wandered between trees instead of deserving the name *path*. Evening warmth had begun leaving the damper hollows, and the house gradually disappeared behind foliage.

Lethira let the land choose their pace. Where the ground softened she guided them a little higher. For a while neither spoke. The day had already contained clerks, pies, old friends and rather more historical embarrassment than she had expected to share with her lover.

"I should have known introducing you to old friends would become dangerous," she said at last. "But I'm glad we went."

As they passed one of the broader trees, Ian playfully pinned her to it.

"You should be careful walking with barely domesticated humans in the woods. Who knows what they might do?"

Lethira's surprise lasted only a heartbeat before amusement returned.

"I suppose I have been terribly careless. Alone in the woods, nearly dark, with an unruly human. Whatever shall I do?"

Ian slid one hand into her hair and closed his fingers. He brought his lips close to hers, then held her there with almost no distance left between them.

"What shall you do?" he whispered.

Lethira held his gaze, then moved. A quick shift of weight and the difference between human strength and a century-trained Wood Elf became practical. Ian found the tree at his own back instead, Lethira close against him, one hand holding his wrist easily against the bark.

She brought her mouth almost to his. "Remember that I know these woods better than you do."

Ian's free hand reached down and squeezed her rear. The surprise, however brief, was enough to bring her lips against his, and Ian kissed her. Lethira accepted the stolen advantage for only a moment before drawing closer and returning the kiss. When she finally broke it, she stayed near enough that their foreheads almost touched.

"Cheating," she said, with no real complaint.

"I'm clearly learning."

Ian leaned up again and kissed her deeply.

Lethira met him at once. Her hand left his wrist and moved behind his neck, holding him close until the kiss had lost the last of its teasing distance.

When she drew back, Ian took her hand.

"Walk or... something else?"

Lethira looked towards the river showing through the trees.

"Walk. We came out here for moonlight and our absurdly extensive estate. I intend to have both."

She kissed him once more, slowly. "Something else can remain an excellent reason to walk home again."

Ian briefly stroked her ear. "Lead on."

Lethira closed her eyes for the smallest moment, then reclaimed his hand and led them onward.

The ground fell gradually towards the river. Their own woodland gave way first to the southern edge of the parcel and then to the lower town-controlled ground. Here the route secured that morning mattered more than ownership: the firmer higher line curved around the old flood channel rather than taking the most direct descent.

There was no finished path yet. Grass brushed their boots, and dark soil and reeds warned of wetter ground before either stepped into it. Lethira chose the easier line without turning the evening into field work.

The broad river appeared properly between the trees at last.

By then the remaining daylight had thinned. Merrowford lay beyond the bend as faint human distance rather than intrusion. The water held strips of pale evening between darker reflections from the bank.

Ian leaned against Lethira's shoulder.

"Definitely."

They stayed there for a while.

The last light withdrew slowly. Moonlight found the water after it had mostly abandoned the trees. Lethira looked down at herself with exaggerated concern and confirmed that she remained a Wood Elf.

Neither of them improved anything. No bench appeared; no path made itself smooth. The grass, reeds and wet ground remained where they were.

Eventually they turned homeward.

They returned through the darkening woodland at an unhurried pace, the stream becoming familiar before the house itself appeared among the trees. What followed at home was the *something else* they had postponed beside the river.