## Chapter 460 — Before the Cart

By the time Lethira reached the lane, the house had disappeared behind trees. She did not look back for it. The road towards Merrowford had become familiar quickly enough that her attention could wander without slowing her feet. Damp still lingered in the deeper wheel-ruts, but the morning was drying above them. Sunlight reached the lane in broken pieces through the canopy. Somewhere beyond a hedge, sheep were objecting to something with the persistence of animals whose grievance required no audience. Lethira walked at the pace she used when she actually meant to arrive somewhere. Their house was less than an hour from Merrowford even when she allowed herself to notice trees, tracks and whatever else a roadside offered. A purposeful walk shortened it further. Years ago Merrowford had been a useful human town: Guild work, an inn, supplies and roads leading elsewhere. Now she left home to ask a man about cartloads of earth and expected to return before much of the day had gone.

Nothing ceremonial had marked that change. There was simply a road she had begun thinking of from the other direction. The west gate appeared through traffic before she had finished deciding whether that mattered. Merrowford was already properly awake. Carts competed for space with pedestrians near the gate. A woman carrying two baskets of greens argued with a driver whose wheel had occupied more road than she considered morally acceptable. Bread reached the street from somewhere ahead, mixed with horses, dust and smoke. Lethira passed through without attracting more attention than a Wood Elf carrying folded papers usually earned. The earthwork yard lay beyond the busier market streets, where buildings opened enough to accommodate carts without requiring everyone nearby to become expert at reversing them.

The yard looked much as it had on her first visit. Covered soil piles occupied one side. Timber stood stacked beneath the open shed. Broken stone had been separated from material somebody might later want to put arrows into. One wheel lay flat on trestles while two workers argued quietly about its iron rim. The broad man with dirt settled permanently into the lines of his hands was measuring a cart bed. He recognised Lethira before she reached him.

"You marked it?"

"Yes."

That was enough to move the conversation out of the yard's traffic. He finished the measurement, made a charcoal note on a board and gave the cart back to the worker waiting beside it. Only then did he turn his attention fully to Lethira. She opened the range notes. The marks themselves were rough because they only needed to survive long enough to be understood: firing line, targets, bank ends, approach. She had added a short line where the older cart track entered the holding and another where the turn between mature trees became uncertain.

The earthworker studied the page without pretending it replaced the ground.

"How close to this turn are the trees?"

"Close enough that I want you to see it."

"Good answer."

Lethira liked him slightly more. He asked whether the ground near the bank was dry underfoot. She described the slope and firmer upper soil, then the softer line nearer the stream which she did not want carts using. He asked whether the old vehicle marks came all the way to the range.

"No. They get us most of the way without crossing anything I care about."

"So the last part is the problem."

"Probably."

There was no reason to repeat their earlier discussion about breadth, clean fill and a sloped face. Neither had forgotten it. What mattered now was when he could inspect the site. Today was possible only if Lethira wanted to wait until late afternoon. Two carts were already committed elsewhere, and the man intended to see another job before midday. Tomorrow morning was cleaner.

"Early?" he asked.

"Not before breakfast."

That earned the beginning of a smile. "Reasonable." They settled on mid-morning, after his first yard work but before the day belonged entirely to cart movements. He would walk out rather than bring a loaded cart to ground he had not approved. If the approach worked, he could price the bank and decide whether ordinary clean fill was enough or whether some retention at the sides would save maintenance later. Lethira made sure the visit committed them to nothing beyond the visit. The earthworker looked at her as though this particular caution had already become part of her description.

"I remember."

Lethira nodded. The point of tomorrow was to let him see the ground, not to acquire a price through momentum once he arrived. His remembering that saved them both another round of caution. "Good."

"You were the one who refused to let me estimate dirt I hadn't seen."

"Also good."

That concluded the useful part. Before she left, the earthworker mentioned that the yard currently had access to clean excavated soil from foundation work east of town. He did not promise it. The material was already going to several jobs, and whether it suited the range depended on what he found tomorrow. Lethira accepted the information in the category in which it had been offered: potentially useful, not yet theirs. She folded the notes. One future problem now had an hour attached to it. Outside the yard, Merrowford had become busier. Lethira could have gone directly home. Instead she turned towards the Guild.

The decision required less thought than it once would have. The Guild stood near enough to the market that stopping there cost little, and Brannock had become one of those people who might have useful information even when Lethira did not intend to take a contract. The hall smelled of leather, stew and damp cloth despite the dry morning. A pair of adventurers occupied the notice board nearest the entrance. One was explaining why a posted escort paid less than the road deserved; the other seemed unconvinced that complaining near the paper would improve the rate.

Brannock was behind the counter. Her cup was fresher today. She looked at Lethira's empty hands, then towards the door.

"No human."

"Apparently I can cross town unsupervised."

"I'll update the record."

The joke needed no explanation. Brannock had seen enough of Ian and Lethira arriving separately to accept that a Warden could conduct her own morning without misplacing her aide. Lethira rested one forearm against the counter.

"The dirt has progressed."

Brannock considered this grave institutional news. "Congratulations."

"He is coming tomorrow morning to look at the ground."

Brannock glanced at the notes beneath Lethira's arm, then at the contract board beyond her. The range had clearly advanced from theoretical dirt to potentially expensive dirt. "Then I withdraw my congratulations until after the price."

That was fair. Lethira asked about the Reed-Mauler bank. The repair had continued through the previous day. Once the crew opened the damaged section properly, the undermining had proved local rather than part of a longer failure. The old stone courses which still had support were being kept. Lost fill behind the damaged stretch had been cleared back to firm material before rebuilding. No further collapse had appeared overnight. The reed-side path remained closed. Lethira listened, asked whether water was still cutting beneath the repair and received the answer she wanted: not at the rebuilt section so far. They would know more after another wet period.

That was as far as the problem needed to belong to her. She had found the animals. She had found the damaged bank. Other people were now doing work they actually knew how to do. Her attention wandered towards the contract board. Brannock noticed.

"You're becoming predictable."

"I have not taken anything."

"Yet."

The nearest B-rank notice involved a road crew asking for an armed sweep ahead of repairs in broken woodland north-west of town. Another concerned repeated damage around charcoal burners farther east, with the cause uncertain enough that the Guild had raised the grade until somebody established whether the problem was animals, monsters or people. Lethira read both. Neither demanded immediate action, which was almost disappointing. She had spent enough of her life responding to work that mattered now. Merrowford's board still contained emergencies, disappearances and dangerous roads, but it also contained problems which could wait until tomorrow while a competent person chose whether to care.

She left both notices where they were. Brannock said nothing, which helped. Lethira looked farther down the board and found the missing chickens still present.

"No."

"I didn't say anything."

"You were thinking loudly."

Brannock's mouth moved. Behind Lethira, the board still held more work than any one adventurer could claim. She pushed away from the counter.

"If the charcoal one is still there after the range visit tomorrow, I may look properly."

"I'll alert the charcoal burners that hope exists."

"Don't frighten them."

Brannock returned to her ledger. That left Lethira in town with no urgent business. She stood outside the Guild for a moment while people moved around her. This was the sort of gap she had once filled automatically with work. Instead she started towards the market with nothing important to buy and found that surprisingly pleasant.

She stopped at a stall selling cord long enough to discover she did not need more cord. A metalworker displayed simple hooks which might eventually be useful in the shed; she left them there because eventually was not a purchasing argument. At a produce stall she inspected onions out of habit, thought of Ian's current level of vegetable competence, and bought none because there were onions at home. The bakery from yesterday reached her by smell before memory. Lethira slowed. Small savoury pies occupied the same trays behind the counter. Beef and onion on one side. Chicken and leek on the other.

The baker recognised her only as somebody who had eaten there recently, which was exactly the degree of recognition Lethira preferred. She bought two: one beef and onion, one chicken and leek. The baker wrapped them for carrying rather than serving them hot on pottery. They would not remain oven-warm through the walk home. Lethira found she did not mind. Ian had declared pies a principal weakness; the least she could do was test whether the condition survived cooling. She tucked the packet beneath one arm. The market thinned as she left the centre. Near the west side of town, she passed a furniture frontage and caught herself looking through the open door.

Not their chair maker. Wrong shape in the displayed backs. She kept walking. Six chairs existed somewhere between timber and completion. Mirelen had accepted furniture as the condition for visiting. Vaelor had accepted the invitation with considerably less concern about seating. The Waykeeper remained somewhere on her road. The Lifegiver might eventually sit at their table if being invited there meant something other than care being performed at her. Aelira was already on the list of people they wanted to ask. Kanno would probably look at the scarred table before anyone sat down. The imagined room had acquired too many people for furniture which had not yet arrived.

Lethira smiled and continued towards the gate. Outside Merrowford, the road quieted quickly. The town remained behind her in wheel noise and smoke. Fields gave way to hedges, then the longer tree line around the lane home. The wrapped pies shifted lightly beneath her arm. Her range notes remained folded at her belt with tomorrow morning now attached to them. She had spent the morning wanting a bank, visiting the Guild, considering work and deciding against unnecessary hooks. Ian had crossed her thoughts only intermittently.

She wondered whether he had stayed home. If he had found something else to do, he would tell her if he wanted to. If he had spent two hours staring at maps, she would eventually discover another colour had appeared on Merrowford. If he had somehow become involved with a god while she was arranging dirt, that would be extremely Ian and therefore insufficiently surprising. Lethira frowned at the road. That last possibility was perhaps more plausible than it should have been. She did not hurry. The house came back into the world gradually: first the familiar turn, then the line where trees opened enough to suggest the holding beyond them, then the roof through branches. Home.

Lethira left the lane, crossed the front ground and climbed the small rise towards the door. The packet of pies remained tucked safely beneath her arm. Tomorrow morning an earthworker would come and decide how much dirt stood between her and finally shooting there. Today still had most of itself left. Lethira opened the front door and stepped inside. Ian was sitting at the scarred table, drinking some kind of herbal tea that might or might not have deserved the name. A selection of dried leaves, stems and wrapped bundles had spread across part of the kitchen work surface behind him in a pattern that looked less like preparation than evidence.

"Hello, my love. How was your morning?"

Lethira closed the door and looked first at Ian, then at the mug. Her expression became professionally suspicious.

"I leave you alone for one morning."

She set the wrapped pies beside him before leaning down to kiss him. The kiss lasted long enough to make the return home more important than whatever Ian had done to the kitchen, and when she straightened she opened the packet enough to show both pastries.

"My morning was good. The earthworker is coming tomorrow, mid-morning. He wants to see the marked approach before he'll tell us what the backstop will actually cost, which remains annoyingly sensible. I stopped at the Guild as well. The Reed-Mauler bank is holding so far, and there is a charcoal-burner problem on the B board that I might look at after the range visit tomorrow if nobody else takes it first."

Her attention returned to the mug. "And I brought you chicken and leek because apparently I am encouraging your principal weakness."

Lethira sat opposite and studied the contents of his drink. The pies could wait; the cup had been assembled without anyone who actually knew what the dried bundles were meant to become, and the kitchen behind him suggested several candidates had been involved. "What exactly did you put in that?"

Ian pointed towards the selection of herbs and other things spread through the kitchen's experimental centre.

"Whatever they are?"

Lethira stood again. The inspection took longer than Ian might have hoped. One bundle she returned at once. A second she smelled and set beside the mug. Another earned a slow look towards him before she separated it from the others.

"Some of these are meant for hot drinks. Some are mostly for cooking." Her finger moved towards one of the less successful candidates. "And that one would have been better after several hours becoming part of a stew."

Lethira looked into his mug, then at Ian. The drink smelled more culinary than dangerous, which left amusement free to win over concern. Her mouth twitched. "You've invented soup-adjacent tea."

"Only possible with omnipotence."

Ian smiled at her and looked at the pie.

"Are you trying to take advantage of my feral human instincts with pie? Because it's working."

Lethira leaned one hip against the table.

"Obviously." She slid the chicken-and-leek pie towards him.

The pastry crossed the table as both evidence and reward, safely identifiable in a way the cup was not. Lethira settled back against the table edge, satisfied that at least one part of Ian's unsupervised morning could be managed through known ingredients.

"I have observed the animal in its natural habitat. It responds well to pastry, affection and occasional supervision around unidentified herbs." Her eyes moved briefly towards the kitchen. "Although apparently not enough supervision."

The kitchen joke had run its course. Lethira looked back at Ian, interested now in the part of the morning that had not left physical evidence on the work surface. "And how was your morning?"

"I went to see the Waykeeper. Between ways."

Lethira's attention left the tea. The humour simply stopped. Her hand, which had been resting near the wrapped beef-and-onion pie, became still against the table.

"You went looking for her while she was still on the road."

Lethira remembered their earlier conversation: the Waykeeper had chosen a journey whose length and ending were meant to remain hers. Her eyes stayed on Ian.

"I told you I thought we should leave her to decide when she came back. Why did you go?"

"I was worried about her—not as much as I was about the Lifegiver. I didn't ask about her returning, just how she was doing. At least to start with. She's still on the journey after I left."

"I understand why you were worried. I still wish you'd left the first approach to her." Lethira kept her eyes on him. "Once she knew you were there, did she want you to stay?"

"Yes. She asked me to observe one of her choices—not talk or intervene, just observe. It was tough, watching her."

Ian gave her the broad shape rather than reconstructing every life the road had shown. He had arrived without announcing himself and stayed beyond the Waykeeper's awareness until the next fork began to form. Before she chose anything, he made himself visible, brought more of her own apples and asked whether she was all right. She was not, entirely. The road had shown her harm caused by intervention, happiness produced by it and other branches which became different rather than worse without her hand.

The Waykeeper then invited Ian to witness one choice on her terms: unseen by the people inside it, silent while it unfolded and changing nothing. A small intervention at a flooded village had steered one family towards a particular road. Both that history and the one in which she did nothing contained love, grief, useful work and harm. She eventually continued through the history without her interference and admitted that she had remembered the original choice as one of the good ones.

Looking farther down the generations had not solved the problem; it had merely given the Waykeeper more consequences with which to justify herself. Ian offered *Keeper of Ways, not Chooser of Ways* as a question rather than a cure. She saw immediately that even opening a bridge or mountain road changes the choices around it, but wanted to consider whether keeping a way required choosing who should walk it. She also invited Ian to return, though not at every fork.

When she asked to see one uncertain choice of his, Ian chose the Demon Lord. He opened the memory from when he left Merrowford alone, keeping what had passed privately between him and Lethira outside it. The Waykeeper saw his anger, his deliberate provocation, the Demon Lord's attempts to end and isolate him, and Ian's decision to remove her brother's divine authority. She understood both why he had acted and why he disliked the judgement he had made while angry.

Ian then told her about the choice she could not inspect through her road: asking the machine to create this reality. He had not designed individual people or events; later questions about its gods and their fall had become history through a mechanism he did not fully understand. The Waykeeper could find no road through that causality and no adequate word for whether it was creation, discovery or something else. Lethira became very still at the knowledge that another builder now knew.

Near the end, Ian told the Waykeeper that her siblings had tried to reach her. She intended to answer them and then continue walking. He also invited her to the possible dinner at the western house; she accepted only if Lethira wanted her there. By the time Ian finished, the experimental tea had cooled considerably. Lethira sat opposite him with both hands around her uneaten pie. Finally she reached across the table and put her hand over Ian's.

"I'm glad she asked you to stay. And I'm glad she's still walking." Her thumb moved once against his fingers.

"I'm glad you told her about her brother too. Somebody in that family needed the truth without us turning it into a strategic briefing first."

Lethira held his gaze. She still disliked the uninvited first step onto the road; the Waykeeper's later invitation was equally real, and flattening one into the other would make the account easier than it had been.

"I still wish you hadn't gone looking for her. But what you did after she found you matters, and I'm not going to pretend it doesn't because I disagreed with the first step."

Then another part of the account caught up with her. Her eyes narrowed slightly. "You told her how you think this reality came to exist."

The enormity of it sat between chicken-and-leek pie and soup-adjacent tea. Lethira absorbed that for another moment.

"And you apparently invited a builder-god to our house while you were there."

The impossible disclosures had arrived while two cooling pies waited between them and Ian's failed tea experiment occupied the kitchen. One corner of Lethira's mouth finally lifted; the scale mismatch was too complete to improve.

"That is quite a morning for someone I left unsupervised with herbs."

"There was more to going to see her than concern, though that was part of it. Every time I saw the Lifegiver, I wondered what would happen if the Waykeeper was getting worse and returned dangerous. How would I feel if I'd done nothing? Not about her journey—about *her*. But that wasn't the push."

Lethira kept her hand over his. The Lifegiver had admitted, in front of Lethira and Aelira, that something in her had gone badly wrong while retaining enough power to make that wrongness catastrophic for people who could not resist her. Lethira had seen enough of that struggle herself to understand why Ian's concern had become personal. The Waykeeper was different, but not harmless. Lethira had met her before the road and knew how much manipulation could coexist with genuine affection, curiosity and sincere belief in freedom.

Lethira's fingers closed gently around his. "All right. I understand that part better. If concern wasn't what pushed you over that morning, what did?"

"I'm not sure if I told you, but the normal way I experience this world is through 'chapters'?"

Lethira's expression changed from concern to concentration. The new word did not merely rename the prose-mediated experience she already understood; it described how the machine organised events for Ian before he became an active participant inside them.

"You've told me that you receive this world as writing rather than seeing and hearing it the way I do. And I've seen the machine give people pieces of that writing before." She glanced briefly towards the folded Merrowford map, separating one kind of mediated knowledge from another. "I don't think you've ever told me that chapters are the ordinary shape of it for you."

Her attention returned fully to Ian. "So when you're here with me, there is also a written account of what happens?"

"Yes, but this is different. I interact in almost real time. When I started this—before I entered the world, as it were—the reality machine typically presented me with options. I'd select one, or steer if I felt like changing it."

Lethira listened without interrupting. The explanation placed another layer between Ian's choices and the lives around them: sometimes the machine did not wait for a direct command, but presented directions he could accept, alter or leave alone.

"It offered me an option this morning: the Sun Father and the Lifegiver meet."

Lethira went still. Until now, she had understood Ian's machine mostly through things it had already done: doors, protections, impossible demonstrations, answers and the body sitting opposite her. She knew he could ask it questions and direct it. She knew it sometimes supplied implementation he had not specified. An offered chapter was stranger. It meant the machine could present a direction involving people who had their own lives and choices, while Ian remained outside them deciding whether to read, steer or intervene elsewhere. Lethira glanced down at their joined hands.

"So you saw that possibility, and instead of choosing it you went looking for the sister who wasn't in it." Her eyes lifted to his. "Did the option make you think something had happened to her?"

"No, first I read the chapter."

Lethira's eyes narrowed slightly. That changed the order of things. Ian had not been reacting to a title or an abstract possibility. He had read an account of the Sun Father and Lifegiver together before he decided what to do next.

"So you knew what happened between them before you went to find the Waykeeper."

She studied his face.

"What did you read?"

"The Sun Father concerned me. I read it as him thinking—or having thought—that I might have done something to her. This was after they discovered the Worldsmith had pressed the button."

Ian gave her the broad shape rather than repeating the chapter word for word. The Lifegiver had discovered the Worldsmith's absence and told the Sun Father about the mortal-life agreement. His anger that she had known and kept silent widened when he learned that Ian had removed the Demon Lord's divine authority. Light tightened, the garden answered with uncontrolled growth, and both builders stopped before anger became a contest between portfolios.

Ian's name entered the argument, as did Lethira's and Aelira's. The other four builders had now encountered the same improbable arrangement from different sides: Ian supplied power they could not classify, while the women beside him supplied judgement which did not become his merely because he protected them. The Sun Father had begun revising his earlier classification of them as attendants gathered around the true authority.

When the siblings tried to reach the Waykeeper and received no answer, both nearly turned their own compulsions into permission to search. They stopped at what they actually knew: their sister was absent, Ian had reached her realm and they had no evidence that she was harmed or required rescue. That was what had worried Ian. *Ian had reached her* and *she no longer answered* now stood next to each other in the Sun Father's reasoning.

The changed divine balance frightened both gods, but neither treated fear as proof that Ian had done wrong. They agreed to tell each other if the Waykeeper answered or the Worldsmith returned. The Lifegiver also admitted that she should have reported the Worldsmith's confirmed absence and the Demon Lord's loss of authority. She had not yet told Ian about the conversation, partly because she was not his clerk and partly because she wanted him to discover that the gods could act without him arranging it. By the time Ian finished, Lethira had forgotten about her pie. Her hand remained over his.

"I can see why that pushed you." Lethira looked at Ian for several quiet seconds.

"Yes, but I honestly have been thinking of her. This just pushed me over. I broadly trust the Lifegiver. I think she is a friend, or..." Ian smiled at the old Kanno reference. "Friend-shaped."

"I still don't trust the Sun Father. But that might be me."

Lethira remained quiet. Ian's different relationships with the two builders were visible even from her side: one had become somebody he visited to garden, while the other was still somebody they approached behind explicit protection.

"Anyway, that's why I went, got a bit emotional, and asked her to contact her family, so hopefully..."

He shrugged and kissed Lethira's hand.

"I thought this god shit was done. I hope I'm wrong and it's just his normal personality and me being a bit paranoid."

Lethira turned her hand beneath his so their fingers remained caught together. "I don't think you're imagining it. The Sun Father stopped before suspicion became permission, but one conversation did not erase the man who decided resistance justified correction."

Lethira's mouth curved faintly. "As for the Lifegiver, friend-shaped seems about right. She likes you. You like her. Apparently this now expresses itself through gardening debt and apple juice."

Ian walked around the table and hugged her where she sat. Lethira's arms came around his waist immediately. For a few moments she simply held him there, cheek resting against him, the half-forgotten pies and questionable tea left on the table behind them.

"I know." Her hands tightened slightly at his back.

She stayed against him. The house had gone quiet around them again, with tomorrow's practical work waiting safely outside the room and no divine answer required before either of them could eat.

"I was quite pleased with 'Keeper of Ways, not Chooser of Ways'."

Ian smiled. Lethira tipped her head back to look at him from within his arms.

"You should be. It was annoyingly good." Her hands settled at his waist and amusement returned to her face. "Just don't become unbearable because you accidentally said something useful to a god."

"I gave her some more apples for her journey though."

The detail pulled the whole encounter back towards the absurdly practical. Ian had crossed an impossible road, shared the history of reality and left partly concerned that a builder-god might run out of fruit. Lethira closed her eyes; her shoulders moved against him with restrained laughter.

"Of course you did." She looked up again. "You steal six apples from a goddess, then become concerned about her provisions and return with supplies."

Her hands tightened lightly around his waist. "I suppose the Waykeeper now has an Ian-managed fruit allowance. At least your divine interventions are becoming increasingly agricultural."

"At least I didn't get a second job. Who knows what selection of herbs and teas I'd have obtained then?"

Lethira looked towards the kitchen. The experimental centre remained exactly where Ian had left it, containing several innocent plants and at least one ingredient which had demonstrated that hot water was not sufficient qualification for tea. She considered the danger seriously.

"Then I withdraw any criticism of your employment situation. One divine gardening contract is apparently the maximum number compatible with kitchen safety."

A smile appeared.

"And tomorrow I am labelling things."

Ian laughed and, for once, kissed the top of her head. Lethira went very still. Then she tipped her face up towards him, eyes narrowed with exaggerated suspicion.

"Was that my move?" Her arms tightened around his waist before the accusation could become credible. "I approve."

She rested her cheek against him again. The reversal needed no negotiation; the kiss was familiar, affectionate and slightly funny only because Ian had noticed himself borrowing one of her habits.

"Yet another theft from the elves by humans. Head kissing."

The accusation gave Lethira enough material to work with. Her cheek shifted against him as she smiled, and she let the imaginary cultural grievance grow to match the seriousness Ian had assigned it. "Terrible. First land, then apples, now our ancient and closely guarded tradition of kissing people on the head. We shall never recover culturally. Though I may permit this particular theft to continue."

"So that ended up being a bit emotional. Then I went to tend to my..."

Ian hesitated, uncertain whether the word would carry cleanly between languages. The translation mechanism had handled gods, Guild law and several kinds of impossible geometry; domestic horticultural categories were apparently less certain.

"Lawn."

"In my reality."

The translation caught the meaning more successfully than the category. What reached Lethira was something close to deliberately kept grass around a house rather than a local term carrying the same habits and assumptions. She lifted her head from him.

"Your garden has a piece of grass you maintain simply so that it remains... grass."

Enough uncertainty remained in her expression to suggest that the idea had crossed worlds intact and still managed to seem faintly absurd. Then she smiled.

"So after discussing divine intervention, your brother's punishment and the creation of reality, you went home and looked after grass." Her arms remained comfortably around his waist. "That sounds healthier."

Ian sat on Lethira's lap and kissed her. The choice relied openly on what he already knew from their shared life: Lethira was much stronger than he was, and his ordinary human weight posed no practical difficulty for her.

"Thanks for listening to all of that. It was a lot."

Lethira adjusted one arm around his back and returned the kiss. The morning had taken them from carts and pies into gods, old choices and the machinery outside reality; having Ian physically close made none of those questions smaller, but it returned them to the room in which they were actually sitting.

"It was."

There was no complaint in it. Her other hand settled against his side, keeping him comfortably where he had put himself.

"But I would rather know what happened in your morning than discover later that you quietly visited a god, disclosed the nature of reality, reconsidered divine ethics and then went home to maintain grass."

A small smile touched her mouth.

"You don't have to make the difficult parts small for me, my love."

Ian reached for the chicken-and-leek pie, broke off a piece and offered it to Lethira. She opened her mouth and took it from his fingers. Then Ian took a bite himself.

"Oh, this is good."

It was. The pastry had lost its oven warmth on the walk home, but the chicken-and-leek filling remained rich and savoury, the sauce thick enough that cooling had improved it rather than ruined it. The crust still broke cleanly instead of becoming soft. Lethira chewed, considering.

"I was hoping your weakness survived room temperature."

One arm remained around him while she accepted another small piece.

"Apparently it does."

Ian stayed there for a while, sharing the pie between them: a human man sitting comfortably on the lap of an Elven Warden, feeding first her and then himself. Lethira accepted the arrangement with remarkably little concern for dignity. Her arm remained around his waist, steady enough that his weight required no visible accommodation. Every so often she leaned forward for the next offered piece rather than taking it from him, apparently deciding that if Ian had chosen to become both guest and serving arrangement, she might as well benefit properly. The pie diminished. So did the seriousness left over from the morning.

Outside, the stream continued behind the house. Somewhere upslope, lengths of cord marked a range which still needed a great deal of earth. Tomorrow would bring a man with opinions about carts and backstops. The gods could remain complicated elsewhere for a little while. Lethira swallowed another bite and looked at Ian from very close range.

"You know, this is considerably better than being worshipped."

Her fingers moved idly against his side.

"More pastry."

"Yes, my lady."

Ian started on the second pie and offered Lethira the first piece, which he had magically warmed back up. Lethira noticed the heat before she bit into it. Her eyes moved from the pie to Ian.

"That is a deeply irresponsible use of omnipotence."

She ate it anyway. The beef-and-onion filling had returned to something close to fresh-from-the-oven warmth. Pepper and softened onion came through more strongly, and the pastry released its smell between them. Lethira chewed slowly, still holding Ian comfortably on her lap. Then she leaned forward and kissed the corner of his mouth, catching a trace of pastry there.

"I may need to revise my position on divine intervention."

"Pie warming: permitted. Noted."

Lethira gave him the sort of look usually reserved for people abusing legal precedent.

"I will regret establishing this category."

They continued until the second pie was gone. The arrangement became less dignified as crumbs accumulated. Ian remained on Lethira's lap; she kept one arm around him while accepting whichever pieces he offered, occasionally stealing one before he had quite decided who it belonged to. The experimental tea sat cooling nearby, wisely excluded from further participation. By the end, the morning's gods had receded to something they could leave unresolved. The Waykeeper was still walking. The Sun Father was still difficult. The Lifegiver was still friend-shaped. Tomorrow, somebody would come and inspect a slope and decide how much dirt an archery backstop required.

For now, there were two empty pie wrappings on the scarred table and Lethira holding Ian as though his chosen seat were entirely ordinary. She looked at the remains of lunch.

"Excellent. We have successfully survived another morning of limitless power."

Outside, the stream went on moving through their land.