## Chapter 481 — The Questions

The message from Aelira arrived without ceremony.

A young Warden brought it up the western road in the middle of the afternoon, accepted water at the door and left again after confirming only that it was private and expected no written answer unless Lethira wanted to send one.

The seal was Aelira's.

Lethira carried the folded pages to the table before opening them.

There were only three.

That alone told her something. Aelira could have reproduced the entire meeting if she thought the detail mattered. Instead, she had selected.

The first paragraph disposed of the easy part.

The island report remained restricted. No proclamation, expedition or territorial claim would follow from it. Her father had specifically preserved the wording *no civilisation observed in surveyed area* rather than allowing anyone to turn a few miles of empty coastline into *uninhabited*.

Lethira approved of that immediately.

The next section was less comfortable.

Aelira had listed the King's questions rather than smoothing them into conclusions.

Could an ordinary ship reach the island?

Unknown.

Could a human ship?

Also unknown.

Could Lethira or Mirelen return without Ian?

Not by any route they presently possessed. Aelira had explained the temporary return-to-kitchen ability exactly as they had experienced it: usable independently once granted, bounded to that day's visit, and demonstrated only for the return journey.

Then came a question which made Lethira's eyes stop on the page.

*Does the evidence establish that Ian could transport an army?*

Below it, in Aelira's own hand:

*I said no. Father agreed the question therefore does not enter the brief.*

Lethira read that twice.

Not because she thought the answer wrong.

Because a king had needed to ask.

She continued.

Who knew about the island?

Ian. Lethira. Mirelen. Aelira. The King.

Had Ian named it?

No.

Claimed it?

No.

Taken resources?

A flower, followed by an irritatingly detailed note from Aelira reminding her that this did not constitute exploitation.

Had Ian shown any interest in ownership, settlement, minerals, trade or strategic use?

No evidence of any.

Why had he taken them?

Curiosity. Lethira and Mirelen's curiosity. A place where they could explore without Ian first obtaining the answers.

Aelira had added a line beneath that:

*Father found this harder to categorise than greed.*

Lethira smiled briefly despite herself.

Then she reached the part Aelira had apparently considered important enough to quote almost directly.

If knowledge of the island spread, the first political question would not remain the island for long. Other courts would ask who could open the route. Guilds would ask who licensed it. Merchants would ask who owned what returned. Temples would ask their own questions.

The King had referred to the access problem as *the road*.

Aelira had objected.

*Ian is not a road.*

The King's response followed beneath it.

*No. Which is why I do not want anyone building policy as though he is one.*

Lethira sat very still.

That answer was better than several alternatives.

It did not make the question disappear.

Aelira's final page dealt with boundaries.

Her father wanted notice before either of two circles widened: people who knew the island existed, and people physically taken there.

Aelira had challenged the distinction between notice and veto.

The King had explicitly said he was asking for notice, not claiming a veto.

When she asked what he intended to do with that notice, his answer had been recorded more fully:

Ask whether a new person needed to know what they were being shown.

Ask what they would infer about Ian.

Ask whether their presence accidentally created a claim.

Ask whether someone believing they were joining a Warden survey was in fact being introduced to a man capable of stopping time.

Lethira's mouth tightened slightly at that one.

It was difficult to object to the question.

It was equally difficult to enjoy somebody else asking it.

The final lines were Aelira's rather than the King's.

*He issued no order concerning whether you return. When he asked what Ian himself intends, I told him I do not know.*

*I thought you should know what he is asking before those questions ever reach you by another route.*

Lethira folded the pages back along their original creases.

For several seconds she remained at the table with one hand resting on them.

The King had not claimed Ian.

He had not claimed the island.

He had not even claimed authority over Lethira's decision to return.

And he had still asked whether Ian could move an army.

Both facts belonged in the same room.

Lethira looked towards the rest of the house.

“Ian?”

Ian stepped out of the kitchen, doing his best to serve through self-elected chore ownership.

“Yes, my love?”

Lethira looked at him, and some of the tension in her face eased simply because he was standing there doing something ordinary.

“Aelira wrote.”

She lifted the folded pages from the table.

“About her meeting with the King.”

Rather than immediately summarising everything, Lethira crossed the room and held the message out to him. Her thumb remained against the edge of the first page.

“He is not ordering anything. The report stays restricted. No expedition, no claim, no attempt to stop us going back.”

Her eyes stayed on Ian.

“But he asked whether the evidence establishes that you could transport an army.”

A pause settled between them before she continued.

“Aelira said no. He agreed that meant it did not belong in the brief.”

Lethira's expression remained thoughtful rather than alarmed.

“He also asked who knows, who can reach the island without you, whether you have claimed anything there, why you took us, and what happens politically if people discover that access depends on you.”

She glanced down at the pages.

“Aelira objected when he called the access problem ‘the road.’ She told him you are not a road.”

Lethira looked back up.

“He agreed.”

She held the message towards Ian.

“I think you should read the rest yourself.”

Ian read it.

Afterwards, he lowered the pages.

“Does Aelira not realise I could transport anything to anywhere? I wonder if she's hiding the limitless nature from her father. Or he hasn't quite realised yet.”

Lethira considered that carefully.

“Aelira knows enough that I don't think *she* believes transport is the limit of anything.”

She took the pages back only to flatten one of the folds against the table.

“She has seen more than Mirelen has. She has seen what you are from outside this world, seen the protection around us work against gods, heard what happened with the Demon Lord and the Worldsmith, and heard you explain what the machine can do.”

Her finger rested beside the line about the army.

“But I don't know exactly how she described your upper limit to him.”

Lethira looked at Ian.

“And I am not sure his question means he thinks an army might be too much for you.”

She tapped the wording once.

“He asked whether the **evidence establishes** that you can move one. Aelira said no, and he refused to put it into the brief.”

A faint, thoughtful crease appeared between her brows.

“That may be him doing exactly what he kept doing with the island. Refusing to turn *Ian can do things far beyond anything we understand* into *therefore Ian can perform this specific act* until somebody has actually established it.”

She paused.

“Which is irritatingly sensible.”

Her eyes returned to the message.

“But if Aelira has not told him that you regard your ability as effectively without a limit, then yes. That is a rather important distinction.”

“It's useful, but also perhaps not useful. If he thinks I have limits…”

Ian paused.

“Let's hope he's not like the North.”

Lethira returned to her chair.

Ian sat down on Lethira's lap, because she was bloody strong so why not.

“I need to stop thinking all monarchs here are like him, or like that Voss… man.”

Lethira adjusted without difficulty, one arm settling around his waist to keep him comfortable.

“Yes.”

She looked down at Aelira's letter on the table.

“Crownholt taught you a sensible lesson too thoroughly. Voss could make restraint sound like courtesy while deciding where Thomas slept, who he could see, what he demonstrated and how useful he was allowed to become. It makes sense that a king asking what you can move sounds familiar.”

Her fingers rested against Ian's side.

“But this King has had opportunities to behave that way already. So far, he hasn't.”

That was not a declaration of trust.

“He asks questions I don't always like. He thinks about armies, courts and leverage because he is a king. But when Aelira told him the evidence did not establish something, he left it out. When she challenged his authority, he distinguished notice from veto. And when she said you were not a road, he agreed instead of finding a more polite word for owning the road.”

Lethira leaned back slightly in the chair, Ian still secure on her lap.

“I don't think you should forget Crownholt.”

A small pause.

“I do think you should let this man earn his own mistakes.”

“Yes, I'm more worried that a perception of my limits might make him take action when there are none. That might get messy. But I will assume he's good until he proves me wrong. After all, he has a lovely daughter.”

Ian smiled at Lethira.

Lethira stared at him for a moment.

“That is an appalling basis for judging a monarch.”

Her arm tightened slightly around his waist, though the amusement faded as she considered the first part.

“The risk is real. If somebody believes there is a point where you can be contained, threatened or forced, they might make a decision they would never make if they understood there is no such point.”

She glanced towards Aelira's letter.

“But I would rather he understand enough not to test that than have you demonstrate it for his benefit. There is a large space between *he does not know your exact limit* and *he believes he can safely control you*.”

Her fingers moved once against Ian's side.

“So far, his questions sound like he is trying very hard not to confuse those things.”

A small smile returned.

“And Aelira is lovely. That part of your reasoning is at least accurate.”

Ian hugged her.

“At least we can go back, if you still want to.”

Lethira's arm came fully around him.

“I still want to.”

Her answer was immediate, but the rest came more thoughtfully.

“The King's questions do not change that. Aelira's precautions do. Ours do. The island itself certainly does.”

She glanced towards the folded message.

“We test the heavier arrows. We keep the return procedure clean. We decide carefully who knows and who comes.”

Then her attention returned to Ian.

“But yes. I want to see more of it.”

“We could fly over it.”

Lethira's eyebrows rose.

“That would change the expedition rather a lot.”

She looked down at the island letter, then back at him.

“A high survey would let us see coastline, rivers, forest breaks, mountains, perhaps signs of settlement we missed entirely from the ground.”

Her expression sharpened with interest, but not into immediate agreement.

“It would also make it very easy to mistake seeing a great deal for understanding it.”

One hand remained around his waist.

“So yes. I want to consider that.”

“You enjoyed flying to the Great Peak—and worrying Aelira afterwards.”

Ian smiled at her, remembering one of their earlier dates.

Lethira's expression changed with recognition.

“I did enjoy that.”

She looked faintly guilty about the second part.

“Although Aelira's reaction was less enjoyable once she learned where we had been.”

Her fingers traced idly along Ian's side as the memory settled beside the new idea.

“The flying itself was wonderful. Seeing the land from above without spending days reaching every ridge was useful as well.”

A small smile returned.

“And if we do it again, perhaps we tell Aelira *before* she has reason to imagine I have vanished somewhere impossible.”

“As well as my pure enjoyment of your face whilst flying, it might give you a different perspective on the place—not the animals and plants, but the size and scale. Maybe probe the 'uninhabited' part a bit more?”

Lethira smiled at the first part, then grew more thoughtful.

“Yes.”

She looked again at Aelira's letter, especially the line preserving *no civilisation observed in surveyed area*.

“From the ground, we have seen almost nothing. A few stretches of coast, one bay, one estuary and the edge of a lagoon. Flying would let us look for the things we could not reasonably search for on foot—smoke, cleared land, straight roads, fields, large structures, regular fires, boats, anything which breaks the natural pattern over a much wider area.”

The empty-looking coastline had never been evidence for an empty island, and the King's wording made that difficult to forget.

“We still would not prove nobody lives there.”

Lethira's interest was obvious now.

“But we could replace *we looked at one tiny part of it* with something considerably better.”

Her hand tightened lightly around Ian's waist.

“I think our next visit should begin from the air.”

“As long as I get to hold your hand whilst we fly.”

Lethira's smile widened.

“That condition is acceptable.”

She shifted slightly beneath him, keeping one arm secure around his waist.

“I seem to remember it worked rather well last time.”

The idea had changed shape now. Less another dangerous walk through unknown country, more a survey: altitude, distance, coastline, patterns too large to read from the ground.

Her eyes moved briefly to Aelira's letter.

“And if we are looking for signs of people rather than trying to reach every interesting animal we see, perhaps we can even behave like responsible explorers for an hour.”

The smile returned.

“Hand-holding included.”

“Does anything else in the letter worry you?”

Lethira looked down at the pages again.

“Yes.”

She rested one hand over the fold containing Aelira's summary of the King's questions.

“The part about who knows.”

Not because she objected to Aelira or the King knowing. That circle had already widened deliberately, and both had so far treated the knowledge with more care than many people would.

“What worries me is how quickly the island stops being about geography once somebody understands that *you* are the route.”

Her expression tightened slightly.

“The King can choose restraint. Aelira can. Mirelen can. That does not tell us what happens if a merchant prince, another court, a temple or a Guild officer learns enough to realise you are not merely a strange unranked human travelling with me.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“And I don't like the phrase *who can compel him* appearing at all, even as a warning about what other governments might ask.”

Her fingers settled against Ian's side again.

“Not because I think this King intends to try. Because somebody eventually might.”

“That won't be their most successful day at compelling.”

Ian smiled.

Lethira looked at him for a moment, then the corner of her mouth lifted.

“No.”

The answer carried no doubt about the practical outcome.

She folded Aelira's letter once and set it aside.

“My concern is everything before they discover that.”

Someone convinced they could pressure Ian might first reach for leverage that existed entirely outside him: Lethira, the holding, Merrowford, people he cared about, institutions which had nothing to do with the original dispute.

Her expression sobered.

“I would rather nobody gets far enough into that mistake to test what happens next.”

“No, the impact on others is the thing that worries me. If it was just me, I'd let them all try for the sport of it.”

Lethira gave him a look.

“I believe you would.”

Her hand stayed around his waist, but her attention had gone entirely serious again.

“That is why secrecy matters more to me than whether anyone understands your exact limit. If somebody wants to test themselves against you, that is their stupidity. If they decide I am easier to threaten than you are, or Merrowford is, or somebody else you care about is…”

She stopped there.

The rest did not need describing.

Lethira picked up Aelira's letter and folded it closed.

“I would rather keep people from ever reaching that idea than find out how badly it ends once they do.”

“I think I might have asked this before, but is teleportation magic, summon circles, anything like that a thing here?”

Lethira thought for a moment.

“Not teleportation in the way you mean it.”

She shifted him slightly more comfortably on her lap before continuing.

“There are passage workings, old road marks, warded thresholds, dangerous boundary rituals, summoning magic, spirit tales, and some very old sites which do strange things at boundaries.”

Her expression tightened in concentration.

“But summoning is not somebody drawing a circle and stepping from Merrowford to the capital. The serious rituals I know of need vast preparation, fixed circles, materials, time, usually several people who know what they are doing, and enough risk that authorities tend to care when one is being attempted.”

She shook her head.

“They bring something across a prepared boundary. They do not give ordinary mages a way to take themselves and their friends wherever they please.”

A small pause separated the old exceptions from the practical rule.

“If reliable living-person teleportation existed as a practical art, armies would not spend months marching and merchants would not build their lives around roads and ships.”

Her eyes met his.

“So when the King thinks of you as the only known route to that island, he is not overlooking an obvious magical alternative. As far as I know, there isn't one.”

“Let's keep it in the fun category rather than weaponised attendants who enjoy brushing their Ladyship's hair.”

Lethira stared at him.

Then she laughed.

“I am not entirely sure how you travelled from teleportation magic to weaponised hair attendants.”

Her fingers tightened lightly at his waist.

“But yes. I strongly prefer the version where impossible travel means flying over mountains with you rather than discovering a new military doctrine.”

A small smile remained.

“And if anyone is brushing *her Ladyship's* hair, I reserve the right to choose the attendant.”

Ian put his hand up.

“I volunteer.”

Lethira looked at the raised hand, then at him.

“Accepted.”

She leaned in and kissed his forehead.

“Your qualifications are suspiciously specific, but I am willing to overlook that.”

“Might I do something a little bit naughty and omnipotent, to keep your island interest high?”

Lethira's eyes narrowed with immediate interest.

“That depends very heavily on what *naughty and omnipotent* means.”

Her hand remained at his waist, but the smile was cautious now rather than discouraging.

“If you mean changing *me*, no.”

The smile returned by a fraction.

“If you mean doing something to the island, showing me something, or creating some new temptation…”

She tilted her head.

“What are you thinking?”

“Showing you something. We're not going anywhere.”

That removed most of Lethira's caution.

Her expression brightened.

“All right.”

She settled back slightly in the chair, still keeping Ian comfortably on her lap.

“Show me.”

Ian made the island and an oval of the surrounding sea appear above the table. It resembled a hologram, but this was the actual island at a magically reduced scale, somehow present in both places at once. Every detail remained. Nothing here could interact with or harm it, and nothing within it could harm them or their home.

The island occupied the table in miniature.

Land rose in full shape and relief from the surrounding sea: coastlines, ridges, lagoons, forest masses, beaches and broken shelves of rock, all reduced to something small enough to fit inside the kitchen and still unmistakably real.

Lethira went very still.

For a moment she only looked.

Then her arm tightened around Ian's waist as though she needed to anchor herself to something familiar while her eyes travelled across the impossible little country. The stretches of coast they had actually walked stood out at once, suddenly placed inside something vastly larger. The lagoon. The broken shoreline. The forest pressing inland. Distances which had felt substantial on foot became fractions of a much greater whole.

“Oh,” she said softly.

Wonder arrived first. Professional interest followed almost immediately behind it.

She leaned forward slightly, studying the shape without trying to touch it.

“That is… enormously unfair to every cartographer alive.”

Her gaze moved outward, tracing rivers, elevations, interruptions in the forest canopy and the relation of one coast to another.

“And very useful.”

Only then did she glance up at Ian, eyes bright now with both delight and concentration.

“Are we seeing it as it is now, or only as a perfect model of its shape?”

“No, this is literally the island.”

Lethira looked back at the miniature world above the table with renewed care, as though the answer had altered not its shape but the rules under which she was allowed to think about it.

For several seconds she said nothing.

Then, very slowly, “That is much worse.”

The words were not alarmed. They were almost reverent.

Her attention moved across the tiny coastlines again, tracing what they had actually seen against what had always been hidden by distance, vegetation and the stupidity of being person-sized on the ground.

“You are not showing me a representation,” she said. “You have somehow put the island here without taking it away from where it is.”

Her arm remained around Ian's waist. The other hand rested on the table beside the impossible sea, carefully not touching what she already understood was not interactable in any ordinary sense.

Wonder gave way to sharper professional focus.

From above, patterns began to emerge. Watercourses. Higher ground. Breaks in the forest canopy. Beaches that were only beaches from the ground but might mean landing places from the air. Headlands they had not seen. Inland areas where the green mass changed texture enough to suggest something different beneath it.

More importantly, there were no obvious signs of the sort they had discussed moments earlier.

“No roads that I can see from here,” she murmured. “No fields. No harbours. No clearings shaped by regular use. But that is not the same as certainty.”

She glanced up at Ian, eyes bright with astonishment and interest both.

“Can you change the scale or angle, so we can examine different parts of it more closely?”

“I can, but if I zoom in too much it might take away the pleasure of going. You can walk around and see it from different places. I can bring it closer if you really want, but I don't want to take away the pleasure of visiting it.”

Lethira considered that seriously.

Then she shook her head.

“No. Leave the scale.”

She eased Ian from her lap only far enough to stand, then began walking slowly around the table.

From each side, the island changed without revealing anything new through magnification. Mountain chains became more legible when seen along their length. Rivers appeared where reflected light caught the tiny watercourses. The coastline they had explored occupied an almost embarrassingly small part of the whole.

Lethira stopped beside the far end of the table and bent slightly to bring her eyes nearer the level of the miniature terrain.

“This is enough.”

Her expression had the particular concentration Ian had seen when she read tracks or an unfamiliar road: curiosity held deliberately short of consumption.

“I want to know its shape. I don't want to inspect every clearing from here and arrive later pretending I discovered it.”

She straightened and looked across the impossible little sea towards him.

“You were right about that.”

Ian smiled, pleased with himself at getting omnipotence right.

Lethira noticed.

“That expression is almost as dangerous as the island.”

There was amusement in it rather than concern.

She continued around the table, studying the miniature coastline from another angle. Now that she had accepted the scale as fixed, the model became less like forbidden knowledge and more like an extraordinary piece of terrain she could walk around without pretending she had explored it.

One long mountain chain drew her attention. So did a broad inland basin beyond it, green from this height but distinct enough in shape to suggest a different country from the coastal forest they had visited.

Lethira stopped there.

“This I like.”

She glanced at Ian.

“Enough to change how I think about the place. Not enough to replace going there.”

Ian held her hand.

“I'm glad.”

He wondered aloud.

“Is there anything unusual on it? Volcanoes, maybe? Something stranger? Other than the crazy animals, of course.”

Lethira's attention shifted from the broad shape of the country to features large enough to survive the deliberately limited scale.

“There.”

Near the island's interior, beyond the long mountain chain she had already noticed, one peak rose differently from the others. Its upper slopes were darker and more symmetrical, the summit broken by a broad depression rather than a simple ridge. Even at this scale, several old flows could be traced down one flank where vegetation had returned in uneven bands.

A very thin plume drifted from somewhere near the summit.

Lethira leaned closer.

“That looks volcanic. Possibly still active.”

She followed the mountains farther south, then stopped again.

Something else was visible there—not supernatural, but strange enough that she studied it for considerably longer.

A vast roughly circular basin occupied part of the southern interior. Mountains enclosed most of it, with a dark lake at its centre and several smaller bodies of water scattered around the inner floor. One side of the surrounding rim had been broken through by a river cutting towards the coast. From this distance the whole formation looked almost like an ancient wound in the land, softened by forest and water over an enormous span of time.

Lethira's fingers tightened around Ian's.

“And that.”

Her eyes stayed on the basin.

“I don't know what made it. It is far too large for anything I would call an ordinary valley.”

She smiled slowly.

“Yes. I think the island has managed to remain interesting without showing us another animal.”

“You know what we have to do now, don't you.”

Lethira looked from the basin to the smoking peak.

“You are going to tell me we need to visit the volcano.”

Her expression made it clear that she did not object.

“Or the great broken basin. Or both, if you are feeling especially unreasonable.”

She looked back at the island, eyes bright with exactly the level of dangerous interest Ian had probably hoped to preserve.

“We are not going tomorrow.”

A beat.

“But yes. We absolutely have to go.”

Ian squeezed her hand, and in place was the main continent.

Lethira stopped breathing for a moment.

The change in scale was immediate and almost absurd. The island which had seemed vast enough to occupy years of exploration was gone, replaced by the landmass containing nearly every road, kingdom, forest and journey she had ever treated as part of the ordinary world.

Her eyes moved slowly over it.

This was familiar geography made unfamiliar by being seen whole. Coastlines she knew from maps no longer ended at parchment edges. Mountain country became part of larger systems. Distances which took weeks or months to cross had been reduced until the relationships between them could be understood in a glance.

Somewhere within it was Merrowford.

Somewhere, almost impossibly small at this scale, was the house they were standing inside.

Lethira looked from the continent to Ian.

“That is profoundly unfair to maps.”

She moved around the table again, but more slowly this time. Unlike the island, this was not a catalogue of unknown temptations. Much of it carried names, histories, borders and memories even if she had never personally travelled there.

The perspective still changed something.

She could see how small familiar political divisions were compared with the land beneath them, how much country lay between places people spoke about as neighbours, and how little even an experienced traveller actually saw in one lifetime of roads.

Lethira's hand remained in Ian's.

After a while she said, very quietly, “I think I understand why you keep losing track of scale.”

“I love how you react to these experiences. It just makes me want to think of more. I love surprising you, apart from when I get it wrong.”

Ian started to tear up a little, strangely overcome with warmth and emotion.

“Sorry.”

He wiped his eyes.

Lethira's expression changed immediately.

She stepped closer and took his face gently between both hands.

“Don't apologise.”

For a moment she simply looked at him.

The impossible continent still occupied the table beside them, mountains and coastlines reduced to something they could walk around. Lethira ignored it completely.

“You like giving me things I haven't seen before,” she said quietly. “Sometimes you misjudge it. Sometimes you don't.”

Her thumbs moved once beneath his eyes.

“I would rather have the surprises and occasionally tell you when one was a terrible idea.”

A small smile returned.

“And this one was not.”

Ian squeezed her hand, and in its place appeared the western holding, their adjoining southern parcel and the route continuing across the town's flood-margin ground to the river. Perhaps if Lethira looked carefully, she could see them in their house, holding hands.

At first Lethira took it in as geography.

Then she saw the house.

Then, looking more closely still, she saw two figures within it—so small they ought to have been meaningless, yet precise enough that one stood holding the other's hand exactly as they were now.

Lethira went utterly still.

For a few seconds she only looked.

When she spoke, her voice had changed.

“That is us.”

Not a question.

Her fingers tightened around Ian's.

She stepped nearer the table, not releasing his hand, and bent just slightly to study the tiny holding and the smaller still image of themselves within it. Wonder remained, but it had altered again. The island had been astonishing. The continent had been overwhelming. This was something else—intimate enough to unsettle and delight at the same time.

A slow smile touched her mouth.

“We are inside our own impossible demonstration.”

“If you look carefully, you can see me being hopelessly in love with you.”

Lethira's eyes stayed on the tiny figures for another moment.

Then she looked at the full-sized Ian beside her.

“I don't think I need the model for that.”

Her smile softened.

She lifted his hand and kissed his knuckles, then kept it against her chest.

“The small one is convincing, though.”

The strip disappeared.

Ian turned and put his arms around her and held her tight.

Lethira came into the embrace without hesitation, one arm around his shoulders and the other firm across his back.

For a while there was no island, no continent, no King asking what Ian could move and no question of who might one day try to compel him.

There was only Lethira, solid and warm against him.

She rested her cheek against his hair.

“I think this is still my favourite scale.”

Ian stood on his toes and kissed her.

“Me too.”

Lethira kissed him back and held him there for a few quiet seconds after.

Then she rested her forehead against his.

“Good.”

Her hand moved once along his back.

“I think we have done enough impossible geography for one afternoon.”

The letter remained folded at the far end of the table.

No island, continent or tiny version of the holding hovered above it now. Outside, the stream moved on past the house through the ordinary afternoon.

Lethira kept her arms around Ian for a little while longer.