## Chapter 494 — What He Brings Home

Lethira had spent most of the afternoon with half an arrow in pieces on the dining table in the front room. Nothing was wrong with it, which was the problem. The shaft was straight, the point sat properly, and the binding had not loosened. One feather had begun lifting along its rear edge by so little that she could have ignored it for another month without consequence, but she had noticed it while checking the quiver and now possessed both time and glue.

The blue bowl sat nearby with three apples in it. It had remained on the table for two days, which represented remarkable stability.

Lethira pressed the feather back into place, held it until the adhesive took, then laid the arrow beside the others to dry. Beyond the open back door, afternoon light reached across the holding towards the unfinished range. The compacted bank had settled a little more since she last walked it. Somewhere near the stream, a bird was repeating the same four notes with the confidence of something that believed improvement unnecessary.

She had been into Merrowford that morning, though not for a contract. The bathhouse plan needed no new decision from her yet, and the Guild board had contained nothing she wanted enough to rearrange the day around. She had bought bread, spoken briefly with Brannock, walked home by the river route and spent an hour clearing fallen twigs from the southern path where recent wind had dropped them. After lunch she had done almost nothing useful. The experience had been tolerable.

Ian was elsewhere. Lethira knew that in the broad way she often knew it now: not where he was, what he was doing or who he was with, only that he had his own life and would return when he chose. Sometimes that meant his biological world. Sometimes a god. Sometimes somebody on Earth. Sometimes a lawn. She had stopped treating his absences as pauses in her day.

The repaired arrow needed another few minutes before she trusted the feather. Lethira picked up the next one, rolled the shaft beneath her fingertips, and found nothing worth fixing. “Suspicious.” She put it down, went through to the kitchen, washed the trace of glue from her fingers and put water on for tea.

The front door opened.

Ian entered through it. “Hello, my love.”

Lethira looked up from the kettle. Her face warmed immediately. She went to meet him without hurrying, slid both arms around him and kissed him once before settling into the embrace. “You’re back.” She stayed there for a few seconds, cheek against him, then drew back just enough to study his face. “How was your time away?”

“It was good, I went out for a meal with the Lifegiver, around normal people. She didn’t exercise any divine powers and seemed. Well, pretty normal really. I’m taking that as a good sign.” Ian paused only briefly before continuing. “She stayed the night there, after I left.” Then, “We discussed discussing her perhaps seeking purpose there, finding herself a normal job or something.”

Lethira listened without interrupting. At *stayed the night there, after I left*, her eyebrows rose slightly. “That may be the part I like most.” She released him and returned to the kettle. “She went somewhere she had never been, spent time among people who did not know what she was, and then chose to remain after you were gone. That sounds useful.”

She poured the water and let it steep before addressing the rest. “Purpose is a word I would use carefully around her. She has spent a very long time believing that having one entitled her to decide what other people needed.”

She carried the tea through to the front room. Her mouth curved faintly as she set two cups on the table. “A job might be good. Or terrible. So might travelling, volunteering, gardening, doing nothing for a month, or discovering she hates all of it.” Lethira sat and drew one cup towards herself. “Was the idea of finding work there hers, or yours?”

“Mine, I think originally she thought I’d magic her a job or something, which she didn’t want. She had misunderstood, I would invent her a plausible enough identity so she could participate in society. I’m not sure if she wants it yet, we didn’t discuss it more than the vague shape of it -- not something to rush into.”

Lethira’s fingers settled around the warm cup. “That sounds better than giving her a life and asking whether she likes it afterwards.” She took a moment before continuing. “But *invent her an identity* covers quite a lot. If you mean papers, records, whatever that world requires so that people can employ her or rent her a room, I can understand the usefulness. If it means creating a childhood, family, employers or people who remember knowing her, that is something else.”

Her gaze held his. “You have been trying to leave people’s minds and histories alone. So what would a plausible identity actually require?”

“No, no, not changing some poor person to believe she was his younger sister. Papers, records, that kinda thing. Not people.” Ian paused. “You were entirely correct to check, though.”

He touched her hand. Lethira turned hers beneath his and closed her fingers around it.

“Good. Then I understand what you mean.” She glanced towards the bathhouse papers beside the drying arrows. “Records that let her rent a room, earn money, pay taxes, whatever else that world insists a person must prove before being allowed to exist inconveniently.” A small smile appeared, and her thumb moved once across the side of his hand. “And yes, I am going to keep checking when your plans involve words like *invent* and *identity*.”

“What would I do without you?” Ian smiled at her. “We also discussed it wouldn’t be constant, she could return to her realm, so would suit a part-time job I guess, that’s something to work out.”

Lethira lifted her cup. “Apparently invent somebody a younger sister and only realise afterwards.” The smile she hid behind the tea lasted a moment. “That part sounds workable if she eventually wants it. People here leave for Warden work, seasonal work, family, all sorts of reasons. That world will have its own expectations about reliability, but that is a problem for later, not something you need to solve before she has even decided whether she wants a job.”

She set the cup down, more interested in another part of his account. “She actually stayed there alone. What did she choose to do once you left?”

“Walked, bought herself dinner, I think she got lost and had to ask someone to help her find the way home, read one of the books she bought, I imagine. I met her for breakfast, which was just before I came back here.”

Lethira smiled at *got lost*. “That may be the most useful part. Not the getting lost. The asking somebody ordinary for help instead of solving it herself.” She picked up her tea again, considering the uncertainty in his account. “You don’t actually know what she did for most of the evening. She stayed somewhere new, alone, and whatever happened belonged to her unless she chose to tell you afterwards.” Lethira took a drink, then looked at him over the rim of the cup. “How was breakfast?”

“The account reality gave me was brief, but it didn’t say anything about using her powers, which based on its editing would have definitely made it through.” Ian continued, “Breakfast was nice. I’m trying to be positive about it, that she’s not going back to her old ways. But she is an aeons-old goddess or anthropomorphic projection or whatever she truly is, so I will try not to be too naïve.”

“That sounds sensible.” Lethira turned her cup slowly between both hands. She knew enough about Ian’s strange relationship with the narrative to treat omission carefully. A brief account could leave out ordinary detail; something as consequential as the Lifegiver openly using divine power among strangers was less likely to vanish into compression.

“One ordinary evening does not erase aeons of habit,” she said. “But it still matters that she chose to stay, chose to be alone, and apparently managed without making the city accommodate her.” She smiled a little. “I would count that as promising. Just not proof.”

“Yes, agreed.” Ian smiled. “How was your day?”

“Quiet.” Lethira’s answer came with obvious approval. “I went into Merrowford this morning. Bought bread, checked the Guild board and spoke to Brannock for a little while. Nothing on the board tempted me enough to take it.” She glanced towards the back door. “I came home by the river, cleared some fallen branches from the southern path, ate lunch, and then spent far too long repairing a feather that could probably have survived another month.” Her eyes moved to the arrows drying on the table, and she smiled. “So, compared with yours, very uneventful. I liked it.”

“I wonder which Earth we went to.”

Lethira paused with her cup halfway to her mouth. “Which Earth were you trying to reach?” She lowered it again, remembering their conversation about the Crownholt guards and unspecified implementation. “After Crownholt, I would rather be sure. Did you actually specify which world, or only ask to go somewhere that matched what you intended?”

“She can’t actually come to mine, I have no power here. I’m guessing reality created another instance that is supposed to be my one. I was ambiguous, I should probably check it isn’t Thomas & Isha’s. Or define it thus.”

Lethira’s expression changed at once. “Yes. Check that. If you accidentally took her into Thomas and Isha’s Earth, that matters. They did not agree to have a goddess spending the night there, even anonymously.” She set her cup down. “And if reality made something else because your wording was impossible, I would still want to know what *something else* means before you send her back. Not because the outing was wrong. Because next time you should know which world you are offering.”

Ian explained that the Earth they had visited was reality’s manifestation of the real world he lived in, distinct from his biological world and from Thomas and Isha’s Earth.

“That’s that sorted.”

“Good.” Relief softened Lethira’s face as she lifted her cup again. “And next time, perhaps decide which reality you are visiting before taking an aeons-old goddess there.” Her mouth curved. “I am beginning to think *be more specific* may become one of our household rules.”

“This is why omnipotence is a lot harder than it looks.”

Lethira laughed softly. “I suspect most people imagine the difficult part is having enough power.” She set her cup down and looked at him with dry affection. “With you, the difficult part appears to be remembering that reality may answer the question you actually asked instead of the one you meant.” Her fingers found his hand again. “That is probably healthier than becoming convinced every result must be correct because you were the one who wanted it.”

“I did wonder what would happen if I willed my power away.”

Lethira went quiet. Her thumb stopped moving against his hand. “I would be careful with that experiment.” She sounded wary, a Warden looking at the edge of an unmapped path. “You already know reality is willing to take broad instructions seriously. *Take my power away* leaves a great deal of room for interpretation.”

Her gaze held his. “And I am not sure whether you mean the power itself, your access to it, the machine that provides it, or the part of your life that lets you come here at all.” A pause. “I would rather not discover the difference by losing you.”

Ian took her hand. “That’s a good reason for not experimenting.”

Lethira’s fingers closed around his, and some of the tension left her face. “Yes. I am quite attached to the version of reality where you can still walk through that door.” She glanced towards the front of the house, then back at him.

“What would you like to do for the rest of the day?”

Lethira looked towards the open back door. “Nothing ambitious.” Her eyes moved briefly over the table: drying arrows, bathhouse papers, two half-finished cups of tea. “I want to fix that bedside drawer before it becomes a permanent feature of the house through neglect. Then I think we should walk down to the stream and stay there until one of us gets hungry.” She smiled and squeezed his hand. “After that, dinner. Something simple. I have had enough gods and reality for one afternoon.”

“That makes two of us.” Ian smiled. “Let’s go fix that drawer then.”

Lethira finished the last of her tea and stood. “Excellent.” She took the small household tool roll from the kitchen cupboard and headed upstairs.

The dark bedside table still sat on her side of the bed, its scarred top carrying a lamp and nothing else. Lethira pulled the drawer out slowly until it caught near the end of its travel. “There.” She crouched and worked it back and forth once, watching the runners rather than forcing it. The right side lifted fractionally just before the sticking point. Her fingers traced the underside. “I think this has swollen rather than broken.”

She opened the tool roll on the floor, selected a small knife and looked towards Ian. “If I take too much off, we will replace an annoying drawer with a loose one. So I am going to pretend patience is one of my defining qualities.”

“I have faith in your patience.”

Lethira gave him a look from where she crouched beside the table. “That makes one of us.” She turned the drawer over across her knees and scraped a very thin curl from the swollen edge, then stopped to test it rather than continuing. The first attempt still caught. The second cut was smaller; this time the drawer slid almost fully home before touching at the same point.

Lethira sat back on her heels, considered it, and smiled faintly. “Annoying enough to notice. Not annoying enough to deserve violence.” She shaved one last sliver from the runner, wiped the dust away with her thumb and tried again. The drawer closed cleanly, then opened cleanly. Lethira did it once more simply because she could. “There.” She looked up at Ian. “Household crisis resolved.”

“Phew!” Ian said. “Now the stream?”

Lethira laughed and rolled the tool cloth closed. “Yes.” She returned the tools to their place downstairs, then came back to Ian and slipped her hand into his. Her expression had lost the last of the earlier seriousness.

Ian held her hand and followed her outside.

The afternoon had cooled a little while they were upstairs. Sunlight still reached the open ground around the holding, but the path towards the stream slipped quickly into shade beneath the trees. Lethira kept an easy pace, her hand warm around his.

They reached the familiar bend where the bank flattened enough to sit comfortably. Water moved over pale stones below, quick enough to make sound without becoming loud.

Lethira let go only long enough to settle herself on the grass. Then she held her hand out to him again. “Much better.”

Ian rested against her shoulder. “Yes, very much so.”

Lethira leaned her head lightly against his. For a while they watched the stream without speaking. Water slid around stones and gathered briefly in the deeper channel before carrying on. A dragonfly skimmed low across the surface, vanished beneath the overhanging branches and returned several moments later as though it had forgotten something.

Lethira’s hand found his again in the grass, and her fingers closed around his. “This part I understand. Water. Shade. Someone I love beside me.” A small smile touched her mouth. “No implementation details required.”

They stayed there. The light shifted slowly through the leaves while the stream kept up its steady movement below them. Lethira remained close, one shoulder beneath Ian’s head and her hand linked with his in the grass. The house could wait uphill, and dinner could wait with it. Eventually one of them would become hungry enough to move. For now, contentment was winning.