We know there is another land we cannot reach. It can be seen at the edges of the southern lunar passages, but it is not within a viable line to establish an arrival platform. Disconnected from all other engaldria, a continent adrift on its own. How lonely must it be to have no neighbors, nor even the hope of lunar travel to alleviate the tedium.

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By the time Jair returned to the house with his mother, Lilin and her father had resolved their discussion and both sat calmly at the table. Zaen was eating the leftovers, while Lilin doodled exotic Terlunan flowers on the borders of the shopping list.

“I hope there’s enough left for me,” Kyami said, eying Zaen’s plate with obvious judgment in her eyes.

“There’s a little more in the pan.” Lilin jumped up immediately, retrieved the food, and set about heating it back up.

Kyami sat down opposite Zaen with a long sigh. She stretched, eying her husband assessingly.

By Jair’s reckoning, she wanted to ask for something but wasn’t sure if this would be the right time to do so. If she was going to offer Jair’s phoenix healing service, then she needn’t bother. He wasn’t convinced it could do anything for Kyami, but Zaen was too much of a demanding jerk to not at least try. If it could improve Larenok’s outlook unrecognizably, what might it do for Jair’s father?

But he’d wait for them to agree, just in case their greed was stronger than their caution. If they hadn’t decided by morning, he’d just stab Zaen and be done with it.

Zaen didn’t make more than a cursory inquiry after Jair’s health and wellbeing, instead preferring to complain about their catch for the day and how expensive sandskimmer repairs were.

“We’ll be downstairs,” Jair finally said. He caught Lilin’s eye and nodded toward the back hall.

The basement was divided in four with a hallway down the middle. Their parents’ rooms were on either side of stair down. At the far end of the hall, Jair and Lilin’s room was on the left, and the cellar on the right. Jair had always thought it was an inefficient use of space to put the food storage farther away from the stair, but apparently being able to catch their kids sneaking out was more important than convenience.

Not to say Jair and Lilin didn’t figure out ways to sneak past anyway.

“Remember when we had to use pieces of salvaged fishskin on the door?” Jair asked, practically automatic. He had no memory of the event, but mentioning it always helped Lilin relax.

Sure enough, she laughed and started to reminisce, a familiar story. Jair selected responses to continue the casual and relaxing direction of the conversation. To his surprise, it was she who first shifted the conversation to an unfamiliar direction.

“You really like Raina, don’t you?”

“Of course. She’s my best friend.”

Lilin tilted her head as though that answer confused her. “But the way you act around her… aren’t you interested in…” she blushed faintly, “something more?”

“What more could I need? She’s already left her family to travel with me.”

“You can’t possibly be this oblivious. How are you so unmoved? Didn’t you get flustered at just the mention of Wythri having a crush on you? And it’s beyond obvious that Raina would do anything you ask.”

“Yeah, don’t worry, I’ll fix that by the time we’re done.”

Lilin laughed, incredulous. “You clearly care about her. Why are you pretending otherwise?”

“I’m not pretending anything. Right now, the power dynamic would be extremely unbalanced. I’m not going to put her in a position to make a decision without having the full autonomy to make it properly.”

Lilin snorted. “Only you would turn a relationship into an equation.”

“Everything is an equation.”

“And it’s made you boring and angry.”

“Boring, me? You’ve clearly not spent enough time around me yet.”

“We grew up together.”

“Oh, I won’t deny I used to be extremely boring. But once you know all the formulas, following them all the time gets so tedious. May as well live a bit.”

"So you'll ask Raina out?"

Jair narrowed his eyes at her. "She's already traveling with me, how much more 'out' do you need?"

"You know what I mean."

Jair shook his head. "Raina has never once tried to exploit me, renounce me, or exclude me from anything. There are a lot of people I wouldn't hesitate to take advantage of—probably only a handful I would think twice about. Raina has her own category."

Lilin frowned, an oddly lost look on her face.

"It's okay if you don't understand. I'm a strange creature."

"I don't know what to even ask. You're not anything like what I remember."

"Are you surprised? I've been away for three years."

"You didn't seem different in your letters. It's just..." she tucked her legs up under her on the bed and leaned forward to stare at him. "I'd have expected you to be different in... different ways. You have this super close relationship with one of your classmates, but you don't act like any people in love I've ever seen. You clearly are, but..."

Jair chuckled. "The word you're looking for is fixated. Perhaps obsessed."

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"And you admit it?"

"Why deny it? I've spent practically every day since I discovered my soulspell living for her. I would die for her without hesitation. Though at this point, there's quite a lot I'd die for and very little that would make me hesitate."

"I'm not sure what to say."

"You don't have to say anything. Except tell me about your choice to travel with us."

"I'm not planning to travel with you."

"I know, you think you have to stay, but you don't. It's not like before, I have the money to give them an easier life than you could manage no matter how much you tried. We can hire someone to come and help with the company,” Jair promised. “Or just hand them a pile of money if you think that would help."

Lilin shook her head. "No. Father is way too proud."

"And mother is way too stubborn.”

Lilin chuckled. "That too."

It would drive them both crazy to think that they were relying on their reject of a son for their livelihood. But he didn’t have to be blatant about it. “I’m serious. Anything you do, I can find someone else."

“Who could you even hire to do my job? You'd need specialists."

Jair laughed softly. "You're not irreplaceable here. Any of the things you do, someone else can do. But you are irreplaceable to yourself. Is any of what you do moving you closer to who you want to be? Where you want to go"

"What else would I do? I'm not like you, not like Father. I don't have these grand ambitions for going off and learning the secrets of the universe or rewriting the sandfish industry.”

“The secrets of the universe are surprisingly dull, actually. Sandfish might be a more rewarding a pursuit. But if you don’t have ambitions, you must still have desires.”

“I don't think so. Do I really want anything? I'm perfectly happy being here."

"Are you?"

Lilin shrugged. "Why wouldn't I be? I love my family."

Jair tilted his head at her, then nodded upward to indicate the house. “And you can't think of anything else you'd rather do than stay here forever?"

"I know you want to travel and explore. I…" Lilin looked away. "I used to think I wanted to go with you, but…"

"I know. When the opportunity came, you made your reticence very clear. However, the situation has changed. Raina and I can more than sufficiently compensate them for your absence. The family business will go on with or without you. I can provide any sort of expert necessary for any facet of their lives. If they'd be better off never working again, I can arrange that. If they'd rather keep working and just need help, I can arrange that.”

“I don't know. I never actually thought that it would be an option. I've always been essential here."

“No one's essential. Think about it. If there's anything you want, tell me. We can make it happen."

Lilin sat down and closed her eyes, hands tightening in her lap. "I do want things to be different," she said faintly, "but it’s not possible. Everything I do here, everything Mom does, everything our father does… It's all so meaningless. Sure, he has grand aspirations for building a business empire. We’ll have bigger ships and more workers, break into the whole industry like a new revelation. Someday. But I don't see anything happening. You've been gone for three years, and we're still exactly where we were. Still working toward the same tedious survival, in hopes of some distant future that I just don't see happening. If it'll take years, okay. I'm fine with it taking years. But I don't… We’re not doing enough."

"Do you want out, or do you want more workers?"

Lilin opened her eyes and looked up at him sadly. "I don't think either one will help. The way we're going, it's indefinitely sustainable but nothing more. You can add workers, ships, but there is no genius here. We’re just one more normal sandfisher family, destined to live and work and die.”

“It doesn’t have to end that way.”

“I told you already. I'm not ambitious. I don’t care. I just want us to live and live well. If that looks like going out on the sandmarsh every other day, staying home and cooking two or three days a week, managing the bookkeeping and driving the shipments into town…" Lilin shrugged. "Are you going to say that's wrong?"

“But are you happy?"

"I'm not unhappy. I don't hate it."

"If you stop and think back over the past three years, then extrapolate that forward throughout your entire life, will that have been a life you’re satisfied with?"

"I don't think I'm ever going to be satisfied with anything. I thought I wanted to go, but apparently I don't. I think I want to stay, but I don’t know… do I really? You’re making me question everything and I just don’t have an answer."

"Then how about this? Come with us. Spend a year traveling. Come places you wouldn't have otherwise gone, try things you normally wouldn’t do. See what the options are before you commit either way. I’ll arrange for workers to come fill in for you at the family business, all you need to do is bring yourself."

"And if I change my mind? If it turns out I don't want to travel, and I’d rather be back here?"

"I'm not going to hold you to this, this isn't some kind of soul contract. Any time you want out, you're welcome to come home. I’ll escort you personally. Though I can't guarantee immediate passage between lunar cycles, I'll get you on the first passage back."

Lilin didn’t reply, and Jair didn’t press. He allowed their conversation to flow on into other topics, catching up as if he’d been away at school for a couple months and didn’t already know everything she’d ever think was worth saying.

They headed back up to the main floor when Raina returned a few hours later. She’d changed into a local robe instead of her finer city clothes, and seemed quite pleased with herself for having done so.

Her arrival set off a round of interrogation as Kyami and Zaen both demanded answers to various questions in an attempt to either scare Raina off or ensure she would remain a valuable resource for years to come.

Raina answered honestly and politely. She and Jair were friends who would be undertaking her Reforging Quest together over the next few years; she wasn’t currently in any romantic relationship; she had no plans of abandoning Jair for being poor; her family’s holdings in Veshin Oasis were indeed as substantial as had been rumored.

There was more, but the most amusing part of the evening was watching how deftly Raina controlled the conversation despite Jair’s parents clearly convinced they were doing all the deciding.

Thankfully, they both were early sleepers, so after dinner and a couple hours of discussion, they headed downstairs to their bedrooms.

Raina offered to find a room at the inn, but Lilin insisted they stay in her and Jair’s room.

“It’ll be a bit tight with all three of us, but we can make it work.”

It felt more than a little strange to be pushing mattresses together on the floor like they were playing at having a sleepover at their age, but Jair only smiled and went along with it. There was a beautiful innocence to both Raina and Lilin that he could watch forever.

Each carried her own scars, but neither was crushed by it. Sometimes Lilin’s body went stiff and her face blank, sometimes Raina stared into the middle distance with a haunted expression, yet for the most part they were able to live in the moment freely. Someone who didn’t know them would never guess anything was wrong.

They ended up talking more than sleeping that night. Jair had years of stories to share in response to Lilin’s repeated interrogation—at least those he hadn’t already written about in his letters. Raina had further insights on the economy to share, and she somehow managed to sneak the conversation around to travel and adventure more than a few times.

Lilin had her drawing pad out, scribbling little landscapes Jair recognized as modifications from one of his old history books. Though she talked as though she didn’t care for leaving, and treated staying here with her parents until they died of old age as her inevitable fate, Jair could see that reticence for what it was.

She was afraid. Same as before. It was easier to stay with the familiar struggles than face the unknown. Without the excuse of having no money, she fell back on ‘they need me here’.

Jair didn’t interrupt. He could have kept up with Raina’s flow and shifts easily enough—and he looked forward to tag-teaming against the nobility once they returned from their powerup arc—but Lilin specifically would only be more reticent the more Jair pushed her.

He could only watch and wait. Maybe Raina’s influence would be enough.

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