“What a thing,” Stephen muses aloud, marveling, “that both of us can drop phrases like I think it was the time travel into casual conversation and that’s just fine.”

Very likely it’s one of the reasons they like each other so much: this offhand, shared straightforward matter-of-factness.

He shifts a little, readjusting his position; a little stiff on the wooden floor, but not as much as he once might have been. These days he stretches, he does yoga, he’s more limber as a sorcerer and mage than he ever was as a surgeon. He readjusts so one leg’s stretched out on the floor, thigh alongside hers. His foot nudges a piece of exposed chairback out of the way.

“And she’s… in the woods now?”