When she and Dragos had made the decision to leave the Wyr demesne in New York and move to the Other land of Rhyacia, they had agreed to not pack any household items. Everything they had required to furnish their spacious house in upstate New York would remain intact and ready for any time they might choose to return.

But that didn’t make the impending move simple or easy. Their decision had propelled Pia into an intense buying spree for new household items that they sent into the Other land in regular shipments. Despite Pia’s original intention to focus solely on their new baby Niall, she had been unable to remain detached from the process. This was to be her new home, and she needed to feel comfortable in it. She couldn’t just step back and let someone else create the whole thing for her.

Color schemes had to be decided upon. Bedding, curtains, carpets (all of which meant the number of rooms and room dimensions needed to be decided upon), kitchenware, bath linens, and more—and every decision had to take into account that while Other lands were rife with magic, they existed in different dimensions from Earth and modern technologies such as electricity and gas-run vehicles didn’t work. Goodbye, KitchenAid stand-up mixer and Keurig coffee makers. Hello, manual hand mixers and French press coffee makers.

What items of furniture would they transport, and what could be made on site? Rhyacia was roughly the size of Greenland. Currently it was a vast stretch of undeveloped land that Dragos had discovered and protected long ago in case he might decide to do something with it someday.

His contingency planning had become a reality. Now, the community in Rhyacia was new and growing at an exponential rate, fueled by Wyr who were leaving New York in huge droves as they enthusiastically embraced the new challenge.

Very soon what had once been a vast tract of pristine, undeveloped land would become a nation, and Rhyacia would be self-supporting in every conceivable way, but that hadn’t happened yet. While money was no object in designing their house (a fact that still felt foreign and exotic to Pia), intensive thought and effort had to go into planning every detail, since most of what they wanted and needed had to be shipped in. Massive cargo caravans transporting a wide variety of goods including shelf-stable and freeze-dried food, tents, eco-friendly prefab housing, and other building materials crossed over to the Other land daily.