And you can. It’s raw, red around the edges from newness, but eager and growing. She likes things about you, these wild things. You are small. You are careful sometimes, and bold others. You’re clever. Too clever. Clever enough to know how much, how often, how deeply you’ve been wrong. You’re brave. You’re cocky. You’re self-serving and a little narcissistic and she likes all of it. All of it. Not some, but all.

“I’m not wrong,” she says. “You are.”

“Remember,” you ask, “when you gave me your knife?”

“Remember,” she asks in return, “when I gave you my brother’s pants?”

James is here, too, and so is Vel, but you can’t feel them the way you can feel her. They can feel each other, though. They haven’t said, but you can see it. Vel has barely stopped crying.

“I can’t believe this is what it’s like,” he says, over and over, spitty and bursting. “I’m going to stitch this feeling into a cloak.”

“You’re a baby,” James says, but it’s allover fond and he’s twinkling.

“Come here,” she says, “sit by the water with me.”

She holds your hand and leads you there and it’s maddening, the feel of it. That you can feel her hand and you can feel your hand and you can feel your hand in her hand and you try not to think about it because you’re worried if you do, you’ll go entirely insane.

“Hush,” she coos, touching your temple, and the madness is gone. “Look out there.”

She points. You want to look at her finger, but you force your eyes beyond. You’re on an island. On the other shore, there are hills. And on those hills, there are houses. Little houses like mushrooms, smokestacks rolling clouds like foam into the warm sky. You can see figures bobbing about, ducking into buildings and out, and things that fly, hovering and swooping.

“This is an island of transport,” Brella says, “in and out. But we can’t go to the rest of the place.”

“The rest?”

“The place that’s hidden.” She draws her fingers up and down, doors and windows and walls. “Some fae live in the forest. Some live here.”

“How big is it?” you ask, because it looks like it could go on forever.

“It’s like time.” She kisses your forehead and you go warm all over. “It doesn’t work the same way for them as it does for us.”

You consider this. You think of hills and hills, rising and falling, and of houses on them. And maybe, if the town is full up, another hill can grow from flat ground for one more fae, in one more house, with one more smokestack to let the heat from their hearth escape into the sky.

You’re crying.

“Oh, you’re crying,” she says.

“I am not.”