Chapter 5: New arrangement

Sebastian still wasn't sure whether what his father had did was good or bad. Half his classmates were either refusing to play with him or forbidden to do so by their parents, while the other half claimed that his father had done something great. The opinion was shared by the one net gain in his number of friends, who was one of the people his father was supposed to have helped. One of Tuuri's uncles – actually her father's cousins – had explained to Sebastian's mother what being a "mage" tended to entail, regardless of whether one believed magic to be real or not. Sebastian himself wasn't sure whether to believe in magic or not, but so far hadn't found his indecisiveness to keep him from being friends with Tuuri. Tuuri had admitted to liking it this way, as those who had their mind made up about it either used it as an excuse to avoid her or wanted to be her friend for that reason and no other. What she wanted was friends with whom she could do normal school things, and only think of magic when she was back at home. For some reason, Sebastian and his mother had recently had dinner at Tuuri's house. The uncle who had married into the family had mentioned having been able to befriend his husband despite initially not believing magic, but that he had almost ruined said friendship and the romance it had been slowly turning into at the time by deeply misunderstanding the bigger implications. Sebastian knew that he wanted to stay friends with Tuuri, at least for now. The adults around him told him that he was still young and had plenty of time to make his mind up about magic. But he really wondered how friendship was supposed to turn into love. Tuuri just chuckled when he asked her if magic was involved.

Thanks to the other Lalli, Reynir's other self had become aware of him. Having already spent five years literally sharing a mind with someone else while being aware of every single moment of it, he wanted to sever the link between the two of them as soon as possible, all while thanking Reynir for the thought behind his interventions. Fortunately, a variant on the process that had separated the other world's Reynir and the other world's Helena's minds had done the trick. While Reynir had secretly hoped to get a glimpse of the upcoming wedding from a good seat, he quickly decided that it was probably best for his other self to have his mind all back to himself before it happened if this was what he wanted.

Lalli had to admit that those mental visits to the other world would be at the very least a good stop-gap solution until Tuuri was sufficiently trained to block the voices out on her own. He insisted upon being present each time she visited her "aunt", even though the two of them had come up with a system that limited the sharing of time-sensitive information that seemed to work while their meetings were still secret. However, Lalli supervising the visits, if only nominally, had been insisted upon by Onni when he had agreed for them continue. Tonight, Reynir happened to be present also, and was telling the younger Tuuri a few stories involving the other world's first Silent World expedition. The story currently being narrated involving a small beast somehow getting inside the tank had caught Lalli's attention, after an indeterminate period of time spent listening with only half an ear.
-And Sven stabbed the thing right in the head. He somehow didn't get scratched or bitten, but Mikkel was so furious. Sven just pointed out that even if he wasn't immune, it was still a better idea than doing nothing and risking one of us getting bitten anyway. Helena stopped calling him "King of Boringland" for three days after that. She actually spent one of them sleeping, but still.
Two things Lalli had been wondering about, the second being how Sven could have ever attracted a hunter-mage's attention, explained in a few sentences. Lalli spent the rest of the visit reminding himself that he had spared his other self only of Tuuri's bite in the first Silent World expedition and that any similar circumstances that could befall him in the future were out of Lalli's control.

Lalli wasn't sure how to breach the subject with Onni. A few days after putting effort in avoiding an encounter between him and Tuuri-Ensi, Lalli had realized that he wasn't entirely sure that Onni didn't know about her. Onni's other self had visited their world exactly once before being asked to not come back, by Onni himself. As the other Onni had used the same channels as Lalli's other self for his visit, Lalli only had his own Onni's words in terms of knowledge of what the two of them had discussed that day. And even then, he had admitted that his other self had something to do with him getting around asking Cecilia out after years of not wanting to ruin the friendship they had built despite Onni being allegedly too busy running the family to have time for anything besides his job. If he knew about Tuuri-Ensi, making him aware of her visits may not be such a bad idea after all, if only to avoid hiding more from him than strictly necessary. Lalli struggled to bring his mind back to the initial thought to which Onni's awareness of Tuuri-Ensi had become a tangent gone out of control: his discomfort at continuing to keep Sven in the dark about the other world. That feeling in itself had come from…
-Hey, are you two back to experimenting new reporting systems or having a stealth date?
-I'm not sure these two things are mutually exclusive where these two are concerned.
-Come on, both people are supposed to have a good time on a date. I'm kind of surprised Lalli hasn't fallen asleep out of boredom yet.
From Sven, it had felt like the kind of simple statement of facts that Lalli himself gave other people once in a while. From Tuuri-Ensi, it had been a legitimate surprise at a difference between him and his other self, who had gotten a major motivation to start paying more attention to books in the first place. From the other skalds, it was often accompanied by remarks even he could understand as meaning that they considered him having no business staying in the same room as them for a longer than it was necessary for him to hand his scouting report in. Lalli had tried ignoring them at first, but he had more and more trouble not thinking of the fact that he probably wouldn't be getting those remarks if he had been his other self. This, combined with the fact that the man he was finding himself wanting to spend more and more time with was a bookish person, had increasingly made him consider trying to look into books a little more, but having no idea what to start with; Tuuri, Onni and Sven's favorites had all been unappealing to him for different reasons, and the latter of the three has strongly advised him to start with something he was actually interested in reading about. Tuuri-Ensi's troubles had the merit of having made him choose books and read them, in spite of the worry that had come with them. Back in the present, Sven handed him a corrected report for the fifth time in the morning:
-How about now?
Lalli scanned the report as attentively as he could, considering he had now been off his shift long enough for the fatigue so far kept at bay by moving around to start to creeping in. Sven spoke again:
-Looks like the first thing we need to fix is how long doing things this way is taking.
Lalli gave him a light nod and let out a little yawn while giving him the report back:
-Looks good. See you tonight.

As the only Finnish mages living full-time in Mora, Lalli and Tuuri had been the only people available to help find a way to make the radio-wave based anti-troll system be less harmful to any Finnish mages staying in town. While the system was also harmful to Norwegian mages, who had a small permanent contingent of their own in town, the new people in charge of the system preferred avoiding the risk of testing the modifications on only one type of mage, only to find out the seemingly beneficiary ones were still harmful to the other type. Tuuri's young age also made so that no other children needed to participate:
-How about this frequency?
Lalli, Tuuri and the day-shifter among the Norwegian mages in town all waited a few moments before nodding, to which the research team's new leader responded ecstatically, only to calm down to something more neutral:
-The good news is that I think I know what we can do from here. The bad news is that we will need to test many other factors before I can implement it, and even one of them not working out will mean I need to figure out an entirely new solution. But for now, the least I can do is let you all go home early.

xxxx

Things had worked out, somehow. On one hand, both Lalli and Tuuri had agreed that they would not visit the other world's Tuuri for three days. On the other, Reynir and Helena had both been growing frustrated over the fact that their last three trips to Mora had been work-related and longing for one on which bringing their daughter, who was just a couple years younger than Tuuri, was an option. In private, Reynir had admitted that he was going to need something to keep his mind off the wedding happening in the other world and to have correctly assumed Lalli was going to be in need of something similar. The gathering had turned into a playdate for both young girls and as much of a dinner party as Lalli could handle for the adults. Being both in the loop as to the real reason of the gathering, Emil and Helena made sure that both Lalli and Reynir would be too tired to go anywhere, even in the dream world, by the time they fell asleep.

Tuuri couldn't help but smirk all the way through the passage to the other world, and her "aunt's" quarters. In the midst of making extra-sure they wouldn't be going anywhere tonight, Lalli and Reynir had foolishly assumed an entire evening playing with Janine would be enough where she was concerned. The safe area seemed to be deserted, and she made sure to spend a few moments with her ear glued to a specific room's door before she snuck into it. The spell that let one make a copy of a real-world object that could be brought into any other safe area was a minor one compared to what she was used to trying without Lalli's guidance but had been more than enough to suit her needs. The fact that the Tuuri she was named after had been the main photographer during the first Silent World expedition had meant that there had been only a few photos of her. Among the handful that had been made, a single one had come across as something that would make a nice wedding gift for her but had the misfortune of not existing in the other world. She left the photograph in an envelope in a place where it would be easily found, and quickly left.

Having woken up early and found himself unable to go back to sleep, Lalli went to his study, and grabbed the book dedicated to Tuuri's photos that he had gotten published a few years ago, sat at his desk, and opened it at a specific page, near the end, where all the photos of Tuuri that had been taken by either a bored Mikkel or a curious Reynir were. One of them was Tuuri working at the office desk, unmistakably wearing her expedition uniform. The portion of the U-shaped desk to her right was occupied by Reynir, who was using it as a seat and focused on either drawing of writing something on a notepad. It had been the only photo of just the two of them ever taken. The original photo was in the house as well, but Lalli didn't want to risk damaging it or any of the others with which it was carefully stored with his tears.