Chapter 2: Best of both worlds

Lalli walked toward the dining area, remembering that he wasn't supposed to know Reynir nor Helena. He had checked the dream area mentioned in the message from this world's Lalli before actually waking up, and had been surprised to recognize the presence and landscape that were mixed in with Reynir's. Lalli had met Helena at a get-together in Norway three years after the expedition. She and Reynir had spent the night together at some point, but she had spent breakfast the next morning debating with Emil on what worked best between magic and man-made explosives to burn buildings during cleansing. Lalli had almost completely forgotten about her when he and Emil had gotten a letter several months later, and the nature of the letter had meant needing to commit her existence to memory. He wondered if she was a mother in this world also. There was going to be only one way to find out. He had weaved a colored pattern in the basket that he was about to give Tuuri. If one payed enough attention, they could see it was a repetition of the number 26. In the dining area, he found the gathering that was celebrating the birthday of Tuuri and another resident of the base that shared her birthday, but that their family only ran into by chance the rest of the year. He noticed Reynir and Helena, wearing close-looking outfits and hairstyles. The ones he knew definitely didn't have this going on. Emil's exact words had been "friends with benefits… and a child, in their case". Lalli spotted Tuuri, took a deep breath and walked towards where she was:
-Janine, this is an adorable little basket! Did you make it yourself?
-Yes.
Lalli kept himself from making his presence known in Swedish so Janine would understand him at the last minute, remembering he was not supposed to know the language in this world. Tuuri was standing and leaning towards the little girl, while the little girl was back to Lalli, which caused both of them to ignore the fact that he was coming closer. The little girl was the first to notice he was coming and turn in his direction, while Tuuri had decided to examine every little detail of the small basket:
-You walk soft like mama.
Lalli was startled. The hair was the same color, and parts of her face were recognizable if one knew what to look for. Everything else was different, including the eye color, which had been the tip-off to the parentage of his own world's Janine, along with the lack of immunity. Compared to the rest, the fact that the Janine he knew was only a year old in 95 while this one looked at least three was an afterthought. The little girl's words made Tuuri finally notice Lalli's presence and speak to him in Finnish:
-Oh, hi.
He wanted this moment to last forever. He wanted to end it as quick as possible. Like the previous times, the body he was borrowing seemed to make the decision for him. He came as close as he dared and gave her the basket:
-Happy birthday.
Always an object small enough that their hands would have to make contact when she took it. That would be enough to last him until next year. To remind him that it had been worth it to create that window into what would have happened if she hadn't died. To his surprise, she grabbed his forearm during the transfer:
-I need to speak with you.
She dragged him towards one of the buildings surrounding the dining area, whose back was a preferred spot for private moments of all kinds. On the way there, she stopped at a table to drop the baskets. During that moment, Lalli looked for Janine, in case he could catch a glimpse of something that would tell him why she looked so different. One of the adults came to pick her up. Wait, what was Emil doing here? Lalli had frequently wondered what had become of him in this world, but he hadn't expected him to ever visit Keuruu. Lalli got his answer when Helena joined the pair to give them a big hug. Both men and women. Lalli hadn't really given much thought to that before. But with all the unforeseen changes that keeping Tuuri alive in this world had brought, not all of them good, it was reassuring to see Emil leading a happy life, with someone he got along with well in his own world.

One of the upsides of that place being a known spot for private meetings is that someone had made an effort to install a bench there, which gave them a place to sit. It turned out to be needed when Tuuri asked her question:
-Lalli, did someone ask you to drop the paperwork for the expedition in the river?
If she had suspected Onni and asked if it was him, he could have said "no". If she had said "someone else" he could still have truthfully given a negative answer. Fortunately, he realized that confusion would be perfectly logical reaction to this world's Lalli to the question, so he went with that:
-What?
-Ah, I guess you want an explanation. I was talking with Reynir about how you always showed up with a present at my birthday despite the current state of things between us. He suggested that someone else may have told you to drop the paperwork in the river, and this was why you wouldn't explain, but still gave me presents. I know you can be convinced to do things that you wouldn't do on your own quite easily, and I remember that I made sure our paperwork never ended up in Onni's hands because I was afraid he could do something like that. I asked Onni about it, and he told he didn't ask you to do anything. But there are plenty of other people here, so there may have been someone else than Onni who didn't want me to leave. So, this is why I'm asking you: did someone ask you to do this?
Lalli thought of his answer. Claiming she had guessed correctly was tempting. But the second Onni would find out, he would turn the world over trying to find who it was, and this world's Lalli would eventually have to admit that it was nobody on the base. That would only worry Onni more and most likely make him jump to the conclusion that this world's Lalli had been under a kade's influence all this time without anyone noticing. He suddenly realized that there was an answer that he could give that was both truthful and had a chance of making things better between Tuuri and this world's Lalli:
-I thought it was one of your weird jokes, so I didn't realize you were serious about the two of us going to the Silent World for a long time. When I understood, it was too late to say no. I was near the river, with the papers in my hands. I didn't want you to leave. I threw them in. After that, I was hoping you wouldn't be mad at me anymore if I waited long enough. I'm sorry it made you sick.
Her breakdown had caused many things to visibly change between her twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth birthdays. This world's Onni had still been musing about his part in it during the twenty-fifth one. Lalli had had a guilt trip of his own at the time, and was happy to see she seemed to be doing better.
-How could you have known? And why didn't you just tell me this earlier?
-You don't hear things when you're not ready to hear them, and just now was the first time you seemed ready since I dropped the papers in the water.
Tuuri suddenly seemed very interested in the floor right next to the bench:
-I see… I still don't like that you did this, though. Though I have to admit that the whole thing did make Onni realize how stubborn he was being about some things. He may still prefer to have me here than anywhere else by a long shot, but at least, he stopped being so controlling on other matters. And it was about time, if you ask me. Look at this, I'm ten years older than he was when everyone thought it was perfectly fine to have him care for both of us.
She suddenly was looking at him again, with somewhat of a smile on her face:
-You haven't properly met my charges yet, have you? They are going to be based here for a while, so you might as well know who is who.
She dragged him back into the party. He needed time to himself after this conversation and seeing this world's Emil, so he let this world's Lalli take control of his body back.

Lalli didn't know what the schemer had been up to, but he had, for some reason, come back right before getting introduced to the foreign mages, the woman's idiot husband and their daughter. Tuuri had probably told them that he didn't like unnecessary touching that much, as nobody tried to shake his hand. A bell ring reminded him that he had come to the party on the way to his shift, and that it was going to start soon, prompting him to leave. His stomach told him a few moments too late that whatever the schemer had been doing, it hadn't been eating. It was spring, he would probably be able to scavenge something during his shift.
-Lalli!
It was his name, but not the voice of anyone he interacted with regularly. He turned around to see the idiot husband running towards him. What did he want? Once he got close enough, he gave him three of something that looked edible, saying something in Swedish. Lalli put two in his belt pouch, but was so hungry he decided to eat one before going on his shift. What were these? They tasted great. He realized too late that the idiot husband was still there, and smiling. However, the second he noticed Lalli was looking at him, he ruffled his hair, said something that Lalli guessed to be a farewell and left in the same direction he came.

One the way back from his shift, Lalli walked by the harbor, where the boat was just leaving, bringing all the cleansers it could carry to this year's cleansing site on the Keuruu-Pori waterway. He noticed a few familiar figures, including Tuuri, waving at the boat. He went to ask her what she was doing here:
-Oh, hi. Emil's helping out with the cleansing operation, we're all telling him goodbye.
Lalli looked at the boat, and saw the blonde figure waving at his wife and daughter. It looked like he wasn't going to have to stand the idiot husband's presence for the next few weeks to months, after all. He remembered that he still had a piece of that food in his belt pouch and showed it to Tuuri:
-Is that some kind of Swedish food? It tastes good.
-Technically, they aren't just a Swedish thing. But you need something that is very hard to find here to make them. There is enough of it in Sweden that it's somewhat affordable on its own. They are called cookies, by the way. But don't keep them for too long either, or they get less crunchy.
Lalli now had an idea of how the other world's idiot husband had gotten the schemer to move to Sweden. But it couldn't be only the cookies, could it? He had tried to ask the schemer why he had married this guy in one of their secret written messages to each other, but he hadn't answered due to his "not letting him know too much of what he was missing" policy. The female foreign mage came to speak to Tuuri, holding her yawning daughter's hand with her own right one. Wait, where had the lower part of her left arm gone? He was quite sure she had two arms at Tuuri's birthday. The female foreign mage must have noticed Lalli was looking at it, as she got closer to him, and started playfully making her loose lower sleeve twirl quite close to his face. He was completely mesmerized, like when he watched one of the windmills for too long. Had Tuuri told her about this, or had the woman guessed that weakness of Lalli's on her own? Fortunately, she quickly got bored of it, and stopped. Only then did he notice that Tuuri had been speaking to him:
-… and they make quite good fake arms in Sweden. She was wearing hers yesterday evening.
Fortunately, this seemed to be the end of what she was telling him. When he looked for the woman again, she was walking away with her daughter.
-When did she lose it?
-During the magic accident, when Reynir lost his. Weren't you listening to what I was saying just now?
-Sleepy.
Thinking to actually tell her when he was sleepy, in hope she realized she didn't have his full attention in these moments, rather than just saying "okay" to whatever she said had been a piece of the schemer's advice. According to him, giving her the impression that he was listening to her when he was in fact half asleep had been a big factor in keeping him from realizing what Tuuri was preparing them for until it had been too late. They had talked nowhere near enough for her to notice these past five years. However, it had worked well with some of the other people with whom he had been using the "saying okay each time he got a word in" method before, which made it one of the few tangible good changes the schemer had brought to his life.