"Heart makes a wrong turn.
Heart locked in its gate of thorns.
Heart with its hands folded in its lap.
Heart a blue skiff parting the silk of the lake."

-heart, dorianne laux

Cities are – cities are painted in glass – a sunstreaked window in the morning, a water smoothed shape in a river. Maastricht is a glassblower's masterpiece – layers and layers and layers of years, not muddied by swirling together, but wrapped by a thoughtful hand. Neat. Artistic. Well-planned. In the morning, the sun lights up the streets like a beacon. Lily's happiest being pulled along in the undertow like a bit of seaweed, but she always struggles to tangle herself in the world when someone is with her.

So she's not quite sure why she sends the letter (folded in the shape of a swallow, dirt-brown and a bit tattered in the tail) swooping over rooftops. A half hour later, a parchment mouse accosts her ankle on the street.

Of course – where to?

Of course, she thinks, marveling a little.

She's got a list of thirty places she is planning to go to – six for each century of tourist attractions she can find. Okay, not quite centuries, just her own arbitrarycategorizations – Medieval-y, Renaissance-y, that middle bit of time between then and now, geographic proximity to her hotel room. And then places to eat if they seem decent or cheap, any other odds and ends she's struck by in her haphazard browsing of tourist annuals.

She goes back to her hotel and copies everything out by hand for herself, starts over again if she makes a spelling mistake. She's nervous about talking to Teddy, and nervous about not saying anything. She wants to smack herself for inviting him. Lily dithers over her jacket, leaves the scarf, leans back to snatch it up again.

"You don't really have to come, you know," she says to him once they've found each other, peering a bit nervously at his face.

"Yes, but I'd like to," Teddy says cheerfully, pausing to scratch at his elbow before hurrying to move back to her side. "I already promised, and if I didn't, I'd honestly just be in the hotel room counting tiles in the floor."

Lily finds it pleasing that he has to work to match her stride if he falls behind, and thinks about that instead of the little jolt that hits her stomach at the thought of her own hotel room, and the seventy-two curlicues on the east wall she recounted for two hours last night. It's possible, she considers, that she is a bit lonely. Not alone, necessarily – heaven knows that both local boys and tourists are eager to buy her drinks – but, well.

"I, well,–" she shoots him another look, then glances back at her brochure before he looks back. "Well, if you're sure. I wanted to go see the – er, wait – the Museum… aan het… Vrijthof? – I definitely said that wrong." She gnaws her lip, glaring as though the hapless paper will reveal the right answer.

She hears a laugh besides her. Teddy stops abruptly when she turns to him, then drops helplessly into another grin. "I don't have any suggestions," he tells her.

She swats at him, and he laughs again. She wonders what she'd have to do to make him stop laughing. Punch a kitten maybe. Rob a chocolate shop. She can feel her mouth shifting, and she tries to catch it back.

"What?" he asks. "Is the Museum aan van Headface a record of comedy routines?"

"Teddy," she whines, and is reminded uncomfortably of James' daughter Annie. She changes her tone, and starts again. "It's a collection of Muggle furnishings, I think– hold on – here: 'featuring period rooms with 17th- and 18th-century furnishings, Maastricht silver, porcelain, glassware, Maastricht pistols, and a collection of 17th- and 18th-century Dutch paintings and 20th-century paintings from local artists.'"

Teddy's eyebrow shoots up. "You're… taking me to see old furniture?"

"Furnishings – it says furnishings –" She's lost hold of the laugh, it's poised right above her bottom lip.

"Meaning plates. And curtains, and chairs," Teddy continues decisively. He adds with a sigh, "All of my grandmother's things were like that; even the spoons had a pedigree."

Lily shoots an amused look at him. "And how exactly would you breed pedigree spoons?" she asks, "Only the shiniest ones are allowed to have litters?"

"Oh no, only the biggest ones, because -" Teddy starts with a sly grin, before coughing and seeming to reconsider. "Because they'd be able to pick up the most soup?" he finishes.

Lily wants both to laugh at him, and to hit him.

"You're allowed to make jokes about penises –" she starts, and Teddy's eyes flick to her, "–though that honestly sounded like it was going to be awful," she finishes tartly.

He turns that still-startled look back to her and she glares.

"Don't," she says, "Whatever it is, don't. It's all right if you talk about having dates or make jokes and all, but the second I bring it up, I'm some sort of a … a … you know." She's heard this rhetoric from enough people, and she has every intention of nipping it in the bud from Teddy if she can. "It's not the 1900s, and I don't have to go living my life like some sort of a nun in convent – "

Teddy interrupts her, throwing up his hands defensively.

"Hey, Lily-billy," he cries, "I– I've known you since you were born!" He drops his hands, subsiding with a laugh. "Since the 'Is kissing wet?' talk. Last time I saw you, you were – very young," he says, shaking his head disarmingly.

And Lily's almost disarmed by it – almost. "Oh, hell with you," she snaps at him, and pulls ahead, suddenly irritable.

There are a few moments of silence while he catches up to her.

"Happens a bit, I guess?" he ventures after a few more moments, and Lily hums in response. He nods in her peripheral vision. "And a lot of it from people who don't mean to be condescending."

It's not quite a question and not quite a statement. Lily turns to him again. He looks appropriately rueful, but he's looking away from her - into his own memory, maybe.

"Dad? Or mum?" Lily asks, and he nods in acknowledgment.

"Ginny," he says. "I don't think Harry ever really got comfortable enough with it to try."

Lily shrugs. "I think he's all right now – just about blistered Jamie's ears off last year."

Teddy's eyes crinkle.

"You still call him Jamie?" he asks, and Lily's responding grin is wicked. "Still hates it, then," Teddy concludes. He glances back at her after another second. "Are you done speed walking, or are you still upset?"

Lily debates it, relents.

"Not my problem you can't keep up," she says lightly, aiming a playful kick at him. He dodges, and makes a face of mock-dismay.

They wend their way through the city – Teddy is merciless in the museum, and she chokes back threads of laughter. A museum employee whispers to her in Dutch and beams like a sun, and they eat in a charming square with another miserably tangled name. Lily makes Teddy snort up his drink mispronouncing it into nonsense, they wander into a series of stores where they are better behaved – and finally the best part, the part Lily's been waiting for.

"Helpoort," Lily tells him, beaming, "It means Hell Gate."

Teddy nods, staring up at it. "So," he says, "It's a… rock."

There's a pregnant pause there, while he waits for her to make sense of it for him, the squat, gray edifice against the thrumming excitement in her voice.

"It's – um, it's eight hundred years old," she says, trying to find words that fit, that tell him what she means. "And they've rebuilt the whole city around it – two or three times. But this is still here. It's… old. And old things, they… have weight, you know? They last. All these things happen around them, or to them, and they survive it. They carry all of that and it… it stays on them. They survive. You can see everything they've gone through, and they are just more by what it's happened to them. Not less."

She hasn't taken her eyes off the gate, but she can feel Teddy shifting beside her. She's waiting for him to say something, but he doesn't.

He shifts, stills, lets out a long breath.

Behind them is the sound of the river, and in front of them, the gate and its towers – tall enough to be imposing, but still human – still built with stone, built by hand.