Loel cracks up.

"But you're okay?" says Aleko, starting to yawn halfway through the sentence.

"Yeah," he says. "You can go back to sleep."

"We'll see about that," snorts Aleko. "I'll try, anyway." He lurches back into the house, toes off his shoes, and flops into the makeshift bed.

Loel flops into his own bed on the kitchen floor and goes straight to sleep - although first he stands just outside the kitchen door and convinces all the water on his body and in his shoes and shorts to depart these locations in favour of the ground.

Kiri is up early the next morning. She tiptoes down the stairs apprehensively.

There is the kitchen, and there is Loel, curled up in his blanket nest but firmly awake. He smiles when he sees her.

She relaxes when she sees him. And steps closer so if he has anything to "tell" her, he can do it without waking Aleko.

In that case, she is welcome to his memories of the whole event, as clearly as he can remember them for her. Which is pretty damn clear.

Kiri slumps (quietly, quietly) against his kitchen counter.

Aleko wakes up anyway. "Morning," he yawns, "Lalindar's alive, can we go home now?"

"Can I make breakfast first?" inquires Lalindar.

"Yeah, sure, breakfast."

Aleko eats appreciatively, although he mumbles something about weird northerly spices.

"It'll be about a week getting back," says Kiri. "Once we've got you where you're going I need to head back to the palace and cough up whatever the story is - it doesn't even necessarily have to include your identity, if you want to hide particularly thoroughly."

"...I think I'd like that a lot better than the alternative," he says. "I can just be Loel obviously-Lalindar, who you found in Thiyec in the middle of a misplaced rainstorm. No missing princes involved."

She nods. "You're a little recognizable. We found your house in the rainstorm in question with Aleko's sketches five years out of date to show to people. But if you don't keep too many servants, and don't travel, you could probably avoid showing yourself in person for at least a while. I'd offer to be your messenger, but it would look suspicious for one prime to be the only public face of another - the Frothens know me well enough not to count on it being a bid for power, but Auney doesn't, to say nothing of the missing Serlast if they ever turn up."

"Do that many people know what I look like? I wouldn't think so," he says. "As long as I don't come to the palace, which I'm not exactly planning to..." He shrugs.

"If someone describes a distant Lalindar cousin who has been out of the country but speaks native Welchin and has fluffy dark hair, thus and such a skin tone, and these descriptions filter to the palace...? I think there would be more suspicion than you'd like."

"I'm also not planning to keep any servants," he says. "But I guess I see your point. I don't know, though, I can't be the only Lalindar who looks like me. Mother has other relatives."

"There are other Lalindars, but by and large they haven't been out of the country - in an approximately northerly direction - and they aren't your age - and all it would take would be a surprise visit from someone who's met you."

"Mm. I'll build a moat," he jokes.

"I would, in fact, seriously advise that you do. There's plenty of water around the estate, but not an actual moat."

"I would love having a moat."