Slurp!

"...gimme your hand?"

...he gives Cor his hand.

And if he puts the pen in Riale's hand and uses him as a drawing implement. Strawberry?

Riale giggles.

A strawberry takes form on the page. Owing to the limitations of Cor's drawing apparatus, it is not the greatest strawberry this book has ever seen.

...partway through the drawing of the strawberry, Riale blinks thoughtfully and the next bit of line gets slurped instead of lingering.

"What'd you do?"

"I realized I was intending to help and stopped that in case it was affecting the experiment. And apparently it was!"

"Huh. But it didn't destroy the previously drawn strawberry parts."

"Nope. So it looks like... you can only put things in the book if you're, uh, using me as a pen, and I'm actively cooperating with the endeavour - but once it's there it's there. Would you like to finish drawing your strawberry?"

"I don't have non-experiment-related feelings about my strawberry."

Giggle. "Okay." He reclaims his hand.

Cor gives back the book.

And Riale puts his hand on the page, and images of various objects in their vicinity draw themselves there. The half-drawn strawberry lingers.

"That looks like a reasonably nice inn," he says after filling a couple more pages. "Let's get rooms there."

"Sounds good to me."

In they go. Riale shows his imperial seal. He has to make it glow multiple times before the innkeeper will admit it looks genuine and let them take a couple of rooms for the night.

"Thank you."

"G'night!"

And he goes to sleep and wakes up early in the morning and fiddles with the foods in the book until he produces a palatable breakfast.

Oooh, breakfast.

"I appear to be an adequate book-cook! Let's go see how the spirits are doing."

When they reach the swoop, the world-model is still in front of it, and Ravkesial is sitting on the edge of Golden Plains with her arms wrapped around her knees and a smile on her face.

Camalirea waves hello.

Wave. "G'morning."

"Good morning," says Ravkesial. She hops off the model of the mainland and drifts back to perch on the wing of the swoop.

"Morning!"

"Are you planning to leave that there?" asks Telarin, gesturing to the model.