And Ranelin sits on the embroidered pillow, once it's in the book! It is comfortable.

"Okay, do you want to start trying to edit now, or - actually, have you eaten anything lately...?"

"I ate before we landed, I'm fine."

"When did you land?" Ranelin is using what could be accurately described as a Mom Voice.

He laughs. "A few hours ago. I have had three whole meals today."

"Good," says the eight inch tall spirit, sounding like she wouldn't have accepted anything less. "All right. Editing now, then?"

"Yes please!"

"All right. So proper editing involves going - into the book? Or, well. Further in than you get by copying things into the book, and taking things from it."

"...huh. Is it the same sort of thing as - I don't know if there's a proper term for it - uh, I put the imperial palace in the book this morning, and I had a bunch of its walls and lamps and furniture and so on in the book first, and it did kind of feel like I was going into the book a little to fit all the pieces together..."

"Oh, you did? Then I guess you don't need to try and take a piece off of something big. Have you noticed a - connection? Between you and the book?"

"...I think I know what you're talking about, yeah."

"So when you're copying things or putting things into the book, you're just using it as an - an interface. Just something you push or pull against. To edit, you need to treat it more like it's a thread that you follow, or a path that you walk."

"Hmmm... I think I see what you mean," he says.

As a test, he puts the chain from his imperial seal into the book, then tries to - follow it in - and he finds himself immersed in the pages, not the paper and ink but the information contained in them, and it's utterly fascinating, but he reminds himself what he's there for and looks for the chain and - pulls it apart -

A shower of individual steel links rains into his cupped hands.

"Okay, that worked."

Ranelin smiles brilliantly.

"Okay, good! So it's - basically that? And you practice with it."

"Okay." He leans over to dump the disassembled chain on a table, then sits with the book in his lap and dives in again, looking for the glass world.

What does he want? Something at a comfortable scale for her to move around in, with the outer glass panes completely absent so she can get into and out of it easily, and - better - not just made of glass - it should have real granite mountains and limestone hills, real sand in the deserts and ice in the glaciers and water in the lakes - he'll have to compromise on the vegetation, make grasslands and forests out of felt and cotton fluff, because he can't think of a sensible way to scale them -

The real sticking point is the way the continents hang inside the world. In the display, they were held up by wires or chains so fine he could barely see them, and that worked fine at that scale, but for his purposes he wants something Ranelin can explore without landmasses wobbling every which way whenever she touches them.

What if he just... insists that it should be the case that all the continents in the model world stay put by magic, purely because he said so? Can he do that?

It does not at first appear that he can do that. But he's at a loss for other things to do, so he keeps trying. Why shouldn't he be able to do this, he put a swoop in the book and swoops are full of magic that has to do with controlling how things move around, and the way he wants to control how these things move around is really simple, come on - what if he goes and picks apart the swoop, can he figure out which bits and pieces of its complex enchantments can be reassembled to work for this purpose -

It turns out that he can. An hour after he started trying, he surfaces from his trance to find himself looking at a metal frame in the shape of the world, filled with exceptionally detailed continents. It stands very stably on the round metal base he constructed, which is a good thing because it's nearly as tall as he is and he's not sure he could hold it upright by himself if he had to. He pokes a desert and discovers that the sand flows back into place as soon as his finger isn't in the way. The lakes are the same way, and the mist of Misty Falls hangs in a stubborn cloud, swirling this way or that when he waves his fingers through it but always returning to its appointed place.

When Riale resurfaces from his trance, the room's noticeably colder. Ranelin figured out a way to get the window open, and sits at the windowsill, feet dangling over the edge, listening to the sounds of a sleeping city below.

"Hey, I finished making you a - well, it's not so much a glass world anymore..."

Ranelin startles at the noise, nearly falling from her perch in surprise. She catches herself, recovering quickly.

"Oh! Um, okay. Thank you."

"It was fun!"

"I'm glad."

"D'you want to come check it out?"

"Sure, but I wasn't sure where you put it - did you add water to it, I hear running water..."

"I decided that a world made of glass wasn't good enough, so I made a world made of... world."

"A world of. World?" says Ranelin, blankly.

"Stone in the mountains, water in the lakes."

Ranelin looks amazed.

"How did you keep it all together?"