… He picks it up off the floor. "Did you want some too?"

Shrug. "Nah, go ahead."

He places it down at the table, takes a seat, and tries some.

They are very good scrambled eggs.

"… Nice perk," he says, after a couple of mouthfuls.

"Yeah, I was so overjoyed when I figured that one out."

"And… other than this, not a ton of progress?"

"Progress on what?"

Shrug. "Getting home?"

"No, not yet..."

"There might be a way to bring people here."

"… Oh? Uh. How?"

"You send them an invitation through the bottle messages. I haven't tried it yet, but it said that they would get an island of their own and whoever sent the invite would be able to visit it."

"Of course it can't also send people back, so we'd be removing them probably permanently from wherever they are." Sigh.

"Yeah, that. I am pretty sure Henry would come, but I don't think he wouldn't think he is in... I don't know, a extended acid drip or something."

"I don't suppose he'd be sensible about it all, act like he would if it weren't?"

"Maybe?" He doesn't sound very sure.

"… I'm not trying to be rude or anything, but it might be inconvenient – in addition to the fact we'd abducted him – if he then did something reckless because he believed it was a hallucination."

"Maybe my mom will be able to convince him. I don't know, he is just very stubborn about this sort of thing."

"Believing magic is real is something I have not totally got my head around," admits Anthony.

"Yeah, but how long would it take you to respond to mysterious messages in bottles?"

"It depends on what sort of way they were mysterious – if they're not clear about being mysterious and being easy to return and so on then I might not bother responding or doing anything with them?"

"Hm, fair enough. I'm actually not sure how they show up on the other end."

"If it's a message in a bottle I have no idea. Kitchen sink?"

"They sometimes show up in nearby water, but sometimes the mail-creature hands it too you. Specially if you've been ignoring them for too long. I don't know if it shows up that way for Henry or my mom, but the mail-creature says that Henry has received my messages."

"And you've sent some to your mom?"