"Because of Ulunat!" Rahim will stop hugging in his quest to explain how Ulunat makes time flow differently. "Because the time bounces off her shell, like magic does, and also you don't grow up, so you can keep being inside her for a million years and still be a kid."

"That's a very reasonable assumption. But Nebetah was born in the dome and has lived here all her life, and she's a grown-up. How do you explain that?"

"You only mostly don't grow up," says Rahim. "You still grow up a little bit. So Nebetah has just been inside the dome for a million million years."

"Ines, what do you think of this theory?"

"Up," demands Ines, despite already being up. "Papa up."

Well, he prepped overland flight today. Everyone can be even more up! 

Ines accepts this fulfillment of her totally normal and reasonable expectations for Up. She keeps clinging; she's determined not to let Élie escape again.

Rahim remembers that he should also hug his mother, and does so. "Can you stay for breakfast, or do you have to go again?"

"Breakfast, lunch, and dinner today, little one. Your father and I have missed you terribly."

Élie discovered some time ago that Ines likes it when he tosses her great distances in the air and uses his dimension steps to pop into existence and catch her at the last moment. He flings the child, pops over to Rahim and Naima, and catches her as she falls. 

"Terribly. But – " no matter how long we're away, we'll always come back. He can't promise that, under the circumstances. "But now we're here, and we'll have the whole day together. Tell me, has Nebetah taken you to see the orrery?"

Ines screams with delight about this, at a volume not entirely polite to everyone else in the house. 

"Hamideh and me went to see it," says Rahim. "Ines couldn't go because she wouldn't stop screaming."

To Rahim – "Did you like it? Would you like to show me?" 

And to Ines – "You know, it's considered very impolite to shout so loudly."

Ines giggles and shrieks again, perhaps a little quieter this time.

"It was good," says Rahim, without much obvious enthusiasm. "Can we go to the market and see the puppets, Papa?"

"We may certainly go to the market and see the puppets."

He can always drag them along to the orrery later – he wants to see it, and it's never too early to inspire in a child the desire to rederive interplanetary teleport. 

" - is this market inside the dome, Rahim?"

"The one with the puppets isn't," says Rahim.

– Right.

"We can't go today, then. But we can go to the market in the dome." 

"But that one doesn't have puppets," says Rahim. "Pleeeease, Papa?"

"Sweetheart, it isn't safe."

"But I really want to see them. You can teleport us away if anybody bad comes."

Probably every father wishes that he could wave his hand and wish away everything in the world that might threaten his children. He wonders if it's better or worse for him that he almost always can. 

"Right now, love, there are some bad people that I can't teleport you away from. Your mama and I are going to stop them. But it's not safe yet." 

Rahim looks very much like he might cry. He doesn't quite; he summons all of his five-year-old self control and manages to hold on.

"Okay", he says tremulously, and goes for another hug.

Hugs all around. 

"We're both very proud of you. You're being so patient, and so brave."

"That's right. But listen, Rahim, there's no sense in spending the day have now crying about things we can't have yet. We'll only have this particular day once, and we'll want to have spent it doing something. Now, would you like to go to the shops to get some breakfast, or would you like us all to eat here with Nebetah?"

"Shops," says Rahim, quietly.

Élie used to find the dome unsettling, until he learned the trick to doing magic in it. Even now, though, there's something off about its central market – far too elegant and calm and orderly for a shopping district at the heart of a major city. He holds Ines in his lap, even though there are plenty of places to sit, and occasionally prestidigitates clumps of stewed fava beans off the ground.