The two chairs prove, disconcertingly, to be exactly the right height. Alex and Mira sit. Alex raises his camera and takes a photograph of the impossible room; the impossible room does not object. Mira opens the guidebook to the index and runs her finger slowly down it. "Right," she says, at length. "It's not in here." The pot simmers with the serenity of something that has been doing this since long before guidebooks existed. The amber light comes from everywhere and nowhere in particular. Outside — somewhere, notionally — a storm is still theoretically occurring; in here there is only woodsmoke, the faint smell of borscht, and the specific quiet of a room that knows things. Then the door opens. Vesna returns, mop-less, carrying a tray with two small ceramic cups of something steaming. She sets it on the edge of the stove without ceremony, studies them both once, and waits.