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“Yes, I’m still watching. Obviously I’m watching. You were the one telling the story! Why are you asking me questions?”

The laptop hummed quietly and did nothing.

There was a small glowing button under the words. Continue watching. A second button sat next to it, but Leo didn’t dignify that one with his attention.

He considered his options. Nate was in the yard, and the yard was off limits. Besides, Leo wasn’t going to float out there and admit that he’d been defeated by the laptop.

He was stronger now. He could do this.

“Fine,” Leo said. “Fine.”

He gathered his might and his focus.

Sadly, the trackpad turned out to be the most insolent object he had ever encountered. It sat there, smooth and smug, while Leo tried to press one small bit of it the way he’d seen Nate do. His first attempt did nothing. So did the next twenty. Somewhere around the thirtieth try, the cursor twitched a full inch, and Leo nearly cheered.

The afternoon light moved across the floor while he worked. From the yard came hammering, then a power drill, then, unmistakably, Nate swearing at something.

Leo noted all of it and kept his attention on the enemy.

The click, when it finally came, was the smallest sound in the world.

The teenagers came back.

“HA!” Leo rose a full foot in the air. “I am still watching! I will ALWAYS be watching!”

He settled in, victorious, to find out how the fight between the people on screen would resolve.

He was invested now.

Only for the screen to go dark again three episodes later.

Are you still watching?

Leo looked at the message for a long time.

Back in his day, a television stayed on unless you told it to shut off. It didn’t need reassurance. It didn’t check on you like a worried mother.

Somewhere in the last fifty years, televisions had gotten stupid. And needy.

“No,” Leo told the laptop. “We’re done here.”

He turned and floated through the wall to go tell Nate that his television was an embarrassment.

He was through the kitchen, through the back wall, out into the evening air, and two sentences into his complaint before he remembered the yard was forbidden.

By that point it was too late to turn around.

And anyway⁠—

The yard was on fire.

That was his first wild thought. Light everywhere, warm and low and golden.

Leo stopped moving and stared.

Strings of little lights ran overhead, post to post to the porch rail, sagging in easy loops. Lanterns sat in the grass along a path of flat stones that hadn’t existed this morning. The path led to the middle of the lawn, where the grass had been mowed, and there stood a table.

It had a white cloth on it and two place settings.