James could feel the silly, boyish smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he pushed his legs to follow the trail skirting the loch's shore in his usual morning jog, after he finished texting with Siena.

He hadn't felt this elated in ages, he had thought that at his age he would never feel like this again, he had been convinced that after reaching thirty he would never act like an enamoured teen... Only now did he truly understand Romeo, who dismissed all thoughts of his beloved Rosaline the same night he laid his eyes on Juliet whom he had never met before... True love at first sight was the rarest thing, but it happened; his experience with Siena was a shining example and an unshakeable proof of that.

He laughed, the unmistakably human sound scattering all sorts of birds from the nearby bushes. That was a book world he and Siena needed to visit; he would like a word with the reckless, immature Romeo, and not only him. James had always wanted to talk to Friar Laurence, the man who thought he could use the young couple's love in his plan to restore the peace between the two dignified households that had been at variance with each other for decades, maybe longer, without any thought of possible tragic consequences of his interference. Romeo and Juliet's naivety was understandable, given their age. The friar's wasn't; he was the adult on whom they relied, whom they believed to be unable to make a mistake...

But before starting to think about this Shakespeare's tragedy, he should focus on Frankenstein. The Monster was kept off page for years in the plot, surviving, living, learning, plotting, and murdering innocent people close to his creator's family in his cold revenge for having been brought to life and then abandoned. Even though Victor found him in the Alps, under Mont Blanc, upon his return home from Ingolstadt more than five years after he created him, there was no way to know where the creature spent those years exactly, and guessing whether his and Siena's presence would change his path, bringing him closer to Victor and them. It felt extremely risky to enter that plot at all, at any moment, full stop.

However, he understood Siena's desire to save Frankenstein's creation from the awful life the young scientist dreaming of glory had bestowed upon it, and so they would go. After they both studied and consulted the book to its tiniest detail to prevent anything going wrong. So many characters needed to be saved in Mary Shelley's dismal world, the young William, Justine Moritz, accused of murder she hadn't committed, the good, tender-hearted Elizabeth... The fact that the story was vaguely set during the late 1700s, being roughly contemporaneous with the events of the French Revolution, happening before the confusion spread beyond the borders of France, meant that he needed to practice the fencing he had given up years ago. Men didn't walk unarmed back in those dangerous years; swords, daggers, and muskets were always carried and often used.

James frowned, barely avoiding stepping into the lake's slippery shallows in his distraction. Helping the Monster wouldn't be as simple as sending the Little Prince home before the snake could bite him or helping the Little Mermaid to return to her sisters. He would have to study the book word after word.

But before sitting down to reading, he needed to write his article for the magazine so he could email it to Claire before she would come to demand it in person. James didn't want her coming over to his place, but he definitely needed to set a date to meet with her, to tell her that he wished to reverse their friendship to what it had been before what it was now. Would she understand when he told that he had fallen in love, in real love, for the first time in his life? The last thing he wanted was to make Claire unhappy, or worse, to break her heart... He sighed; maybe he should invite her for a drink on Friday after work, the only day of the week Angus insisted he must turn up and sit through the working hours in the office in person.

Reaching the group of tall, scattered rocks marking the first five miles of his jog, the nature's creation looking vaguely like some man-made temple from the beginning of time, a ring of stones consecrated to a long forgotten pagan deity, James turned around to run the second half of his morning workout back to his cottage. The Urquhart Castle now spreading in front of him was magnificent, its elegant, bright, half-crumbled walls towering in their resplendent glory above the ribbons of semitranslucent white mist slowly retreating into the profound deep blue lake. Siena would love the view, he was sure...

He allowed his thoughts to wander after her freely as his feet treaded the alternatively grassy, muddy, or sandy stretches of the loch's shore.

Siena's text reached him in the evening, just as he gave up writing for the day. His book about the Lochness Monster was coming together at a slow but steady rhythm, and James was fine with that. There were more pressing things he needed to deal with in his life at the moment than writing a book. And he had to do some cooking right now, unless he wanted to go to bed hungry tonight, then he could finally read...

James' heart started to beat faster as he opened her text; he hadn't been sure that she would text him first.

'Just arrived home with my weekly shopping. How was your first day back to normality?'

He smiled, her words didn't quite capture the meaning he could read between and beyond them, the feeling which they both apparently perceived, of their normal life being the fake, and their existence as Book Travellers being the real thing.

'Long and boring despite having so much to do.' He typed in reply. 'What about you?'

'Same.' She stated immediately. 'I need to put away the groceries and cook, and then I'll be finally able to read. I must reread the entire Frankenstein, I don't recall it well enough to decide on the best place to enter the plot.'

Just then, James realised that reading her thoughts off the phone's screen wasn't satisfying enough; he needed to hear her voice. He stood up from the typewriter and walked outside, towards the tiny, crumbling stone wharf built by some ancient fisherman living in this place in the long gone past, the place where James now kept his inventions monitoring the deep waters of the loch, before he dialed her number.

"Hi," she breathed into the phone after a long while, as if she had been tempted not to pick up, and he could imagine feeling her breath on his ear. His ring glowed dimly, surprising him, responding most likely to his feeling that she was closer this way, when he could at least hear her.

"Hi," he replied, conscious of the unusual husky notes in his voice. Goodness, he missed her. He kneeled into the coarse, large-grained sand surrounding the weathered stones and checked the instruments to busy his free hand while he collected his thoughts and came up with something to tell her, other than that he really needed to hear her voice. "I'm going to reread the book, too. The world is too dangerous for us to simply jump in without knowing the plot by heart."

"Great," she agreed. "Then we can text each other whenever we read or think of something."

"Of course." James smiled, straightening up again, shaking the cold lake water off his fingers before pushing his hand into the pocket of his jeans to stop his arm from reminding him how much it wanted to be wrapped around her waist, pulling her close to him.

"Just wait a second, will you?! Aspetta un attimo, non ci riesco ad aprirlo adesso!" Siena's whisper-shouted words, followed by a loud, indignant miaow, disturbed the multitude of perfect pictures of her, of them together, which his mind was painting.

"Is that Dante?" he asked, his words laced with laughter.

"Yes," Siena admitted on a sigh. "He loves tuna, but he'll never understand that I can't open the can with one hand." She giggled, and he wished, yet again, that she was within reach.

"I'll let you go then," James said, walking back to his cottage. "I wouldn't want Dante to become angry with me even before we first meet in person."

"I'll text you later when I get to think about our quest," she promised.

"You can call too, whenever..."

"Okay... What are you up to now?" she asked, obviously reluctant to put the phone down, making his heart soar.

"I must put some dinner together. Otherwise, I'll have to eat the leftovers of my lunch, cooked by Grandma Eilidh. She's wonderful, I hope you'll meet her soon."

"I hope so, too. We should... find time to meet beyond the Society, and our London flat..."

She couldn't have said anything he would have wanted to hear more... she was feeling the same way about him as he was feeling about her... But he could perceive from the tone of her voice that she needed time to sort through her emotions.

"Have a nice evening, Siena."

"You too, James."

A couple of minutes elapsed before she finally put the phone down.

James looked at the silent screen of the phone for a long moment, dimming gradually like the world around him, becoming perfectly black even as the sun touched the waters of his loch, beginning its unseen journey into the world below the horizon.