With each party or event it became a little less intimidating for Teddy to stand in a room, or around a bonfire (complete with spitted goats), with various heroes of legend and his childhood icons. If he thought about any of it too hard, that feeling of belonging went away, but there was a basic level of comfort born, he supposed, of familiarity, and it was kind of nice.

He was experiencing something new, also, in that he had a drink in one hand, cake in the other, and his glasses had slipped down his nose. He was still relatively unused to those, and was contemplating the least conspicuous way to push them up again.