"So I am your fantasy man?" Eliot asks, sounding amused, but also with a slightly flirtatious cock of his head to one side, briefly touching a finger to his lower lip as if in thought, before adding some crushed cherry tomatoes to his mix, then turning to check the noodles.

"And actually, yes. Well, not the fauns. But we've found that time does seem to pass differently in different worlds, and all of it is different to the Neitherlands. Fillory, for example - the world we'd traveled to - had time that passed much more rapidly than Earth. It made it quite difficult to coordinate at first."

He glances over his shoulder at Jean (and really, the rear view isn't bad at all, if one likes slender men with long, long legs), adding, "But who knows how it's passing here. We;d have to go back to know for certain, and then, know when, exactly, we'd left. And it seems highly unlikely that it would be that simple. Things never are."