Yeah, the magical growth thing is kind of a cop out anyway.
I feel like the author wanted to have his cake and eat it too. Save a child and have the cute protector child relationship, but then magic her into a suitable wife, and have a new child appear, so they can play family.
Spice and Wolf did it better.
That's good to hear. I figured between Lithuania and Latvia there should be enough terrestrial routes for redundancies to work out fine.