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Elsseth's position is three cities away from her mother's. This isn't uncommon, but it can occasionally be inconvenient.
She has a matter she would prefer advice on, and now is a good time to travel; she calls up a set of dancers, and--
everything should have gone fine. But someone came in with a minor emergency, not having been notified of her visit, and ran right into a key definer.
She vanishes.
She does not reappear in her mother's city.
This is instead a city street. The technology implied is fantastic, it's very clean - it looks a little run down, as though it's all years old, and there's a mix of new flimsy things and more banged-up sturdy things that suggests poor occupants.
The buildings reach to the sky.
It's evening and not too crowded, and most people don't even look the queen's way, but someone with purple hair sweeping the sidewalk shrieks at her and lifts his broom and thwacks her with it.
???
She shrieks in surprise and raises her arms reflectively to fend the broom off.
Thwack thwack thwack!
"What are you doing?" she demands, trying to wrest the broom away from the crazy person.
The broom-wielder yanks it away from her and thwacks her more, yelling in a foreign language. The handful of passersby look at them, and seem alarmed, and respond to this by interacting with glassy rectangles they pull from their pockets.
She continues to attempt to relieve the crazy person of their implement of violence (why is no one doing anything???) until an unlucky blow clips her on the head, leaving it spinning and her crumpling to the pavement.
Thwack! Thwack. ...thwack.
The police arrive a bit later and shovel her onto a stretcher and dump her in the back of a plastic-lined truck and haul her away.
She is not coherent enough to register any of this except for the pain stopping getting worse.
They put her in an interview booth and wait for her to wake up.
She does this. Slowly. When she opens her eyes she looks around in confusion.
She is locked in an interview booth! A person with grey hair barks a question at her.
"I don't speak this language," she snaps at him.
He repeats the question LOUDER.
"I still don't speak this language," she snarls.
He yells something else! Threateningly!
She just looks at him contemptuously.
Turns out the floor is electrified!
She shrieks. She has no idea what's going on except that it hurts.
When it stops he HAS LOUD QUESTIONS FOR HER.
She whimpers.
LOUD! QUESTIONS!!!
"I really don't speak this language."
Eventually, after some unpleasant hours, they bring in someone who tries other languages.
She speaks none of those either. This takes longer to determine than it needs to; she is not at her most intelligible.
Eventually they give up for the time being and she is left in the booth for a few hours alone.
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