"- yeep!" says a voice.

She stops the horse at once. She looks around. 

The owner of the voice is very warm and short and she's got an ankle-length braid of hair that shines just barely copper in the dim light and her clothes are bizarre. She gets to her feet with a curiously perfect smoothness.

She maintains what appears to be no private thoughts nor concept thereof; she fairly blazes with presence and self-advertisement. Aredhel can within a moment conclude her name (Elspeth) and surprise and the fact that they won't have a shared language and that Elspeth has noticed her and the horse but is trying ways to contact her family before addressing that. The long-distance telepathy doesn't work and the technological device won't work and now she's trying to signal the precog via circuitous route. And her wolf is going to be frantic.

Aredhel decides she likes anyone whose first thoughts on landing somewhere exceptionally far from home are that their wolf will be frantic. Also likes her in general. Is she a kid? She has to be, or a race of very small people - not any race Aredhel's seen, not running that body temperature -

- she should probably stop reading her if she just doesn't know how to keep her thoughts private -

Hi, she says. Aredhel, technically queen of Nan Elmoth whoopdie-fucking-doo, what are you doing here?

Elspeth actually gives off the impression of being old, but in a bizarre sideways way, as though she can't lay claim all the years in her head.

- hello, she says. Elspeth Cullen technically princess of the Golden Empire, I seem to have had a magical accident.

It's not osanwë. She's doing something else.

She's telling the truth.

Weird.

Okay.

Does accident mean you can't go back? Because this is a shitty place for you to be and I can't recommend anywhere else in the world either.

The people whose magic produced the interaction that sent me here aren't present. They may be trying to reproduce it to get me back but I don't know how long to expect that to take if it's less than ten seconds, which apparently it is.

Great. I probably can't keep your existence from coming to the attention of my husband, and he's going to be intrigued, and then we're going to have a problem. The forest's enchanted to be impossible to leave but I think I know a way around that but I have a baby at home, I can't leave him and I can't get him out of the fortress. I can probably kill my husband but then there'll just be a civil war and my son'll be of great interest to everyone fighting in it. What've you got?

I don't know how I stack up physically against your species, you don't smell the same as anything we've got at home. I can incapacitate most people nonlethally or technically-nonlethally at range for hours, once per target unless I get the technically-nonlethal result, that varies by species too. I can unreliably produce sourceless truth but I've got nothing right now. What's the problem if your husband notices me?

He'll take you prisoner. He'll be friendly about it for as long as you play along. I'm expecting we're disable-able genuinely nonlethally from what you're communicating of the relevant species difference - we're immortal and mostly thousands of years old - and either way a couple hours would be enough time to correct the nonlethalness.

Being thousands of years old will probably help but memory crispness is probably also a factor. I am pretty hard to hold prisoner by the standards of my world but the magically inescapable forest may be a problem.

We don't have perfect memories, no. Very good, not perfect. I am getting the impression you're physically stronger than us, which will help a lot, but he has magic. 

What does it do besides make inescapable forests?

Confuse you about the passage of time, mean that you don't move in the ways you intend to, make things that can go badly in fact go badly. 

I may be difficult to confuse about the passage of time. No special defense against the other two.

Okay. You can also just hope he's not particularly interested. I can - try - on that front.

Why can't you get your son out of the fortress?

I mean, shitty thing to do, I'd stab my husband in his sleep but running away with his child is pretty awful - and if I were willing to do it anyway there are a lot of people who'd stop us and then he'd send an army after us and I know people who'd protect me but, ah, not for free, and there's a chance the King'd take it as an excuse to invade Nan Elmoth - to avenge me, you know - 

Child custody seems like a greater entitlement than not being stabbed in one's sleep.

Really? Not here, there are people who murder their enemies rather unflinchingly who'd still not take their children as hostages. 

I'm not saying I don't know anybody who makes a great parent who wouldn't have been perfectly reasonable to kill under certain circumstances but I was not getting a 'great parent' impression.

He mostly doesn't bother the baby. He doesn't want to name him until he's twelve.

This doesn't improve my assessment. You'd know better than I would, of course.

I don't exactly have lots of fantastic options here. Blasting the city and running might end up being more appealing than going home and hoping he can't be bothered to find you, but it's not going to be good.

No way to convince relevant parties not to start a war for you?