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Ari is... so, so lost. He didn't know this amount of lost was physically possible. One minute he's in a briar maze deep in Winter picking frostberries for a pie, then he takes four left turns and he exits the briar and he's in a temperate forest. Not even any snow on the ground. He turns around and there's no thicket to be seen.
He puts the frostberry pouch in his backpack and mutters the incantation to open a Way back to the mortal realm; he might land somewhere dangerous, but better endangered in the mortal realm than completely lost in the Nevernever. And... nothing. Literally nothing happens, no backlash or fizzling or anything that would indicate that he fucked up a spell, but the kind of nothing that happens when you don't have a spell to cast.
In something of a panic, he tests that he still has magic by punching a nearby tree, which splinters and crashes to the ground. "So that's still working, I guess," he mutters. "Punching systems: still online."
So, recap: magic works, he just got snatched out of deep Winter territory and put into something that kind of looks like the Wyld, and the Ways are on the fritz. Either something big is screwing with him or he's very much not in Kansas anymore. Either way, he'd better figure out what the hell is going on.
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bitterchill
imeanforever
"I'm probably unqualified to speculate. There aren't stories like that here that anyone believes, anyway, and some fairies, such as the Queen, are rumored to be eternal and don't have anyone who can contradict them ready to hand."
bitterchill
"Oh yeah, your Queen. I saw something about her in this utterly creepy book Tacky Creep gave me; what's her deal? Does she just know a lot of names in high places?"
imeanforever
"Most kinds of fairies, possibly all, have a kind of magic besides sorcery that they get. She is the only fairy of her kind and her magic is to know every fairy's name without having to be told. She doesn't know mortal names, I think, but of course if she wanted yours she could have it out of me or Yellow as soon as it occurred to her to wonder."
bitterchill
Ari rides in quiet awe for a bit, then perks up. "So, everybody's got a racial magic of some kind? What's yours, if that's not a rude question?"
imeanforever
"I'm a leaflet, and leaflets each get an immunity to one kind of sorcery."
imeanforever
"Name-learning sorcery. Which is very obscure to begin with and doesn't help if someone decides to torture me until I talk."
bitterchill
Mildly awkward silence! Ari is thankful and slightly confused that he hasn't got some kind of crick in his back yet, considering he's over six feet tall and rather broad and he's being carried in the arms of a woman who stands at 5'jack. He chalks it up to leftover positive karma from setting Tacky Creep's house on fire.
imeanforever
"When we find a spot in the Snows - I gather you do architecture? Do you want to build us a structure to live in while I take care of planting and ensorcelling an initial food supply and scope out the neighbors?"
bitterchill
"Sure. It'll take me a while, but I can make a cottagey little shelter in a few hours and work on something bigger when I have a minute going spare."
imeanforever
"I will want to know all about what else you can do, too. Especially if I can learn it. Mortals can learn sorcery."
bitterchill
"You can't. You need inborn potential, and I'd have recognized it the second you touched me. Honestly, I'm not even sure if fairies have souls in the Back Home sense; if you were a species from- calling it "back home" is irritating, let's call it Never- you might be able to do magic anyway, but that's even more inborn. Sorry. Do you want that summary right now?"
bitterchill
Ari sighs. The speech, the speech.
He inhales deeply. "Well, evocation-wise, that's instant magic, I'm particularly good at hitting things and protecting myself. I can do a lot of things with earth and stone and gravity, that's all sort of the same family of things. I can do slightly fewer things with air and lightning, which is a different family of things. I can do slightly fewer things than that with water and ice. I have the extremely limited ability to do things with fire and light and sound and pure force, mostly limited to party tricks. And I can do thaumaturgy, which can do an absolutely ridiculous variety of things given time, including do things like evocation but much, much bigger. Also shield locations, heal people of minor ailments, find and see things from a distance, curse people with bad luck, create detailed illusions, create objects for some amount of time, make variously useful potions and enchanted trinkets, turn things invisible, see the future very, very badly, see the past slightly less badly. That's not counting necromancy and summoning and demon magic, which I'm pretty sure wouldn't work here due to the lack of ghosts, summonable spirits, and demons respectively. Though if I can summon from here it'd be very handy."
He inhales deeply. "Well, evocation-wise, that's instant magic, I'm particularly good at hitting things and protecting myself. I can do a lot of things with earth and stone and gravity, that's all sort of the same family of things. I can do slightly fewer things with air and lightning, which is a different family of things. I can do slightly fewer things than that with water and ice. I have the extremely limited ability to do things with fire and light and sound and pure force, mostly limited to party tricks. And I can do thaumaturgy, which can do an absolutely ridiculous variety of things given time, including do things like evocation but much, much bigger. Also shield locations, heal people of minor ailments, find and see things from a distance, curse people with bad luck, create detailed illusions, create objects for some amount of time, make variously useful potions and enchanted trinkets, turn things invisible, see the future very, very badly, see the past slightly less badly. That's not counting necromancy and summoning and demon magic, which I'm pretty sure wouldn't work here due to the lack of ghosts, summonable spirits, and demons respectively. Though if I can summon from here it'd be very handy."
imeanforever
"Interesting. And versatile. Sorcery does a variety of things and is always much easier in familiar locations because the spells have to be adjusted in minute ways for a lot of ambient conditions. I'll be much worse at it than I'm used to for a while until I've gotten used to where we're setting up our - I suppose you could call us a court if you were so inclined - but both of my masters gave me time to study so I can do a lot when I know a place or have time to look for what a spell needs."
bitterchill
"Ooh, a court. I'm so tempted to call myself Mab. Except it'd be heresy, and possibly also treason. I would like to learn sorcery at some point! I'll probably be too busy for the next five to a hundred years, but it's on my bucket list."
imeanforever
"Well, I can teach you when you want, assuming we're still on good terms then."
bitterchill
"I sure hope we are. We set Tacky Creep's house on fire together! Well, you did. I watched. But I watched appreciatively! That's the kind of bond that lasts, Promise. Promise!" He cackles at the worst joke he's been able to make in several weeks.