The forest is pretty and full of a wide variety of trees and shrubs and vines and flowers and mosses and lichens and mushrooms. Some of them smell like food, if weird food. There doesn't seem to be anybody around here.

Nope!

They are not poison or cursed! They are green and seedy.

Ari pops one in his mouth to check if they are delicious. He hopes the answer is yes!

It tastes really weird, but in a delicious way!

Weird delicious berries! Ari is delighted. He takes a handful and sits to snack on them while he comes up with a design for a little earthen cottage. He's so glad he specialized in earth evocations, coming up with an enchantment to keep an ice house frozen would be so much more trouble than it was worth. Thank you, Past Ari, for breaking the Winter stereotype and diversifying your elements.

...Sylphs! This weird alien forest has sylphs for some- no, wait, the wings aren't sharpened. Unspecified faerie-like creatures. Likely sentient ones! Best weird alien forest. "Hi! What the hell are you?" he asks cheerfully, without considering the fact that there is absolutely no reason for an alternate-universe faerie-thing to speak English.

The fairy hops out of the tree, still grinning. "Don't tell anyone else that. Follow me. And keep calling me sir."

"I didn't eat anything else, and I know better than to tell anything my name, sir," Ari says mechanically.

"But not better than to eat fey fruit! Tell me how that is."

"Where I'm from, sir, things can do magic to you if they know your name, and faeries can trap you if you accept a gift from them. But there's no... "fey fruit". I tested the berries for poisons and curses, but ownership wouldn't have mattered. If magic acted the way it does back home. Sir."

"Stop looking so sourly at me, that's going to get tiresome," says the fairy. "Do go on about your home, you've got me curious now."

"It's got different faeries, sir. There are lots of different kinds of them, and they're either Summer or Winter or Wyld, and Summer and Winter are always at war. There's the common fae and the Sidhe, those are the nobles, and the Queens, who're, well, the queens, Mother and Queen and Lady, and there's a set of those for Summer and Winter both. I was raised by a Winter Sidhe. Very nice lady, which is strange because Sidhe are usually backstabbing bastards, that's in her own words. She got killed by centaurs. Centaurs are assholes."

Ari hadn't actually realized that he could lie to his master, but he's not sure he would've taken the opportunity in the first place. Seems like the kind of thing that might piss him off. Which is bad.

"Well, I'm really, really good at combat magic. I can make my fists hit hard enough to dent steel plate or knock down a moderately sized tree, and I can shield myself or another person from- I'm not sure how to describe the amount I can protect from without comparisons that don't exist here. I can protect them from something a bit less strong than my fists, I guess. I'm very good at commanding earth and stone, I can do some cunning things with lightning and wind, and I'm competent with water and ice. With at least a few minutes and up to a few days and the right components, I can get some very interesting things done with ritual magic, though I'm not sure I can get the right components in your weird alien world, damn. But I can definitely do some basic stuff, finding things or people and warding locations and some other small magic. And I might have enough stuff in my bag for a few larger rituals, though I'd have to check what I've got."

"Go ahead and check. If you get thirsty you can take water from that basin there -" the fairy points out a bowl attached to one of the walls, partly full of water - "don't drink the lake water, tell me if you get hungry, don't eat any fey food I don't feed you, don't go outside or in the water without express permission, don't break things, don't make a racket, hmmmm, don't make me regret not thinking of something to put on that list."

"You can keep your rock," laughs the fairy, and he ruffles Ari's hair. "I don't know what chicken is, or steak for that matter. Or ghosts or demons. Tell me more about the wards."

"What sort of gear would you need?" purrs the fairy.

"I could probably make a replacement anvil out of enough gold and silver, but the one I have back home took me seven years, sir."

"What is your lifespan like?" wonders the fairy thoughtfully, tapping his chin.

"I'll live... four hundred years, maybe five, given good health. Humans live about ninety years, but wizards get a lot longer, for some reason. And if we survive an injury, we heal all the way, no scars or anything. No quicker than a human, though. Still, it's nice."

The fairy cackles and looks very pleased with himself. "Now, now," he says, "I know how this always goes, somebody's going to want to steal you, and if I'm not careful you'll help them. Tell me the best way to avoid that."

"It doesn't have to be a logic puzzle. If there are any little treats you would like that some other fairy wouldn't give you I'd like to hear that too," purrs the fairy.

Ah. If gilding his cage is the order of the day, then Ari can work with that. "Well... I'd like to keep up with my magic practice, sir. Under supervision, of course. And if you have novels here, then it'd be really nice if I could get some of those, because I only have a few paperbacks in my bag."

"Why, that's easy. I think we shall get along very well," says the fairy. Hair-ruffle. "Let's see you practice some magic."

"Hmmmm. But someone might see you and it's so rarely night here," muses the fairy, going over to the water basin and dipping up a cupful for himself to sip thoughtfully. "How much space would you need?"

"Uh... more than there is in here, sir. Some of my forms are designed to kill anything in a twenty-foot radius. I mean, I could probably create an underground cavern that would suit? It'd take a few days, but earth is my specialty, and I've got enough architectural stuff under my belt to make it stable."

"Can you avoid the lake?" asks the fairy. "And not disrupt the contents of the house?"

"Yes, sir. I'll just pack the dirt into itself instead of pushing it out of the hole, it's a bit slower but it's better technique anyway. And avoiding water's easy, you can see through ground you're working with almost as far as you can through air. I'll want to map it out beforehand now you mention it, though."

"Work on that, then, that's your chore until it's through or something comes up," grins the fairy. "Do explain what you're doing while you do it. Let's put the stairs over there." He points.

Planning, planning, planning. He's got a notebook in his bag, he takes it out and readies a pencil. Then he rethinks this, and takes out a sack of chalk dust instead. "I need to map out the surrounding earth before I figure out where I'll put the cavern. I could just look at it magically and sketch it on the paper, but that's boring and there's not much reason not to just do the whole thing by magic. So instead, I'm going to make a scale model of the earth for a few hundred feet around here with chalk dust! Can I draw some rock out of your floor, sir? The alternative would be to go out and get a clod of dirt, but I can put the rock back afterwards, and you didn't want me going outside."

"That's fine," says the fairy, sitting on his kitchen table.

Ari smoothly scoops up a handful of slate from the floor and shapes it into a ball. He draws a circle around himself with the pencil (perfectly even, from years of grueling practice under Belinda's mathematically exacting eye), opens the bag of chalk, and holds the stone between his hands. He closes his eyes and begins chanting in a tongue that might be of some kind of Germanic or Nordic root; his words translate to a sort of mantra, demanding that the stone reveal the secrets of its earthy kin. It's a bit repetitive. After a few minutes of this chanting, the stone glows between his hands. Chalk fountains from the bag and hangs in the air, outlining... something, presumably the subterranean layout of the area. Ari opens his eyes, sets the rock down gently, and starts humming at the chalk thoughtfully. He prods at it occasionally; the chalk clings to his finger when it goes through the outline, then springs back into place when it's removed.

The fairy watches in fascination.

Eventually, Ari makes a fluid gesture and snaps "Blähen!", which causes the chalk to stream back into its bag accompanied by a localized breeze. He pushes his stone back into the floor, erases the graphite circle with a quick "Gehen!", and turns to the fairy. "I know where the cavern should go, sir. The next step is figuring out the circle and the incantation I'll need for the ritual, which will probably take a day or so if I don't do much else. And the ritual itself will take a few hours, and should be pretty impressive, I think."

"Hop to, then," says the fairy, "you may have a break of two hours during this period of time to read any of my books," gesture at the bookshelf, "plus however often you need to eat."

"Very kind, sir," Ari says. "I am a bit hungry now; magic makes you hungry and tired, and that was just a little bit but even so. Could I have some food, please?"

Fair enough. Ari wonders briefly if the activity would be noticeably different if said reasons did not exist, Fairy Creep being, rather tautologically, a creep. But reasons do exist, so it's irrelevant, and at any rate Ari's hungry, so he opens wide as instructed. He's pleased to continue exploring the world of weird fairy foods, especially since his experience so far appears to indicate that they're delicious.

The nuts are pretty tasty. "More?" inquires the fairy after they're all gone.

"That's all right, sir. Thank you."

"You're welcome. So polite." Ruffle ruffle.

Always, with the ruffling, and the creepiness. Ari ignores the creepiness and enjoys the ruffling. He then hops up and goes to pick out a book. Anything interesting hereabouts?

Assorted histories and some fiction and some art books. The fairy has not had a chance to expand his selection in favor of more fiction.

That's alright. Ari picks something that looks vaguely exciting from the limited fiction section and settles in. Reading isn't his fondest hobby, but in the absence of demons to punch or magic to do or people who aren't creepy fairies to have sex with, it'll do.

The creepy fairy is not currently trying to have sex with him! Though for obvious reasons he wouldn't need a lot of leadup. And he does keep looking at Ari while going about his fey business in various parts of the house.

Fairy fiction is pretty weird, apparently; the whole master/vassal business appears to stand in for every other possible social relationship. Some sorts of fairies apparently have parents and children, but this just provides an easy source of vassals for the parents in question. Other sorts of fairies just "start". This is the backdrop against which some cunning "breeder" fairy escapes her court via loophole and manages to assemble her own court with her in charge until her grandmother catches up with her and takes the whole shebang back home and punishes the granddaughter in inventive ways. None of the characters are supplied with real names, even when breeders are born and expressly named by their parents then and there; everyone is referred to by chosen nicknames or epithets.

There is also occasional reference to the Queen, in the story, but she doesn't feature as a character and is not explained in this book.

The fairy flutters over and lands on his back - he weighs about forty-five pounds, much less than it looks like he should - and perches there, reading over Ari's shoulder.

"No animals available, alas," says the fairy.

"Damn. Well, I can use a dash of the vervain to help myself recover from the loss- actually, sir, I might want to get the blood now, so I'm more stable by the time I get to the ritual itself. Wouldn't want to get dizzy in the middle of funneling power into a major working. Do you have a knife and a bowl I can use, or should I make them out of the wall, or..."

The fairy hops off of his perch on Ari's back and finds a knife and a bowl. "If you assume you aren't going to be able to get more vervain, is using it now wise?" he wonders.

"Oh, no worries, sir, I've got a ton of it. Seriously, almost a quarter of my bag is vervain, it's really handy, and the heal is just a pinch of it. I'd hesitate to do a luck charm or a purging, and a serious healing would be a very different story, but for a bit of blood loss it's fine." He expertly cuts into the nook of his elbow and holds it over the bowl.

The fairy doesn't resume sitting on Ari, possibly out of concern for the possibility that he'll spill. "I'm not sure it grows here at all. Do you have a way to determine the magical uses of plants you haven't encountered before?"

"Trial and error, mostly. I can come up with some low-risk rituals that could work if something's good and fail harmlessly if it isn't, but it'll take me a while to cover all my bases. But I'd probably see if you've got any healing plants first, it is pretty important."

"There are some plants that help with healing, but I obviously have no idea how they'd interact with your sort of magic."

"Hm. I'd probably like to look at those soonish, sir, if they've got baked-in magic. That could be even better than what I've got. But again, I've got a good supply of the vervain and unless someone breaks a leg or something it probably won't go away any time soon." He deems the supply of blood sufficient, plasters his elbow over with a bit of clay he apparently had in one of his pockets, and smooths an airtight layer of stone over the blood in the bowl.

"I'll pick some up next time I'm out foraging, but the principal reason that I'm so pleased to have you is that you're unexpected," says the fairy. "Even sorcerers won't expect you."

The fairy watches all this with interest but has no further commentary.

In that case, Ari can return to his work on the ritual and his valiant attempt to explain his work to the fairy. It's actually kind of a good thing, he explains, that there are no animals, because using his own blood means more power will go into the circle. Which makes things a bit easier.

"At some point you should see if fairy blood will work for this sort of thing," muses the fairy. "What's the smallest amount you could test that with?"

"Ooh." Ari wasn't going to mention it, because it seemed a bit of a faux pas to suggest bleeding one's master, but he's glad it's an option on the table. "I could test it with... hm. If you don't mind possibly being flashed with a very bright light if it turns out your blood is more potent, there's a simple pyrotechnic illusion I could incorporate it into. How does that sound? It'd only take a small cup's worth, I can heal you up the same way I did for me."

"Are you sure?" the fairy asks. "That you can heal me the same way."

"No you can't," snorts the fairy.

"I could, or I could wait for my other vassal to get home. Do try to get along with her, by the way." That one's an order.

"Good, because she's well-behaved enough that I'd consider giving her your name if there are any problems."

Ruffle, ruffle. Forehead-kiss. "There's a good mortal. Now go on with what you were doing."

"What's wrong?" inquires the fairy dangerously.

"Well, don't make trouble with my other vassal and I won't need to let her stop you from doing it," says the fairy reasonably. Ruffle. "It's quite up to you."

The fairy sits and watches and listens.

"Of course." The fairy goes into the kitchen and prepares something soupy with chunks of a green fruit in it and feeds it to Ari, spoon by spoon.

Oh good. Ari was vaguely worried that requesting to be fed without having been specifically told that it was permitted would result in offense of some kind. He consumes the something, continuing to be fascinated by fairy foods.

"Yeah. Thank you, sir." Ari sets about his work with renewed vitality! Food is good at that.

The fairy makes himself some lunch too and eats it, watching from a slightly greater distance.

Ari is capable of working for pretty much arbitrary amounts of time, given food supplies and an interesting problem. He appears to have both!

Hm. Names, names... "How about Winter, sir?"

Ah, yes. Classic Fairy Creep. "Sounds like fun, sir."

Ari realizes once the Creep has left that he seems to have forgotten that this piece of work is going to take at least another eight hours. He sighs, wraps up the part of it he's doing right at this very moment, deems that good enough for government work, and knocks on Promise's door.

"Thank you," says Promise. "If Master gives you a room I would be happy to let you have some of my drawings for it."

"Nah, that'd be cheating. I'll do something with stone shaping, probably. Maybe there's some semiprecious somethingorother in the area, I'll dowse for it. Anyway! I'm a weird alien who has weird alien magic, and Bossman says I should figure out if I can use fairy blood for it. Don't worry, it'll just be a little bit. Oh, yeah, and I'm also supposed to figure out if I can heal you. Same weird alien magic. Any questions?

"Well, I just need to borrow a little cupful of your blood and then do some magical woo-woo to it. Your involvement is pretty much holding out your arm for me to cut on it a little, sitting in a circle afterwards for hopefully being healed, and watching the pretty fireworks I'm going to make with the blood if you want. They might get kind of bright if your blood has special properties, though, fair warning."

Promise nods and steps out of her room and sits in one of the living room chairs and holds out her arm.

Ari scoops a cup out of the floor. He pulls up another lump of stone, molds it into the vague shape of a knife, and pinches at the blade until the edge is sufficiently sharp. He holds the cup under Promise's elbow and cuts at the same place he used earlier on himself. Red blood trickles into the cup. "Huh. I half expected it to be green or something, faeries back home hardly ever have red blood."

She winces slightly but doesn't move her arm when he cuts her. "No?" she asks.

"Yeah, it depends on what kind they are. Usually if they're Winter they bleed blue or purple, Summer bleeds yellow or green, and Wyld bleeds... a lot of colors, that's where you'll get the red sometimes. I saw a wyld pixie once with rainbow blood, that was hilarious. Gruesome, but hilarious." The cup fills. It's really not much blood. Ari patches the cut with his pocket clay and goes to his bag for some vervain.

"Are there only those three kinds of fairies? Is the clay part of your healing spell?"

"Well, those are the broad categories; there's species within the categories, but there's hundreds of those and it'd take all day. Blood's a category thing. The clay's just to keep you from bleeding all over the place- bandage type thing. You could take it off if you wanted, but I use that spot because it keeps bleeding for a good while and I'd hate to ruin a good chair."

Promise doesn't take it. "But you're not one of those kinds of other fairies, you're actually a mortal?"

"Your kinds of fairies can die?" she asks, peeling up the clay to look at her fixed arm.

"I wouldn't be pleased about it if you stabbed me but I couldn't die."

"Right. You can't attack him anyway, of course."

"Where will the point of origin of the brightness be? I can protect my eyes if I know in advance."

"It'll come out of the cup. Might reach a bit farther than that if it's too strong, though."

Promise nods and peers at the cup, then tilts her head and says, "Go ahead."

"Well," she says, "that's good, because my idea will only work if you're alive. Unfortunately, it can also only work if you're willing to trust me."

"What? Idea? What idea? What's this about ideas? Can you hand me some vervain, I need to fix my eyes, we can talk about ideas after I stop being blind."

Ari blinks a few times. "Much obliged. Would've been pretty hard to cure myself while I was still blind. What's this about ideas?"

"It is possible for two people to be vassals of each other, under the right conditions. New orders from any master supersede previous ones from any master. He hasn't had you long enough to close a lot of loopholes, and I have one he hasn't noticed that I've been saving. For whatever it's worth, my idea requires me to trust you a lot more than the other way around, because it will only work if you vassalize me first."

"I need to know how much leeway you have, first - don't say it if he hasn't, but I assume he's forbidden you to say your name?"

"He forbade me to say it to anyone else. I'm pretty sure that can be circumvented by recording me saying it to myself, though. If not just talking to myself loudly while you're in the room. He's really not as good at loophole-mongering as I'd expect, my mother would be horrified."

Promise shakes her head. "He thinks of things in bits and pieces over longer periods of time. I'd have got out long ago but the master who gave me to him was much better at it and Master didn't directly rescind any of his orders. Okay. So you can say it to yourself, or maybe say it backwards or something. But I'm forbidden to give any enforced orders - holdover from long ago - so first I need to eat some of your mortal food, please tell me you have some, there are alternatives if you don't but they're less pleasant. And then you rescind my orders and then you tell me your name and I rescind yours and we get out of here. I know where you can find a gate to the mortal world."

"...I've got herbs? They're not exactly food, but I can certainly feed them to you. Ooh, actually, I think I've got a packet of beef jerky in my bag. Forgot about that." He rummages and comes up with a sad-looking plastic bag containing a single lonely unit of jerky. "Would this work?"

"Presumably. As long as it won't completely incapacitate me I'll eat whatever will envassalize me, anyway, and that it will definitely do. Can you feed me or did he catch that?"

Promise shrugs and seizes the bag out of his hand and pops the jerky into her mouth and chews. "Eugh," she mutters, but she swallows. And looks at Ari expectantly.

"Oh, that... works? Okay," Ari says. Feeling around for some indication that it worked, he intones, "I rescind all commands placed on you, by my right as your... master? I guess? Co-conspirator? Buddy?"

"Thank you," she sighs. "Now, I can't just feed you, because feeding doesn't work either way between people who are already master and vassal. If you want to come with me it'll have to be your name."

She takes the paper; she looks at it; it goes up in flames. Then she fixes him with an intent look. "Never give me an order that I do not expressly request of my own uncommanded will, or that you do not sincerely without mental contortion believe to be in my best interest as you genuinely understand it, except for a copy of this order should you so desire."

Ari nods cheerfully. "Yes'm. And, uh, not sure this is necessary on your end, but never give me an order that I do not expressly request of my own uncommanded will, or that you do not sincerely without mental contortion believe to be in my best interest as you genuinely understand it. That is very nice construction, kudos. Now can I be freed of my previous commands excepting your own?"

"Except the one I just gave I rescind all your orders. I'm going to take two minutes to pack and then let's get out of here. Do you want to go to the mortal world?"

"Thanks! Mortal world... Eh. Maybe. What's it like?"

"Sorcery doesn't work, so if you go there I won't be coming along. I don't know about your magic." She is in her room flinging books and some of the fruit into a bag. "I don't know a lot else about it. But I know where a gate is because this isn't the first time I've tried to help a mortal home - it's just, apparently, not your home. I won't be staying near the gate either, it's too close to where I used to live, I have to find somewhere far from anybody who knows my name."

"Yeah, I'd rather not risk losing my magic. Plus, fairyland is cool. Can I come with you instead? I can punch your enemies and build you a cool house made out of rocks. You could teach me whatever the hell sorcery is, we can be weird magic buddies and feed each other weird alien food!" Ari stuffs the things that he had out into his own bag. The basement ritual he puts into a folder to keep it neat, he really wants to keep working on that. It'd be handy.

"I don't mind. Obviously you're familiar with the risks." She finishes packing. "How fast can you travel and what sorts of obstacles are the most problematic for you? I can't carry you or enchant you to fly yourself."

"I travel at human speed. My obstacles are human obstacles. Would you be able to carry me if I made myself practically weightless and made the air pretend we're aerodynamic? Because that's totally a thing I can do."

"Yes. That sounds like it'll get us where we're going fastest."

Vengeance! Vengeance vengeance vengeance. Ari's okay with Promise getting the fun part, she was vassalled longer.

He does take the time to break some furniture, though. Smash, smash. Hee hee hee. Then he runs out the door.

"Mm-hm. How do you want me to carry you?" She's in the air already, hovering, feet a couple feet off the ground.

"You could carry me bridal-style, I suppose. Go for the Fairy Pieta effect."

Oh man. "This is amazing! Flying is amazing! Your world full of terrible mind control is amazing!"

"It's not mind control. A master can't control their vassal's thoughts directly, although they can oblige you to think about specific things as part of a task."

"Eh. Same difference. Flying remains amazing!"

"Mm-hm. So I have four ideas for where to go. If one of them's become occupied since last I heard, which is entirely possible, it's probably a better idea to move to a different one rather than try to oust unknown residents, but other than that we could try any of them first. What do you like best, waterfalls, valleys, snow, or grass?"

Is this even a question? Come on, Promise, get with the program. "Snow! Snow is the best. I'd take waterfalls, but snow is great."

"Forever Snows it is. Much less likely to be occupied than the other three, harder foraging though, might have to grow my own plants in sorcerous plots."

"I can probably help with gardening. I'll have to see what reagents I can find that can be used for thaumaturgy, but I'm sure I can come up with something to help plants." Were he not held in Promise's arms, he would likely be bouncing. Problems to be solved by magic! So many of them! Making a life together with a pretty fairy woman in a snowy expanse in the middle of nowhere!

"Excellent."

Continued flying?

"Sure. I can go without food for a good while. Ooh, maybe I can plant a frostberry thicket! They make really nice pie. And liquor. And candy. You can do a lot of things with frostberries."

"You have the seeds?"

"Well, I've got the berries. They've got pips in them, so I think you can plant 'em. And if not, we will have one last glorious frostberry pie before leaving them in a forgotten world."

"Planting them's probably a better idea. If they're unique, we can trade them with other fairies."

"Ooh, there's an idea. Glorious trade empire of the frostberries. I'm pretty sure you won't have them growing naturally, the species is pretty firmly rooted in faerie culture. There's an extremely long and involved story that culminates in Queen Mab inventing them to reward her daughter for... slaying a dragon, I think? And it's probably true, so I don't think they'd show up without her."

"Noted. I've never heard of the berries before so that's another point in our likely favor. Speaking of... cross-pollination... you are the only person I have ever heard of turning up here from anywhere other than the usual, non-magical mortal world, so I'm not sure if we should expect it to happen again. What did happen?"

"I have absolutely no idea. I was in a frostberry thicket, I took a right turn, and suddenly there was no snow on the ground and there wasn't a briar to be seen. Tried to open a portal back to the mortal world - my mortal world, where magic still works - and got the magical equivalent of a comical slide trombone noise. Then berries, then Fairy Creep, etcetera and so on."

"His nickname is Yellow, if that's ever useful. Not very creative, but a lot of fairies aren't. Eating the berries would have been safe where you came from?"

"I can call him Tacky Creep to separate him from other creepy fairies, if need be. And it would've been, you can only get in trouble by giving out your true name or accepting a gift from a faerie's hand. I checked them for poison and curses, but not ownership. Because that would be absurd. Because they were growing wild in the middle of a forest." Fairy property rights have become something of a pet peeve for Ari in the past 24 hours.

"Eating things growing in the middle of forests is often safe. If he hadn't noticed, or hadn't been able to catch you to give you any orders, or had forgotten the bush was his and didn't try commanding you just in case, you would have been fine - well, not necessarily fine, he could potentially still have captured you, but not so easily. And it works much less well on fairies. He probably couldn't have gotten me that way, although it might depend on how recently he planted the bush. Which is why I'm going to have to do the foraging and feed you."

"Yeah, yeah. It was still a cheap trick. I'm used to being tricked out of my will, not just being commanded by some hollow-boned little jerk because I stole his Lucky Charms." An astute observer might notice Ari pouting. They would be wrong, because Ari does not pout. He is a grown man; he broods. There's a difference.

"You realize most of your references are totally lost on me."

"Sorry. It's a kind of... food, by a generous definition. There's a joke about it. It's got marshmallows."

"So you were whatever passes for a vassal under some other variety of fairy before you even came here?"

"Oh, yeah. I'm not sure how long, the Nevernever doesn't always have a day/night cycle, but there was a period of between five and ten years after Belinda died where I was trapped in the Nevernever and I kept ending up oathbound to some faerie bastard or other. Then I escaped to the mortal realm."

"How'd you get away from your masters there?"

"Back home there's only so long you can keep somebody enthralled if they've just accepted a gift from you. And you can't command them to give you their name, so it's a real limit. You can keep them accidentally accepting gifts, though, one clever ogre had me bound ten times over that way. Also, I had ways of indirectly getting rid of the ones who were sloppy with their conditions. There was this goblin who thought she was safe just by ordering me not to kill her!" Ari chuckles at an obviously fond memory. "I didn't kill her, but the tripwire that dropped five hundred pounds of granite on her head sure did."

Promise snickers. "You're apparently very good at mental convolutions."

"Oh, yes. It helps that back home the only thing keeping you from attacking the oath-holder was the strength of their own order, and legend has it the whole system was consciously designed to be as vulnerable to loopholes as physically possible. I don't know about the protection on someone who knows your name here, it might be tighter."

"It's pretty tight. I haven't been able to confidently conclude anything about the exact definition, but I never found a gap. I'm lousy at self-deception but good at other loophole-finding mechanisms, so..." She shrugs. "Consciously designed? Yours was designed?"

"Legend has it. The faeries have been around for a very long time, but they weren't always around, and they exist for a reason. Belinda told me this as... well, ironically, as fairy tales, and she never told me what that reason was, but she did tell me that the faeries were created by something, and that the oaths and the war between Summer and Winter were designed to trip them up." He shrugs. "On the other hand, maybe she was just the faerie equivalent of a nutty conspiracy theorist. Or maybe they really were just children's stories. Couldn't say."

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"Yeah."

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?"

"I'm a leaflet, and leaflets each get an immunity to one kind of sorcery."

"Nifty. What're you immune to?"

"Name-learning sorcery. Which is very obscure to begin with and doesn't help if someone decides to torture me until I talk."

"Ech. That sucks, I'm sorry."

"Thanks."

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.

"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?"

"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."

"Excellent. Synergy."

"Synergy!"

"I will want to know all about what else you can do, too. Especially if I can learn it. Mortals can learn sorcery."

"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?"

"Why not."

"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."

"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."

"Well, I can teach you when you want, assuming we're still on good terms then."

"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.

Cackling may continue until Promise stops making that face. It may, however, cease after about fifteen seconds if she continues to make that face. It's only hilarious for so long. After that point, it's merely really really funny.

"I'm glad my nickname amuses you so much."

"Aw, no offense meant. I just like making stupid puns. And your name is a word, it's easy. I probably won't make any more, it's not the best material. Not like Peter and the "hook" jokes. Man, that was fun. He hit me with his baseball bat for one of them. Good times."

"I'm not offended. Do I want this story?"

"Eh, it wasn't even that bad. It's just he ended up sleeping with this really rich guy, and I made the same joke about how "I guess we could call you... a hooker?" six times in two hours. The guy turned out to be really nice! Pity he got eaten. Peter was really broken up about it for a few weeks."

"Eaten?"

"Yeah, a couple of days later there was this noble vampire of the Red Court who came in with a retinue and tried to set up an enclave by turning some people into vampires. They ate a bunch of people, among them Rich Guy Whose Name I Don't Remember- was it actually "Rich"? I think it might have been Rich. They ate a bunch of people, including Rich, and we had to kill them. Sally made this sunlight bomb, completely shredded them, it was really cool. Wish they hadn't gotten Rich, though. He was nice."

"Your world sounds very complicated."

"It was at that. I think I'll miss it, nasty fatal place that it was. Everything and its mother wanted to kill you, but under all the hatred and death it had real heart. And meat products. I'm definitely going to miss meat."

"Sorry. Fairyland is very, very short on animals that aren't a transformed fairy or something."

"Maybe with enough magic, we can develop a meat substitute that doesn't taste like woodchips and sadness."

He sighs. "And maybe a beautiful sparkling unicorn will descend from the sky to spread peace across the land. And we can eat that instead."

"If I knew what meat tasted like I might be able to recommend something similar. As it is we'll just have to have you try things until you know what you like."

"You have had meat before," comments Ari. "You envassalled yourself with the last of my beef jerky. On the other hand, it did seem like you wanted to throw it up immediately, so you might not be the best judge of its flavor. Anyway, weird fairy plant life is delicious, I just wish there was weird fairy meat as well. Though it'd probably taste like bubblegum and dewdrops or something."

"Oh, that was meat? I didn't like it at all. Too salty. Didn't remind me of anything in particular, but I know where to get salt if you like it."

"Salt is a good thing to have!"

"I don't put it in things when I'm making food for myself, but there's a long vein of it near the libraries. Though it's possible I should find a different library just in case someone lies in wait for me at the one I've been to before..."

"Wait- libraries? This is a new concept. I mean, not libraries in general, but- libraries?"

"Were you not expecting libraries?"

"Are these magical libraries, or just... libraries? "The libraries" sounded sort of magic-y."

"They... have enchantments on them and books about magic in them, among other books, if that's what you mean. They're places where there are lots of books, and fairies can go there and via one means or another leave with some of them."

"Ah. Magical-ish. Fair."

"My collateral has certainly expired, but I can probably pay my way into one with some of the frostberries, after we have a crop. But the more I think about it the less I want to go back to the same library. I've frequented it pretty recently; one doesn't keep a sorcerer vassal and forbid her books."

"Sounds like a good idea to stay away, yeah. If you've got anything at that library that you were just dying to read, I could go with a fake mustache on and pick it up for you?"

"It's not readily obvious to me how you'd get there without flying, and a mortal will get more attention than a leaflet."

"We can make me some wings out of papier mache. To go with the mustache. It'll be great, I'll look like a cross between an old-timey muscleman and Tinkerbelle!"

"I still don't get your references, but I don't think that to whatever extent that was a serious suggestion it would work."

"Your lack of faith in my muscleman leaflet disguise wounds me. I am wounded."

"It definitely wouldn't work to disguise you as a leaflet. Leaflets are all female and a lot shorter than you."

"Are you implying that I would not make a beautiful woman, Promise? Because I will prove you wrong if it is the last thing I do. Mustache and all."

Promise giggles.

Not that Ari wasn't already grinning, because he's practically always grinning, but Ari grins even wider. "There! I have achieved genuine, audible laughter. I have made you laugh, that is the best thing I've done today. Previous champion breaking Tacky Creep's sofa, new champion making you laugh. This is my life's achievement and you are really freaking cute."

"Thank you."

"Do leaflets in particular? I don't think we're particularly unusual as fairies go."

"Well, you are the species I'm likely to spend most of my time around for quite a while. And is that a "yes"?"

"Fairies sometimes conduct things that could be described as romances, complicated of course by the vassaling business."

"So, do you in particular have romantic inclinations? Because you're very smart, and really nice, and extremely pretty, and if we're going to live together for a few centuries I'd like to know whether my next few weeks would be better spent trying to sweep you off your feet or taking very long showers."

"I will of necessity survive the experience," she says mildly.

"I can see the edge of the Snows from here," she says after a while. "But I don't think we'd better set up very close to the edge. Especially if you like the cold."

"I'm native to an autumn climate. It will be colder than I'd really like, but I can keep some or all of the court warm and it's comfortable enough for a flyover, or will be when I've got new clothes. It won't do me any harm in the intervening time."

"All right. If you don't mind, I don't mind."

"I did suggest it as one of the possible locations unprompted."

"True! I'm glad my fears are unfounded."

"I don't think I knew mortals liked the cold, come to think of it."

"I'm a weird mortal! I grew up in the deep reaches of the Winter Court. There are two climates back home: cold, and death. Everything else kind of feels like a lazy summer day."

"And where you grew up affects what temperatures you can tolerate?"

"A bit. It's possible Mom did something to make me impervious to cold. There's a couple of runes she tattooed on my back that could have done it, but runes are kind of vague, so I don't know for sure. They could also have been to make me grow strong and beautiful. In which case she did an admirable job, in my opinion."

Ari continues grinning and returns to work on his nascent bird.

"What are you making? Is it magic?"

"I don't think I've ever seen a bird, so maybe?"

"Aw, that's sad, though. I'll conjure you a dove when we get to the Snows, it'll last a couple of hours before it dissolves and you can see what a bird looks like when it's not being sculpted by a guy with big stupid hands."

"Are they useful for anything? I mean, I'm happy to have a look at one, but why can you conjure them?"

"You can conjure just about anything out of ectoplasm! It's pretty easy, but it can't do anything much. I mean, you could conjure a sword and stab someone with it, but you couldn't conjure some sage and use it for an exorcism. One time the Summer Lady went nuts and made thousands of frogs rain over Chicago! I could conjure you a frog, but they're not as pretty as doves."

"I do actually know what a frog looks like. My master before Yellow made me turn someone into one."

"Ah, the classics. We don't do much of that back home, it's very difficult and flagrantly illegal."

"Then why is it a classic?"

"Not sure, really. The people who made it illegal haven't been around forever, maybe it was more popular before they showed up. And it's only a bit more difficult than killing someone with thaumaturgy, so if you were already going to do that then I guess it's only a small step up for a lot of extra spite."

"Whereas here, since killing a fairy is impossible, turning them into something is generally the next best thing."

"Reasonable."

"It's really very unfortunate that mortals die. If somewhat tautological."

"Well, our immortals can die, too, the Summer Lady apparently got assassinated by pixies with box cutters a couple of years ago. So it's not quite as tautological as it sounds. But it is kind of bad, I guess. I'm pretty much okay with it."

"Your immortals don't sound very immortal. You're okay? That you're going to die?"

"I wouldn't mind immortality as long as I could quit when the sun burned out, but I'm already going to live for a while. Five hundred years is pretty nice, you know. I mean, maybe I could do some necromantic woo-woo to make myself immortal, but I'm not interested in rending the fabric of reality or going nuts, which are both known side effects of necromantic woo."

"When the sun does what?"

"I doubt very much that our sun is more mortal than fairies are, and anyway I think there's more than one, or it would be very dark everywhere that wasn't more or less directly under it, but I didn't know the mortal world's sun was going to die. What will the mortals do?"

"We're pretty sure we'll have spaceships by then. We can just find another sun. But eventually all of the suns available will burn out. I mean, probably, there's magic, but- probably. If the species hasn't died out by then. And if they haven't, they sure will then. Unless one, such as me, was totally immortal no matter what. Which would suck, because I'd be floating through an empty dead universe. That would be bad."

"Well, you live here now," Promise points out.

"...true. Okay, I might not turn down unconditional immortality. Except somebody could turn me into a frog, or a gritty paste."

"You'd rather be dead than spend a while waiting for a frog spell to wear off?"

"Well, it's generally meant to be permanent, but forever is a long time, and spells can break or wear thin."

"Well, alright. What about if you're just chopped up into little bits? Will one of them grow a new Promise out of it?"

"It may be harder than you're thinking to do that much damage to a fairy - somebody could mutilate me pretty thoroughly, but there would still be a part that was obviously the part the other parts were chopped off of, in most cases. And even if someone managed to make that non-obvious, yes, at some point I'd grow back from whichever bit was non-obviously the central one."

"Dammit. Fine, I give, immortality rocks and I will gladly take it if a genie pops out of a lamp and offers it to me. One point to you for smartness."

"A genie?"

"Very old magical thing, legend had it they granted wishes. Which is definitely a myth; there're still probably some genies around somewhere, but if you asked them for three wishes they'd probably crush you like a bug."

"Huh. Well, I don't think there are genies to be had here, but sorcery might be able to do it, if you don't want to risk your kind of magic's side effects."

"I'd need to be convinced that I want you around indefinitely, or have a way to make the solution available to lots of other mortals too, or both, but it sounds interesting to try."

"Well, I have five hundred years to bring you around. And I do make a convenient test subject."

"Test subject for immortality, or other things?"

"Well, if you happen to need a mortal around for other reasons, I can do that too! But immortality seems most relevant."

"Yes, probably. I think the other mortal I met is probably already dead of old age if nothing else."

"I think the Creep mentioned them. He said you "weren't very careful," which I assume is "set him free for moral reasons" in Creepese."

"...The story is more complicated than that, but I'll tell you if you want to know or have concerns about my past treatment of mortals."

"Sure! I don't have concerns, but it'd be nice to know the story."

"So I was a very new leaflet living in my original tree and I found a mortal, who was very lost, and I let her stay in my tree and I learned how to make a gate, but it took long enough that she had to eat, so I fed her. And then before the gate finished settling, she - wandered off, stir-crazy or something I guess, and another fairy found her and hurt her until she told him her name. And then he - staged an elaborate trap where I thought I could rescue her and actually I was just lured into his other sorcerer's turf and she was already irretrievable. And then he hurt me until I told him my name. And he kept us both but we didn't see very much of each other after that. And eventually he traded me to Yellow for something, I never found out what."

"It's not your fault. But please don't let Yellow find us or get vassalized to anyone else."

"I won't. Is it possible for me to hurt him now that you're my master now? Because the "how to get rid of fairies" problem seems like the kind of thing I'd like to work on. If I still can't, do you think encasing him in stone would count as hurting him? Maybe we could keep him in our living room. Or bury him fifteen miles underground."

"He's still your master. We can't attack him, including via entombment. Or each other. I also can't hurt my first master. That persists until the name is forgotten - in your case with Yellow it might just last forever, a strong food-based vassalization."

"What if we paid someone else to do it? And- I don't know how to do it, and I don't exactly love the idea, but thaumaturgy can fuck with people's brains. Including removing memories. But that probably counts as an attack, doesn't it."

"We could pay someone else to do it if we could find anyone who wanted to try. For that matter, you can hurt my first master, if it comes up and he doesn't have your name out of me first. But yes, sorcery, including mental sorcery, counts as an attack."

"...If you want me to, I will reconstruct psychomancy in the basement, track down your first master, and erase your name and existence from his mind. Just putting that on the table."

"Looks like I have my next project. At this rate I won't get to sorcery until I'm pushing 400." He doesn't look too unhappy about this.

"Will it take that long, really? ...Also, does this psychomancy even necessarily work on fairies?"

"More that if I keep accumulating projects at this rate I'll be occupied for a very long time. I don't mind. And I don't know that it does, but the healing worked. I guess I could test a little bit on you? Erase your memory of what word I just said, or something?"

"I doubt you can and don't want you to try."

"Well, there are other applications. Burst of happiness, temporarily thinking quicker, that sort of thing. It's just the most relevant thing to what I'd be using it for. And do you doubt it because of your leaflettiness, or because you're a fairy, or...?"

"I suspect that doing any sort of mind magic on me would constitute an attack. Even if it wouldn't, it makes me uncomfortable."

"Oh, yeah, the vassal thing. That is inconvenient. Sorry for making you uncomfortable. We could pay somebody three frostberries for a non-invasive test, or something?"

"Maybe. I'll keep an eye out for non-hostile neighbors."

"Potentially, if you want. It doesn't carry an inherent risk, but some fairies have a seduction-based modus operandi for name collecting - or for collecting information that lets them get names other ways - and it would be pretty easy to get you to take some of their food if you were going to be kissing them or anything. You will also attract a lot of attention for being mortal more or less anywhere you go, even if you intend only to visit some specific hypothetical fairy who you're inclined to trust."

"Dammit. I'll stick with blank-body conjuration. Don't want to risk getting nabbed. I can make them for you too, if you want, they're very convenient. Though I guess you've got lower risk, what with your immunity."

"You'll stick with what?"

"Blank-body conjuration. You conjure up a shell that acts kind of like a person for a few hours, with better detail in the relevant bits. Relevant activities ensue. It's easier to just summon a spirit, but if you can't do that for some reason or you just don't want to hassle of bargaining, blank-body is the way to go. Mom taught it to me when I started going all moody and pubescent, it's pretty complicated but once you've got it you've got it."

"...No thank you. It's not actually intelligent, is it?"

"Nope! It runs off your subconscious instincts, very convenient."

"Then that sounds much safer than investigating the hostility levels of the neighbors that closely."

"Yeah, probably. Not sure they'd be very comfortable for it anyway, if your literature is anything to go by you seem to have a pretty mean society."

"It's not good. There are pockets of adequacy. Like libraries. But mostly - yeah."

"Both, really. How do you mean?"

"I suspect blank bodies wouldn't be to my taste regardless but I wouldn't have started thinking about it so soon even if it appealed generally."

"At least he didn't have you long enough."

"Thanks." He doesn't quite need the comfort, but he's not sure it was for him; he leaves it.

"You're welcome. Anyway, I don't think Yellow could have caught me himself, and Thorn - my previous master - well -" Shrug. "So the hypothetical doesn't work but it's a very kind sentiment."

"I wish it hadn't happened at all, then. But things happen, and I'd rather wish I could do something about them than wish them away without a trace. So, I'd rather wish it was me instead."

"That's an interesting constraint on your wishing behavior."

"It's... it's a thing I've kept around from the time after Belinda died. I wished to myself that it had never happened, and it just made me feel worse. So instead I wished that I could break my enchantments, or that I could kill my master, or that I could do something about it. And that made me angry. And anger, I can... work with. Misery makes you useless, but anger and hate, they're like a fuel. Hate can burn through steel."

"I can get plenty angry about things not having been all right of their own accord."

"Well, there's ways and ways."

"Yeah. And I don't find anger productive anyway, so sometimes I skip over it when things fail to have been all right of their own accord."

"That's fair. I don't get angry often, because it's not very often I'm powerless anymore. Benefits of being very, very good at killing things!"

"I am afraid that here you may have to settle for being good at beating things up. Or pointlessly destroy plants, I suppose."

"Works for me. I can get the same results by just being very, very careful about everyone else in the world who isn't you, here. Which might get exhausting, but I'll be busy and you're good company."

"Thank you."

Ari keeps his weightlessness on so he can walk atop the snow. "If I work out a diagram I can get you warmed up until sunrise tomorrow. This isn't me saying "do you want me to do this," by the way, this is me telling you that I'm doing this so you know who to thank when you're not miserably cold anymore. Not that you need to thank me. Basic human decency and all that."

"The Snows is usually early morning," says Promise. "Sometimes it goes through a cycle, but then it tends to stop at early morning again for a long time. You may wish to give your estimates in hours. Anyway, soon I'll have the place's harmonics learned well enough to do a patch of warmth by sorcery."

"...There's a difference between "the amount of time until sunrise" and "at sunrise," though. In my magic. I'm going to want to test that at some point, but it'd definitely last for at least 24 hours. When are you going to have the warmth set up, you look like a sad kitten and it's distressing. Do you want some of my human clothes to put on over your leafdress?"