"If you know what a kind looks like you can usually identify them by looking, although there are usually other differences that aren't so obvious, too."

Emma looks at herself and shrugs. "I guess we only come in human. No different wings, or anything."

"That's what I'm led to understand, yes, just mortals in a few colors and all one kind."

Emma giggles at that. "Heh, multicolored mortals. That's us."

"What are you going to do when you get home?"

"Find my parents," Emma says immediately. Then, "There's not- is- um. Time's the same, right? It'll just... be months. Or whatever. Not years, or anything?"

"I think it will be the same amount of time, yes."

Emma had been calming down, but now she sort of furls right back up. "I didn't even- they could have been dead," she mumbles.

"I don't see any reason to expect your parents to be dead."

"It's just- fairy tales. Stories. There's some- you go into fairyland, and you come back and it's been centuries but you're only a couple days older. If fairies are real- it could've-" she stops, and sighs. "At least that's just a story."

"Well, if somebody put you in a magical sleep or something, that could happen, but it didn't happen to you."

"There's... a story like that. I forget what it was called. Some guy with a long beard fell asleep and woke up a hundred years later." She shakes her head. "It's so strange to think it might be true."

"Well, I haven't heard that one, but it could be."

"Yeah, I've wanted to be a sorcerer since I started."

"What does that mean? I mean, um. What can you do. Besides gates."

"The first thing I learned to do was a light spell. The things I do most often are growing spells on my favorite food plants. I've learned a lot of defensive magic, just in case."

"...do you need those a lot...?"

"I haven't so far. I'll be glad of it if the breeder colony that wants to settle near here makes a fuss about being unwelcome, though."

That sounds vaguely familiar, but Emma can't remember where from. "Um. Breeder colony?" she asks, very confused.

"At the meeting you saw? River bought my vote with you? That was all the fairies who live near enough to notice if some other fairies move in to a certain area along the stream, deciding on whether they're invited to do that or not. Probably no one would have minded if it was just one fairy, or a court of two or three, but it's breeders, there's dozens of them."

"Breeders are a - kind of kinds. The particular colony is mixed, I think the representative said he was a lilybright, but I don't know what the other kind or kinds in their court are. Leaflets and other spontaneous kinds just start instead. I started in this tree."

"...well, it sounds tidier, if nothing else."

"I think that varies on a kind to kind basis, but in leaflets' case, yes."