"...is that in any way dangerous? If you had four kid siblings you loved to itty bitty pieces next door who you were responsible for and had a surprise fairy in your shed asking you that, would you do it? Honestly?"

"I can't do magic here. I can't even fly. I'm pretty harmless in terms of what I can do even if you don't want to trust what I would, and you'll still be able to tell me what to do afterwards, anyway."

Jenny sizes up Promise consideringly. Tiny, sad, sporting visible damage. The black eye is fading, but it's still in the 'gaudily colorful' end of 'fading'. Jenny sighs, feeling bad. This girl, fairy or no, looks like she has had a horrible few weeks. "I rescind all your orders."

Promise relaxes substantially, but does not do anything else, let alone anything threatening. "Thanks. ...If you want to order me not to order your siblings to do anything I won't really object."

"You can-! Don't order my siblings ever!" Jenny says, panicked and horrified. "Why can you order my siblings?! Can you order me? How do I fix it?"

"I can't order you because I don't know your name. If you think I'll run across it go ahead and tell me not to give you orders either just in case. I know their names, because they said them, but I couldn't talk before and now I can't give them orders, and I wasn't going to anyway," Promise says. "You can order me, probably because they took some food that belonged to you when they were feeding me or something. I was under orders not to take food that would vassalize me like that but it's safe to take food from people who are already one's own vassal so as long as the girl was handing me everything I could accept it, since I didn't know any of it was yours; if I didn't have her name I would have been just - not eating, the entire time."

"...so that's where my gummy bears went," Jenny murmurs exasperatedly. "Okay. Don't order me or anyone from my family, then, I guess. Er, can I turn the order thing off? I don't know where you could go that you won't, like... have to eat, or hear people's names, or whatever."

"You can't turn it off. It's just part of being a fairy. I can take mortal food from you without making anything worse, and I can take mortal food from your siblings without that doing anything at all."

"So if you leave, you just- can do this to other people? Or they could do it to you?" Jenny isn't really that horrified- Promise has been reasonably nice so far. It doesn't seem like a threat. But picturing Promise ordering her siblings makes it very clear that this is still a scary, scary idea. "I wouldn't send you back to someone who beats you or anything, but is there anywhere you can go? Er, anywhere safe?"

"If I could get back to Fairyland I could go somewhere he probably wouldn't find me. But I don't know where to find any gates on this end, and the tear is gone and it might take thousands of years for me to run into another one."

"...I have no idea what to do with you," Jenny says unhappily. "I'm only sixteen! I don't- you are so way out of my comfort zone. I mean, I wouldn't starve you or anything, but...but... fairy!"

"While you can, technically, keep me as a pet, I don't exactly relish the prospect," Promise points out. "I will have some trouble feeding myself without help but once I can fly around help doesn't have to be you."

"You're not a pet! You're a person!" Jenny objects somewhat automatically, then her brow furrows. "Well. The Bible doesn't exactly cover fairies, but still. You're obviously not an animal, I'm not gonna keep you as a pet, that's twisted."

"Okay, well, since that's established, knowing what to do with me is not the problem. I will decide what to do with me. In the meantime since I'm injured and can't easily go looking for other mortals, it would be nice of you to feed me, and nice of you to explain to me things I may not know about the mortal world so I don't get confused."

Promise eats them. "You said you didn't know what to do with me. I'm pointing out you don't need to do anything with me," she says.

Jenny's brain immediately comes up with about seventeen ways in which this is not at all the case, but Promise has already said she doesn't understand the mortal world and it doesn't seem worth the argument. And they do revolve around a relevant unanswered question. "Well, are you planning to stay here?" she asks instead. "Cause then I need to make some choices. If only about grocery shopping."

"It would be nice of you to let me at least until I can fly again. That should be - a few weeks, maybe, I've never had to let my wings heal naturally before," says Promise. "I like vegetables and fruit and nuts, mostly - I don't know how to be sure I'm getting a really good diet in mortal food, but I'm not going to die of it, at any rate."

"You can stay, seriously, you're injured and alone and I'm not a monster. Plus we wouldn't, like, drag you to a lab to poke at your wings or anything." She shudders. "I'm just worrying that I should try to find you a shelter, or something? But then you might learn people's names, or eat someone's food by accident, or whatever, and I don't know if that's better, for anyone."

"This shed is a shelter," Promise points out. "Did you mean something else?"

"Oh. Yeah, I meant like buildings that take in people that have nowhere to go? Homeless shelters for people who don't have anywhere to live, or-" don't look at the black eye, don't look at the wings, "women's shelters for women who get beaten up by their husband or whatever. Or the church will take in pretty much anyone if you ask, they've got some extra beds in the back. But... wings. It all sorta falls apart at the wings? I mean. You're fictional, here."

"I don't have any really strong opinions on where I stay, since I can't go home to my tree, or get a cutting of it."

"Aaaaand this is a tree such that we cannot, say, buy you an acorn and you can grow another, I guess?"

"No. It would have to be the tree I started in or a cutting from that exact one."

"You... started in? What, like where you were born?"