"I don't think you had better leave the house at all. Someone will see you. Fred would be safer, but still not really safe."

"Willing to go on risky, dangerous trips to the public fairy library if it means that Ted and I can go home sooner. Just saying."

"Noted, but the first places I'd check if I turn out not to have a book about it are not going to be accessible to someone who can't fly."

"That's - annoying. Mm. Okay."

Promise shrugs. And starts looking through her bookshelves, wings twitching occasionally as she starts to lose her balance.

"What are the incomplete defenses you mentioned, I'd like something, if I ever have to go outside again."

"There's magic. I think mortals can learn it, but it's complicated. There's - social rules, which are complicated too, maybe more so, and inconsistent to boot."

"'Mortals can learn magic' is about the best thing I've heard about this crazy place, where can I learn it, that sounds like something that would be extremely useful."

"Well, it won't work when you go home," says Promise, pulling a book from the shelf.

"Of course not," sighs Ted. "That would be too sane."

"What does sanity have to do with it? There isn't any magic there."

"No, but I - like rules being consistent, and they're not doing that. It's annoying."

"That part's very consistent. Where there is magic to use, you can do magic. Where there is not, you can't."

"It's consistent in an inconvenient way," declares Ted. "And when the inconsistencies are inconsistent in an inconvenient way, that's when I start getting really annoyed, because then it feels like the universe is out to get me."

"How did you fall in, anyway, was it a tear in the silk between the worlds or an actual gate that then moved?"

"... I don't know enough about the differences between them to guess. What are the differences between them, aside from the - hint that tears are accidental and gates are not?"

"At the time you stopped being in the mortal world and started being in Fairyland, were you going through a doorway?"

Fred nods.

"Okay, that means it was probably a gate. I can't manufacture one of those myself, I'm not powerful enough yet, but I might be able to find you one. The trouble with gates is they have keepers, and you have to impress the keepers enough to let you by, and there are generally stakes for failing. I might be able to make a tear but I can't be sure of holding it open long enough for you to both go through and I also don't know where in the mortal world it would put you."

"What are the standard stakes for failing?"

"Your name, often. You might be able to bargain a gatekeeper in a good mood down to some finite number of years of indentured servitude or sexual favors or something."

Ted shudders.

"And if they get either of our names, they get us both. Great. Ted, we're playing for keeps."

"Not quite. If a gatekeeper - or whoever - gets your name, Fred, I still have it. Then me and whoever else has it have to figure out how we're going to deal with it. Those conflicts can escalate, and badly - and sorry, but I'm not planning to spend four millennia singing without rest in a birdcage in somebody's conservatory for you - but if they were even less inclined than me to make a fuss over it, I could get them to give up their claim and then for most practical purposes it would be like it is now."

"That's - a bit better. But Ted would be fucked."