"Hmmm. Well there're some things that if they got out they might make it harder for me to take over Scandinavia later. Maybe you should ask me before you tell people specifics."

"Okay." She makes a note. "Is there anything else you want to talk about while you are here?"

"D'you have any more of those song boxes? I want to see if they have any that do any really cool things."

"Sure -" she reads off a long list. "reflexes, strength, attentional capacity, perception, sleep, restful sleep, crops, warmth, cold, ardor - let's say not that one, okay, - health, healing, wind, mist, speed, precision, stealth..."

"How much healing does the healing one do? Strength and stealth and reflexes and attentional capacity all sound really good. I have nine coins but I gotta keep one so I can take the bus back. Oh, and some of all that stuff I told you should count as a story."

"Actually, we pay people for attending meetings with their social workers." She digs around in her bag and then passes over ten coins to Vigdis. "The healing one means you recover from things about twice as quickly, if you play it continuously. You can have all of those songs but you won't get any effects if you play them all at once."

"That's good to know. How much effect do I get from each of them?"

"I think strength makes you as strong as an Elf, but only for bursts - you can't do heavy labor all afternoon with it. Stealth is supposed to be good enough that you can walk past people who aren't specifically on the lookout for you, but I haven't tried it and I encourage you not to take any risks. Reflexes is mostly good for fighting or video games, attentional capacity helps you study."

"Can I take all five of them home and test them?"

"All right. Be careful, okay? Loki doesn't want any children to get beaten."

"I'm being careful! If I were any more careful I wouldn't've gotten to come here."

"I am very glad that you did!"

"I am too. Thanks for everything," she says, stuffing her boxes and her coins into various oversized pockets on her person. 

She heads back to the bus and goes back to earth and stops by the bakery to punch the baker's son in the face ("You know what you did!" 'cause he probably did something), then plays her stealth box by a tree for a bit and sneaks back into the living quarters.

Her father prepares a truly colossal lecture for her, but in a while she's free, free, free to report back to her aunt.

"I trust you've been up to no good."

"I've been up to the most good. I went to see the wizards on their wizard world and they said that their magic is from Loki and that if I follow her I can have magic and also that she doesn't like human sacrifices and also she's a girl."

"....well."

" - anyway, they said some of the emperor's other concubines are going to leave and try to take their kids too, and that'll cause a diplomatic situation anyway, so you might as well be one of 'em. Also their judges don't think that kids should be raised by parents who do human sacrifices so probably you'll get to keep the kids and they won't send 'em back unless they really really want to go back."

"...well. It's a barbaric practice."

"So are you gonna go?"

"I don't know."

"Come on, what else is there? Is it that they're all Norse pagans? 'Cause they do know Loki but they said that they have Catholics there too and you can live with the Catholics if you want."

".....your father is a demonic abomination that passes from his own body to that of his heir upon death, making him effectively immortal."

"What."

"I realize that probably sounds really weird? Uh. I have to, like, stop him from continuing to do evil stuff forever. Somehow."

"...see, you have to tell me this sort of critical strategic information if I'm going to make good decisions about stuff."