There's a girl in jeans wearing a belt knife sitting at the bar with a milkshake. "Hi."

Valerie takes a step back, reaching for the door and not finding it yet.

"- I don't think there's a visual basilisk in here though honestly it's smart to act like there might be, I probably should've."

She kind of wishes she could ask what that's supposed to mean but she can’t. She takes another small step back in the general direction of the door, still not finding it.

"Do you not talk?" Is this easier?

Oh no, is this another fairy (that may or may not secretly just be a demon)? She’s not actually sure if she’d like to answer but also she doesn’t know how to communicate via telepathy even if she wanted to. Maybe she can ask the fairy to help her get home and not give her another horrible curse? Is the fairy going to be mad that she doesn’t like her curse? Oh no.

"- sorry, if you're not used to subtle artists - I'm not reading your mind, I'm precise enough to only get things you mean to tell me and not anything else -"

I didn’t mean to come here. ...Are you a fairy?

No, I'm a human like you! Just a subtle artist. This is a magic interplanar bar. The bar part of the bar is a person and she'll give you a free drink if you want.

I don’t know what a subtle artist is.

Some people say 'psion'? Or 'telepath'?

...I don’t know anything about those, either.

Well, maybe we're less common where you're from or something, supposedly this place picks up customers from lots of planes. Even if you're in a hurry back home I don't think you have to go if you don't want, she says it usually sits outside of time - the bar part of the bar is a person.

I’m sure she’s very nice. ...I don’t suppose you know anyone who knows how to fix a fairy curse?

Oh no, those are really nasty. Do you know if yours has a formal end condition?

I don’t know.

How'd you come by it?

Supposedly it was a gift - maybe for my mother rather than me but she didn’t like it either. I can imagine how someone else might have liked having it done to their child, though.

Well, the good news is that fairy gifts are way less dangerous to remove and work around than anything originally intended as a curse! I don't know a lot about them specifically but maybe Bar can lend me a book. Is that why you're covering your eyes?

Shrug.

Is part of it that you can't tell anybody about it?

Do you imagine that that question is going to get an answer?

Indirectly!

I guess you might come to some conclusions from the fact that I'm not answering.

Well, hypothetically, if you had a problem like that, would you want somebody to read you a bit deeper to find out about it?