No, the bar usually talks to people by napkin but I've just been conversion with her telepathically so there aren't any right now and there's no signs up or anything.

Valerie opens her eyes and looks around. Oh, there's the door. It would be a little silly to run for it right now.

What is the correct phrasing to just cancel an order instead of impose a contradictory one...

They’ve used "disregard the order to..." successfully in the past.

"Disregard the order not to talk to strangers."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome - oh that was so weird looking -"

"Weird looking?"

"Not literally 'looking'. It was weird when telepathically sensed."

"Does that make it more or less likely you can fix it?"

"Neither, really, there's no normal-looking thing it could've been." She sips her milkshake. "Bar, can you recommend me a book on fairy curses and blessings?" A book appears, thoughtfully jacketed so Valerie can't see the title.

Valerie will sit here and not interrupt the reading for now.

She's skimming and skipping around a lot.

"Okay, this book confirms my guess that if it's intended as a gift it's relatively safe to try to shake it off. If the fairy comes back and wants to know what's going on your line is going to be something like 'it was a fine gift for a child, and then as children do, I grew up' or something like that. I would advise you not to also have kids because there's no great way to not leave it wide open for the fairy to turn it into a generational situation."

"Thanks. I wasn’t expecting to be able to have kids anyway."

She looks, quietly, for a few minutes more - "anything else you want said, so I can watch it again -"

Shrug. "As long as you don’t hurt me and it doesn’t last it’s fine."

"Okay, I'm gonna use the handclapping example because you came up with that - ready? -"

"Sure. Do you want to watch me try to fight it or not?"

"It might be useful. Say wh- belay that! If you say when then I'll say it."

Giggle. "When."

"Clap your hands."

Valerie makes an abortive movement to do just that, catches herself, clenches her fists. She takes a deep breath, catches her hands trying to clap again, pins them in her armpits and sits down.

"Let me know if that's good enough." There is a lot of strain in her voice.

"I got a good look, don- you don't have to hurt yourself."

She claps her hands.

"Huh.

"So the most obvious thing I could do here is make it impossible to interpret things as commands, or as directed at you, or something, but those options have side effects like whoa, so I'm trying to think of something cleverer."