"You might be surprised how little effect the lack of moral feeling manages to have," he says. "But I take your point about the rest."
"I am very impressed with how little it is affecting things! But I do not know how permanent to expect this charming state to be."
"Wait and see. I'm convinced of my stability but communicating the evidence seems intractable."
"And I'd better start putting these books away if I want to be back in the crypt before dawn," he adds.
There it is.
She steps through.
She comes back with a tree branch. "I can sleep there over... day. Should be safe enough as long as I don't go out. But the food I had is all shriveled up to nothing and I can only get so many haws to grow on the inside of the tree without the outside moving suspiciously, so I do need to be fed again."
Time passes. Sherlock presumably sleeps. But when Promise comes back she will find him drinking tea again.
"If I ever have to introduce you to a fairy and you haven't picked a nickname yet I will call you Tea."
"I'm going to make a gate to another continent so I can plant my tree branch there and get food for myself," she says. "Where do you want this one? I can just put it right in front of the other if you like."
"Reasonable enough. Possibly tricky for anyone trying to go through one of them from this side."
"I wonder if you can reach through the gate into my tree if I don't actually say in words that you may."
"It shouldn't be possible according to the usual operating parameters of vampires. Who knows how the gate or the tree factor into it."
"My tree has a property that you can't get into it if I'm not meaning to let you, but meaning doesn't involve speech."
"Should I test it, then? One attempt to get into your tree never having been permitted by any means, one attempt having been permitted silently, and if that fails try a verbal invitation and if it succeeds try silently revoking permission? Permission for a vampire to enter one's home cannot traditionally be revoked except by magical ritual."
"It's per home when the home is not a tree. Seems logical that it would be per tree when it is."