"Had you already caught one when I came through the tear last night?"

"I don't actually catch my own animals, I steal containers full of animal blood. Less tedious that way."

"Oh, okay. I guess stealing food doesn't have the obvious problems for mor- for non-fairies."

"Indeed."

"What else do you do with your time?"

Shrug. "In what context?"

"I'm going to be here for possibly weeks. The gate into my tree will take a while, I'll probably just move to a different part of Fairyland after that but that gate could also take a while, I want to know what good ways might be to spend my time between now and then."

"Oh. Hm. I could show you a library or two. Hellmouth optional."

"A library could be interesting."

"Options include the school library with informative material about magic and nonhumans, and the public library with no such material."

"The... school library... sounds obviously better then."

"The school library is somewhat more dangerous, given that there is a Hellmouth there and every so often someone tries to use said Hellmouth to cause some manner of mischief. And the public library has a much wider selection, it's just that most of it is written and curated by people who have no idea that magic is real. So their relative merits depend on your interests and risk tolerance."

"Oh. What kind of mischief?"

"The destruction or conquest of this planet, generally speaking."

"...Are they ever any good at that?"

"Well, the planet remains intact and unconquered. Sometimes that's because the people trying are incompetent, sometimes the defenders of the status quo get ahead of them, and I suspect once or twice it's come down to sheer luck."

"How frequently are attempts made?"

"A few times a year, at a guess? Really serious ones are less frequent, and I'm sure a handful of demons getting together in a pub somewhere and making idle boasts about their capacity to bring about hell on earth is practically an hourly occurrence. But I would be surprised to find out it was less than once a year on average that someone actually put a plausibly workable plan into action and needed thwarting by some combination of luck, providence, active opposition, and their own stupidity."

"I think I can put up with that level of hazard to find out about local magic. Especially given that not everyone who wants to do mischief is necessarily an immediate hazard to me personally."

"Reasonable. Local magic itself also possesses a hazard or two but given your described characteristics I don't think you'll have too much trouble with those, and you're unlikely to run into anything nasty just reading about it."

"Hazards like what?" wonders Promise.

"Unwanted attention from hostile entities. The chance of getting addicted to the magic itself."

"Sounds inconvenient. I'll read up anyway. Lead the way?"

Promise peers curiously at all the things they see on their way.