It is: a forest. None of the individual plant species are familiar. Trees, bushes, moss and grass and lichen, vines and mushrooms. A little person with four wings and brilliantly yellow hair.

The person with yellow hair laughs. "Of course," he says lightly. "Hello! What's your name?"

"Yellow," he says, smiling less. "Are you lost?"

"I might be. Where am I?"

"Not too far from my house. Do you want to come get something to eat?"

"None at all," he says. And he flits into the forest, pausing every few trees to let her catch up.

"Yep," says Yellow. "Ooh, do you want a candied dewdrop? They're not filling at all."

"I'm not about to run out," he assures her, offering a clear thing that looks like it has the texture of a gelcap.

"It's not sweet. Candying's just the name for the process."

"What process is that?" wonders Callida.

"Oh, Promise makes them with sorcery."

"Sorcery?" says Callida, delighted, turning towards Promise. "How does that work?"

"There's books and I'm sure Promise will warm up to you if you stop snubbing her dewdrops. She does them quite well, you know," says Yellow.

His wings beat. He glances in Promise's direction. Promise has gotten up out of her chair, wincing. The sleeve on Callida's raised arm is now on fire.

"Let me go!" exclaims Yellow. "Promise, do something useful -"

Promise is not doing anything obvious, but she is looking at Callida with some urgency in her eyes.

"Is there an obvious way for me to free you from whatever, thing he has on you?" Pause. "And does it have anything to do with food or names?"

Twitch. (Yellow is still struggling.)

She twitches on 'force feed him my food'.

Yellow is not happy about this at all.

Twitch.

"Okay. Uh. Let her speak freely?" she attempts, and then she un-chokes him.

"Rescind all her orders," says Callida, because really, that seems the best thing to do. "And then don't give her any others."

"You're welcome. Okay, how does this work, specifically?"

"He has my name; you fed him; that means that you're his master and he's mine. If he'd fed you instead he'd have you too. I would've been allowed to talk as soon as it wouldn't be interfering with a capture attempt and we could have maybe gotten away by cooperating because he's not very smart, but this is better. You can tell him to do whatever you want."

"Right, okay. Thank you. Uh, Yellow, always tell me the truth, and tell me in an obvious way if Promise lies to me, or has lied to me since she started talking." She looks back at Promise. "High stakes, paranoia, I'm not a monster but I need to be sure I won't have a master, I hope you understand."

"I think I would have accepted that over being his, but - yes, I'm happier with this."

"Do you know if you came through a tear or a gate?"

"What difference is there between the two?"

"Tears stop existing after you go through them. If you went back and forth before coming through that would be conclusive."

"I did not, but I think I could find the place I walked through again. What happens if it was a tear?"

"Then I can make you a new gate, I know how. But it'll take a while to settle. You can safely take food from Yellow now, he's already your vassal."

"Fairy food's safe for me. Well, safe enough, it'd be astronomically unusual for someone to track down that weak and distant of food claim on something I found foraging. It's you who might run out and need to eat things you normally shouldn't."

Another nod. "And it's safe if the food is obviously his, or if he feeds it to me? He was trying to feed me one of the things you made, would that have made me your vassal?"

"If he feeds it to you. The dewdrop might have given me a weaker claim, which would have been really inconvenient if it held, because I was forbidden to speak my name and it would have had to be food on my end, name on yours."

"That would have been inconvenient. All right. Is there any danger in checking on the place I entered right now?"

"You might be accosted by another fairy," Promise says, "or meet an environmental hazard. Will you ask Yellow to tell me his name?"

"... I can, but what do you plan to do after?"

"I'm better at phrasing orders than you are. And if I have his name he can't hurt me. I don't need him for anything, I'm not going to keep him."

"Do I have your permission to get a lie detection from you on that via him before I give you his name?"

"...A lie detection? You already told him to tell you if I lied."

"I mean, yes, but - I don't expect he actually knows if you'd be lying about what you'd do with him or not, that was more in the way of 'are you lying about how the world works.' So, I'd want to confirm that that specific thing is definitely true."

"How?"

"Ordering him to give you a specific order that we work out beforehand, to make sure that you're not lying about that specific thing, and then clearing all of your orders again. He's an awful person, but I just met you ten minutes ago, I don't know what would happen five minutes after I left when you're free to tell him to jump off a cliff, or gouge his own eyes out. I'd fall in your favor in the 'which one of you is allowed to give the other orders' game, but I'd rather not play it at all if it's going to lead to a worse situation than what I've already got in front of me."

"I could think of situations that could come up where I'd need a vassal - or where I'd need a master - and then I'd come get Yellow sooner than find someone else, but I'm not in such a situation now and don't plan to get entangled in one if I can avoid it. You can have Yellow order me not to lie to you for a minute."

"All right." She looks at Yellow. "Give Promise the following order: 'For the next minute, you will not lie to Callida.'"

"That phrasing doesn't work, it has to be 'don't', not 'will not'." (Yellow is silent, presumably because there was not an order after 'the following order'.)

"... Ah, okay." She corrects the phrasing to the proper one, restating the order correctly.

"All right then, thanks. Sorry. Yellow, tell her your name."

"You fed him, unless you share his name or someone makes you do so it doesn't add anything to how much your vassal he is."

"Right, yes, but - still."

"I know."

"This is such a fucked up situation. How many people are in this, forest? Are you all subject to these rules?"

"...I don't have a census. A few hundred in the forest, I guess, it's a big forest. Fairies all work the same way."

"Ah. ... And this is a different planet than the one I started on, I think," she muses. "That's. A damaged powercoupler if I ever saw one."

"Planet?"

"Plenty. It's not a planet. That's the round things, right? This isn't a round thing."

"Fairyland's flat, apart from mountains and things, in all directions forever."

"I can gate you wherever you need to be, though, I just need a geographical description. I should probably start that now, it might take a while to settle."

"You should probably describe the planet."

The tomb is likely not a geographical enough feature. Rivers? Mountains? Can Promise get a map?

Actually, yes, Callida can produce a map, on her datapad. Here it is! And here is the tomb, near the delta of this river.

"Okay. I'll put the gate at the wall over there." And Promise looks at the wall over there, then goes outside and gets a rock to throw at it. It bounces off. "Not an instant settle."

"How long does it typically take? And can the gate be closed, after?"

"It can be anywhere from instant to a week or a little more than that. I'll be able to close it from this side."

"All right." Pause. "Are you going to stay in this area, after I leave?"

"No. I'm going to give Yellow light precautionary orders so he doesn't come after me or tell my old master that I got loose and then leave. Why?"

"Instant travel to other planets would be very useful," says Callida. "Even if you couldn't make gates large enough for ships."

"What would it be useful for?"

"Travelling from planet to planet takes time. Sometimes not very much time, but some. And travelling distances on planets takes time, too. So you could transfer objects or people from one place to another faster, which would be good for things that can't be moved except under very specific conditions, or things that are ruined after a certain amount of time - so on."

"This would require leaving a lot of gates open, sounds like. That's not necessarily safe."