The door opens slightly. She opens her mouth as though to say something, pauses, then says instead, "Master isn't home right now. May I invite you in until he returns?"

"Oh, so you're a minion, then? Sure, why not."

The minion opens the door farther. She's wearing a dress made of leaves and has wings that are also made of leaves, albeit much larger ones.

"...Are you some kind of fairy or something? It's been a while since I've encountered one of those."

"I just appeared here. I'd love to go home, but this kind of thing happens to me a lot; a weird thing happens to me and I have to deal with it. I can defeat it, even if it would narratively inappropriate, but running from it never works. So your master is evil, I'm guessing? And you're not his voluntary minion. So I have to defeat him and free you, I'm guessing."

"Then I'll just have to not get got. How does he get people?"

"Don't tell him your real name and don't eat anything you didn't bring with you."

"Okay. I just had lunch, so the latter shouldn't be a problem for a while, and conveniently I have a nickname I'm used to using. Hi, I'm Little Bird, what are you called?"

"Promise." She pauses. "Do you have any mortal food with you?"

"A little bit. Not enough to keep me going for very long once I get hungry, but not none."

"That's convenient. Does he have any evil plots besides keeping you captive or should I consider my B-Movie plot quota filled by rescuing you and evading capture myself?"

"I'm his only vassal, if that's what you're asking?"

"I don't know if he has any evil plots besides keeping vassals but probably if your reaction is 'I'm not sure what you're talking about' rather than 'yes, he's trying to summon a dark god' or something it's probably fine to leave. Ah...would you rather have a mint or a squashed chocolate?"

"I don't know what either of those things are and it doesn't matter as long as they're food and from the mortal world and come out of your hand."

"Alright, here." She pulls a hard object wrapped in a clear material out of her pocket and tears off the wrapping. She holds it out to Promise.

Promise takes it and swallows it whole. She shivers. "Say, 'I rescind all your orders'."

"I rescind all your orders."

"Thank you," says Promise, suddenly relaxing all over. "I'm going to pack a few things, burn this place to the ground, find someplace relatively sheltered to make you a gate, and fly away. Just a minute." She ducks into a side room of the house and comes out soon after with a bag.

"Do I even want to know what he had ordered you to do?"

"He wasn't as bad as my last master. I had leftover orders when Yellow bought me or I would have been long gone." Promise leads Little Bird out of the house. She looks over her shoulder and the entire structure turns into smoldering slag, collapsing on itself slowly.

"...That sounds like there's someone else who could use thwarting. Nice arson, by the way."

"Do not try to find my old master. I can get you a gate home. You'll be safe back in the mortal world."

"I mean, yes, sure, I'm not going to go charging off half-cocked, but I've dealt with things that smart people don't tangle with before. Not voluntarily, usually, but I did and came out of it alright. If there's someone consistently doing bad things to people I'm not going to give up without knowing anything about the situation."

"He collects sorcerers. Most of them are psychologically loyal, his orders are airtight, and you are mortal. Follow me."

"Oh, magic users. Yup, not dealing with that by myself if I have a choice. Sure." She follows.

Promise flies - "Run, at least as long as you can, Yellow may head back to his house at any moment and we want a wide search radius, he flies faster than I do and definitely faster than you run."

Daphne runs. She's a little faster than the average mortal on account of having so much practice dodging serial killers, not that Promise knows how fast mortals tend to be.

She grimaces. "It wouldn't be my favorite thing, but I can survive for a few days as long as I have water. Some food would be good too but I think I could go as long as a week without food if I had to and not die. Maybe more than that? But--yeah, not fun, I've had worse, I'll survive."

"It shouldn't be a week. I'm going to make you a gate, it may settle right away in which case the question is moot. Can you describe a good place to put you? In geographical terms."

"...If it's going to be days my car will have been towed anyway and I should be back on campus soon..." She describes the geography of the Borgia University campus area.

"Okay. Here's hoping." Promise makes subtle marks in the ground. "I'll make it between here and here. It'll only work going this direction." And then: "There -" She throws a rock. It disappears midair. "Go on through, it settled."

Promise scrunches her eyes shut. "I need to find Little Bird. Do you know her? Please just answer yes or no."

"Uh, not personally, but I know of her and I can get you to her."

"That was not a yes or n- Just don't tell me anyone's real name. Please take me to Little Bird."

"I'm sorry, but it wasn't exactly a question I could answer yes or no to. Do you need help standing?"

"No."

"Some of Thorn's vassals found me. I couldn't outfly them for long, but if I can hide here for a few weeks - even a few days - they didn't see me come through here, shouldn't be able to find the gate, if they do they won't be able to use sorcery so as long as I can stay far enough away and nobody tells them their names - if I can just stay long enough that they lose track of me I can start over somewhere farther away."

"...Almost everyone uses their real names here. I conveniently have a close social group who are in the habit of using nicknames but someone's going to slip up eventually."

"I can hide somewhere. Or put out my eardrums - well, you could, one of Thorn's people ordered me not to do it myself before I got away, but I don't have to stop you. I can fix them when I get home. I don't want to envassal anyone. I just need somewhere to hide and you can feed me without making anything worse."

"Um, you can hide out in my room for the duration if you want. No one but me and my roommate will come in without an invitation and she'll be fine not calling me by name and I can refrain from calling her by name and that sounds like more fun than putting out your own eardrums. Also, if you've acquired orders you don't want since last we met, I rescind them."

"Thank you."

Promise steps into the room. Her wings roll up behind her and she finds a corner to sit in, tucked out of the way.

"...Um, hello," the room's other occupant says. "You, uh, don't have to sit like that, I'm sure we can find you a chair at least."

"Backless chair?" asks Promise, looking at the chairs currently in the room.

"...Squashy stool at the very least. Hi, I'm Overbite."

"I'm Promise."

"I gathered from the exchange at the door. So what kind of fairy gets dominion over someone from hearing their birth name?"

"All the kinds of fairies I've ever heard of. Do you have kinds that don't have that property here?"

"All the kinds of fairies I've ever heard of don't have that property, and I've met a lot of them."

"Weird. Maybe there are some fairies who moved to the mortal world permanently and... lost it? Maybe it takes a long time to stop working unlike sorcery but still does... or there are breeders here and if they're born here they have mortal name properties and their ancestors left them...?"

"Most of the fairies I've met were originally from the Fey Realms. I'm not sure what you mean by breeders."

"Fairies that breed, instead of just starting. I have no idea how they'd have lost the name thing if they came from Fairyland. Maybe they were pretending, to be polite."

"Just...starting? Fey don't have children very often but they make new ones just the same as anyone else. I am beginning to suspect we are talking at cross purposes. And I have known fey who knew my name and would have commanded me if they could."

"Well, they could also have been under orders not to use it. And plenty of fairies are breeders, maybe even most of them, but not most kinds. I'm not a breeder."

"I cannot imagine why the Winter Queen would have ordered Imlaiss the Bright not to order me to put a stake through my own heart."

"It wouldn't have had to be her. Anyone with the fairy's name, or who'd fed them. There's someone calling herself the Winter Queen? Really? Presumptuous."

"If Imlaiss the Bright answered to any but the Winter Queen I would be shocked. And--I really do think we're dealing with some kind of misunderstanding, I had you pegged for a Summer and to be fair the two courts aren't terribly reverent of each other, but you seem surprised."

"...I'm not currently affiliated with a court, I started in a forest that's usually autumn, and anyone with even a medium-sized court who called herself something with 'Queen' in it would get some attention from the actual Queen if they did it in Fairyland, although it could be safe enough here."

"There are two Fey Courts and two Fey Queens, Summer and Winter. If you don't know this I think something very strange is going on."

"...I have no explanation. In Fairyland, there is a Queen, she knows all fairies' names but maintains a finite actual court for reasons of practicality, and other fairies collect names or feed one another and form smaller courts elsewhere with whoever the Queen doesn't want. There's no... seasonal division, and the names thing works with every kind of fairy."

"I think we may be working based on different definitions of fairy."

"I suppose we must be, although it's really something that I've never heard of this entire other kind of mortal-world seasonal breeders."

"Well, they don't live in the mortal world, they live in the Fey Realms, which I suspect is a rather different beast than your Fairyland."

"I suppose. How do you get from here to there?"

"There are doorways--mostly in hilled areas, but not exclusively--that open and close based on things like the position of the stars and the turn of the seasons and the pull of the tides. I have heard that truly powerful fey mages can open new ones, and that all the doorways that exist were once created in this manner."

"Also, you said your sorcery doesn't work in the mortal world."

"It doesn't. Or at least it supposedly doesn't, I haven't tried any since I got here, but sources are consistent in saying that it doesn't work, the harmonics are wrong."

"Fey magic works here, and there are a few types of magic that people here can practice."

"Then..." Promise fixes her eyes on a spot in midair, frowning, and then a pinprick of light appears there. "...Oh. I should close my gate, then, since I can do it from this end."

"Do you want an escort, so no one tells you their name by accident?" Daphne asks.

"Yes, please."

"Fair warning, if you're seen primarily with me and you're not a student here people are likely to think you're sleeping with me."

"I really don't care if they think that as long as it's false."

"I wasn't propositioning you, no. The power dynamics alone, ugh."

"I am suddenly intensely sympathetic to your desire to burn that fucker's house down. If anyone asks you to do something you don't want while your here you can come to me and I'll explain to them why this is no."

"Nobody else here can order me, just you. Unless they can reasonably claim the food you give me, so if you could avoid getting it from particularly nearby that would be good." She gets up. "Let's go get my gate closed."

"Okay." She opens the door again, having closed it after not-Frederick left. She remembers the way from three weeks ago. "I didn't think they could make you, but sometimes people who've been through shit like that find it...unpleasant even to be asked, so."

"I don't think that's specifically a problem I have."

"Well, if you did I would tell people off for you. ...I'm going to have to ask my mom to send a care package if the food needs to come from not nearby, is there anything in particular I should ask for?"

"Fruits, nuts, vegetables."

"Any particular flavor preferences? More or less sweet? More or less savory?"

"Some of both. I'm not picky."

For which Promise is grateful.

But eventually they do get there without accidentally envassaling anyone.

And Promise closes her gate, then says, "Done."

"So those goons can't get at you. You said they were Thorn's vassals, who's Thorn? Is that the guy who had you before Yellow?"

"Yes."

"...I still agree with you that going after him at the time would have been a terrible idea, but I do have friends who are magic users."

"What kind of magic? If it's different enough..."

"I think it's pretty different. I can ask Overbite's brother to come down, he's a magic user. And a huge nerd. You two can compare magic systems."

"That sounds fun. And maybe if it's different enough it could get around Thorn's sorcerers."

"That was my thought too. I think Jawbreaker knows a little, he's not anywhere near as good as--ooh I'm going to have to come up with something to call him, if I try to keep saying 'Overbite's Brother' I'm going to slip--anyway he's not as good, he pretty much couldn't be, but it's probably enough to tell if they're very different or not."

"Underbite," suggests Promise.

"That would be...pretty insulting actually. Oh, Overbite and her brother are vampires. 'Overbite' is a reference to her fangs, but vampires only have top fangs and not also bottom ones like some animals do, so calling him 'Underbite' would imply that his fangs were so small even his humanish lower canines were larger than his fangs."

"Oh. Not that then, I suppose. Usually fairies pick our own nicknames, you could ask him what he wants to be called."

"Yeah. I'll email him when we get back to my room. And then I'll go fetch Jawbreaker."

"Does Jawbreaker actually break jaws?"

"No. There's a kind of candy called a jawbreaker because you're supposed to suck on it instead of chewing and it's supposed to be so hard that if you try to bite it anyway it'll break your jaw, and they're one of his favorite things."

"Oh."

"You are not the first person to ask that question."

"The candy isn't very popular?"

"It's fairly popular, but before he got his act together he used to be a member of a particular cultural group known for violence."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Plus the story of how I had to break a chainsaw murderer's face with a baseball bat to keep him from murdering me with a chainsaw didn't help much."

"I... see."

"Getting dropped in Fairyland was pretty far from the first perilous thing to happen to me."

"I didn't realize the mortal world was so dangerous for mortals apart from the whole mortality thing."

"I have a worse time of it than most. Most people go through their lives never encountering situations like I deal with on a regular basis."

"Why does it always happen to you?"

"We're not sure, exactly...we think it might have to do with something I found out about myself a little less than a year ago, but that's pretty private and I'm not really interested in sharing it with as many people as it would take to make serious headway on figuring it out."

"Okay."

Promise sitting somewhere out of the way, thoughtfully staring into space!

"Do you want to read a book or something?" Little Bird asks, finishing the email and hitting Send.

"That would be nice, but it would be even better if I could borrow something to draw with."

"Uhm...Okay, I have a mostly-blank notebook and some pens and pencils."

"That'll do."

"Here. I'll go fetch Jawbreaker."

And Little Bird fetches Jawbreaker! This takes a little while because she doesn't know exactly where he is but she finds him sooner rather than later.

"Hi," says Promise, when Little Bird and Jawbreaker show up.

"Hi. You apparently have magic which may or may not be what I'm familiar with and I'm not to tell you my name."

"Right." She sets the notebook aside. "My magic is called sorcery. It involves knowing my environment and the thing I'm trying to do magic to very well, as well as an invisible environmental factor called harmonics that have to be found through trial and error. It can do things like lights or turning people invisible or growing plants faster."

"Well, that's definitely nothing like the magic I know. Our magic can accomplish arbitrary tasks and works through gestures, incantations and sometimes rituals."

"...How arbitrary?"

"Theoretically indefinitely, but not everyone has the skill to do everything that can be done."

"There is a court," says Promise, "in my Fairyland, run by a sadistic sorcerer-collector who likes psychological tactics and when those don't work, or even when they do, is a consummate master of orders with no loopholes."

"I didn't think mortals lived that long."

"Oh. I didn't know there were kinds of mortals, either."

"Oh, there's lots of kinds of mortals and lots of kinds of immortals," Overbite says.

"Immortals besides Fairyland fairies?"

"Fey Realm fairies are immortal too, or at least they want you to think so. Demons. Ghosts, arguably. Angels, if they exist."

"I've never heard of those things. What are they like?"

"Demons are mostly bad news, especially in the higher orders, but the lower ranked ones are sometimes okay. There are a lot of kinds of demon. No one is quite sure if angels exist, so I couldn't tell you what they're like if they are. Ghosts are noncorporeal people who used to be mortals until something should have killed them but separated soul from body instead."

"That sounds inconvenient. Especially if your magic requires doing physical things."

"Ghosts can usually develop telekinesis eventually, but yes."

"Telekinesis would improve things."

"It takes a while, though, and there's no way of being sure of becoming a ghost instead of just dying."

Nod. "Where do they all live, if there are more places than just Fairyland and here?"

"Fey Realm fairies live in the Fey Realm, obviously, demons live in Hell, angels if they exist live in Heaven if it exists, and ghosts live in the mortal realm."

"Do all the gates work the same way apart from ours?"

"Again, I can't confirm how angels and/or Heaven work, but demons...no. Generally people summon them and dismiss them."

"Why?"

"If you mean why does it work that way I have no idea. If you mean why do people do it, well, they have lots of reasons."

"I meant why they do it. If demons are bad news."

"Well, a lot of people are evil, and want the demons to be bad news at someone else. There are also succubi and incubi, which are sex demons, and people summon those because they want to get laid."

"...Are the sex demons all right with that?"

"The sex demons need sex energy to...well, not to live, exactly, but it's food to them. For them, sleeping with someone has about the same emotional meaning that...wait, food envassals you. Well, it has the emotional meaning that having someone make you a sandwich has for mortals. A really good sandwich, if it's really good sex."

"Okay."

"The problem with sex demons is that the nastier ones don't care if people want to feed them," Little Bird says quietly. "They don't...hold someone down and force themselves on them, but they have this mojo thing that makes them so attractive it inhibits your ability to say no."

"Oh. ...Are these common? Should I ask you to order me not to have sex with any sex demons?"

"Not very common, no. If you wanted me to do that it wouldn't be a terrible idea since I doubt you're likely to want to anyway."

"Probably not, no. Is it ever going to be a really good idea to have sex with a sex demon?"

"For you, no, probably not."

"...Who is it a really good idea for?"

"Oh. Okay, if that's the best reason. Are they pretty easy to tell apart from other people?"

"They have wings, but they can sort of...dematerialize them? I'm not totally sure how it works, but it's totally possible for them to pass as human."

"Then I'm not sure the order would work very selectively unless you told me not to have sex at all, and then I'd have to find you or give someone else mastery over me to get it reversed, down the line when I'm feeling better."

"And at that point we're back to you can let me know if someone propositions you so I can tell them it's not okay. They're not going to mojo you off the street, anyway--in all the cases I've heard of it happening, the victim was lured into a position where no one else would notice the incubus or succubus being supernaturally sexy."

"Okay."

Little Bird checks her email. No response yet.

"Can anyone learn to do the kind of magic you have here?"

"Maybe I could learn their magic. I'd like to have more than sorcery to fall back on."

"Thaaat seems like a bad idea for a number of reasons. Their magic is a bloodline thing--half fey can do it sometimes, but plain humans just can't, and I'm not confident you count. Also, we would have to find a fairy to teach it to you, and most of them are, again, snobs. We'd have to find a way to make it worth their while, which would be...difficult. And I can't be sure that one wouldn't be offended by the fact that your kind of fairy uses the same word as them when you're so different," Overbite says, wincing.

"I can just say I'm a leaflet," suggests Promise. "That's the kind I am. But if it's safer to learn the kind mortals use I'm just as happy to try that."

"Great."

That's neat. Promise has notebook left; she takes notes.

If Promise looks to be running out of notebook Little Bird will ask to tear out the first few pages that had her own writing on them and volunteer to get her a fresh one from the campus store.

"That would be nice of you, thank you. ...Maybe more than one if you can."

"Thank you."

For practical reasons, Promise would like to as much as possible abridge rituals into actions she can often perform even while under heavy orders, such as blinking, breathing, and various actions that are part of keeping her balance.

...Actions like that introduce a risk that she might do magic accidentally, but if they're careful and creative she can have something like breathing to a certain rhythm instead of speaking, and blinking in a pattern. Does she anticipate relative freedom of facial expression while under heavy orders?

Usually. Some people like their vassals to smile.

If orders to smile only apply to her mouth, she can put a gesture into a peculiar eyebrow movement. Can she wiggle her ears? Can she roll her tongue? Are either of these likely to be prohibited?

She can't wiggle her ears. Rolling her tongue will be noticed; irregular breathing won't. She could usually tense muscles that didn't complete visible motions of their own? Clench her jaw, say.

"...Huh. I never noticed you can't roll your tongue without opening your mouth. You can clench your jaw, but if you were in the habit of doing it otherwise you'd need to break it; if a gesture means magic to you then it will do magic whenever you do it. That's one reason most magicians prefer grandiose gestures and nonsense words; you're unlikely to do those without meaning to. Your situation is different, of course, but that does mean you'll need to be more careful."

"Maybe the entire stealth idea is worthless anyway. If someone clever gets me I'll be under a general order that won't let me do magic regardless."

"If it looks to be more trouble than it's worth then by all means we can skip it, but it sounds like it's possible that that order might not be applied, and it might be valuable to be able to pretend you're doing your sort of magic when you're not."

"Maybe I should wait until I've picked a complete spell I want available under those conditions and assign shortcuts to its components then. Everything else can be a word or a gesture."

And Promise can just do it the long way for now, right?

Right. Also, even if you have abridgements of many of the steps of a ritual, it's strongly recommended that you do it completely the long way at least the first time you do it.

So, painstakingly, carefully, she changes the color of her dress, green to red.

The silence ward is potentially very very useful.

The silence ward is incredibly complicated. If you do it just as a ritual it can take up to a week to do. But you can abridge things indefinitely if you work at it enough--these steps are all abridged as gestures and these gesture sequences are abridged as words and these word sequences are abridged as another gesture. Most magicians are limited by their ability to create and remember distinct abridgements. If she works very very hard and is good at remembering things, she could eventually cast a silence ward by clenching her jaw.

...and how long is Little Bird willing to hand-feed her leaflet visitor?

Little Bird is outraged by the fact that Thorn exists. Besides, it's not that onerous a chore. She can do it while studying.

Promise shows him her notes on magic and explains Jawbreaker's didactic habits.

"Hmm. It may be for the best for him to stay on, at least in an advisory role. My own library of spells and shortcuts is far superior, but I am not an experienced teacher."

"All right. I self-taught sorcery from books, but that meant no one but me was spending time on it."

"In my experience self-teaching is adequate; a proficient instructor is invaluable. Of course, many instructors are sufficiently incompetent as to give one the opposite impression."

"Finding teachers in Fairyland would have been too dangerous."

"Given the information my sister has relayed to me concerning the state of affairs in that place I cannot disagree. However, you may as well avail yourself of the resource while it is available."

"I agree."

"Jacenty" proves to be a somewhat better teacher than he had predicted. He gives her advice on memorization techniques and striking a good balance on how precisely to define a shortcut--too precise and it becomes difficult to remember, imprecise enough and it cuts down on the total number available. "I do not suffer fools patiently," he explains one evening, "but you are not a fool. Now, let's see if we can't train a bit more precision into that sequence."

Promise attends with perfect focus to the sequence in question.

It's a good sequence! At this rate she may be able to finish condensing the silence ward before the month is out. (It is not the same month she started in. It is still impressive.)

"I think this is a great idea in theory but there is only so much planet and I wouldn't bet there's an inch of land that no one's grown anything, so you'd want to do the branches thing, definitely. And, uh, our population is kind of growing, so even if you pick somewhere uninhabited it might not stay that way."

"I could live somewhere very otherwise inhospitable," Promise says.

"...Well, there's Antarctica. It's too cold for humans to live there permanently, although there are a couple of research stations."

"I was thinking maybe high up a mountain." She has been reading some of Little Bird's books in between practicing ritual magic. "So it wouldn't be so inconvenient to visit. But if humans are as acquisitive as all that maybe I should just gate to the farthest place I've ever heard of and live there and gate here when I want magic lessons."

"All the mountains high enough that people aren't likely to start living there are pretty far away from here too, though granted not as far as Antarctica."

"All right. I'll just wait until I have the silence ward down and then I'll get a cutting of my tree and some seeds and go to the Valley Continent."

"How do you have a continent of just valleys? It sounds like it would have to have mountains, too."

"It's not valleys. The middle of the continent is very low, below sea level, and I imagine it varies somewhat but the entire continent is overall valley-shaped. It should be easy to gate to and it's very, very far away from Queenscontinent."

"That's very reasonable. I'm on the tall end for Fairyland fairies but there are a few taller than me, or even taller than you, so you know."

"Definitely good to know. Strange people with wings should not be handed names, especially if they're short but even if they're not."

"Nor should anyone take food from them, especially if it's unfamiliar and plant-based."

"True, but even if it's a human taking food from random strangers is a bad idea most of the time. We can't vassal people but there are still some very unpleasant people who think it would be great fun to put nasty things in food and then feed it to unsuspecting strangers."

"Ah."

"Yeah. Honestly I think Fairyland fairies aren't necessarily worse than humans, in general, just...with more opportunity to be not nice."

"And more to gain from it."

"Yeah. And no societal expectations not to, and no formative years for a lot of you to have them ingrained if there were..."

"There are some expectations. The choosing one's own nickname thing. Apart from 'nicknames to annoy the Queen' you can pick anything you want. Even Thorn didn't nickname me something else - well, 'leaflet', sometimes, but when it wasn't that or my real name it was always Promise."

"Huh. So it's not as bad as it could possibly be, but...well, you turned out alright, anyway."

"I think I started different."

"Oh?"

"My nickname is Promise because when I started, when I was still in my tree and all I had was common knowledge, I promised myself to - be like I am, instead of like most fairies are."

"Awww. I'm sorry, that sounded patronizing, I didn't mean it that way. I think you're a very admirable person."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

So when Promise has the silence ward condensed as she likes, she gates to her tree; she finds it unguarded, and, invisible, takes a cutting and seeds of her favorite other plants, then goes back to the mortal world. Then she gates to the Valley Continent, and finds a nice place to plant everything, far far away from Thorn until and unless she's ready to go back.