"He was being chased in the forest where the tower is, and he climbed up because he figured a doorless tower couldn't be inhabited and it would be a safe place to rest, but I was there. And he was too tired to climb back down right away. I gave him a muffin and then made him leave and promise not to tell anyone where I was, because I was scared - Gothel was out at the time - and he climbed most of the way but then he fell and -" Skip skip - "couldn't leave right then, and then he had the idea that I might be the lost princess, so I climbed my hair down and went with him to the capital."

"Aw, adventures! And that's how you learned about your illustrious parentage, I guess."

"Yes. And my more recognizable name. Everybody except my friend and my parents and the ones of the palace staff I've introduced myself to already knows me as Claribel."

"That sounds... stressful? If you'd rather be called Rapunzel, I mean, since you asked me to call you that."

"I'm used to Rapunzel. Claribel's a fine name. I'm learning to answer to it. But when it doesn't matter I might as well be Rapunzel."

"Ah, alright then. I'm glad you have a good friend and that you got out of your tower and that you're a princess. All of those are good things."

"Yeah. I'm really lucky in my parents and my friend."

Ari smiles and turns back to his coffee. It's one of those ridiculous confectionary drinks, because Ari is secure enough in his masculinity not to pretend that he likes coffee black.

"What made your mother different from all the other faeries, anyway?"

His brow furrows. "Not sure I catch your meaning."

"You said faeries are never nice."

"Oh." He considers this. "Well, she was, actually, the one who told me that, but she- well, there's a difference between being nice because it's the right thing to do and being nice because it's... there as an option, I guess. I mean, she'd taken me in, so I suppose it was easier to keep me happy than not. Locking me in a tower being more trouble than it's worth, as I think we agreed."

"And the baby teeth and the - blood? They were just that useful? What were they for?"

"Oh, you can do a million things with milkteeth. Long as you're not squeamish, at least. They're a power source, something to do with the essential magic of children's innocence. They go bad when the kid comes of age, it messes up the thaumaturgical connection, but for seventeen years you're golden. And blood, well, blood's the table salt of ritual, you can put it anywhere. She made sure the draw was all safe, too, and gave me lots of soup and red meat for the week after. Very decent of her. She said she'd been doing it for centuries, so she had the practice."

"Oh, she does this a lot. So you have brothers and sisters?"

"No, it was one at a time, she said it was neater that way. I guess there must be some others running around, but I've never met any."

"They don't even visit her? Or is she just too hard to keep track of what with moving around all the time...?"

"I'd... guess the latter. She taught me to navigate the Nevernever, but I- don't know that I could've found her if she was carting a kid around. She never seemed to hide herself, really, but... maybe it's harder to actually track someone down in the wilds than it is to find your way to the nearest nymph pool? I don't know, I would have tried to visit, maybe she just didn't want anyone showing up while she was paying attention to childrearing. She did tell me about them, sometimes. They all had magic, that's why she picked them."

"She doesn't visit them either?"

"Well- she didn't while she was raising me. She never really left me alone and unsupervised, the Nevernever is pretty dangerous. Maybe she visited them while I was sleeping and she could ward me properly, magically protecting a sleeping child from a distance is easier than doing it for one who's running around trying to punch trees."

"If she adopted them too wouldn't they be your brothers and sisters who you could visit too, even if they were a lot older? I mean, I don't know how this works except from books, I don't have any siblings, but I think usually when people have them they... meet."

"...I don't know. Maybe they were all killed in the vampire war. Maybe they broke the Laws. Maybe I'm a test run for Parenting Mode Belinda and she just kept them all locked in a tower until unceremoniously dropping them off in Eastern Europe when they turned seventeen, maybe she-" He freezes. "We don't know. I don't know."

"We?"