"...Why not? The idea of a character from a fantasy story coming to life, or coming to speak to you, is a trope. I really liked Inkheart..."

Raoulin has been rocking gently in the rocking-chair in the corner, occupied partly by the purring cat in his lap. He is understandably very sleepy after coming back from an absolute slog of a mission, and people have mostly been happy to leave him alone to nurse his coffee. But this is too interesting to not ask. 

"I - okay now I'm hung up on the part where Sir Raoulin has read Inkheart." 

"I'm just saying it could potentially be really old. If there's old enough stories about people from stories coming to life....?"

"Not how magic works, surely? The requirement is not an old enough story, it's an old enough moral conviction." 

Baroness Elynor shakes her head. "Right, but dragons exist, and it's not that people have a really old moral conviction that dragons should exist, it's that - for whatever reason - sometimes moral convictions specifically about authority and dignity and the fucking rights of kings turn into dragon-shaped problems, like how moral convictions about sex sometimes become succubus-shaped problems or moral convictions about loyalty become direwolves or some shit. The question is what sort of moral conviction gives us a fucking storybook character."

"No, I think this actually just doesn't make sense. There's many old fantasy stories but - before modern widespread literacy they don't have worldbuilding. At most maybe there's a fantasy land, like Avalon or Tir Na Nog or a Dreamland, or there's heroes with specific powers, but there's not - a fake village called Ujue in a place called Menador in Taldor with a whole separate religion with different beliefs. I think that sounds like.... a level of detail in separating the story's world from Earth that would be post-Tolkien." 

"We have worldbuilding. We're in the barony of Kalomeros in Atlantia, we've got songs and everything and a mythos. And a whole cadre of Laurels turning out magical artefacts as fast as they can launder them."

"So she's a fucking figment of my imagination brought to life by how much I love Atlantia?" Elynor asks. "Shit." 

"I also do not find the storybook thing plausible."

"Fuck it, I just want to ask her. There's no way we're getting her away from Jenny to ask her whether she's got a magic artefact but... can we quiz her, find out what magic is going on with her, then just memory wipe both foster parents?" 

"I am not prepared to authorise that on your goddamn hunch," Elynor says firmly. 

"....As much as I hate to say it, if she really does have magic and really isn't aware she's supposed to keep it secret, she is an active risk to the secrecy of magic." 

"If we're suggesting memory editing the fifteen year old, I have to object in the strongest possible terms. We don't know enough about her to specifically remove the dangerous memories, and if you're proposing we reduce her to knowing as little about her own past as we know, that is unconscionable." 

"I am definitely not proposing that." 

"It kind of feels like it's crossing a line a little bit to use my powers against humans, and sorta feels like it's crossing the line a lot if I snuck into her house or something, but, you know, I could go invisible and pass her a note."

"Significantly less line crossing than editing her memory." 

"What would the note even say?" 

The Baroness looks directly at Nicole. "Nicole, you're my ambassador to strange otherworldly creatures I don't fucking know how to interact with." 

Nicole holds up a hand to ask for silence while she thinks very carefully about it for several long moments.

It's a painfully long pause. 

Baron Rees emerges from the kitchen with risotto for everyone, and on observing the general atmosphere, decides to deposit plates very quietly and not say anything. 

"I think.... we have procedures for how to handle mundane people in possession of artefacts they should not have, and we have procedures for how to handle potential recruits, and procedures for how to handle demons who are assimilating into society by pretending to be humans - though we haven't had to use those in a long time and God forbid we need them today. We're struggling because those all say very different things about what to do with her. I think we can't tell her about everything we are and everything we do, because if she's a potential recruit then she needs to go through the same vetting as other potential recruits, artefact or no artefact. But we do need to make sure she knows not to use magic, but without tipping her off that it exists if she doesn't already know. And without tipping her off that we're onto her, if she's a demon infiltrator. So no invisible notes being handed to her in mid air, and nothing that mentions the SCA, nothing signed 'from the SCA' - especially because I can't imagine her foster parents let her come back if they think we're slipping her secret notes."

"So I think an invisible note should come from, as far as we can figure out what this like like, someone like her. It's deceptive and it sucks that it's deceptive, but something like: be careful, it's dangerous in America to reveal that you're from Taldor, you have to keep it secret that you're a holy warrior."

"....I really really hate that though. I really want a better plan than that."

"It.... wouldn't be saying anything that isn't technically true. Under basically all of our hypotheses, bad things might happen to her if she tells everyone she's from some kind of magical alternative universe."

"It's an okay last resort but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth," Raoulin agrees. 

"Okay, the project is to make a better plan than that," says Elynor.

The risotto goes cold on the table.