Hug.

Yeah.

"Doesn't really say how he became a fairy in the first place."

"I've never heard of it. But I don't know it's impossible."

Nod. "I think there's usually something to a story, even when it's wrong. But it could be that the only part that has anything to it is that you shouldn't pick fairy roses."

"Not if you don't want to be indebted to a fairy, anyway."

"I imagine it's often much more inconvenient."

"Well I assumed it was pretty bad because of how all the humans died, but I didn't know that humans die anyway, so maybe I need to reconsider that and it's usually perfectly pleasant."

"Well. Most people have a lot more to lose if they get stuck in fairyland, I think."

"That makes sense."

Hug.

"I miss my other children. I didn't really have all of them anyway, and it's better here, but I still miss them."

"We'll get that figured out, as much as it can be figured out."

Nodnod.

"I think the resting will be a while. If you want I can tell you a longer story."

"You know a lot of stories."

"Yeah. I sort of hoard them. Closest I could get to escaping, before."

"I'd like another one."

OK. Then she can tell him about... Moses freeing the slaves from Egypt, with all the plagues and the parting of the red sea and some of the wandering around in the desert before they get to the promised land, that one's long.

"I like the idea that humans can just leave their court and start a new one. It doesn't sound very practical when you haven't got - plagues and so on - but it's neat."

"Yes. It's not easy, of course, if you haven't got miracles then usually you need an army, and that only works if you're leaving someone too weak to hold you. But it has happened."

"Sometimes there are fairy court takeovers but they're not very dramatic."

Nod. "I think - human rule changes are dramatic but sometimes don't change very much. A lot of the time wars are just succession disputes between different people who believe most of the same things but all want to rule. Though not when, say, Scandinavia takes over Christian nations, that changes things a lot."

"What does it change?"

"Well, some people are enslaved. Christian nations mostly don't have slavery, anymore, though they used to, but Scandinavians do. And then they go about closing churches and pressuring people to worship their pagan gods, and they kill some people by human sacrificing them. I suppose a lot of other laws must change. But I haven't, admittedly, actually been in formerly Christian territory since I was captured, I don't know exactly how it's changed."

"I don't really see why anyone would care which gods other people worship. They're not around much, right?"