He's pretty unclear on what fairies want?

"You wanted to learn to use a sword, right? I'm sure he knows much better than my son."

"Ooooh! Yes, I'd like that."

Well, then he's perfectly willing to offer however much training it takes to even them out.

He's so pleased. It doesn't take very much training to level them.

Well, then hopefully it won't take very long to get his family and then him to slow down.

Yep!

And then they can head on to Greece. She'll want to sketch things for his father before it gets too dark to do that, probably.

Sounds good. He wants a bunch of buildings, for some reason, and also to improve his existing map of the coastline.

Well, a map of the coastline will probably involve walking along the coast a lot. Greece has a lot of coast. She doesn't really know how to draw buildings accurately, but neither does anyone else in this century, really, so she can just do her best.

Drawing buildings is kind of impossible because of how they're three dimensional. But maybe his father can do something useful with lots of different attempts at rendering them in two dimensions. Or maybe he was just thinking of additional ways she could pay him back.

Maybe both. 

Greece is nice. It's full of history and it isn't very hard to find food. She's able to tell her children stories about the area every time they stop for a while.

And they can learn the territory of the local fairies and learn where to go for food and start stockpiling it somewhere warm for when night comes.

Yeah. Maybe they can build another house for it. And when night comes she'll have lots of books to copy, provided they can find some kind of light source. There are humans around, in some places, so it shouldn't be too hard. 

Her kids seem to mostly enjoy Greece. Sigrun and Tyr appreciate it for the stories, in different ways. Frey mostly appreciates the chance to run around unhampered by territory restrictions, and Ingolfr is glad that his mom is back. Ragna doesn't understand a lot of the finer points of their situation, but at some point she does start talking in sentences.

"Awww, she's adorable!" he declares one day, having never paid her any attention at all before. "I think she has your nose."

Well, as long as he likes her now that she's passed whatever mostly invisible barrier fairies have for personhood. She is, in fact, adorable.

"Should I go away for a bit so you can name her?"

"In theory she already has a name? Although I'm admittedly not sure she knows what it is."

"Well, it's safer if she doesn't, I guess."

"I guess. Do you know how to keep a secret, little one?" she asks.

      Ragna considers this. "No."

"Well. Then perhaps I'll tell you when you're older."

"Awwwwwww.... fairy children learn not to lie because it hurts. Teaching human children not to is probably harder."

"Probably. I imagine fairyland will sort that out for these ones? But I think most parents settle for punishing the lies they find out about."

"Yeah, I just suddenly realized how different that must be."

"I think the complicated thing is if they lie to you without you knowing. Makes it harder to look after them in a bunch of other ways. Children aren't good liars, of course, but they manage sometimes. 

"The emperor had a habit of telling them how to to tell better lies, when he caught them. Only told them to stop if he thought they weren't any good at it."

"Well. If he lives by that philosophy himself we'll get very sick one of these days."