Well, that's weird, but she can't really ask about it.

And eventually they come to a rock and go through a tunnel and come out into a big brightly lit place full of houses, which they are hurried through by the people accompanying them, and then to a smaller room with a bed and a table and a sturdy wood door. 

They go in. 

The door is closed. 

The fairy sets her down on the bed and sits next to her and cries.

Welp. Crying is better than some things even if it's not useful or intelligent.

She gets herself together eventually and stares at the door morosely but without crying. 

It takes her a while to go back to asking questions. 

"The thing I'm supposed to do - is it something I am supposed to say?"

Blink.

"Okay. Is it one word?"

Blink blink blink.

"It's either one word or it's not one word!"

No! It's not! Many single-word commands would work and so would many full sentences!

This ends attempts at guessing what thing to say. There's more moping. 

Eventually someone comes to the door for her. "They want you -"

"Yeah."

She comes back a few hours later. She's limping. She looks even less happy. She doesn't start crying until they close the door. 

"They are gonna cut us loose," she explains eventually.

Look who can't have any constructive opinions about that! It's Promise.

"I don't know how to say anything that both is and isn't one word! Is it a compound word?"

Blink blink!

"Is it one word in some language but not others?"

There's not a single specific it. Blink blink blink.

"I hate you."

Blink. Promise hates you too.

"We're probably going to end up someplace where they want to dissect you for experiments," she says, and sounds mildly pleased about this.

So what else is new.

Things do not improve. 

There is a halfhearted attempt at guessing the word ("is it 'jam'? is it 'tangerine'? Is it 'human'? Is it 'tree'?). People come to take her away for hours at a time a couple more times. No one offers them food, or anything else. No one else in fact talks to them at all. 

Sometimes her co-prisoner looks inclined to kick her, or throw something at her, but she does not actually do it. 

Well, then Promise will be able to make any progress on healing her various injuries, though not very much since she isn't eating or drinking.

After - it's a bit hard to track time in a closed room with no windows and a single light, but maybe a couple of weeks? the people who come to the door say "pick her up" and they are escorted back out and across the forest.

They leave them at the forest's edge. 

"Do you have any opinions about where we should go next," says her companion unhappily.

Blink blink.

"Great. Okay. We're gonna go east because there's less density of claims there, when people kick us out we'll have somewhere to go.

Can you, like, write? You could write the word. In the dirt or something."

Blink.