It doesn't take very long for people to find her. She can hear their voices in the distance. 

"Identify your- oh."

      "It's slow."

"It can't be slow, it wasn't here an hour ago. It could be dead."

      "Or could've recently slowed."

"Here? What are we supposed to do if -"

      The voices get closer. Someone pokes her, touches her - "not slow and not dead. Maybe someone - tried, and failed? Or didn't care to on our territory?"

       "Dying?"

"I don't think so." The nearest person explores more closely. "I don't see anything that ought to kill her."

       "Do you recognize her?"

 "No."

        "Someone might recognize her, if we take her back."

"Yeah, all right. Go and ask if they want her, and if so how, and where."

This is all very puzzling but she can't exactly inquire about it. She blinks at them.

The people who blink back at her are wearing sparkly clothes made out of some odd flowing fabric, and sandals of the same fabric. They're carrying a single polished carved stick not long enough to be a walking cane, each of them, and they look as puzzled as her. 

One of them goes off. The other one watches her anxiously.

She is wearing a dress made of leaves. She has a twisted ankle and a broken leg and a black eye and a wrenched elbow. She's not completely immobile but she doesn't seem inclined to move around much. She's got wings, which might also be made of leaves - giant ones.

The wings are weird.

The whole situation is weird, actually, and accordingly stressful. Her observer sits and glares.

She doesn't know what his problem is and if she did she couldn't do anything about it.

The other one comes back a while later. "We're sending people to ask if any of them did this. In the meantime we can bring her back - in deep enough she won't disobey, once she's recovered enough to start moving, but not more than that - we're happy to set you even later," she adds to the injured person, "if all goes well. Do you want a drink or a story?"

...she's not sure what's going on. She does blink at "drink".

"I don't think she can talk," says the one who stayed with her. 

     "Does she have a tongue?"

"Didn't check."

    "Drink or a story?" asks the one who asked last time.

She tries opening her mouth.

And someone pours a little bottle of something sweet and unfamiliar into her mouth -

And then yelps in distress and alarm a second later -

She swallows it.

She blinks at them.

"What's wrong? Oh - shit - "

      "Yes! I don't know! I didn't do it on purpose - I don't know what it is I didn't mean to -"

"We should report that -"

       The person who just fed Promise some liquid whimpers. 

"Oh, stop that. Think for a second, all right? Right now she's too injured to do anything, so right now we have some time to consider our options. The more reasonable you are, the more appealing "keep her for study" looks, and the less anyone's going to consider cutting you both loose. But the more you act like a scared child -"

        "I realize this," the whimpering person whimpers, not any calmer. "But I didn't - there was no way to - who knows what'll happen when we pick her up to carry her in -"

"We shouldn't do that," agrees the other one. "We should report this, like I said."

       "Right. Okay."

"You should stay here with her and do nothing while I go report it, really."

       "Right, okay."

They're doing a surprising amount of debating about what to do. They sound like they must belong to somebody but she's never heard of a court leaving vassals, let alone mortal ones, with this much leeway.

The person who fed her sits and watches miserably. 

Well, that makes two of them.

She's not too injured to do anything, they must not be very observant. Maybe they figure if she's this roughed up she's hiding a lot of internal damage? But then she wouldn't be sitting up.

Two people come back, a little while later. The person who is sitting and watching her stands up. "Did you explain - I don't know what happened -"

"I explained." 

         "We want you to ask her some questions," says the unfamiliar person. 

"Okay. I can do that."

There's some whispering. 

"Are you capable of speech?"

Blink blink blink.

Whispering. 

"Do you know why giving you a drink had the effect that it did?"

Blink blink blink. She has no idea what framework these weirdos are operating under; she knows some things about the effect but apparently a disjoint set from what they know.

"Is the thing that happened when I gave you a drink going to happen if we pick you up and take you to our court?"

...blinkblink. Assuming it's not some completely other thing.

"I think that's a no." Whispering. 

"Are you dying?"

...blinkblink.

"If we take you back with us, do you have plans to entangle people or break rules while at our court?"

??????

Two blinks.

"And are we going to injure you worse if we move you?"

Blink. Seems like it'd be hard to avoid.

There's more whispering. 

"Were you dying before I gave you something to drink?" the person asks excitedly as if this would make a lot of things make more sense.

Blink blink. What is with these people.

Whispering. 

"Okay," says the person unhappily. "Uh, are you unwilling to talk because you promised you wouldn't speak to strangers?"

.......blink blink.

"Is something bad going to happen if you say something?"

Blink blink!

Whispering.

"Has someone instructed you not to talk to us?"

Blink.

She looks relieved. "Not to talk to us in particular?"

Blink blink.

"Not to talk to a broad category of people which includes us?"

Blink blink.

Whispering.

"...not to talk at all?"

Blink.

"Will you still be in debt to the person who gave you that instruction in a sleep?"

...blink blink blink.

"In three sleeps?"

Blink blink blink. What is up with these guys.

Whispering. 

No one asks her further questions for a while.

Then she'll just glumly sit there, won't she.

Eventually she gets a short explanation. "We think you've been affected by magic we are not familiar with. We're going to move you once we can do that without injuring you. We're also working on a way to spell out a more complete explanation, if you want to give us one. Until then you can wait here."

She sure can, dude.

The way to spell out a more complete explanation comes a few hours later. They have a board with lots of letters. "Do you want to spell something out?"

.......blink blink blink.

"Have you encountered the concept of writing before?"

Blink.

"Do you know how to write in some alphabet?"

....blink blink blink.

"Okay. So, the idea of writing is that you make a letter for each sound in the word, and then when reading you make the sounds and figure out what word it is." She explains the sounds that each of the letters represents. "Does that make sense?"

Blink blink!

"Maybe we should do an example? So imagine I wanted to spell out "I am an exotic sort of fairy that can only speak at night". That starts with "I". So first I'd blink when someone was pointing at this letter, because I said that letter sounds like "I". The next sound is æ, so you'd blink for this letter. Does that make sense?"

Blink blink.

....will an hour of attempts in this vein get anywhere?

It will get her acknowledging that a greater fraction of the concepts involved make sense but otherwise no.

This person is so frustrated and (once the others have wandered off) sad and scared. Eventually she gives up and sits down and cries quietly.

Well, Promise kind of wishes she'd just fucking let her talk already but she is way too confused to do that apparently.

Much too confused.

A different group of people come with a new barrage of questions. 

"Are you a fairy?"

Blink blink.

"Are you a mortal?"

Blinkblink.

"Is there some other kind of person?"

Obviously you moron. Blink.

"Is your kind of people faster than us?"

Blink blink blink what the fuck does that mean.

"Uh.... we are faster than mortals. That means we can see them but they can't see us, and to us they appear to go about their lives very very slowly, doing only a few things between sunrises, when we can do many thousands. If you were faster than us, you'd have noticed us, being all but still."

Blink blink.

"Okay. Uh, since you are not a fairy, you might not have the concept of debt. Do you know what debt is?"

Well, she'd have thought so but apparently it's complicated. Three blinks.

There is a lot of whispering.

"Okay. When people do things for each other, or to each other, one or the other will accumulate debt. Debt entangles you with the other person, and it entitles them to repayment. When you're entangled with people, any misfortune they call on themselves through their conduct will affect you also. Does that make sense?"

...blink blink.

Sigh.

"...when people do things for each other, or to each other, one or the other will accumulate debt. Does that make sense?"

Blink blink blink.

"Okay. Are you confused about the meaning of any of the words that I used?"

Blink blink blink.

Aaaahhh.

There is a lot more whispering.

"Uh, mortals don't track debt among one another, and this doesn't seem to affect them until they meet fairies. Are your people a kind of people who don't track debt among each other?"

....that sounds probably close enough. Blink.

"Okay." Sigh. "Well, here you need to keep track of it or you'll bring horrible misfortune down on everyone you're entangled with.

Which is me. Uh, usually giving someone a drink puts them in your debt a little. In this case it put you in my debt a lot and, more than that, created a - enormous, unprecedented, amount of entanglement without debt which is even worse because it can't be fixed. Do you know why that happened?"

Blink blink blink. Just a guess.

"Well it's - pretty bad. Because it's very bad to be very entangled with someone you know nothing about who doesn't know the rules. And it's bad for my whole court, they might try to figure out how to get themselves loose from me. And then we're on our own and I'm - not smart enough for that to not immediately end really badly.

And this is all your fault."

Look, if you want Promise's intelligent and helpful commentary on this situation you KIND OF HAVE TO LET HER FUCKING TALK.

Well they can have another try at the stupid alphabet board!

Promise gets absolutely nowhere with the stupid alphabet board.

Then they can sit there glaring at each other.

Eventually Promise will start nodding off, when there's no more stressors being piled on to keep her up.

When she wakes up not much has changed. The fairy that is attached to her is still sitting there glumly. She has thought of some more questions.

"Is the problem with the alphabet board that you know a different alphabet?"

Blink blink.

"Is talking against some rule in your society?"

Blink blink.

"Is there a reason you're not just explaining yourself."

Blink. (Bitch.)

"Is it a reason that's going to change eventually if we don't do anything more."

Blink blink!

"Is it a reason that's going to change if we do do something. Not that we know what."

Blink.

"Does it require anyone else's help?"

Blink blink. It might be useful if this one doesn't wise up though.

"So it's something I can do? Uh. Do I need to know any magic?"

Blink blink.

"Do I need any objects?"

Blink blink.

"Is it something we do together?"

Blink blink.

"Do I have to....say a specific word?"

Blink blink blink.

"Guess your name?"

Blink blink.

"Sing something?"

Blink blink.

Sigh.

Ugh.

After a while other people come back. 

"We'd like you to bring her back."

      'Yeah. Okay."

"It's not so bad. Think, if -"

       "I've thought about it a lot."

She picks up Promise. She does not look happy about it.

Well that hurts and is just generally real unpleasant. Promise is very quiet about it.

It's kind of a long way. Takes about an hour. If she's paying close attention to her surroundings, they're also changing in a kind of bizarre way.

She looks, yes. What's changing?

Sometimes they're sideways instead of right side up, and either they are getting smaller or everything around them is getting bigger.

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.

" - well, all right, then!"

Promise can sort of twitch her hand, but not very much.

The woman observes this incredulously for a minute. 

"I think," she says slowly as if talking to someone incredibly dense, "you should write in the dirt the word that I'm supposed to say to make you talk."

Twitch! Twitch!!!

"Oh, come the fuck on, you useless little lump, you said you could write it, write it!" And then she flinches.

Promise jabs her hand into the dirt and writes TELL ME I MAY SPEAK

She takes a while deciphering this because she's not good at reading but eventually she says, incredulously, "you...may speak?"

"Thank you! How did that take so long?! Why are you so averse to giving usable instructions that you don't think of it for days on end when desperate?"

"I'm in your debt right now! Because of all the stupid questions they made me ask  - and carrying you into the court was expensive - carrying you was bizarrely expensive - nothing with you costs what it should and I have no idea what it does cost and you can't just - you don't just - give people instructions with no idea what you'll be paying for them, that's stupid!"

"I don't know how any of this works but if that adds up to you wanting to do me a favor try saying I rescind your orders."

"I rescind your orders," she says, and then makes a face like she's had the wind knocked out of her - "I really hate you."

Promise, meanwhile, relaxes. "I assume that did a different thing neither of us could predict in your maniacal debt system."

"It's only you that I can't predict," she says miserably. "Everything works fine with everyone else. I've met a human once and it worked fine for the human, too."

"Does this system let you tell me how it works or were you just withholding that information for fun?"

"I can tell you, it's just expensive. For you."

"If I'm going to think of anything that solves that problem, and I'm clearly the only one of us who's going to, I need to know what I'm working with."

"Fairies can tell how much debt people are in, and how much debt results from actions, when we do them. We can usually anticipate the costs of things pretty reliably in advance but you don't do what I'd predict, at all. It's usually the right direction but everything else is off. Debt is one source of entanglement. The other source of entanglement that I'm familiar with is knowing someone's name. I've heard stories about magic that can do entanglement, too, but I don't know how confident to be in them. I don't know why giving you a drink caused entanglement, but it did, a lot of it, like - nearly as much as knowing someone's name? I don't know anyone's names so I can't compare directly -"

"And debt and entanglement do... something."

"They mean that any misfortune incurred by one of us, the other will suffer too. Moreso the more entangled we are."

"You got kicked out of your court and nothing in particular happened to me," Promise points out.

"Not that kind of - I mean, like, if you tell a lie, I'll get very sick, or have bad luck for a long time."

"Why not that kind of misfortune? Why is telling a lie lumped in with misfortune?"

"Other people deciding to do something that's in their interests and not in yours isn't misfortune. If you had remarkably good fortune it might cause their plans to go awry in some unexpected way but it'd be some unexpected way like... the patrol being a few minutes delayed so it runs into them when they're sneaking around, or having no particular appetite for the food they'd arranged to sneak you, or walking by them and overhearing something. Or a storm keeping you in one night.

Fortune isn't any of the things that a person deliberately controls towards an end, it's - everything that no one is perfectly causing."

"...and how does lying come in to it?"

"It's one of the things that incurs misfortune. Like disobeying someone you're indebted to, except that's only a little misfortune and lying is a lot, or like betraying an oath, which is lots of misfortune, or doing violence to someone you're indebted to, or destroying their things -"

"- is that the whole list?"

"No? I don't know if I know a list exactly - various kinds of doing wrong by someone when in their debt, and then some things that are a disaster even if you were not previously in their debt, like lying, and betraying an oath. And killing someone, I guess, unless they're enough in your debt that you were entitled to."

"...mmm. And right now I'm in debt to you again?"

"Yes. Saying 'I rescind your orders' was the most expensive thing someone's ever had me do for them and now you are in debt to a degree that, if we were in a court, would get me in serious trouble."

"Is that even worth trying to fix at this point after what the drink did?"

Sigh. "Probably. It - there might be some courts that'd take us if we were clearly being perfectly responsible in every respect aside from being as badly entangled as we are. There are courts that'd take a mother and a child, or two lovers. The way we are now - it looks like we're both irresponsible and astoundingly entangled, and that makes getting tangled up with us a very bad idea."

"Okay. What do I need to do for you to make up for it?"

"I could hurt you. That's mostly how my court got me clear, so it'd be fair, but also you look like you can barely walk anyway and we have to walk well east of here. We could have sex. You could tell me a story or sing me a song or give me food that's yours, if you had any, which you don't. I could ask you questions but I'm not going to because I'm really tired of asking you questions and it'd take so many of them at this point."

She can sing.

...She can sing pretty decently and in harmony.

"Sure, fine. It'll take a whole night at that rate but you already destroyed my entire life so I didn't have plans for that night anyway."

Promise sighs and goes on singing rather than address the question of what she's going to do about it if this person tries to have sex with her.

A couple hours later when they've stopped walking to drink dew from some bushes, she lies down. "Now give me a massage."

Promise squeezes her shoulder for about half a second and then rockets vertically into the air at high speed, grabbing a twig off a tree on her way up.

 - what.

"Come back here!" she yells after her once she realizes what is going on, which is not immediately.

Promise does come back eventually, still holding her stick. It's got blood on the end of it and she's dripping more from her ears.

"What the hell were you thinking? You can't - if either of us go off on our own no sane civilization will ever take in either of us -"

Promise taps her ear. "Can't hear you."

She considers her for a second and then shrugs. 

How far apart are they.

Promise is perched in a tree branch, about ten feet away.

She starts walking in the direction they were walking in.

Promise gets up in the air again and follows.

Does she at any point get close enough to grab.

She's maintaining a fair amount of personal space but will dip lower when the foliage is closely spaced.

...probably this should wait for when she sleeps.

Which she does, after a while.

Then the fairy will grab her and try to break her wings.

They're not hard to break. They're like tough leaves and they tear and Promise wakes up at once and screams.

She would explain herself but the stupid horrible person won't even understand the explanation, will she. She sits down and glares at her.

Well, Promise can't take off in this condition. She sobs instead.

Eventually she stops glaring and starts crying too.

Whatever this person is isn't a human. Has been implied to be some kind of mortal, but not a human kind.

Maybe this isn't the mortal world either.

Promise tries healing herself - less the ears -

- her wing knits back together.

Astounded blinking.

Now she's up in the air again.

"I'm going to leave and not come back - I don't care what you do, I can't die and I think you can - unless you write your name on the ground for me right now."

She glares. 

She picks up a stick.

She writes on the ground "STAY".

The name, if it's a name, will still be good a split second stale, so Promise doesn't watch her write, just reads it after - "That's not your name. You just tore my wing in half. I don't want to be anywhere near you while you can do it. Name or I leave you on your own."

"Don't you understand that'll make everything worse? More than twice as bad?"

"Can't hear you. If you want to make cunning arguments you have to write them, I don't trust you."

She's a really slow writer but she tries it. 

THAT WILL MAKE EVERYTHING WORSE. MORE THAN TWICE AS BAD. 

"More than twice as bad as my traveling companion ripping my fucking wing in half? Sounds awful, like I should just leave instead."

IT APARENTLY DIDNT AFECT YOU AT ALL.

"That came as a surprise to me, as it happens, though I'm sort of curious what you were planning to do to get around when I had a ripped wing and a broken leg."

EXPLAIN WHY YOU CANT LEAVE AND GET YOU TO AGREE NOT TO AND THEN NEGOTATE WITH SOMEONE FOR HEALING

"I bet you're not thrilled with the results. Why can't I leave? You might do something stupid, on account of being kinda stupid, and then something bad happens to me? So? Eventually you'll die. And I won't. You make the prospect of sticking with you very unappealing."

NO ONE ANYWHERE WILL HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH YOU

"Sounds lovely. People around here having anything to do with me sucks."

NOT - she scribbles that out - IT WON"T STOP PEOPLE FROM CAGING YOU OR CUTTING YOU UP FOR RESERCH

IT WILL STOP YOU FROM FINDING A COURT WHICH IS HOW YOU MAKE PEOPLE NOT DO THAT

"Well, apparently sorcery works here, so maybe I'd like to take my chances on self-defense if you can't keep your hands to yourself."

I PROMISE NOT TO DO IT AGAIN BEFORE WINTER UNLESS YOU TELL ME TO

"That's way too narrow for me to be getting on with."

WHY

"I don't want you to touch me."

IS THER A REASON YOU DIDNT JUST SAY THAT

"Well, first you forced the issue and then I put out my ears and after that having a conversation got real complicated."

YOU COULD HAVE SAID YOU DIDNT WANT TO 

"I didn't want to slightly more than you seem to be imagining. Perhaps I should have listed every single thing I don't want ahead of time as soon as I could talk?"

YES!

"What an appalling error on my part! If only someone who was supposedly explaining all the rules to me had MENTIONED THAT!"

ITS NOT A RULE ITS JUST STUPID AND A BAD IDEA 

"Look. I'm tired and hungry and don't want to hover here forever. Make your case or write your name or I'm going to find someplace to sleep where nobody's lurking."

I PROMISE NOT TO TOUCH YOU BEFORE WINTER WITHOUT YOUR PERMISION

"I don't even know if your promises thing works in writing."

YOU CAN ASK ME THAT AND I CAN NOD?

"I don't know if your lying thing works in gestures!"

I COULD LIE IN A GESTURE AND YOUD GET REALLY SICK PROBLY SINCE WERE SO FUCKING ENTANGLED AND THEN YOUD KNOW

"You aren't making it sound like much fun! Is that how you're planning to torture me if you've actually closed off touching?"

YOUR THE ONE WHO WANTS US TO BE TWICE AS ENTANGLED

I DIDNT HURT YOU EVEN WHEN I COULD AND EVEN WHEN YOU RUNED MY LIFE

"Until instead you did!"

BECAUSE IF YOU LEAVE I WILL DIE

AND YOU LEFT FOR NO REASON AND DDNT EXPLAIN WHEN YOUD DO IT AGAIN

"You're not succeeding at making me think the part where you die is a bad deal. That fixes my entanglement, right? Free and clear! And then I never have to think about you again!"

THATS WHY YOU WANT MY NAME

"I want your name because I have different rules from you and if I have your name you can't hurt me."

CAN YOU HURT ME THO

"Your name won't affect that."

WHAT ALL DOES IT AFECT

"It'll mean you can't hurt me. It'll mean you'll have to do what I tell you to, if I mean it when I say it."

INCLUDING IF YOU TOLD ME TO DO THINGS THAT WOULD MAKE ME DIE?

"I'm only still entertaining this exhausting conversation because I think you might be telling the truth that if I leave you'll die and you have a pretty high ratio of stupid to evil. I can work around things like that."

I WILL DIE IF YOU LEAVE

IF WE ARE MORE ENTANGLED I MIGHT DIE THE FIRST TIME SOMETHING YOU DO REACTS BADLY WITH HOW THINGS WORK HERE

PRETTY SURE SECOND ONE WILL HAPPEN SOONER

"So I should go, then?"

I DO NOT THINK THAT IS IN YOUR INTRESTS AS I UNDERSTAND THEM

BUT IT IS MORE IN MINE THAN GIVING MY NAME

"Bye."

Promise ascends, looking for a relatively clear altitude so she can get some speed.

She sits down and cries, again.

The sky is clear above the trees.

Promise rockets off in a random direction and, when probably no longer clearly visible, switches to a different random direction, and finds a place to sleep.

She is awakened a short time later by some fairies shaking her awake. "Where are you from, what's your business?"

Once they touch her they do seem surprised by the effects of this.

She startles fairly violently when nudged. Blinks at them. "- I can't hear," she informs them.

They either can't write or can but don't immediately think of it as a solution. There are some attempts to pantomime their questions.

"- that's not coming through as a signed language, perhaps if this is very important you could write."

Must be 'don't know how' instead of 'didn't think about it'. 

One of them goes off. The others stand there tensely.

Maybe she should just make a gate and go... well, not to her tree, Thorn'll probably have her tree staked out, but as long as she's not going to have her tree she could gate to the Valley Continent, and come back after a hundred years, and then go get a bit of her tree...

Eventually the one who left comes back with someone who can write!

They write that the court of this valley demands she offer the guard who awakened her the chance to redress this and then depart immediately from their territory.

Sigh. "What's the preferred means of redress?"

As she can't hear and he can't write she could have sex with him or slap him repeatedly or stab him or something?

"I don't suppose he'd like to, uh, draw me a picture?"

This is fine with everyone though it takes, like, quite a lot of pictures before they seem to be satisfied.

And then, not really satisfied with her nap, she moves on and tries to find a higher, more difficult to notice treetop-spot to sleep.

She gets woken up with a nudge. (It does take a bit longer this time). These people are demanding to know what business she has here and how she got in and what she's doing.

Promise still can't hear.

Someone can write. 

Where are you from? What's your business here? How did you get to this place unnoticed? 

Sigh. "I'm from a tree. I was just here to nap. I flew."

This court will grant you permission to sleep on its lands in exchange for:

1) a detailed explanation of the magic which she used to fly, sufficient for someone with comparable resources to replicate it

2) offering redress to the guard who woke her

3) her promise that she has no intentions to interfere with the court or any of its members on her visit here and that her intention is to leave when she is done wth her sleep

"I'm not sure if you'll find the degree of explanation I can produce about my flight satisfactory. Will you settle for a best effort?"

They agree to this.

"I can fly by flapping my wings, which I have always had, and may also be lighter than I look to you depending on how heavy I look to you. I do not know a way to attach wings like mine to anyone who did not start out with a set. Your guard may draw me pictures if he can't write me a story; last time this happened it took about forty sketches but maybe this one's a better artist. I have no intentions to interfere with your court or any of its members and plan to leave when I am done sleeping."

This guard takes about as many sketches and seems kind of annoyed about it but then they let her sleep.

Good.

When she wakes up this time she's no longer too sleepy to think up the clever idea that next time she'll just be invisible. She picks a direction and flies for a while so she won't be overstaying her welcome and then hunts for one of those ensmallening paths so she can drink dew.

There are ensmallening paths, and dew to drink. 

And if she lingers too long there'll be a patrol.

Wow, they are really heavy on the patrols around here. "I can't hear," she remarks once she notices them noticing her. "I can read."

1) Where is she from

2) What is she doing

3) How does she propose to repay them for the dew

She is from a tree. She is drinking dew. She'd be willing to sing them a song.

Well, why doesn't she do that to start and then they'll see where it leaves them.

She sings. This works surprisingly well considering she can't hear herself very clearly.

Yeah, they're fine with that as payment for the dew.

Next time she should introduce herself at the border so they know to expect her. Some courts are not friendly to interlopers.

"I get around by flying and have not learned to identify borders from the air."

Well, it's none of their business, really.

Will that be all?

Yep! All even.

Great.

She needs to be able to hang out somewhere for up to a week to make a gate there and is not having very encouraging results at finding someplace that lightly policed, and flying around all day on an empty stomach is hard, but there's no way she's going to eat even apparently wild plants here. Occasional self-healing will keep her skyworthy.

She moves on. She stops for more dew, somewhere else.

This time they throw a net over her. It's made of some odd magical fabric, and it's weighted on the corners, and it all happens very quickly. 

These guards are literate. 

They write that they welcome her to their court and will accompany her now to a festival in honor of her arrival. 

"I don't appreciate this," she informs them, "and recommend that you let me out of the net before I must express that in ways other than speaking."

There is some conversation but she super does not get let out of the net.

She's going to look real closely at this here net. That probably won't be very convincing in the short term.

Magical fabric of some kind, it's all shimmery. 

Someone gathers up the net to walk her in to their festival.

The shimmers make things complicated and it will take her about fifteen minutes before she's ready to do anything to the net.

They walk her along the path into a meadow, where there's a picnic laid out, and more people around. Fifteen, maybe twenty of them, all watching her with fascination. Someone is sketching her.

Someone hands her a note. It reads:

Welcome! We are not familiar with the kind of person that you are. Are you familiar with the kind of person that we are?

"Only as of the past few days."

There's conversation. 

Someone writes another note.

Among the kind of person that we are, entering someone's territory without permission and stealing from them is a frightening thing to do. We are not angry, but we are nervous, and we want to ensure it does not happen again to anyone, and we would like to know if it has happened before. You should also know that it is very dangerous to say things that aren't true; if you do not want to cooperate with us here it is much better to refuse than to say something that does not accurately represent the situation.

Have you been stealing from other people in your time here?

"I've stopped for sleep and dew in other places. When I've been approached about that I've squared up with whoever approached me. I don't know for certain if the places where no patrols made themselves known belonged to anyone because I don't know how to tell by looking, but at the time I was traveling with one of your kind, who directed our travel, and it's possible she could tell."

And are you planning to continue doing that?

"If you'd like to direct me to somewhere I can get dew without this problem I'm not attached to the idea."

We would pretty strongly prefer you live in unclaimed territory. It would avoid a lot of problems. There's some not too far from here. I could get you a map. 

"That would be great. I can sing for it."

I actually want to know what you are. And what you are afraid of.

"I'm a leaflet."

He waits a while to see if she will answer any other aspect of either question.

Nope. Staring intently at this net.

Maps are expensive. I don't want a song. Do you want to propose some questions you are willing to answer?

"I don't know what else might interest you. I don't even know why the bit I didn't reply to interested you. Perhaps it would be less expensive if I copied the map over."

Not really. The labor's not the expensive part. 

We thought there were two kinds of people. There are apparently more than that. This is of interest to us. You have abilities we do not. You think you can leave, or will be able to leave soon. This is of interest to us. You have been here only a few days, but read and speak our language. This is of interest to us. People who cannot hear speak oddly, as they have no feedback to shape their voices, and you do not. This is of interest to us. You are very obviously frightened of something, and this is of great interest to us because perhaps it should frighten us also.

"I'm willing to talk about how I talk."

There is some spoken discussion. 

Please tell us about that.

"I don't speak your language. What I'm doing is called plain speaking, which is what all my kind do. We don't encode meanings in exact sounds or shapes like you do. I can usually hear, but have found it recently expedient not to. I'm not sure that never having been able to hear would make me sound strange to you anyway, though."

Why do you prefer not to hear?

"...I don't want to answer that, and if I decided to I think it might turn out to be a surprisingly expensive question."

Not all courts have any members who are literate. I am concerned about what would happen if you encountered one that did not.

"Well, I suppose I could try sign language or try yes-or-no questions to figure out what they wanted."

I do not really expect that would work. I am not sure who would get hurt when it failed, though.

"I'm not sure either."

I find that more worrying. More catastrophes happen when no one's sure who will win than when everyone knows it.

"Like I said, I'm happy to go be in unclaimed territory instead."

And we would like to arrange that, if it won't be catastrophic for neighbors in the near future, which we currently feel underequipped to assess. Are there assurances that would enable you to answer more of the questions?

"I'm not clear on the connection all the questions have to whether me occupying unclaimed territory will be catastrophic for neighbors."

Are there people looking for you? Are they dangerous? Are they like you? What abilities do you have, and what abilities would anyone who might come after you have? If you have children, what abilities will they have? For how long will you want to eat dew and leave your neighbors alone, and under what circumstances would you decide to do diffferently? Who would stop you if you did? 

"I can't have children. Most likely less than a week if I find a place where I can live undisturbed for that time and thereafter I would bother occupants of bordering territories even less. I'm not sure what you mean by the last question."

If I set up camp near my neighbors doing something strange, they know who to ask about my behavior, and from whom to receive assurances that it doesn't endanger them, and who to retaliate against if it does.

"I am entangled with someone but am no longer associating with her and do not otherwise have a court at this time."

Some conversation results. Then another note. 

I really need more to go on here. Would it be better if we spoke without an audience?

"I don't have any particular suspicions about your audience that I don't have about you alone."

What makes you say that you only need a week?

"It might be less than that. - Although, now that I think about it, it might be a week in terms of the local daycycle, not a subjective week. I don't know yet."

I would really like an answer to the question I just asked you.

"And if we somehow factor out this net I am still in you are much more pleasant to converse with than anybody else of your species I've met, but that doesn't make me inclined to trust you very far."

I think that if you asked any of our neighbors and neglected to mention that I was considering trading you a map, they would say that they trusted me to protect my people and react predictably to provocation and not start fights and not endanger anyone and to do all of this even when it is a great deal of effort with very little personal benefit, but they would not agree on much beyond that.

If you told them about the map I think they would say I was a dangerous idiot and should not be trusted at all, which is one of the reasons I want to be very sure before I give you the map.

Sigh. "Is there something that wouldn't work about verbal directions?"

The immediate areas near here are all claimed; I don't want to give you assurances that mistakenly guide you into someone else's territory. 

If you go very far in that direction it's very cold but I think no one bothers claiming anything.

"That might be fine."

If it's not, you could come back here and reconsider what you're inclined to share.

"Maybe I could."

He gestures to someone. They pull the net away.

"How far?" she asks.

How fast do you fly?

"I can do seventy miles an hour under good condtions but these aren't. That might have me slowed down by half."

Twenty-two hours, then.

"I'd probably push it harder if I'm trying not to need to stop to sleep in the middle. Is there a landmark?"

How often does your species require sleep?

"Ideally about once every twenty-four hours or so."

The trees stop growing and the fairy paths get thinner and you can see the ocean ahead of you in the distance, though I wouldn't go all the way to the ocean personally.

"Okay."

He doesn't write anything else.

She takes off.

She flies north.

It gets colder. There's a strait of water. Eventually, the trees stop growing.

She touches down past the last tree. She starts a gate and -

- she starts a -

She goes to sleep and eats some frost and flies back until she finds the court she left.

It looks about the same as she left it.

She lands.

It takes them about twenty minutes to find her. They don't throw a net this time. Someone gets out a notecard on which is already written,

Welcome back. You can ask the guards to show you to a guest room, if you'd like, or a place to stay outside, if you'd prefer that. I can join you shortly.

"...I'll take the room."

So they lead her down a path that winds and gets smaller and goes, eventually, into a fallen tree. There's a city in there, with paths curving all around and houses carved into the walls and people working and playing and talking in the space between them.

People turn and stare. 

The room that the guards take her to is simple and reasonably sized. It has a bed and a table and a window and some ivy growing out of a pot and up a wall.

In she goes. She flomps on the bed and goes to sleep again.

No one interrupts her, but when she wakes there's food on the table and a note that says

I don't know what you like, so I wanted to offer a variety, but I feel obliged to warn you that if you happen to like all of it that'll be expensive. Tell the guards when you'd like to see me. 

She places the tray of food out in the hallway, all the comestibles untouched. "I'm up," she tells the guards.

They can take her next door. 

This room has walls lined with books, and a desk, and the fairy she spoke to earlier. 

Hello again. Was it too cold?

"No."

What can I help you with?

"I'm not sure you can. I was just reasonably confident I could land here and figure something out from that point."

Nod.

Are you trying to get back to the place you left from?

"Not exactly."

Is anyone from there likely to come after you?

"No."

Or after us?

"Even less likely."