When she thinks she can see him without crying again, she holds her baby close and walks silently back to Rana's.
The room has been replaced with - something else. She has no idea what this means. She has nobody to ask but Rana. Everything she asks places her further in his debt, of course, but it hardly matters now.
She steps inside.
"I don't like them. They - I don't mind that they worried given that you looked upset but they shouldn't have tried to tell you I didn't care about you."
"You did what you were told and you got me right away and you did all that even though you thought I didn't care about you at all and was in the middle of replacing you with someone shinier."
"That's not messing up. It's -
I don't think I can explain this really.
There's a kind of person who thinks they're being mistreated readily and decides not to cooperate with people who might be getting away with mistreating them, and if you try to work with them everything always blows up. And then there's lots of people who cooperate for as long as it's clearly true that everyone else is too. But that falls apart, too, at a big enough misunderstanding. But if you're willing to - keep trying - when it doesn't seem like other people are trying - then sometimes you'll have things none of the rest of them could."
"I'm proud of you. I'm glad of you. I'm not mad about anything you did.
I'm a little scared that things could go that badly without me even knowing there was anything there to step on. If there are other things like that -"
Eee.
"I can tell you the next time something - makes me scared, or sad. Even if I think it shouldn't. It's - as long as I know you do care, a lot, that feels - a lot safer. Okay?"
She is suuuper not going to talk to the weird not-fairy people until someone says something to her first. Presumably Rána has some idea whether they should be getting food from here or from his court.
He's thinking his court. It's expensive but at least they know how to pay for it. He goes to the door, hesitates. "Do you know if this place will still be here if we leave?" he asks her quietly in Norwegian.
Headshake. "They said something about time stopping when we're in here with the door closed - I forgot to tell you, I'd thought they were just talking about how fairyland is, but they think it's something different. - oh, they did say something about how I shouldn't leave if I wanted our world to stay in contact with this one, I think, that doesn't sound promising."
"Okay.
- well, do you want to stay here with these idiots while I go explain things to my brother and ask for food, or do you want to go explain things while I stay here, neither of those sound like things I'm delighted to put on you."
.....that's honestly a little bit terrifying with all of these very judgmental people watching, she is maybe not quite there right now.
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