"- hello? - you know, summoning in languages you don't know isn't a best practice."

There are three people watching him from the edge of the circle; all three of them jump delightedly to their feet. They're wearing really weird clothes -- blue and silky and shimmery and loose -- and sandals which might be made from leaves. 

"It worked!"

    "I told you it would."

"Hello!"

One of them steps into the circle to touch the wings. 

The demon permits this with only mild surprise. "Leave the tail alone, please. You realize you can look up in any responsible source what media are known to be valid for circle-drawing and 'in the dirt' is not nearly as creative as people have gotten."

"Oh, I can't read," the person who finished the circle assures him. He too steps in to touch the wings. "So I don't know where I could have looked it up, really. We were just copying some mortals."

"- okay I'm not sure being outright illiterate makes it worse than just summoning in a language you don't know, but, uh, wow. What do you mean, mortals."

They glance at each other. One of them nods.

"Mortals," the one who finished his circle says seriously, "are the slow people who live in towns and on farms and keep animals and cut down trees and die."

"I don't feel very enlightened over here."

"If you would like I could show you some mortals, as a favor."

"I'm not sure that would be enlightening either. What are you supposed to be?"

"We're faeries. Some people thought you'd be a faery, since you make trades and can contact the mortal world in circles, but you aren't, I don't think."

"I'm a demon."

For some reason this seems to slightly annoy the faery, but he nods. "Welcome."

"I confess I'm not, uh, familiar with faeries?"

"We'd noticed."

"...did you, uh, want something, or is this just an experiment, or..."

"I want to take you back to my court and show people! And you could make us a feast. Can you do that? Make feasts?"

"I can, yeah. Your court?"

"Faeries live in courts. Most of us do, anyway. If someone doesn't have a court then they'll run into trouble eventually and there'll be no one who really minds."

"...you're not very good at explaining things."

"Well, maybe when you meet my court you will understand what courts are."

"Sure, let's try it."

"Can you see the paths from here?"

Cam looks around.

The forest looks like a normal forest.

"Nothing's obvious from here. I mean, I guess there's a fairly clear way in that direction for a while." Gesture.

"Huh, okay. - mortals can't see them either but faeries can. I think if you eat our food you'll be able to, because that works for mortals. Want a berry?"

"...this is setting off some alarm bells," Cam remarks.

For some reason this statement seems to absolutely horrify the faery. He steps into the summoning ring and punches Cam in the face.

Cam falls to the ground. "- excuse me?"

The faery seems distressed in some way still, and kicks him. 

"There were not any alarm bells," he says indignantly after a minute.

"Ow, cut it out - it's just an expression!"

"You shouldn't say things that are not true."

Cam can't read his binding, but manages to materialize a little bell and ring it. "Does this help."

"...if you want to say that there are bells ringing and you ring the bell and then say there are bells ringing that'd be fine, yes."

"So you'll stop kicking me now?"

"When we're even. I don't think I'm hurting you very much or we would be already."

"When we're what the fuck now?"

The faery stops kicking him. "Even. For lying to me. I could've enslaved you."

"I can't read this binding and neither can you."

"Well if you can't read either then I don't know why you're lecturing me about it."

"I can read, I just can't read this language. Neither of us knows what I'm stuck with, here, I made the bell just fine."

"It's a very nice bell but you didn't give it to me so it doesn't actually help you at all here."

"- here, do you want a fucking bell!"

" - sure, all right."

Cam gives the faery the bell.

The faery takes it and takes a step back. "We still can't take you along the paths if you can't see them, I don't think. - maybe we could carry you?"

"I'm not super sure I want to go anywhere with you since you just kicked me a bunch for translating an idiom."

"Go back to the court and tell them about the demon," he instructs one of his friends.

The friend runs off. He - literally gets smaller as he runs, until he's weaving among sprouts of grass. The other faeries seem to find this unremarkable. 

"- did he just shrink?"

"Yes," the faery says, as if demons must be very dense.

"I'm unfamiliar with this phenomenon."

"Well, if you come to court, you'll get to be very small and maybe someone there will explain it to you."

"How exciting."

"When you can see paths, you can walk along them, and if they get very small, then you get very small."

"What happens if someone tries to walk in the correct direction without being able to see the path, either because they do not have this magical ability or because they have been blindfolded?"

"I mean, mortals walk around all the time and just stay big. I don't think a blindfold would be different but I haven't tried blindfolding a mortal. - there's a mortal back at court, I guess someone could try blindfolding her and walking her off the paths?"

"How'd she get there?"

"Well, we enslaved her after she came to this faery ring. Running away from a marriage she didn't like, I think, though I haven't talked to her."

"Marriages are a thing mortals do. They give the girl mortals to the boy mortals and then they both promise not to run off with other mortals. Or with faeries."

"That wasn't the thing at all."

The faery shrugs.

"Lot of slavery going on or is that just interspecies?"

"Almost all mortal slaves are enslaved by other mortals, if that's what you mean? Most courts can't afford even one."

"Yes, the economics of every mortal trying to afford a mortal slave would be awkward. But in fact that is not what I meant, I wanted to know about your, ah, court's slavekeeping practices."

"Well, we're rich enough to afford a mortal overnight so we'll pick one up when they come here. That's not very often, though, maybe twice in a year? They don't live more than a couple of nights usually, a dozen if they're very stubborn, so you're kind of lucky that there's one here now."

"I assume that if I say I feel indescribably fortunate you'll start kicking me again."

"I'm not going to kick you if you lie again."

"Why, do you need lots of bells?"

"I'll cut out your tongue."

"Does it count as lying if I say 'good luck' while confident you won't have it and not appreciative of the incredibly remote possibility?"

"...if you said "I wish you good luck" I think you'd have a problem but if you said 'good luck' all by itself I don't think you would."

"Good luck!" chirps Cam.

The faery glares at him.

"Why would you even bother cutting out my tongue? You can't reasonably think you're getting your feast at that point. It's a testament to my many personal qualities that I'm still up for that after all the kicking."

"You have a lot of nerve, lying to me and then acting put upon that I tried to get even."

"That's one of my personal qualities! But also you're incredibly confusing!"

"I find you confusing, too! Who lies about bells?"

"You have humans! Rumors of human idiom could conceivably have reached your ears even if you consider them exotic pets!"

"Mortals lie a lot until you teach them to stop. It's not less bad because it's familiar."

"I have had plenty of opportunities to observe that you're not deaf. I was obviously not trying to deceive you into believing there were bells."

"I take it that's the only reason you can think of why it might be bad to lie to someone."

"...assuming you are, in fact, clear on the fact that I was obviously not trying to deceive you into believing there were bells, yes, pretty much, how are you doing on reasons it might be bad to physically batter people?"

"Violence against people you're indebted to is wrong."

"How many bells before I qualify for basic rights?"

"I want the feast."

"Then do I get to talk without getting kicked?"

"I won't kick you."

"That's very specific."

"It's what you asked."

"I should probably stop relying on anything to do with your grasp of conversational implicature."

"It's not my decision what to do with you anyway, not at this point. It's my court's."

"Oh?"

"I don't think they expected this to work or I'd have had instructions in the first place."

"Oh?"

"With mortals everything's planned out and there are people who know how to do it smoothly. I've only ever watched. They get them every time."

"How?"

"That's secret. ...I guess you could ask the one we've got now."

"Maybe I will."

"You still have to eat something so you can see the paths."

"This wouldn't be part of the slavery process, would it?"

"I mean, not more than everything else about this conversation, except the kicking you, which was helpful and yet you objected."

"Fancy that."

"And the bell," he adds thoughtfully. "I just took the bell because it seemed neat."

"Enjoy."

"That doesn't make it worth more, but okay."

"Or don't, whatever."

The other faeries come back. They have a cage. "We can take him to court in this," one of them says cheerfully. "If he doesn't want to eat anything."

"I'd rather you ate something," his summoner says earnestly. "It's kind of heavy and a pain to carry."

"Should I assume that unless I unlock a hidden secret faery ettiquette code we are going to find out how thoroughly this circle prevents me from preventing you guys from sticking me in the cage?"

It seems to take him a couple seconds to puzzle through that. "You can't fight us," he says when he has. "We already talked about this, hurting people you're indebted to is wrong."

"I mean, that wouldn't be the first thing I'd try but I can't read this binding and you can't either."

"Look, I thought you wanted to come see our court and meet our mortal."

"It sounds interesting! I'd prefer to skip the slavery."

"And your strategy to do that is to threaten to attack us?"

"Do you have a substitute idea?"

"Come back to court. Don't tell lies. Make them a feast. Then offer to make them more nice things in exchange for safe passage home."

"Are there any more charming rules I should know about besides the lying one?"

"Don't lie. Don't hurt anyone. Don't break any agreements. Don't - swear to things falsely? I really think this is pretty obvious."

"Why the actual fuck do you think that?"

"They're just very obvious."

"Wow. Is there someone less stupid I can talk to about the options here? It'd be really great if they could read the circle but I'll settle for a three digit IQ."

"Yep! At court."

"- isn't that technically a lie since my question included the word 'here'?"

"Oh, I thought you were referring to "my options here", like your options in this situation. Of the people here, I don't think they're supposed to talk to you. It makes the debts less manageable. They're here to get you in the cage if you can't be persuaded to work with us here."

"Well, maybe you could go get someone who is prepared to talk to me, and I will... make bells or whatever... if that is called for? Or whatever turns out to make sense after someone who isn't you has explained matters to me."

"We're supposed to bring you back to court."

"Is someone gonna kick you if you don't?"

"No, that's not one of the preferred methods of discipline when it's not an emergency because it's hard to be consistent about how much damage you're doing."

"Your culture is fascinating. I think that given certain assumptions about the consistency of information density across languages and the number of characters in this circle? Your best bet at fulfilling your instructions is to go get someone who is any good at explaining anything."

He can't actually follow that but it's not a lie. He sends one of the other people bounding off into the forest.

"Anyway, I'm Cam, who're -"

This prompts the remaining people to materialize sticks and attempt to club him with them while trying to drag him into the cage. 

For some reason.

"Ow - hey - what the hell -" Being hit with sticks hurts, if not very much, and a bunch of people wrestling him is enough to make line of sight complicated.

They start also attempting to gag him.

"You know you mrf could have just traditionally done mgrrh!" he says.

- okay. What's the deal with this circle. Interpolation's a no. Fire's a no...

Cage!

He cannot interpolate the cage either. He starts trying exotic physics experiments irritably.

They pick up the cage and start carrying it. They get smaller.

Cam decides to stop short of trying drugging anybody just yet, since he's not sure how he'd get out of the cage if they all fell unconscious.

In that case they'll make it uneventfully to - a rabbit hole. 

Inside the rabbit hole there's a city carved out, with bright lights, and music, and it doesn't smell that much either like dirt or like rabbits.

There are a lot of faeries. They peer at him curiously. Then they lever the chain up in the air so it floats and everyone can see him better.

Then they have a lengthy debate about what to do about him. The bell is thrown around and yelled about a lot.

Yelled about how?

Some people think the bell is really exciting and his eccentricities should be tolerated in order to get more things like it. Some people think the bell is very nice and all but he's clearly a menace to society and not worth the effort. Some people think the bell means that he will be worth more when they trade him to somewhere very far away. Some people think that they should give him as a present to their worst enemies and stand back and watch the fireworks. 

Well, this is at least more interesting than his original plans for the day.

Can he make a violin?

Yep.

He will play, softly, keeping an ear on the conversation trying to figure out what's up.

The violin is immediately the central topic of conversation. 

He's clearly too valuable to give up. He's clearly too dangerous not to. He's clearly trying to ENTRAP THEM WITH HIS EVIL VIOLIN PLAYING STOP HIM AT ONCE

The chain is lowered and people attempt to smash the violin through the bars, with spears.

It's not an especially durable violin. "Mmmf mngh mg mff mgh mvvvf mn." He starts picking at the gag with his hands once he is no longer holding a violin.

Well then they will have to open the cage and attempt to chain him up such that he can't do that!

Can they possibly be wearing their own - not chains, ropes? He will stick to ropes.

Doesn't work. They chain his hands to the walls of the cage and close the cage again.

Cam sits in tail-lashing annoyance in the cage among the splinters of his violin.

They have a more heated more panicked conversation about what to do with him. Eventually someone in charge says he'll be sent to some other court, by way of yet some other court, because the first court would be suspicious to get him directly but won't be suspicious at all to get him from an ally. They can throw in the human, too, for that matter; claim they got too many today and can't feed them all all night. 

What, no feast?

They lower the cage again and put a blanket over it.

There's some muffled yelling.

They open the cage and shove a naked human woman into it too. It's really not big enough for both of them.

- can't make clothes for her. Poor lady. Blanket, can he do a blanket.

She blinks bewilderedly at him. 

The cage starts moving.

Come on, why can he do a bell and not a blanket - no, brain, it's clearly not about objects starting with the letter B, that's wrong on so many levels - is this an anti-interpolation protection, can he only make stuff midair? - there, blanket.

She still looks bewildered but maybe now it's gratefully bewildered? She pulls the blanket close around her. 

"I don't - speak much faery -"

"Mrrgf," acknowledges Cam.

"They'll be angry if I take it off. -- could take it off and put it back when we stop, if we're fast."

Nod nod!

She attempts this. It is not very hard since it was put on in a hurry. 

"Thanks," he whispers. "- what do you speak besides faery?"

She says something that he might or might not recognize as tenth-century German.

He can guess what it is but not really speak it. "I think your faery is better than my that," he apologizes.

"You didn't look local."

"I'm not. Language thing is a magic shortcut. What do I need to know about faeries?"

Unhappy laugh. "They live in faery rings. You shouldn't go to them unless you're desperate. You mustn't lie to them, or tell them your name, and if you eat their food or ask them questions you will never get to leave."

"- well, I avoided the food but asked lots of questions. Why can't we leave?"

"Faeries track who owes who. If you owe them, then by their laws you belong to them. And even if you escape, the rest of the world will be slow. - to faeries the mortal world is slow. It takes a very long time for it to be night. Feels like months and months. And if you look at other humans, it's like they're standing still."

"And that can't be fixed?"

"No. Not while you owe them."

"Do you know why they flipped out when I played violin?"

"No. But I don't know all the rules. - also don't know what a violin is."

"Musical instrument."

"I think music does something. They play me music, sometimes. Don't know what, though."

"What do they want with people?"

"I don't think they're all the same. But the ones who don't want much from slaves just don't bother, because we're expensive to keep.

I don't know what they'd want from a man."

"...ah. Why are we expensive?"

"Faeries don't need to eat and we do."

"Oh. I don't."

"Oh. That's probably good for you I guess. If they say they'll stop feeding you if you keep crying you can just tell them that's fine."

"- Do they not like it when you cry because it's... loud, or what?"

"And annoying, yeah. And makes my face ugly. They thought it was interesting at first. I don't think faeries cry very much."

"I'd believe that."

"Do you know where they're taking us?"

"They're giving us to another court because I freak them out and they want me off their hands, I think they're throwing you in as a bonus or you constitute a less suspicious explanation of why they're giving me away or something."

"Oh. 

Okay."

"Sorry, I have no reason to believe this will constitute an improvement for you."

"When you're new it's hard because everyone's curious."

"I guess that tracks. I'm not sure how much wherewithal I'll have to help you, I've got a different thing going on constraining my behavior."

"It's okay. It's nice just to talk to - someone who's not a faery. 

And who's chained up. No offense."

"None taken."

She doesn't immediately have anything else to say.

"You have a name? Or a nickname or whatever?"

"They call me 'Mortal'. I don't - I don't even know if it's a good idea to remember the name I had before that, honestly."

"Yeah, that seems reasonable, but, like, if there's another mortal around or anything."

"I hope there's not. No one can feed two, supposedly.

You can call me Auda. It's my sister's name but she's dead so it should be safe enough."

"If they have any sense they'll have me feeding you. I'm just... not sure they have any sense.

Call me, uh -" The German's old but not that old, the Bible's around, so not Revelation. Doesn't know if middle names count. "- Apsel for now, I guess."

"Apsel," she says. "What'd you do to end up among faeries?"

"Apsels - that's my species - can be summoned. A faery summoned me."

"Oh. 

Well if you scared them probably they won't do it again, so that's good."

"I suppose it is."

She pulls the blanket more tightly around her and watches the ground pass underneath them.

"Do you have a guess how far courts are from each other?"

"Some border each other. But if they want to be rid of you they might want you to go to one that doesn't. I bet it won't be more than three or four days because I bet they won't have bothered to bring food and I bet they don't want to hand us off in terrible shape."

"- hold out your hands and I can drop some food in them probably, I currently think I might have to make things in midair but I seem to be able to make some things."

She holds out her hands.

Roast beef sandwich.

She eats it and stares at him wonderingly. 

"Do you want more stuff, or anything specific -? You probably have at least five kinds of malnutrition but I don't have any of what I'd need to diagnose it specifically."

"I don't - I don't know that I should eat more right now. The faeries have feasts sometimes but if I eat as much as I want I get sick. 

I could maybe drink something?"

"- oh, yeah, don't wanna give you refeeding syndrome. Heck, what are the supplements for refeeding syndrome - phosphate and... I think multivitamins in general - yeah okay - do they give you enough to drink?"

"Yeah. Water's free, and wine's not but sometimes they want you in more debt so they'll give it to you anyway, and they have these tasty sugar things sometimes. I don't think they wanted me to die. They said it was as likely as not in the night even if they fed me but I didn't die all night and they seemed pleased."

"Okay, so don't have to go too hard on the electrolytes... catch." Bottle of apple juice with a bunch of vitamins in it, capped enough to not spill but not sealed.

She opens it and makes herself drink it slowly and then gives the bottle itself a nervous frown.

"- is that going to be a problem?"

"They'll probably wonder? I don't know if they'll be mad. It's hard to predict what'll make them mad."

"You can put it on my lap when we get wherever we're going, if you want, and I can refill it - probably, anyway, still working out the edges here - on the way as necessary."

"That just means they'll be mad at you instead, and you've been so nice."

"Yeah, but there's only so much they can hurt me, I'm indestructible."

Hiccup. "That sounds nice."

"It is, yeah. So pin whatever we accumulate on me if that seems like it'll help."

Nod.

"Do you want anything? 's not much I can do here, but I could try - if there's anything -"

"No, no, I don't need anything from you, I'm not a faery, let's not do faery bullshit, okay?"

...smile. 

Smile.

After a while the cage stops moving. She gags him again. Someone pulls off the blanket. They're next to a big leaf heavy with dew.

They open the cage and let her get out and drink some and wash herself. 

"Are you going to attack anyone or talk or otherwise make us regret it if we take the gag off so you can drink?" someone demands of him.

He has no idea how their lying thing interacts with being mistaken about a statement about his future actions; the fact that they didn't phrase the question to be about his intentions suggests that it's within tolerances, but these people do unfortunately appear to be stupid and evil, so. He doesn't need the drink. He nods irrepressibly at them.

Well then they won't take the gag off. 

They notice the bottle and argue about it a little and then decide to keep moving as quickly as possible.

They reblanket them.

Cam internally debates making his computer. He leans in Auda's direction to be degagged.

She does that. 

"Thanks."

"There'll be a feast when we get there, probably. I was going to say you'll want to be cooperative for that because it's the best you'll eat for ages but I guess you can just make yourself things any time so maybe you can keep being scary then."

"I'm not actually sure to what extent it'll be to my advantage to be scary, it'll depend on their - attitude, I guess."

Shrug. "I've been to other courts a couple times and their feasts seemed mostly the same but I'm not - I haven't got wings, they know what I am."

"Yeah, exactly." He tilts his head back and makes popcorn fall into his mouth.

Giggle.

"You can try some if you want."

"Maybe one? They look so funny."

One popcorn!

It is crunchy and interesting.

"If I'm right about where we are, that's made from a grain that grows all the way across the ocean west of here."

"I never left the village I grew up in until I - ran away."

"Say," he says, "do you happen to know what year it is?"

"It's the year of our lord one thousand and thirty two. - that's since the birth of Christ."

"One thousand thirty two, wow. Thank you."

"He's been gone for a while. He was supposed to come back."

"- I don't have any updates on that, sorry."

"It's okay. I'm not going to live to winter anyway, even if I live old enough to have been a grandmother if I'd had any children. Because of how faeries are fast."

Cam nods. "- do you think faeries can't get you pregnant, or that maybe you haven't been eating enough to get pregnant, or are they being careful on their end, or?"

"Can't get pregnant fast. - and if you are, you lose the baby, which is - they told me about that in advance, it wasn't an accident or anything." She kind of cringes against the side of the cage.

"- having to make things in midair really limits my options here, but I can give you some little things where if you swallow one as soon as you wake up or first thing before you go to sleep, every time, they will prevent you from getting pregnant in the first place - I'm just not sure they'd let you hold on to them and they stop working if you stop taking them -"

"It's been more than a year that I've been here. I think they're right that you can't get pregnant when you're sped up like them, and I know they're right that if you speed up when you're already pregnant you lose the baby.

That's - neat, though."

"It's pretty keen, yeah. I don't know, if they decide to let you go or it turns out I can buy you free with popcorn or something maybe stop and ask me for some of those before you go."

Sad laugh. "Okay."

"And a sack of gold. Or whatever."

"A fancy dress. Men'll pay more if you have a fancy dress. Gold they'll just think I stole it."

"- if that's what you want. I don't know a lot about current fashion though."

"I can tell you. If it ever comes up."

Nod nod. "I don't know a ton about your options if you get loose, I'm just assuming it's better than being a faery prisoner even if I'm available to feed you."

"I hadn't really thought about whether it would be or not because it didn't matter much but I think if there was a way not to get pregnant then it would be. I could have friends, and a place of my own, and it wouldn't be dark for months at a time."

"If I can buy you out with popcorn at all maybe I can get enough leeway or someone who can read the circle or something to figure out how to give you a more stable option than the pills - if you lose them or they get wet or anything that's it, but there's stuff you can have as an implant that just hangs out indefinitely."

"It's a nice idea but I would be pretty surprised if they liked popcorn more than a slave. I guess I could act like I was sick and close to dying anyway."

"Yeah, I have no idea what exchange rate I'm working with here."

"Faeries don't make a lot of sense."

"And they seem completely oblivious to it, too!"

"I think to them we're making lots of obvious missteps which give them more latitude, and that's funny, and not really something to be prevented. I think they could explain themselves if they wanted to."

"I kind of don't think that because they could have warned me not to give my name when I asked if there were rules I should know about. They didn't seem pleased to have it."

"Huh. Maybe they're just stupid."

"That's my theory. I mean, perhaps they vary."

"Would it be any better if they gave us to smart ones?"

"Depends how evil they are."

She nods and stares at the blanket.

"I can make you actual clothes, I just couldn't make them on you so I went with the blanket," he mentions.

"They'd just take them off. At the feast. I think it's probably better if I don't seem - new. But thank you."

"You're welcome."

She closes her eyes. The cage trundles on. Eventually she falls asleep. And some time after that slumps over to sleep in his lap. 

...he can't make a pillow between them and can't place one manually with his hands tied so he will just sit there, he guesses.

When she wakes up she's briefly disoriented and then apologetically gets out of his way. "Do you not sleep?"

"I can, but I don't have to, and this isn't very comfortable for it."

Nod. 

"I can make you a pillow next time but I couldn't put one under your head once you flopped over, sorry."

"I didn't mean to inconvenience you. I don't usually share a sleeping space with anyone unless they want - anything."

"I'm fine," he assures her.

"You're very nice but I don't want to take advantage."

"Making stuff doesn't cost me anything and it's mildly more interesting than watching leaf litter go by underfoot."

"I guess I'd like something to eat, then."

"Any requests?"

"Not really. I'm supposed to eat as much fruit as I can, so I live longer?"

"That sounds like the sort of thing faeries would conclude about human nutrition if they didn't start knowing enough about it to keep people from dying of scurvy." But here is a pear.

"They were better than other courts at keeping humans alive. They bragged about it a lot. - I don't really know what that means about other courts."

"Well, I suppose it could mean they're even worse at it and their humans succumb to marasmus first, or it could mean other courts kill them on purpose, who knows."

Nod.

When she's finished her pear he gives her some highly fortified cheesy bread.

It's delicious.

And in this way they may pass the time till they get to their destination.

It's a couple more days. They actually get handed off to one group of faeries which gets instructed to deliver them as a gift to a second group of faeries. The cage gets swapped for another cage. They get worried about Cam not drinking anything and soak his gag with water a few times. They collect the suspicious materialized items.

And then finally they are delivered into another faery court. The blanket is taken off. This court is inside a hollowed fallen tree, but otherwise rather similar. 

The new faeries graciously accept these presents from the old faeries in repayment of the debt between their courts. 

Someone opens the cage, pulls Auda out, takes a look at the chains, decides not to pull Cam out too. 

The table is covered in food. There's music playing. 

Cam makes a stereo.

It appears, but isn't playing, possibly because it's tiny, possibly because they're accelerated.

He makes headphones, not quite touching his head but with a sproingy enough headband that they snap onto his ears once they appear.

This is noticed and causes some consternation. 

Someone tries to say something to him.

Well, he can't hear them. And can't take the headphones off by himself either since his hands are chained up.

They don't reach into the cage to remove them. 

People crowd around Auda, petting her or feeling her hair or trying to feed her food. 

Suppose he drops a cage around anyone who gets close to her. He doesn't start by making them too heavy.

That works fine!

It also causes some panic!

People will attempt to drag his cage away from the feast.

He can put some heavy things in the cage to make that hard! Enjoy your collection of colorful iridium-cored bowling balls!

That will sure make the cage hard to move. 

They, instead, toss the blanket over it and try to run.

Heavy things with velcro on them can be appeared in such a way that most of them stick to the blanket and pull it down.

Then he can see these intensely bewildered fairies trying to flee their feast. Some of them are trying to drag Auda away too.

Cages for Auda-draggers!

Auda ends up with both arms held by people who are now in cages and mad about it. She goes still. If she says anything, Cam can't hear it.

The fairies who are capable of fleeing do that.

Well. Holding her arms isn't bad enough for him to do anything too drastic about it.

There's quiet while everyone waits to see if any more cages will fall from the sky.

Well, he's keeping an eye on things, but has not decided to cage people just for existing.

After a moment someone walks into view. He looks around at everything and then looks at Auda. 

He says something. The faeries let go of her. He says some more things. 

Cam still can't take off his headphones by himself.

He can place something sharp facing inward from the bars of his cage and slice this stupid gag off, though!

Then he won't be able to follow any of this conversation. 

After a while Auda walks across the room towards the faery.

"Hey, I can't hear what you're saying to get her to go over to you right now but I'm gonna be pissed off if she disappears never to be seen again or to have a haunted look on her face or anything like that!"

She jumps.

He nods.

They talk some more. Then someone walks her into one of the little doors on the sides of the tree trunk.

He walks over to Cam.

He pulls the headphones off. 

"If no one has explained to you how faeries work, I'd really appreciate it if you'd let me do that before you say anything. It might have unexpected effects. If you say something dangerous the human girl will get hurt and I can't protect her from that."

Cam is listening attentively!

"Don't tell me your name. This is most important for the first name your parents gave you, or for the first name you got some other way if your parents didn't name you, but it goes for all names to a lesser degree. Don't say things that aren't true, even illustrative stories. There's a way to do that safely but for now just don't do it. Don't break promises. If you have made any promises you should probably tell me that, first."

"I don't believe I have made any promises since encountering faeries but I'm a hundred and seventy two years old and have in that time ever said I promised something."

"I have never heard of mortals having problems that had to do with promises they met before they met faeries. 

For faeries, and people entangled with faeries, the universe punishes misconduct. Lying, breaking promises, violence against people you're indebted to. The punishment is usually immediate, but not always, and usually not lethal, unless the incident was unusually bad. It affects you and everyone who is in your debt, or vice versa, or who knows your name, or vice versa. I assume you knew some of that because you only caged the people you were angry with. But had you attacked them, everyone here would have been hit very hard, including the human girl."

"You know, if the first faery had explained things that well we would have gotten along so much better. But you're mistaken - while I did know some of that, mostly from her, I wouldn't go around dropping cages on people who were behaving fine regardless? Because why would I do that? That has nothing to do with technical debt, since I don't know enough about where it's accrued."

"Caging people you're indebted to is - well it causes a lot of problems but the universe does not parse it as an attack and so it did not cause the universe to smite us all. I'm grateful for that, even if it was entirely luck. Do you mind if I get them out now?"

"My earlier statement about being pissed off if I can't verify the human's at least loosely adequate treatment stands, otherwise I don't mind."

Some more people come in to effect this. 

"I'm hoping if you're not gagged this can get cleared up before anyone gets a cage dropped on them?"

"Probably! Talking does keep having unexpected consequences but maybe this time you've been thorough enough!"

Nod. "I'm curious who sent you here. I don't think they meant us well. But it wasn't the people who brought you in, I'd have noticed."

"Yeah, they sent us through a different court so you wouldn't be suspicious. I don't know how to identify them to you."

"Huh. How long did you travel?"

"She fell asleep four times."

"And you?"

"Don't have to sleep."

"That's convenient. Supposing I wanted to keep you here what sort of place would you want to be kept in."

"I don't feel like I have enough information to answer that question in a way that won't turn out to have been misleading."

Nod. "If the human has travelled for four days it's not safe to put her back in a cage to go lob off on someone else, even if I wanted to do that. So it would be useful to figure out how you both can stay here without this routinely endangering or terrifying my people. I don't have any idea what you're capable of or what'll provoke you."

"I have a roughly human psychology but am unusually scrupulous among the category and even if you've met a human who has explained humans to you in the past I'm from a very different cultural background. Unsafe how?"

"Good odds of dying of something along the way or shortly after she arrives."

"Why?"

"I think a contributing factor is that humans need to eat quite frequently. But we've never had one, so I don't know for sure, I just know the advice not to keep them in a cage for more than five or six days."

"I was feeding her, but it will in fact be bad for her health in other ways if you keep her in a cage, yes."

"So I can't just find some people I hate and ship you off to give them a headache. Which is fine, but it means I need to figure out what I can safely do instead."

"Personally, I think I'm very easy to get a good deal out of, but it being easy might rely on my trading partner not being a moral abomination or whatever is going on. I suppose it's possible I'd be just as appalled by a bunch of humans around here if I wandered off and met some."

"Strong language for touching a human we didn't even know you wanted."

"The kind of logic you just employed is precisely the nature of the moral abomination, actually."

"I'm afraid you're going to have to explain more."

"I perceive her to be in her own right as an individual entitled to certain basic treatment such as not being groped by people she has not expressly invited out of her own intrinsic motivation to so grope her, and further consider this entitlement inalienable such that nothing you've finagled about playing music or receiving her as chattel or whatever the hell infringes on it, and neither does anything she's construed to have done. I also consider her to have additional rights beyond those by default that in theory she could be dangerous enough to warrant infringing on, which maybe the whole misfortune business constitutes, if - can I use non-literal figures of speech if I preface them with 'metaphorically'?"

"Meaning you're making some kind of analogy? Yes, you can do that."

"If I metaphorically squint."

"You consider it very important that nobody gropes anybody ever, if they didn't specifically ask for it?"

"Groping is the salient example, not the only thing in the category, but, uh, approximately. There are non-'specifically-asking-for-it' ways to invite it, like, I don't get on people's cases if they have long-term consenting partners and their relationship therewith involves occasional unannounced ass-grabbing."

"Have you got a list of all of the things in the category?"

"Not handy, but if you really want I can attempt to get some written references and try to turn them into something like a comprehensive list."

"I would really want that, yes."

"This might take me some doing because this thing didn't work and that has some implications," he kicks his speaker where it is slightly dented among the bowling balls, "and would be easier if my hands were free."

"I have some hesitations about freeing you before I have the slightest idea what's liable to anger you."

"Well, I suppose you could attach my feet to something before letting my hands go, if for some reason you think my threat potential is located in my ability to move around the room."

"Right now our worst case scenario is that the survivors head out to another court that I have reason to think will take them. If you can move, it gets worse."

Cam waves a foot in his direction.

He gestures at someone to his side. "Tie him up." And to someone else, more quietly, "tell everyone that my recommendation is that they go to their rooms alone and not do anything or touch anything and certainly don't interact with each other."

"I'd love to tell you that's ov- metaphorical overkill but maybe the very first kind of all that that someone would think was definitely okay would in fact qualify as a war crime under the Geneva Convention."

"The thing you objected to is something I have never heard of anyone objecting to. It does not strike me as obviously in a different category than talking, or than looking at people, or than touching something that belongs to someone else, and I don't know what you think of any of those things, and it's honestly frightening to admit that they occur here because maybe you will get very mad."

"Then I guess it's not metaphorical overkill."

Nod.

They chain up his legs.

He tolerates this patiently.

And free his arms.

"The Geneva Convention is in fact mostly about warfare, which isn't exactly applicable but if I mix it up with rules for treatment of criminals might do." He conjures some papers and starts leafing through them. "I'm also going to have to translate everything, I hope there isn't some intractable language gap..."

"I hope not."

"Wow is the Geneva Convention ever not set up to have useful definitions for morally abominable faeries, it's probably not going to be useful at all if I tell you that civilians are entitled not to be subjected to 'cruel treatment', is it."

"I could tell you what my guess about that would be?"

"Might usefully triangulate."

"If I heard that some court took a prisoner for - inadvertently stealing from them, say, and then they beat the prisoner nearly to death and fed him while he healed so that by the time he'd recovered he was in enough debt they could beat him nearly to death again, then I would say that they were being cruel."

"It might be useful to consider that these rules were developed by and for humans, for whom food is not optional and debt is not magical."