She tilts her head. "Oh? And what do you have in mind?"

"I will show you the inside of a tree. We will dance with the rabbits and ride the deer, and we will climb above the canopy and chase fireflies. We will burrow under a rock and find crystals to feed the rock hounds and we will sail on the back of a leaf and do battle against salmon. And we will dance again under the moonlight and hear the stories told by the stars. If you come with me."

"Well that all sounds very charming and whimsical, but, uh. Why. What would that get you..?"

Shrug. "Novelty. Adventure. Excitement. Fun."

"You can't go chasing fireflies and doing battle with salmon without a mortal along? Or do you just think me so charming that you'd like to bring me on an adventure?"

"Yes."

She snorts. "I suppose that's what I get for asking two questions at the same time, isn't it, silly me."

The answer to that is a smile and an offered hand, again.

Evette looks up at him, amused. Then she shakes her head.

"No, thank you. I'm still here to try to figure out how to go back to my old life safely, not... leave it entirely for something I don't know. Even for just a night."

"What if I vow to return you safely to your old life in the morning, better off than you are now?"

"... Maybe. Depending on how 'better' is defined and whether or not it'd be anything I'd regret."

Wide grin, followed by a serious expression. "Then I do promise this. Come with me," he says, and it's the third time he says it, and that has a certain weight to it, a thrumming of the air that she can feel down to her bones. "At the end of the night, I will return you to this fairy ring, and you will be able to return to your old life, safe and sound, if you so desire. You will not regret having thus spent the night, and I will grant you a boon," and that word, too, has weight, "for the favour of accompanying me tonight. Your boon will be useful to you, whatever it turns out to be. I do not promise you you will not be harmed tonight, nor that there will not be any danger. But I do vow to see you here tomorrow morning, in full health and better off than you are now, by your own reckoning." He extends his hand a final time. "Will you accept this?"

Oh, she's in trouble. She's in so much trouble. This is much more tempting that it really has any right to be. It would be much smarter to just decline, work out a deal simpler and less risky, with payments that both sides could properly quantify on more than just promises. Maybe she could just resist. Maybe, if she hadn't been chafing for years in a society that has trouble seeing her value in anything but a dutiful wife and broodmare, maybe if she didn't just have a fantasy ripped away from her by the harshness of reality, maybe if he wasn't so damn charming...

Evette looks up at him with wide, longing eyes. The deal doesn't protect her from harm or danger, just imprisonment and regret, but that's... fair, fairer than most everything that's been offered to her by humanity.

".... All right," she whispers, gingerly reaching out to accept the offered hand. "I will."

He clasps her hand and grins, wider than the moon and with a joy almost childish in its purity. "I knew you were one of the fun ones."

The weight is gone, the thrumming is gone, the silence is gone, but the forest isn't quite back to what it was before. It has a certain new quality that it previously lacked. It's like the shadows can hide more things, and the patches of light reveal more details than they did before. Everything seems... more, somehow.

"Oh, come on, wasn't I at least fun before I recklessly agreed to accompany you for the night?" she teases, carefully standing. Her voice is surprisingly even, but the rest of her is all... nervous and fluttery and filled with aaaaa that was very crazy aaaa.

"Oh you were fun, but now I know for sure you're one of the fun ones."

"I'm not sure how that's meaningfully different."

"You'll see," he says, slowly letting go of her hand by pulling his and sliding the tip of his index finger along her palm.

She snorts. "I suppose I will. So, adventure? Does the proposed adventure opportunities have to have quite so much dancing?"

"Dancing is fun!" he says, twirling around and starting to jog away from her. Clearly slow enough for her to follow him, but not as slow as a walk.

"So is that a no? That sounds rather like a no," she laughs, picking up her skirts to follow after him. Not quite so fast as his jog, but not quite so slow as a walk either. It'd be boring if she just kept up with him without incident.

He doesn't slow down, either, but somehow she manages to barely keep up with him, always catching glimpses of his shadow behind flower stems or flashes of his feet weaving around blades of grass.

Eventually she finds him stopped, staring in marvel at a file of ants bringing food into an anthill. Relative to them, the ants are about the size of a very small dog.

Following a fairy off into the woods is surprisingly fun, even if (or possibly because) it doesn't quite make sense in physical space.

"You realize," she informs him as she catches up to him, eyeing the ants warily, "that ants at this size are... no, of course you realize. Do please try not to aggravate the whole nest, I do not want to be swarmed by ants and carried off to be eaten by their queen."

He scoffs. "Ant queens are not the ones that we need be careful about," he says, hopping over the ant line and making his way up the anthill. The ants ignore him entirely as he peers into the hole at the top. "Maybe we could go in and explore."

"No?" she wonders, picking her way gingerly over the ant line after him. "Well. I wouldn't mind exploring, if they're content to ignore us."

'Wouldn't mind,' is an understatement. She's curious. She has a vague idea of how ant colonies work, but it'd be interesting to see how the strangely organized little insects conducted themselves up close...