A second ago she was at work in the temple of Erastil in Sothis, which was actually going pretty okay, all things considered. Now she's in a grassy field with a couple fruit trees and a table and chairs and some notebooks and pens.
This is unexpected and requires a ton of power and is therefore sort of inherently terrifying. And she's alone, and defenseless, and she doesn't know where Verita is.
She mills around in steadily increasing amounts of distress until Hagan appears, just as suddenly.
"Us too. Moonlight Falls, in Virginia. Uh, in the United States, in the year 2013, I guess I shouldn't assume much just from 'Earth' -"
"They can't go outside in sunlight and can't get into human-occupied houses without an invitation. I'm not really an expert."
"Um."
How do you tell fairies that you don't really want a hug from them without telling any lies about how okay you are or how much you might need hugs in general.
"I don't really - think it would help."
"Okay - the fairy who learned your name didn't try to make that your problem, did he?"
"He, uh, said that he wasn't going to hurt me? But some people were not super confident that he knew how to do this."
"He can't do anything to you because of the entanglement, and he can't make you do anything. So the way that fairies work, if you're in someone's debt, they can order you around. I'm in your debt right now and you don't have any debt, any direction, with him, or with Connor. He can order you until his face is blue and you can ignore him entirely. The universe will not punish you, he cannot touch you.
I think he would have implied otherwise because it'd be awfully convenient for him if you thought you had to do what he wanted. But you don't."
"If you lie it'll hurt him a lot and it might hurt his family too, depending how the planes work. So he's scared of you. But he can't - not even under the admittedly screwed up fairy rules about who can do what - hurt you."
"I can stop talking with you now if you'd like. I know it's stressful talking with fairies without practice at it. But - so you know -"
"If you're up for it, it'd be neat if you could ask me some questions or ask me for a small favor or something so that we'd be even. Since I asked you some questions and am now in your debt. If you don't want to, that's completely fine. Small amounts of debt wear away over time anyway."
"We went to the same high school! We didn't talk very much because I was a couple of years older and also she was very unhappy in school - this was before she met Connor and actually had enough support at home to realize she was any good at it - but I knew who she was and I think she knew who I was? Possibly not. It'd be a bit embarrassing to ask, I try to act like I am definitely over caring about who was popular in high school now that I have been out of it for six months."
"She found a spellbook in the catacombs, last spring. - it's been longer than that for her subjectively, because Fairyland runs faster than the human world. A couple of years, maybe."
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