So that was subtexty as fuck, but if Dragon can't come out and say it then maybe she shouldn't come out and hear it. Maybe.

She tinkers. Occasionally asks for more parts.

The Fairy Queen has no complaints about having her shade provide them.

Fugue is lovely, she only has to think about taking things apart and putting them together and not about being in the Birdcage without a trial or being dead or not being able to speak to her parents.

Eventually the Fairy Queen has other matters to attend to and instructs her Scout to find an appropriate stopping point.

"On what timescale, please?"

"The next five minutes."

That's a really inconvenient timescale but she can manage "not going to explode" and only need to redo about forty-five minutes of work when she's allowed to resume.

And then all of reality can explode outwards around her as she falls into a very dark pit held in the Fairy Queen's hand.

She's not sure whether she likes that she's conscious in here or not.

That depends on her opinion on being without any form or sensory input whatsoever.

Oh, she hates it, she's just not sure it's worse than missing time.

There's nothing much to notice for the first several hours of this, but eventually she grows accustomed enough to the nothingness to notice, as if from miles away, the senses of the Fairy Queen.

...huh, okay. What's there to telepresence over there?

Hearing requests from her subjects for additional rations and mediation in disagreements. And also the feeling of having a body, with all its normal attendant senses that are difficult to notice until they are gone.

Any interesting requests or responses thereto?

Most of the requests for particular rations receive more or less instant responses of yes or no with little reasoning behind them.

Bakuda wants the materials Lorica was using and receives one of those curt refusals. Another woman wants to take the hand of someone who stole from her - after discussing what occurred with one of her shades, she chastises the woman who claims she was stolen from and tells her not to waste her Queen's time again, or she'll regret it.

Can Lorica hear the conversation with the shade?

Yep, the shade is informing her that the item is still in the woman's cell.

Interesting. She should try listening to other shades, maybe talking to them, when she's out. ...can she sense any others from here? Presumably Glaistig Uaine can, and she can piggyback on her senses...

Her first attempt to reach for the Fairy Queen's sense of her own shades finds something different - a strange sort of sight with which the Fairy Queen views the world. The woman asking a request becomes a twisting ribbon of light and gnashing teeth - Bakuda a malestrom of fire and electricity. In fact, everyone in the room becomes their own fantastic monstrous representation, with more distant figures in the prison visible with enough focus as well.

Whoa. Can she correlate that with their powers?

It's not always obvious, but yes. This one cape, for instance, seems to be breathing mist as if very cold in real life, and their avatar consists of a spinning array of icy windchimes. When the cape creates a block of ice to trade for some candy rations, the windchimes coil around one another, glowing briefly.

Can she see herself or other tucked-away shades like this?

She's can't see them but she can, in some strange and distant manner, feel them.

...what do they feel like?