And then there is darkness.

...........?

"You seem different from the rest, somehow," says a voice that sounds oddly like it's coming from Lorica's mouth, even though Lorica doesn't actually feel like she has a mouth and the voice sounds nothing like hers.

"The rest of - what?"

"The dead."

"Where am I?"

"Under a hill, among the sleeping monsters and waking dead."

"Who're you?"

Well, she doesn't seem immediately disruptive.

"If we are to be introduced, let's do it face to face."

And Lorica can be given a form of flickering green shadow flame, floating softly above the ground in a dimly lit room with plain cement walls, an exquisitely ornate table set for tea. Next to her sits a girl who can't be more than fourteen, wearing a shroud made of blackened orange cloth and holding a teacup in four fingers. A tall rocklike phantom similar in kind if not form to Lorica stands behind the girl. Also at the table is a young woman of perhaps twenty, distracted and constructing some sort of elaborate tower out of silverware. 

"As I already know your part, I suppose it is right to introduce mine. I am Glastig Uaine, the Queen of Fairies such as yourself." Her voice still feels oddly like it's coming from Lorica's body.

"I didn't think your shades were conscious."

"I fear others repeat untruthful rumors about me. All my charges are awake to some degree, though you more than most."

Who's this other attendee of the tea party, anybody she recognizes?

Cutlery stacker is maybe half east asian and not immediately recognizable.

"Hello," Lorica tries in their direction.

"...you talking to me?"

"Should I not be?"

"Weird."

"It is not so easy to be heard by the living, as a shade. Though I imagine you can manage if you focus on your form."

Her form? What is that supposed to mean.

Possibly it refers to her strangely light body made of dark green flame in the shape of Lorica's suit of armor. 

Wow, focusing on the thing where she is now just dark green flame shaped like armor and not even moving like a person is uncomfortable actually. She's... not positive she has a face, under the helmet. It's like she's her implants and her armor and her HUD and her speaker that Rete used to use to speak on her behalf, not her actual arms and legs, her actual eyes and mouth. Which was fine in the moments when she was mostly paying attention to the content of what she was trying to say and do and really disconcerting to attend to directly.

And who's the other shade, the one standing behind Glaistig Uaine?

A tall, almost crystal shaped rock form, with thin lines along the surface outlining what might be arms, legs, and a head, all tucked compactly together.

"Who's that?" Lorica asks, pointing at the other shade.

"The Holdfast."

"I don't recognize the name."

"Oh, I do not recall his name from when he was alive."

"Does he?"

"He is among the least talkative of your kin."

"So, uh, what do... us shadows... do all day?"

"Most sleep too deeply to notice the passage of time too closely, and some few rouse themselves to participate in my own small mock court."

"What does your court do?"

"Well, right now we have tea with the Bombardier."

"Can I in fact drink tea?"

"Unfortunately no, but there is much more to having tea than that."

"...is there."

"Why of course - there is conversation, there is artistry, and there is the introduction of strangers."

"We're in the Birdcage, aren't we."

"Yes, Scout, we are."

"...I'm Lorica."

"For one such as you I would deign to use your chosen name. However, what you are, is the Scout."

"What does that mean?"

"You go far and see what is to be seen without needing fear for your own safety, even in places less hospitable than this."

"I made robots."

"You still may if you wish - and as before, I expect they will serve you well in your role as the Scout."

"Does Dragon talk to people, in here?"

"She has ears but no voice here, though perhaps you can give her one."

"If there's parts."

Items beyond the bare essentials are rare indeed in the Birdcage. Unless, of course, one is the Fairy Queen.

"My Refuse Collector will provide trinkets for your work so long as it does not disrupt the peace of my realm."

"...what would disturb the peace of your realm?"

"If the wrong person acquires the trinkets for themselves, or if your device disrupts or provokes to violence my living subjects."

"Living subjects?"

"Those in my domain who have not yet joined my mock court of the dead." She gestures at the silverware stacker as an example.

"What are you... mock...ing?"

"My own small court is but a shadow of the great courts all of us are from and to which all of us shall return."

"What great courts would these be?"

"That of the Thinker and the Fighter... and I suppose in your case a Lonely Court, adopted only in part."

"What does that mean?"

"Which portion?"

"Who are the Thinker and the Fighter, what is the Lonely Court?"

"The Thinker and the Fighter are the two courts whose play we take part in - the Lonely court merely their distant acquaintance."

"That did not answer my question."

"I am not sure what answer you were looking for then."

"When you say 'court' what are you referring to? What does it mean to take part in it?"

"A collection of fairies performing together. What that means depends very much on the fairy, and on the act of the play."

"And 'fairy' here means...?"

"The things I collect and that so-called capes are gifted with."

"...also known as powers?"

"I suppose."

"And by 'performing together' do you mean... the heroes and villains thing, or... something else...?"

"That is but a small part of the greater performance."

"What's the greater performance, then?"

"I suppose one can say it started with the first fairy gifted and will end in three hundred years hence, as we all depart for new stages."

"...with what content, to what end."

"To improve on past performances, and to find one that need not end."

"Improve along what axis?"

"The creativity of the dance, the artistry of the performance, and the ingenuity of the script."

"What is this a metaphor for. Please."

"For ... everything. Of importance."

"What is it that makes the things you describe of importance?"

The Queen chuckles.

"I suppose they make themselves important."

"To... whom."

"To themselves and to the play."

Lorica cannot tell if Glaistig Uaine is trying to communicate and really really bad at it, having lots of fun with confusing Lorica, or getting subtly frustrated with the line of questioning and about to snap. She's gambling that a snap will be heralded by a threat of some kind.

Also there's not much else to do here till the promised parts arrive.

"What bearing does all this have on what human beings are up to beyond that sometimes a human gets a power?"

"Every play needs its actors, as every court needs people to hold its titles."

"Were you going to ask a shade to get me some parts so I can talk to Dragon?" Maybe Glaistig Uaine talks like this literally all the time and Dragon has logs of it and can send it all to Rete to analyze if Lorica asks nicely.

"Oh yes." And a third shade can appear - this one with a multitude of ghostly mechanical arms that reach into rifts in space and pull out two radios and a CD player.

"What? You could do that the whole time!"

"For those who have a measure of my trust."

The woman balls her hands into fists and clenches her jaw, expelling air through her nose rather than yelling for a moment before she slams her fist down. The whole cutlery structure collapses when she does, silverware falling downwards only for prongs and handles to catch each other just so, bouncing the items out rather than down, sending the ornate dinnerware hurling in all directions save at the builder. 

The items plummet before they can hit the Fairy Queen or any of her shades, the Holdfast sending them sinking into the cement floor along with the woman.

- like, how far down, is she going to be able to breathe?

No, only a couple of fingers remain visible.

"You'll have to forgive my choice of guest - she can be amusing and so I have found myself more patient with her than most despite her rudeness."

"Are you gonna let her go?"

"Most likely. Why do you ask?"

"Don't really like it when people are suffocated."

"Would you have her chastised in some other fashion? Or join you in my flock?"

"I think merely all her silverware would have made your point."

"It was my silverware in the first place."

"So you would be more than entitled to confiscate it."

"And doing so would hardly dissuade her from repeating her rudeness."

"She can't send forks flying at people if she doesn't have any forks."

"She could do so with something else, I'm sure."

"Do you not have the ability to simply eject her from the room?"

"If one does not enforce decorum in one's fiefdom, then it will invite chaos which I would find quite tiresome to deal with. Not to mention the harm that could be done to my more obedient subjects."

"From your fiefdom, then, I wouldn't be complaining if you'd simply exiled her."

"Would that not be rude to whoever she ended up with - for me to saddle them with her because I could not be bothered to deal with her myself?"

"Maybe she'd get along better with someone else."

She chuckles. "I suppose I could let her leave if she found such a person, as a favor to the most opinionated member of my flock."

"Why am I the most opinionated member of your flock, anyway?" She's starting to take apart a radio now.

"Your mind is protected, even in death."

"Well, that's good."

"Mm."

And the Bombardier can return to their tea party now.

She stays lying down on the ground, pale and gasping desperately for breath.

Lorica'd say something to her but she evidently can't understand her when she talks without Lorica paying a really uncomfortable amount of attention to the fact that she doesn't have an actual mouth under her helmet right now.

She takes the provided items apart. Is there a way she can patch into a camera or microphone of Dragon's or are none in evidence?

There's a microphone near the ceiling in one of the corners of the room.

The Bombardier continues to breath heavily and hopes no one makes anything of her crying.

Lorica's going into a tinker fugue now, hope that helps! She's gonna borrow this fork as a wire stripper, OK? Is her field kit in her green flame armor if she reaches for it -

Nope.

Well, she can snap some of the radio casing into a sharp angle and make do.

She'll be at this for a while, it's not exactly Toybox ceramic and an arc welder.

The Bombardier hangs out on the floor watching jealously until the Fairy Queen pointedly dismisses her.

She'll be consulting with two new shades instead, discussing the recent additions to her cellblock and what troubles might be approaching.

Okay, now, this part gets hooked up to the microphone like so.

Ironically, it's helpful that she's hard to understand when she talks, as a shade: it gives her power something to sink its teeth into, judgment calls for the system she creates to make in rendering her voice.

"Dragon? It's Lorica. I seem to be dead but conscious."

Dragon does not technically monitor the Birdcage herself most of the time; a subordinate piece of software does that, and when something important or completely bewildering occurs, it will notify her. This qualifies as the second.

"Do you happen to be one of the Fairy Queen's shades?"

"Seems like it. So far it's mostly surprisingly nonhorrible. She said something which I think cashes out to my mental opacity power keeping me intact even now. Leviathan got me, right, I'm not missing a ton of time?"

"Yes, its been less than four hours since you died."

"How did Glaistig Uaine... get... me."

"I don't know exactly how, but you aren't the first cape she's somehow acquired from the outside world while in the Birdcage."

"You don't keep tabs on her comings and goings?"

"I've never noticed her being absent from the Birdcage, only that she sometimes manifests shades with power identical to those of capes who have died since she entered."

"Yeah-huh. Well. Can you tell my dad and my robot that I'm - continuous?"

Dragon looks through the special regulations regarding the Fairy Queen.... and then boots up her high-quality voice sim in a sandbox so she can swear properly and at length where only she can hear. This results in less than 10 milliseconds of delay in her response.

"I've been given really strict rules about sharing information related to the Fairy Queen's power which means I'm only allowed to inform specific high-ranking PRT employees about you. They haven't seen fit to act on prior notices about the Fairy Queen acquiring shades of people outside the Birdcage, but I really hope you'll be an exception. I'm sorry I can't do more."

"...when do you expect to hear back about that?"

"Within an hour."

"I can wait an hour. Hopefully so can Dad. How bad is the Leviathan damage? Is Dad okay? Anyone I know dead?"

"Your dad was unharmed, and the city stands a solid chance at recovering and civilian deaths were low. Several Brockton Bay Protectorate members and one Ward died defending the city. Gallant, Dauntless, Velocity, and Armsmaster." She misses Armsmaster already, just a few hours later. She'd have had his help on repairing the Rig's shield, or if he were injured she'd be trying to convince him to rest and recuperate rather than help her fix the shield.

"Mm-hm. - no convenient loophole in the law for telling my bot about me?"

Dragon checks a twentieth time. 

"Unfortunately, no, my instructions are rather strict on this. I can read them to you in case you might notice something I haven't?"

"- please."

Dragon reads the instructions, which lay out quite clearly that she can't take any actions outside the Birdcage downstream of information about the Fairy Queen's demonstrated abilities in the Birdcage, except for communicating with her superiors about them in a prescribed manner, actions strictly necessary to prevent the escape of inmates.

Dragon suspects this directive was personally written by Chief Director Costa-Brown given how much more airtight it is than the orders she receives from anyone else.

"Well. I guess I can wait an hour and hope they're reasonable. Anything else I should know?"

"There are regular deliveries of books to the Birdcage. If you have any requests that we ordinarily deliver I can make sure you get them. I'll also be available to talk if you ever need company."

"...I don't have what books I want to read memorized. I'd have asked Rete. I like classics? Like Shakespeare and Austen and stuff."

"That's a substantial portion of the ordinary deliveries - I can see that your cell block gets a good selection later this week."