At least alone in her tent she doesn't have to be General Foundling or Lady Squire. The titles still sit a little uncomfortably, and it's a relief to get to just be Catherine for a while.

Unfortunately, her tent also contains a pile of paperwork to deal with. Seriously, she swears the stack gets taller every time she turns her back for five minutes, and they haven't even been on the march a week. 

...wait, what's this?

A blank notebook with a purple-grey cover, its pages very smooth and fine. The cover is engraved with a simple design of flowers in the corners. There's no clear explanation for how it got into her stack of invoices and requisitions.

Catherine's spent long enough around goblins that her first thought is prank. It would be a strange gift for someone to give her, and she's hardly awash in suitors right now besides. 

A quick look around her tent reveals no hidden watchers, and she can't hear any stifled giggling. Maybe a trap in the notebook itself? It doesn't look thick enough to hide very much in its pages, and—she quickly sniffs it, feeling a little silly—doesn't smell of goblin munitions. (Not that even Robber would be bold enough to risk exploding official paperwork. Probably.)

The cover smells like plain clean leather, the paper like wood pulp, the binding like glue. It very much appears to be just a notebook.

Maybe it is just a nice gift...? She vaguely remembers mentioning to Hakram in passing that she could do with something more organised than stray scraps of paper to make notes on. 

Ugh, she's turning into Black with all this paranoia. It's just a notebook. 

She opens it. 

That is some really nice paper. And still no explosions!

See, Catherine, it's just a notebook. 

But she doesn't have anything she wants to write in it at the moment, so it gets closed again and put to one side. Maybe she'll ask around at some point and try to find out who put it in her tent. It'll have to be later, though. She's put off these requisition forms long enough. 

It turns out an Imperial Legion on the march generates a lot of work for its General, enough that a week later she still hasn't written in the notebook, and has entirely forgotten to be curious about its origins. 

She's been trying to keep up her language studies as they march towards Summerholm. Even with her aspect, Learn, Taghreb is still a bitch and a half to get her head around. She grabs a pen and the notebook—might as well use it, since it hasn't blown up in her face yet—and starts copying out a grammar table. 

Oh, are you learning a language? Neat!

What.

Uh. What.

Hello! I'm sorry if I startled you.

...talking notebook? Talking notebook. Definitely magic. 

The smart thing to do, the sensible thing, would be to stop writing in it immediately, maybe even chuck the thing in the nearest fire. It's unquestionably what Black would do. He hasn't survived as long as he has by taking risks with things like mysteriously appearing magic items. 

She's curious, though. Sue her. 

And besides, it's been nothing but polite so far. It seems rude to just destroy it without another word. 

Who or what are you? And how did you get into my tent? 

I'm an avatar of the Spirit of Femininity Unleashed, and I was sent to offer you its power!

...so, devil trying to trick her into a deal, maybe? Is this an Heiress plot, this is kind of starting to smell like an Heiress plot. Subtle digs at Catherine's lack of feminine charms seem right up her alley. 

The Spirit of Femininity Unleashed, huh? What'd I do to get its attention? 

You didn't necessarily do anything in particular. The Spirit doesn't quite see things in the same way you or I do; the people it reaches out to are people who want to be beautiful and powerful and special in a feminine way, but it isn't looking for the people who are most like that, or the first people who are like that, or anything. You could say that it glanced into this world and you were the first person it saw, and that wouldn't be entirely accurate but it wouldn't be too wrong either.

Well, that's a puzzling response, and a surprising one. It's—not what she'd have expected the notebook to say if it was a trap from Heiress, she doesn't think. Which means she's back to having no idea what this is.

You're implying that the Spirit is from outside this world. Do you mean the Heavens or the Hells or Arcadia, or somewhere outside Creation entirely?

Somewhere outside Creation entirely. And if this is one of those worlds where most of the things nearby outside it are very weird and bad, I should probably add that the Spirit is from farther away than those things.

You preempted my next question, which was about to be "Is the Spirit a demon?" Sounds like that's a no. 

All of this is, of course, what a very smart devil would say to convince her it wasn't a devil. 

You seem very comprehensible for something from outside Creation, I must say. Speaking a civilised language and everything. How do you know Lower Miezan, anyway? 

I don't think I'm the sort of thing that can fail to know a language.

Can you tell them apart?

...she writes, in Kharsum. Of the three and a half languages she has available, the orcish tongue is the one Heiress and her agents are the least likely to know. 

I think so! The letters in this one are different shapes.

That's...probably evidence of something. Doesn't entirely rule out Heiress, though. 

...well, she might as well ask.

Do you have any proof that you are what you claim to be, and not, for example, a devil sent to trick me out of my soul? 

I'm not sure! I don't really know very much about your capabilities, because it would be rude of me to show up knowing a lot about you when you might not have wanted that. All I know is that you're the person the Spirit sent me to talk to, because the first person who writes in me always is.

If you can think of a test, though, I don't mind you trying it; it seems very important for you to know that I'm the kind of thing I am and not something else!