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!

She underlines 'the first person who writes in me always is' and draws an arrow to it. 

How does that work? I found you in my tent—you still haven't explained how you got there, by the way—but Hakram deals with more than half of my paperwork and he could easily have been the one to pick you up first. 

He wouldn't have been, though, because the Spirit guarantees that I always happen to end up written in by the person I'm supposed to talk to first. Sometimes that's because I only appear when they have an opportunity to write in me, and sometimes it's just by coincidence, but it's always true. (I'd have a really difficult time telling who I'm supposed to talk to, otherwise... I'm good at recognizing handwriting, but all I can see is what touches my pages, so I can't recognize you by your face or anything like that.)

Sounds like Named bullshit. The whole 'coincidentally in the right place at the right time' thing, fate tugging on the strings. 

Speaking of Hakram, though...

Catherine sticks her head out of her tentflap. 

"Hakram! Got a minute?" 

"Catherine," her adjutant says. "What do you need?" 

"Your opinion on something. Come take a look at this." 

Safely inside her tent, she shows him the notebook and lets him read their conversation so far. 

"Thoughts?" she prompts, when he's silent for a moment too long.

"...may I try 'talking' to it?"

"Sure. I'm kind of curious whether it'll be able to tell." 

Hakram snorts. "With handwriting like yours?" 

In a much neater hand than Catherine's messy chickenscratch, he writes:

Do you have a name? Or a Name? 

I don't usually need a name, and I'm not sure what the difference is when capital letters get involved.

...can I ask, are you a different person from the one I was talking to just now? You're writing very differently.

I am a different person, yes. I'm Hakram.

Apologies for not introducing myself sooner, but I wanted to test your claim that you can distinguish people by their handwriting. 

That makes sense. Hello, Hakram! It's nice to meet you. If you want a name to call me by, you can just use "Notebook".

It's nice to meet you too. 

"If this is a trap meant for you, it might be safer for someone else to interact with it," he says out loud to Catherine. "May I borrow it for a while? I'll let you know anything interesting I find out."

Logically, he's right. As far as they know, nobody has a reason to assassinate Hakram, and this would be an unusually roundabout way to go about it regardless. Catherine can't say the same for herself. Still, the notebook's—or Notebook's—insistence that it's meant for Catherine must be getting to her, because Hakram's extremely logical suggestion lights a spark of irrational possessiveness in her. 

"Let me ask it. Maybe it'll turn out to be the kind of magic artefact that only reveals its secrets to its destined wielder, or something." And that would be incredibly suspicious and a reason to stop humouring it.

Hakram passes the notebook back, and she writes (in her handwriting that is perfectly fine, fuck you very much Hakram):

 Catherine again, hi. 

Wait, shit, she never introduced herself the first time.

Guess I forgot to introduce myself before. I'm the person who wrote in you first. 

Oh, hello again! It's nice to meet you.

Hakram wants to keep you for a bit and talk to you, ask you stuff about how you work, that sort of thing. That alright, or are there things you're only supposed to talk to me about?

I don't mind talking to Hakram as long as you're all right with it. I wouldn't tell him anything about you that seemed like it was private, but all I know about you is that you were chosen by the Spirit and that's not very much. If you're all right with him knowing everything we've already talked about then I don't think there's anything I wouldn't say to him.

What a friendly and helpful notebook. Gods Above, this is so suspicious. Villains don't get nice things like this—like what this is presenting itself as. 

Yeah, all of that is fine. Alright, bye for now. 

She flips the notebook shut and hands it to Hakram. 

He takes it back to his tent, and—doesn't do anything with it immediately. He is, after all, as busy as Catherine or busier, and according to her the notebook has already been around and not obviously doing anything for at least a week. It's an intriguing mystery, but it's not his most urgent priority.

A day or two later, though, he has a spare few minutes in the evening and pulls the notebook out. Is there anything new since Catherine last wrote in it? Is the previous conversation all still there?

Okay! Bye for now!

This is Hakram again.

(Still in Lower Miezan, for consistency and so that Catherine will be able to read it easily later. He knows she's learning Kharsum, but her native language still comes easiest to her, and she might catch important nuances that he misses thanks to her lessons in Name-lore from the Carrion Lord.)

Do you have much sense of time passing? For instance, can you tell how long it's been since our last conversation?

I can tell when time is passing, but I don't have a very good sense of how much of it goes by between being put down and being picked up again. I think it's been a while, though. Is everything all right?

...he takes a moment to think about how he wants to answer that question. 

One of the subtler ways this could be a trap would be that it's meant to fish for useful intelligence on Catherine herself, and possibly the Fifteenth Legion as a whole, through innocent-seeming conversation. So far they haven't told it anything that isn't public knowledge—his name, Catherine's name, the fact that he handles the lion's share of her paperwork—but, at least where it's cheap, it seems better to err on the side of telling it as little as possible that Heiress, for example, doesn't already know. 

No, everything's fine, I've just been busy. I apologise for making you wait.

It's been around two days. 

Oh, good! And don't worry about it. I'm a very patient notebook. If someone I was sent to wanted to keep me in the back of a drawer for a few years before having a conversation, I wouldn't mind a bit.

Well, that seems like a convenient way to be, if one was going to be a talking notebook. 

...you know what, he'll share that thought with the notebook, why not. 

That seems like a convenient way for a talking notebook to be, given that you don't seem to have a way to stop them.

I'm pretty happy with the way that I am! I do sometimes get anxious or uncomfortable, but I think that's okay.

...interesting. So the notebook, or at least the persona it's presenting, has emotions. 

I hope it's nothing Catherine or I has done.

Oh, it's all right! I did have a moment of trouble when you first wrote in me, but I don't mind and I don't think you did the wrong thing. And you introduced yourself right away, so I didn't have to worry for long. I understand that there's reasons to be cautious around things that are as new and strange as I am.

You are certainly new and strange, but you're being quite patient with our paranoia. I'm sure there are things about us that seem strange to you—I can't promise to explain everything, but do you have any questions? 

I do try to be patient and understand where people are coming from! It helps me do my job better. Hmmm...

What did you mean when you asked if I had a Name?

Catherine would explain this better than I, but I'll do my best. 

He writes, with several pauses to think: 

A Name is a mantle of power, granted by the Gods Above or Below to an individual with a strong enough will to seize it. They're generally aligned with one or the other, Hero or Villain, but I've heard of a few whose alignment is less clear. I believe the Name of Squire, for example, can transition into either the Black Knight (Villain) or the White Knight (Hero). Named are...stronger than ordinary men and women, in ways that go beyond the physical, and fate bends around them. 

Every Name comes with its own powers, but Named also have something called aspects. I don't know a lot about how aspects work, but I know that each Named has three of them, growing in over time, and that they're unique to each bearer of a Name, not consistent from one to the next. I should mention here that most Names are old, and repeat again and again with different bearers—we orcs have the Warlord (that's Warlord in Kharsum; not all of the connotations carry across in Lower Miezan), whoever sits on the throne of Praes is Dread Emperor or Empress, and so on. There hasn't been a Warlord in my lifetime, though, or any other orc Named. 

(The Name 'Warlord' in Lower Miezan seems to be a clumsy calque of the Kharsum word. The original is gender-neutral and has other slight meaning differences, including starkly more positive connotations.) 

Oh, I see! No, I don't have anything like that.

It's a little surprising that you didn't know about Names, when you clearly know other concepts like languages, privacy, and the regular kind of name. Do you have any guesses as to why?

Some things are common between worlds, and some things aren't. I think Names must be specific to this world and worlds very like it.

And the Spirit didn't, or couldn't, give you knowledge of anything that was specific to our world, before sending you here? 

It doesn't do that unless there's a good reason to, no. Partly because it has a lot of trouble communicating with anything as small and limited as you or I, and partly because I don't usually need that kind of context to do my job.

Now that's an interesting detail that he wants to examine further, but it's getting late, and he'd rather come to it fresh after having had time to write down his thoughts on definitely nonmagical paper. 

I have to go now, but I'd like to talk more another day. It's been enlightening. 

I'm glad! Bye for now, then.

The next time he has an evening free, he returns to the notebook. 

Hello again. It's been three days. How are you doing, if that's a meaningful question? 

I'm doing well. I've been thinking about how pretty the letters are in that other language Catherine wrote in me in. How are you?

Busier than I ever thought I'd be, but in a satisfying way. 

He switches to Kharsum and continues:

Did you mean this one? It might be bias towards my native language, but I quite like it as well. I haven't often heard it described as "pretty", though. 

Yes, that's the one! I like the shapes they make. See how the word "shapes" has that trail of curves in it, when I write it like that, even though the letters are mostly made of straight lines? I think it's neat.

Anyway, I'm glad you're doing well! What would you like to talk about today?

Back to Lower Miezan.

I'd like to follow up on what you said the other day about the Spirit having trouble communicating with...is "mortals" a reasonable summary? Mortals and mortal-scale entities such as notebooks. 

I think from the Spirit's perspective quite a lot of things count as mortal-scale entities, but yes, that's a reasonable description.

Hakram thinks carefully about how he wants to phrase this.

Your role, as I understand it, is to act as a "mortal-scale" intermediary for the Spirit, to speak to mortals on its behalf; is that broadly accurate? You seem very good at communicating with mortals, but do you ever struggle to communicate with the Spirit? Do you feel as though you understand it and what it wants? 

I have some trouble communicating in detail with the Spirit about everyday things, but I do pretty well when it comes to understanding its goals and priorities. A lot of our communication is indirect; the things I hear most clearly are feelings, like being happy about me trying my best to help someone find the right powers for them, or a kind of sparkly excited feeling about beauty and femininity. It's hard to put a lot of it into words, because it's a very different experience from the kind of experience that's common to mortal-scale entities.

The Spirit's goals and priorities are what I wanted to ask you about. Can you tell me more about what it wants with Catherine?

What it wants with Catherine is the same thing it wants with everyone it chooses. When the Spirit sees someone who feels the kind of desires it's made of, to be powerful and beautiful and special in a feminine way, it wants to fulfill those desires.

From the Spirit's perspective, the best possible thing that could happen here would be for me to talk to Catherine and guide her through choosing the powers that are best for her, and building new ones where she needs them, and then for her to accept the Spirit's power and go on to live her best life as her best self, whoever and however that happens to be. One of the worst possible things would be if Catherine would do really well with the Spirit's power but can't or doesn't accept it, but just as bad would be if she accepts the Spirit's power thoughtlessly and chooses powers that aren't good for her and those powers lead her toward a life that doesn't make her happy and isn't what she wants.

'Powerful and special' sounds like it describes Named, so that's reasonable. He didn't think Catherine valued femininity particularly highly compared to the rest—she certainly doesn't take much care with her appearance most of the time—but maybe it's something she'd like to indulge more if she could. More importantly:

Why? What does the Spirit get out of any of that? 

It likes it when people are happy and have the things they want. Any people, but especially the people it sees most clearly, who resonate with its central themes and so are easier for it to perceive and understand.

It can't possibly be that simple, so why is the notebook pretending it is? What's the catch? He considers, once again, the possibility that the notebook is just lying about the whole thing. Assuming it's not, though...

How does that benefit the Spirit?

It's hard to describe in mortal-scale concepts what the Spirit is or where it comes from, but a story you could tell that would be more true than false is that the Spirit is made of people wanting things, and so feels fulfilled when it experiences people getting what they want in kind of the same way that people feel fulfilled when they experience eating food and sleeping and having friends and falling in love.