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She's a four-year-old girl, and people (especially her Dad) insist she's a boy.
Not that she isn't sometimes. She is. But not today! Today she's a girl. And Dad keeps saying that's not true, that God made her body perfect and she shouldn't second-guess God's plan for her. God made her a boy, so she's supposed to be a boy. And on the one hand that kinda makes sense. God doesn't make mistakes, right? So if she were really a girl sometimes, then she'd... what? Her body would change, she guesses. But on the other hand, she knows she's a girl. She's a girl with a peepee, that's obvious. She'd prefer not having a peepee when she's a girl, but it's not the worst thing ever. And if God doesn't make mistakes, God also didn't make her feel like a girl sometimes on accident, right? It must be part of His (because God is always a He, even though God made everyone, boys and girls, in His image, he's always a He, Dad says) plan.
She tells Dad that, today, and Dad gets angry, and yells at her, and she doesn't know why he's yelling. It makes sense to her! But he won't explain why she's wrong, he's just yelling, Dad's so mean, she hates him, and she's not crying, shut up, you're crying!
And now Mum's coming and she's talking to Dad, and that usually makes Dad stop yelling and go away but he won't stop now and Sadde's angry and afraid and hurt and she's running away. A part of her thinks that it doesn't make much sense to run away, the park is pretty open and she can't really hide anywhere, and she'll have to go back because she'll get hungry (not now, though, she just ate a sandwich).
So she runs until she finds some bushes where she can hide, and she hides there, and she doesn't cry, and she spends a long time not crying. Mum and Dad don't come after her, though, and after she's done not crying she doesn't wipe her eyes and her nose, and she comes out the other way of the bushes she was hiding in.
And she's pretty sure that's not the park.
"One hour should probably be enough for a rough web of relationships, map, and a first mole, I think. What do you know? Outdated information is still better than what I have, at least to start. Like, do you know where exactly his court is? Something about the physical layout, where his vassals are likely to be... What were they even doing in that library, Yellow said it was three hours away from his court," he says, looking at Yellow at that last part.
"He has several sites, and I know where one of them is and how it's laid out, and have guesses about some more locations. Three hours is perfectly convenient transit time for a library; I don't know how many libraries you think there are. I assume they were there to borrow a book or renew their collateral or something."
"Several sites. Of course." He sighs and shakes his head. "Anyway, it sounds like quite a coincidence for one of his vassals to just happen to be visiting the library at the same time as my mother was, prepared to vassalise her. She only really used to visit the library once every several months, after we'd exhausted everything a book had to teach, and she wouldn't just give them her name, they'd have to force-feed her or dart her or what-have-you."
"It's possible he laid a trap for her but not that implausible that there would be a coincidence and an attack of opportunity. His sorcerers would be better than her and know the territory better, it wouldn't have to be a dart, any fairy food out of their hand would work."
"It's not worse on any objective scale, it's just, emotionally, a coincidence is just pointless." He shakes his head again. "Never mind."
"It's more likely to have been a coincidence or they'd have caught you too, unless you reacted very quickly to her capture and they didn't know you existed."
"The only time I visited the library was fifteen years ago, when I was yea small, and I never visited fairyland when she was going to the library."
"Sure, but she knows you exist. You found Yellow and not one of Thorn's court."
"Yeah. I mean, I arrived there half an hour before she was supposed to be back. And if it had been a trap they wouldn't necessarily know to ask something that would reveal my existence immediately."
"Thorn is a big fan of questions like 'tell me what you're hoping I won't think to ask about'."
"One learns from him. One can't help it, and the vassals with permission to do things like go to the library in particular wouldn't try to help it."
Sigh. "But then wouldn't that have made them be waiting at the library regardless of whether it was a trap or coincidence? I mean, my mother doesn't actually know how long I'd wait until I went looking for her, that's one of the things we didn't tell each other, but..."
"There are reasons to be at a library that don't involve setting traps for anyone. They can and do make perfectly innocent excursions for books."
"Right but I mean, after they captured her, wouldn't they ask her about what she was hoping they didn't ask about, and then hear about me, and then wait for me? Although I guess it may not be obvious that she doesn't want them to ask about me because it's plausible that I go to fairyland..."
"They might've taken her back to the court before thoroughly questioning her - it'd be a mistake but mistakes happen - or she might have managed to prevent herself from speaking in some way that they couldn't reverse right there, or they decided not to commit resources to getting you until they had her more secure and there was only one of them present at the library then."
"The first two could've happened regardless of whether it was a trap—and I'm not sure this is a productive discussion."
"It's probably not. Regardless, they know about you and have her best estimate of what resources you'll be able to command getting her back and how likely you are to do that."
"No. They have more brains on the problem than we do and already know everything they want to know. Rushing does not improve our odds. Thinking long enough to come up with something your mother would not normally think of does."
"I don't know what my mother would normally think of, we never actually did discuss any plans, like I said. Which, well, is probably an advantage, but she might be able to reconstruct any plans I'd come up with. She has certainly thought of walkie-talkies and the like, maybe not moles with remote microphones and cameras in specific but it's not unimaginable she might."
"So you tell me more about what resources there are and I come up with something."
"Okay. Erm, microphones, almost arbitrarily small, same for cameras and earbuds or other kinds of speakers. Those might be a bit hard to find but throwing enough money at most problems tends to solve them here, so remote communication for any purpose is probably a nonissue. Humans are also really good at destroying things so anything that causes or requires anything to be destroyed should be easy to use. Vehicles, we have very fast vehicles, computers are probably not useful..."