"Fair enough." Slight smile. Leareth pauses; he has a lot of questions and is trying to put them in order. "Do mortals from your 'mortal world' look the same as us here?"

"I've only seen one but you look like the same sort of thing, and like the pictures, yes."

Nod. "Interesting. I wonder why. Anyway, what are the kinds of fairy other than leaflets?" 

"I don't know them all, there are so many. There's - glowgolds and patient mossies and pollenclouds and painted tailwings and, uh, razorfeet, and berrybushes, and - there's so many."

Nayoki tries to write all of those down but can't keep up at all. 

"That is a great many! Hmm. I am curious to hear more about their differing traits, for the ones you know that about." 

"Of those glowgolds and razorfeet are breeding kinds... I think glowgolds like to leave their children in the mortal world and steal mortals directly from there, sometimes. They glow. Razorfeet are kind of mean or at least the colony that lived near me was. Patient mossies can turn themselves to stone for predetermined intervals whenever they like and they often do that when people are bothering them. Pollenclouds give off pollen, inhaling that can work like a food claim, and they're little -" She gestures about ten inches high. "Painted tailwings - I forget actually what the one I knew could do, it must not have been very good - pretty wings though. Berrybushes have antlers and grow berries on them, those are strong food claims. Knifewings have claws and sharp wings and they can claw through any material they want. Some fairies aren't kinds, they're one-offs, but I've never met any of those, they're very rare... Creekpearls exist and I'd recognize one but I don't know much else about them... broadears can hear from far away, dewflowers heal fast, shrublies I don't know what they do, sunshine tepals are breeders but I don't know if they have anything else..."

Scribble scribble wow that is a lot of information at once. 

"Do you know where fairies come from and why there are so many varieties of them?" 

"It depends on the kind where we come from, leaflets do the tree thing. I don't know, like, why fairies exist at all."

Leareth nods. "What sort of society do fairies have? Are there cities, do the different kinds live together in groups...?" 

"Not really cities, I don't think courts tend to get that big. Different kinds live together as often as not but usually a breeder colony is all that one kind."

"Breeder colony?" 

"A court of fairies of a kind that breeds."

"And a 'court', does that refer to a structure of vassal fairies under a master?" 

"Yes. They're mostly not as bad as Thorn's, but."

Leareth glances at Nayoki. "N– er, Sunspring said that you did not recommend we tangle with Thorn. Does he have considerable resources?" 

"He collects sorcerers and most of them are older and better than me."

"What are his - goals - in doing that?" 

"We're pretty generically useful? It makes people reluctant to mess with him, means if he wants something it's easy to have his vassals arrange it even if they have to trade for it, makes the court more defensible."

"I see. What sorts of threats do courts need to be defensible against?" 

"People trying to take the members for their own courts, mostly."

"Do other courts also tend to fight with sorcerers?" 

"It's not that any of this is very common, but sure."

"I see. What sorts of things do courts trade with each other for?"