Eventually Vanyel wakes up. Yawns. 

"- Jisa, pet, are you still here?" 

"Yes! UncleVanUncleVanUncleVan look! I did new wards for you!" 

He sits up, stretching, and smiles tiredly at her. "Thank you! It looks beautiful." 

"Sandra taught me! She said this sort of shape is for making shields that're fireproof, and then this one I just made up, it's for making wards that tell you if there are dragons, and this one is so that you can talk to cats - UncleVanUncleVan you should help me, what else do you want wards for -" 

"Yes, all right." 

And so Herald-Mage Vanyel Ashkevron, called Demonsbane and Hero of Stony Tor by his allies - and the Butcher in White by his enemies - slips down onto the floor and sits next to his six-year-old 'niece', accepting a bit of chalk from her and absently adding some more random decorations while he half-listens to her chatter. 

In the middle of Jisa's anti-demon ward with some Van-added curlicues there appears - someone.

"- wow, this is so not safe, what are you doing?"

In front of him is a small girl with brown hair in two braids, who immediately bounces up and down like a pogo stick and makes a high-pitched noise of excitement! "Eeeeeeeee you have WINGS are you a dragon-person can you fly -"

And an overly-thin-looking man with heavily silver-streaked black hair, dressed in white, who takes half a second longer to respond but is then suddenly on his feet, shoving the little girl behind him and flinging up a hand - an invisible wall of force comes out of nowhere and tries to smash the unexpected arrival into the floor, and then a shimmering bubble-like barrier appears to pin him there. 

"What–"

The unexpected arrival is smashed! And pinned! He looks startled but not hurt. "- what the -

- what language is this -"

Vanyel is sufficiently nonplussed by this question that he doesn't manage to answer, just keeps staring at the strange winged and tailed person sprawled on the chalk circle on his floor, a half-formed levinbolt crackling in his palm. 

"Look, from my perspective I appeared here very much invited, there's no need to be slinging around, uh, lightning magic, I'm not going to hurt you."

Jisa thinks her Uncle Van is being very rude. 

"Valdemaran!" she says brightly, wriggling past his legs while he's still frozen in confusion. "My name's Jisa! What's yours?" 

Vanyel is, at, this point, mostly frozen because, contra all of his screaming combat reflexes, it is PROBABLY a bad idea to turn this person into a smear of soot on the floor. Not to mention the collateral damage that would do to his room. He's having a hard time convincing his mind to calm down about it, though. 

"I'm Cam! It's nice to meet you, Jisa! You shouldn't draw on the floor, it's not safe, but this time you were really lucky, okay?"

"What do you mean, drawing on the floor isn't safe? Why's it any different from drawing on the walls or on paper? I mean, besides how Mama gets mad if I make messes where I'm not supposed to, but I think floor messes are probably easier to clean up than wall messes?" 

Vanyel is NOT ANY LESS CONFUSED, but he does manage to lower his hand, and make an effort to control his breathing. 

"Well, it's because it can summon demons, like me, and most demons are pretty nice people but sometimes there's a mean one."

Jisa gives him a thoughtful, suspicious look. 

"You're not a demon," she declares finally. "I saw a picture of a demon in a book and it was really ugly, and you're handsome, so you can't be a demon. Also demons are stupid and can't talk and none of them are nice." 

"Well, I think maybe I'm not the kind of demon you usually get around here. You could call me an apsel instead if you like."

"Did you just make up that word right now? It sounds made-up." 

Vanyel takes a deep breath, lets it out, and with considerable effort of will, plus the help of some of Melody's Mindhealing redirects that she put it when he left the Border, manages to relax his shoulders, and focus. 

"Where are you from and how did you get here?" he asks the stranger, very levelly, while at the same time playing his mage-sight over him - does he look like an Abyssal demon, or elemental, or human, or something else? 

"It's in another language," Cam tells Jisa, "I didn't make it up. Uh, we call it Hell, and you - or possibly she, I'm not sure - summoned me."

He doesn't look like any of those things.

"I don't understand how we could have. We," an apologetic glance at Jisa, "weren't doing real magic, we were just playing." 

Jisa is, fortunately, far too captivated by their shiny and exciting winged guest to take offense. 

She tugs at Van's sleeve. "Hey you're being rude, you should help him up and offer him tea. Cam do you like tea?"