Gwen narrows her eyes.

She's been played.  By a mistress of the game.

And she still can't object, because Lila's exactly right.  More than right; she's sure a Baroness wouldn't go bowing down to Fay either if one of them suddenly appeared!

She pointedly sits back down on the couch.

So what else should she be objecting to here?  And how?

Well, Lila is serving some lord, who's kidnapped her...

... and Lila's at least trying to act like a friend.  So maybe Gwen can really bring her around to being a friend?  Like Great-Aunt Trinn brought around Grandma Marian back at the start of the Revolt?

Gwen lets her chin tremble in nervousness.

(Real nerves, suddenly come over her now that she's thinking about it.)

"D-do you know what your lord plans to - do - t-to me?  Ransom me back - or - blackmail - or - s-something else?"

"Oh!"

Lila's hand shoots to her mouth, and her wings droop.

"You don't know -"

Gwen's eyes shoot open, and she pulls her bodice close to herself. If Lila is so dismayed even thinking about it - 

"You're dead, Gwen."

Gwen swallows, her heart thudding.  That's not the words she was expecting.

"You mean... he's going to lock me in a dungeon and let everyone keep thinking I'm dead?  Or he's going to definitely actually kill me -" (she squeaks) "- when?  Or -"

Lila shakes her head.

"No.  You have already died.  I'm told someone killed you.  That is how you got here."

Gwen doesn't feel dead.

She runs her hands down her sides, her legs, her face...

She feels warm and alive, just like before.  She doesn't feel any death-wound.

Lila doesn't respond except to flutter her wings.

But... wait a minute; there's something she didn't feel.

Gwen hikes up her skirts to the spot on her leg where there should be the scar and the notch in her bone from when she got kicked by Applecore the stallion.

It's not there anymore.

That could be healing magic beyond anything in Trinnshire, maybe, but...

She's remembering now the fuzzy dream of that strange shape in the stables with a glistening knife.  It's coming back to her, and it's feeling not quite dream-like anymore...

It feels still weirdly fuzzy, but it's slotting right into place in her memories as the last thing right before she's here --

The moment the first tears appear in Gwen's eyes, Lila is there, sitting next to her, hugging her in her wings.

It's a little while before Gwen looks over past Lila's feathers (as soft and comforting as goose-down).

She still barely remembers dying... but she's not really trying.

And given that she's here now...

"It's a beautiful garden," she says, not sure how to start, "but this isn't quite how I imagined Heaven?"

"Oh good.  We aren't trying to look like how people imagine Heaven."

"... where am I?"

"... are you an angel after all?"

Lila releases Gwen from the hug and steps back.

"Some people call me that," she says with a shrug.  "But sometimes the name doesn't fit.  I'm not an angel like the angels you're thinking of.  Or the angels I was thinking of when I first got here."

It really would've been easier if she could've called herself a Fay, but Gwen was thinking inappropos things about them too...

"Your story hasn't gotten to Heaven and angels."  And then she hastily adds, lest Gwen run off in a different wrong direction, "- at least not yet."

Oh well, it's time to say it even more plainly.  Hopefully this will help, or... well, she still won't be at a loss; she can keep comforting her; but she hopes Gwen will show enough spirit here.

"This isn't Heaven.  Or Hell.  Or Purgatory, or the Abyss, or anywhere else you've heard of.  That's why you could say my lord kidnapped you - you wouldn't normally end up here, but my lord snatched you to here after you died."

"Sleep my child and lay thee down, hear the trouble-free waters..."

The first lullaby Lila sang, Gwen had never heard before.  That just made things worse.  It isn't that she's still hurt by having been killed in some way she could only half-remember; it's not like she feels dead (nor even like she had any idea how that would feel); it's not like she'd been looking forward to waking up in Heaven to-day; it's...

... well, by the third lullaby (one she'd heard half the mothers in Trinnsford singing to their babies), she was humming along, and she'd gotten her thoughts together enough to realize.

"... where am I?"

She twists the corners of her wings.  That's not one of the questions she'd been expecting. 

"... We have names for this place, but most of them wouldn't mean anything to you..."