... wait, doesn't Gwen's world have a sometimes-open worldgate in it?  if so, that'd help her understand...

Lila makes a magic sign with her fingers, looks over Gwen's shoulder, and sees a page flutter into existence with the answer:  Yes; among her people it is called the "Gates of Night."

Oh good.

"... You've heard of the Gates of Night?  You could perhaps call this this the Gate-house of Many Nights."

Yes, she's heard of them.  She never really thought about what was on the other side, where the Fay had (in long ages past) come from, but it at least matches something.

The terrible gnawing lostness and loneliness starts to fade a bit.

"Oh.  So... we're still... next to the worlds?  Even if I'm not in any of them?"

Lila nods.  "And we'll be sending you into one of the worlds soon, into a new story."

That feels like a rock holding her down against the wind of... dark cold night.

But this Lila... or at least her lord... has a plan, she's sure.

So she repeats a line she'd never heard outside people's tales of other shires, or the old time before the Revolt:  "What does your lord want of me?"

"Nothing demanding!  Unless you're very demanding about the genre of story you'll be in."

"Oh?" she asks skeptically.  "So what if I decide Mother's right after all and I need to raise another Revolt?"

Lila throws back her head and wings and laughs.

"I'd love to see you try!  I don't think he'd mind if you tried - he might be amused too! - but I really don't think you'd get anywhere.  Nor that you'd really want to raise a revolt, given what you were hoping to do with yourself before you got killed."

"Maybe getting killed by a conspiracy of all the nobles in every other shire, just like Mother kept saying they'd try to do, changed my mind."

"Did it?"

She's pretty sure it didn't.  But even if Gwen is a radical now, she wouldn't mind.

"I guess you'll need to wait and see."

She won't let Lila play her again.

"So what does your lord want of me?  And - is there some other way to talk about him, by the way?"

"What he wants of you is - he wants to create stories.  To design worlds to create stories, around the stories he wants to build!"

"He can do that!?"

Lila gives one sweeping nod.

"And for you, he wants to put you in to subvert another sort of story where you're in the place of someone who would've been the villainess."

Gwennyth frowns.  "Like... like the nobles all called Grandpa Kosvin a villain in the Revolt?"

(That brings back some unpleasant thoughts of her death... but she shakes her head.  Now she's farther away from home, and Mother, than she'd ever dreamed of getting!)

"If you want.  Or she might've been another sort of villain.  You get to choose."

"More specifically... I was talking earlier about how there're many worlds.  And in some of the many worlds, there's a genre of story around romantic rivalries, and sometimes adventures.  My lord will set up a world as if it's one of those... except, he'll let you design many of the details as long as they stay within the bounds he's set on the story.

"And then, he'll have you be reborn into that world to grow up as the person who would've been the villain in that story... with the wheels of Fate conspiring to get you into the story."

"Fate," Gwen snaps.

She'd never liked that word.  Nobody in her family had, except maybe her big sister Emma.  Fate, after all, would've doomed the whole Revolt... but hadn't it won?  Or now, wouldn't Fate have been set to doom Gwen to a life building out her mother's dreams?

"You can end most of the Fate, if you want."

"Tell me about it," she snaps.

"... Tell me about the whole world, in fact.  What can I do with it?  Just how much of it can I design?  And just how much can I spell out about where you're going to put me in it?"

Oh, the hair is metonymy for personality?  All right.  Red hair (she pauses a bit about silver's creativity, but goes in the end for the powerful emotions), with hime cut (she doesn't want to be a standard villainess, and doesn't want her hair impractical).

Being an Elf sounds fun... but when she's about to say it, it just feels too much like "make me exactly the sort of noble who thinks she's better than all the commoners and mistreats them so they all know she thinks that."

So, no, not an Elf.  There'll be no Elves at all in Villarosa.  Everyone's equally a Human.

... and what?  No, the same standard sort of Human body she's had all her life.

The same "technology level" as her own world, but the one with less of the misery and inconvenience, of course.  And yes, absolutely weave powerful useful magic into the beat of everyday life.

In fact... does the powerful useful magic have to be with gems and plants like in her old world?  Or can she design how it works?