Her kidnappers are not immediately apparent. It's the dead of night. She's standing on a large black stretch of asphalt, bordered with chain-link fence, with white lines evenly spaced on the ground. In the distance a glowing sign reads Costco. 

Why does she speak this language! Why is it night! What is this flat black rock and why did they paint it like that?

Glowing is... probably expensive even for... fairies?... and therefore actively being maintained. Some set of people are supposed to go find that sign. And she has absolutely no better ideas, so she goes to see if she is one of the people who are supposed to go there.

Costco isn't open at night but it has a night shift, shelving and unloading. Just inside the door a man is mopping, and whistling to himself.

Isn't open? Despite expending... some kind of magic fairy resources other than firewood... on the light?

"Excuse me," she says to the person mopping, "can you tell me where I am?"

"Yes," he says. "You're at Costco, but we're closed, and I expect this is going to be an unpleasant interaction where you try to convince me you should get to buy just one thing."

"No, it's going to be an unpleasant interaction where I ask if you know who mysteriously kidnapped and then abandoned me here or where someone who has been mysteriously kidnapped and then abandoned should go next."

"- mysteriously kidnapped you! I don't have any very good guesses of why they'd have kidnapped you, maybe for sex? I have a vague impression that random stranger kidnappings are usually sexual perverts, or serial killers, and you're not dead. I don't have a good guess why they abandoned you either. I'd think someone mysteriously kidnapped and abandoned should report that to the police, because it's a crime."

"Thank you. Where can I find the police?"

"Well, at the police station. I think the nearest one is at City Hall, so 14th and Peralta."

"I don't know where 14th and Peralta are, can you point me in the right direction?"

"Yes." He points. "Seems like a dangerous thing to do, walk to the police station in the dark, but I guess there probably aren't two abductors running around and we already know the one didn't want you."

"Well, the Costco is closed and I have no compelling reason to believe it'd improve the situation to ask a random person I've never met before to walk with me."

"Well I certainly won't walk with you, but I would call the police if you asked!"

"Oh. Yes, I would appreciate it if you did that." How? Well, she'll find out from watching in a moment.

He pulls something out of his pocket - small, black, glass - and pokes intently at the surface. Then he holds it up to his ear. 

"Jimenez! I'm going to write you up for being on your phone when you're not on break!" someone yells from across the warehouse. 

"You bitch!" he shouts back. "This here is a kidnapping and abandonment victim and I'm calling the police for her!"

"You can do that on break! Or you can do it now but if you do it now I'll write you up, because that's what I said I'd do and I can't back down without losing face!"

"Well fine, but if you get kidnapped and abandoned I won't call any cops for you! And you probably won't, because you're old and fat and they're probably sexual deviant kidnappers!"

He puts the phone back in his pocket. "I can take my break in twenty, so you'll just have to wait around until then."

Who just gives up and admits they can't do what they want without losing face, to the person they're having the argument with? What kind of conversational norms produce behavior like that?

"I can wait for a while. Is that person, uh... normally like that?"

"Jala? Yeah, everyone fucking hates her except Senna, who has very low standards, and Caleb, who has a thing for her. She's a bitch about breaks and a bitch about phone use and when I missed my shift because my sister went into labor and I had to drive her to the hospital, she threatened to fire me."

"That sounds infuriating." Why is he allowed to say all this about her? If it's true, she's a controlling asshole and a bad boss, and then why not fire anyone who complains like this? And if it's false, then, uh, why is he allowed to make his boss look bad by spreading lies about her?

"Anyway, I can take my break in twenty minutes, though I was kind of hoping to take it later so I could dodge unloading the electronics when the trucks come in. Still, I've never met a kidnapping victim before, and I'd feel terrible if the kidnappers kidnapped someone else while we were waiting to call the cops, so I'll take the break in twenty."

"Electronics?"

"'cause they're heavy and fragile so we get yelled at if we drop them or jostle them too much on the forklifts."

Right, well, that doesn't tell her what electronics are at all, but she was kind of only asking because wondering about the impenetrable conversational norms was getting too upsetting to be a good distraction from how everyone is going to believe she was raped and she'll have to deal with their opinions about it. And now she's thinking about that and should maybe not be hanging around in public having a conversation about it.

"That sounds stressful," she says mostly on autopilot. "...Um. Is there a... place I should wait, or anything?"

"I don't care. Honestly I don't care if you grab yourself a snack out of grocery, though Jala will threaten to call the cops if she sees - I guess that's one way to get them here sooner."

Is that a test? That's a fucked up test. "I'm not a thief, and even if I were slightly inclined to do anything of the sort, I'm hardly desperate for one snack."

He shrugs. "I guess might be awkward to steal something right before you talk to the police." 

Mop mop mop.