She is in a woods, and it smells like salt such that she might be near the sea. It's afternoon and hot and there are chirping birds.

The heat sinks into her wool and sticks there; she groans blearily, trying to remember how to sit up. "Hbblll. Blech. Oourrgh." Come on, self, say a syllable. You can do it. Any syllable. "Fuck." That's a syllable. Good job.

Very slowly, she gathers her wits and her strength until she can manage to pick her face up off the forest floor and roll onto her back. A little later, she manages to haul herself to her feet with the help of a nearby tree.

As alien and uncomfortable as these woods are, there's something about them that feels... light. Welcoming. Beautiful. Like she's okay. Like she's safe. Like she's free.

For lack of a better direction, she heads toward the smell of salt. Her crown flows helpfully into her hand as a walking-stick.

The beach is empty of people, though there are seagulls, and hermit crabs, and things like that. It is brilliantly sunny and the ocean hurts to look at in the light. There are waves gently slopping themselves onto the sand and then receding.

Then all that is gone and it's just stars stars stars stars everywhere, and the lamb herself, as though looking in a mirror made of stars -

- The beach isn't gone actually. She can still smell it. She can hear the waves and the gulls. There's dirt under her feet even though her eyes tell her that those feet are planted on nothingness in the sea of stars. It's just that she has gone beachblind.

???????

Concern! Alarm! Confusion!!

Her crown assures her hastily that it is Looking Into This, and then turns its attention toward whatever strange thing has happened to its person. Where is this phenomenon anchored? In the body, the soul, the mind? What is its nature and where did it come from?

Oh, it's over there. In the place wherefrom one can see these stars for real.

And what is there, in that place, that does this? The crown Inspects.

It is a planet! A planet of chaotically manicured beauty, with people on it, no two of whom look alike, singing and dancing and playing and building and arting and having a cold war.

Where is the part that is connected to its Person by means of This Nonsense?

Definitely the cold war part. A small group of the strange and beautiful people have managed to get their foes to agree to conduct the war only by proxy: they have both lain effects on this other planet, the one the Lamb is on, which will duke it out without endangering the primary combatants. The Lamb is being invited to join the fight on the side of Beauty. Or just to be beautiful and not necessarily fight, they don't do conscription.

The crown inspects this situation further. It is far too tired to haul its Lamb across this vast distance without the scaffolding of a stone circle, but inspecting is definitely a thing it can do.

The stars, then, are a power of war? What do they grant? How do they function?

The stars are actually just there to be decorative in what the Beautiful People assume is a universal language. The real power is the power to become beautiful, and if you go hard enough on it you can have bonus magical powers too!

The crown is having some real trouble accessing and interpreting this 'beauty' concept, and its Lamb is too confused and alarmed to be much help in the matter. It may be time to try something truly drastic.

It cobbles together a cheap translation solution out of bits of this and that, and tries to find a location as close as possible to the far end of the starscape's trail where it will not be interrupting anything too grievously if it attempts to communicate, and then in that place there appear mysteriously comprehensible sigils of black flame, inquiring, approximately: what is it to be Beautiful?

The beautiful people do not really know how to answer that except by example! Here, look, all of these things are beautiful - all of them are beautiful - if the Lamb becomes beautiful this will give her more magic -

It dutifully stores away all of this information as best it can. Probably the Lamb will be able to help with interpretation once she is less generally confused. In the meantime, it has more questions:

with What do you War?

for what Reason the War?

They war with That Stuff Over There. It's all the same and it wants everything else to also all be the same, it's awful and ugly and they hate it, but they were just BARELY able to communicate enough that they could propose doing the proxy war thing. That way all their beautiful things and selves are not at risk directly, unless they lose, which is possible, but they'll at least buy time.

Okay its next question is going to be pretty tricky to get across. It tries to think of how to say it.

my question now is difficult and will take many sayings

for what Reason the Beauty?
what is the Ritual of the Beauty?
of the Magic of beauty what is the Means?

Beauty is its own purpose, really, but some fringe benefits include being enjoyably at home in one's own self, the efficiency of elegance and the safe-coziness of profligacy, the depth of interpersonal connection only achievable by conversing in and blending unique aesthetics - they think that the people on the proxy-war planet will agree with them if presented the dichotomy, and volunteer to help, so possibly if the... thing talking to them now... has an easier time talking to those people they will be able to explain.

They set up a thing so that the magic will show up helpfully for anyone who is autoselected as compatible (they have a proxy war cap on how much stuff they can do, so they use this system to narrow it down) and agrees that it is beautiful to change and be special and beautiful!

I clarify that I am not good at talking
very much possible that I am still more good at talking than no talking at all
but I am not a thing of talking. the talking is not what I am for

At this time it shall take a brief pause (though still listening for responses) to confer with its associate.

The stars are what. And she's expected to what. And it's all because of what???????

Her crown thinks that it has as many as several ideas for ways in which she could look interestingly different, although it admits it is having some real trouble parsing the definition of beauty and it might end up making suggestions that are not well-optimized. Here are some examples of things the aliens thought were beautiful, in case that helps the Lamb understand better so she can have design input.

...it's possible that she might have a notion or two and they could perhaps productively collaborate but before any of that she wants it to ask the aliens what kind of magic powers she's up for, please. If the magic powers suck she is not going to turn into anything weird for them.

It dutifully conveys: of the magic of beauty what is the Use? what is the Effect? what is the Nature?

It's all different kinds! Some of it is just for fighting, going plink plink against the Hideous Enemy, but not all or even most of it. Their automatic system tries to match people to powers they will like but they don't expect to be amazing at that. They can't actually query the system from here to see what any specific person will get, it has to run autonomously to abide by the terms of the proxy war agreement. The possible numbers of magics per person are One and Three. Those numbers are beautiful. It is possible to linger at Two, as Two is also beautiful. Actually, most numbers are beautiful, except for the square root of two.

In that case, it seems, the best way for the Lamb to find out about the magic is probably just to try it and see. Though at least her crown is here with its deep connection to and understanding of her on all levels of her being, to swiftly interpret the results.

Its suggestions to its bearer are as follows: she could be just a little taller, her face just a little sharper, horns just a little longer, and her red cape could be redesigned like so and like so, and it could assist in this endeavour by sizing and styling itself appropriately and also by providing decorative red-and-black ghostly flames. This is its tentative as-few-changes-as-possible plan, because it expects that is where she'll want to start.