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the Lamb in Fabulous
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"That is a really good question and I definitely have no idea. Some kind of Fucked-Up Woods magic. It's really old and back in the Fucked-Up Woods it was pretty powerful but it used up most of that helping me escape and cross the Bigger Weirder Ocean so now it's like... I guess you could say tired? And can't do very much. It translated for me with the Pretty People, though, that's how I managed to even slightly talk to them. I thought it might have taught me your language too but it says it's more complicated than that."

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"Oh, I didn't even wonder about how you talked normal."

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"Yeah, my crown says I learned your language by magic somehow and I shouldn't worry about it, but it can't actually explain what happened, so. One more thing to add to the pile of weird confusing things that have happened to me."

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"Your life sounds a lot weirder than mine and mine has gotten pretty weird."

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"My life is so weird. The weirdest life. ...if there's anybody out there with a weirder life I never ever want to meet them."

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"Why wouldn't you even want to meet them?"

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"Because I'm afraid that if I met them it might be in the middle of something terrifying or unpleasant happening to them that would happen to me too since I was there."

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"Oh. Makes sense. You're - not, though, you just garden?"

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"Yeah, I left all my terrifying unpleasant stuff way behind in the Fucked-Up Woods. I guess the whole situation with the Pretty People and the slug monsters is also kind of terrifying and unpleasant but - not in a way that gets on people just because they're near me specifically, I think? The slug monsters and the Pretty People would still be having their situation even if I'd landed somewhere totally different and never ran into them at all."

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"Yeah. I think my family thought it was from being near you because it happened at the same time, but..."

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"I guess that was kinda reasonable of them under the circumstances even though it's not true."

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"Yeah. Sorry."

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"I'm sorry too, I wish I hadn't... made things more complicated for you."

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Awkward shrug.

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Awkward shrug confirmed.

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"So - I don't know where I should set up, even if you do teach me to build a house, all the land is the lord's or whoever's. Maybe if I fly enough I'll find an island like yours."

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"...really? All of it? That's so weird. There's plenty of unclaimed land where I grew up." She shrugs. "This one was all rocks when I got here, but I hammered it down until it was flat enough to build on. If you find another pile of rocks big enough to fit a house, I can help you do the same to that one."

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"I don't know if it's all all of it but that's the way to bet. I'll look around." She smiles, and takes off again. "Bye Iris."

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"Bye, Maria."

Okay. Maybe she has succeeded in making one friend. Possibly. One awkward acquaintance, at minimum.

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Maria doesn't come back that day.

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Pretty reasonable of her. Iris does a lot of gardening, and then goes to bed at night. She has not stopped marveling at the fact that she gets to sleep now.

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Maria doesn't come back for a month.

When she does come back, she has company. The company doesn't seem super cooperative - from the time when Iris notices the approach to when the pair of them make landfall, Maria's companion has once dived out of the rowboat Maria was sustaining by magic and had to be retrieved and the boat re-formed, and once tried to fly away only for Maria to chase her and grab her in the middle of the air - but she seems playful about it, at least, and isn't attacking Maria or yelling or anything.

Maria hauls her onto Iris's island.

"Can you fix her."

The "her" in question who needs fixing is some sort of - swanperson? With the neck and the wings and the feathers, and a sort of beaky shape to her face, though she still has teeth and stuff suggesting she started out monkeyfolk. She's wearing a lot of rubies and silk, which she fixes placidly once she's out of the water.

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".....ohhhhh dear," says Iris. "She—went too far and did the Pretty Person thing? Can she still talk?"

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"She will sometimes but not usually - sometimes I can get her to sing -" Maria sings a line and the swanperson comes in on a harmony, beaming at Maria.

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...they're very cute. Very worrying, but very cute.

"I... might be able to get her to do the same thing that—the Pretty Lamb—did, and then you'd have the person she was before back. Um. Hmm."

She should try asking first. Trying asking first seems like a good place to start. Or, actually—

"Did you already try explaining to her about what the Pretty Lamb did, to bring me back, and asking her to try it?"

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