And then she is somewhere else.

Specifically she is standing on the second-tallest tower of a stunningly beautiful castle, overlooking a stunningly beautiful lake, with a view down a partly forested rocky mountainside to a city that is not nearly so stunningly beautiful but is still worth a second glance at this distance.

The castle seems at first glance deserted, or very close to it, but also very well-maintained. The lake has some pretty white birds on it.

- the birds have minds. The birds are not especially happy people.

There is a person in the castle who is reading a book of poetry in a completely unfamiliar language.

And there is a person outside the castle who is circling around it as a gust of wind, enjoying the sensation of flight.

Well sucks to be swans this is pretty. Way better results than you normally expect from walking into a snake. Weird that a Maia isn't keeping private thoughts. She piggybacks on the flying for a moment, stares at the view for more moments, then goes looking for a way down the tower.

The - Maia? - notices her.

He flies down and materializes on the tower, next to the door that seems likely to lead to a set of stairs leading down.

"Who the fuck're you and what are you doing on my mountain? - with the ugliest baby I've ever seen?"

I'm an orf and this is my baby and I got here by weird magic I don't understand.

- uh, speaking of weird incomprehensible magic, she's talking in his mind?

...fine.

"I don't know what an orf is so I'm not really sure that answers my question."

The baby is an orc, and my parents were Elves, and I'm in between. There's only one orf right now and that's me.

"...okay. Were you trying to go somewhere in particular and just landed in my castle by accident, or...?"

I wanted to be not where I was, and I had a plan but it was pretty stupid, and then this thingy showed up and ate people but it didn't seem to be swallowing them or hurting them, so I let it eat me. I am pretty pleased with the results it is so pretty here!

- aw. He likes her being pleased. She does a good being pleased.

"You probably could've landed in safer places but I'm not sure you could've managed a prettier one, not on this planet anyway. I'm glad you like it."

It's so pretty! Nothing is pretty where I'm from except, like, my art, and I had to argue with the tattoo guy a lot to get him to do pretty things. Anyway it's not safe there either.

"Your art?"

Art! She manages to pull off her shirt without having to put down the baby. She shows off the circles of various sizes cascading down her shoulder, big ones up high and little ones farther down. She turns and tosses the longer bits of her hacked-uneven hair so he can see the wheat-topped whip marks.

That's some pretty good art. That might be the best art he has in fact ever seen. Wow. Art.

"I like your art."

I have lots! She takes off the rest of her outfit too. She is a little flirty about it but not in a way that makes it seem like nudity is inherently flirtatious. Scrollwork on her hip swirling around wickedly deep puncture marks! Flowers that might be covering a previously very broken ankle! Abstract swirl up her leg incorporating a nasty but oddly neat burn!

Nudity sure is inherently flirtatious in this probably-not-a-Maia's home culture.

"Impressive." And really fucking hot. "How'd you end up with all those?"

Whenever something happened to me that seemed like it was gonna stick around I went to my tattoo guy and got him to pretty it up!

"Those sound like stories I want to hear." Oh does he ever.

Gosh. Well, one time I got in a Balrog's way, Balrogs're a kind of Maia that looks like this, terrifying fuckoff fire monster image, and being in one's way is a real bad plan and it grabbed me round the leg with its fire whip thing and flung me down four flights of stairs, that's where the leg one came from. It shined hot for weeks before I could let my tattoo guy color it in and put in neighbor stripes. The ankle one was one of the times the baby's daddy was working me over real bad, he liked to try to make me say stuff I didn't wanna say, I barely remember a thing about it I spaced out so bad, I fixed most of it with magic but my ankle I could just barely make bend right again, there were bone splinters everywhere, so tattoo guy turned 'em into stamens and did petals... I've never seen a real flower, just telepathy about 'em.

He thinks of the prettiest flower he can remember seeing, an indigo-edged white one whose name he forgets if he ever knew it, and he tugs on his conjuration spell and the flower materializes in his hand. He gives it to her. There isn't really a clear reason behind the impulse, except that it seems like it might make her happy and she does such a good happy.

Oh it's so pretty oh wow it's real - She smells it and stares at it delightedly and then tucks it into one of the shrimpy braids the longer bits of her hair allow.

Well that was every bit as delightful as he expected. He beams at her.

"You're lovely," he says. "You should get to have flowers."

A gentle rain of rose petals, silver like her hair, materializes in the air around them and swirls on a magically directed breeze. Doing unstructured magic to make the air move just so is a rush - picking a bit of power out of the vast torrent available to him and spinning it up so it does exactly the thing he wants and nothing else, balancing the wild chaotic magic with an effortless ease so well-practiced he barely thinks about it.

She bounces, and catches one and pets it with the hand that isn't holding the baby.

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww she is so precious can he keep her. He thinks he would like to keep her. He thinks he would like to keep her for much longer than he keeps his swans, and much more nicely. She does such a good happiness.