"Yeah, although I'll eventually get too tired and slash or hungry."

"We can stop and I can feed you something when you need it."

"Okay. Thank you. But for now I can keep up."

And he can stare a little more at the order magic—even if she's invisible that's just obviously there—with the knowledge that feeding plays into it to figure out more details.

Flying flying flying flying. "Do you have a nickname."

"...no. I should come up with one. What's yours?"

"Promise."

"I'll be..." He thinks about it for a couple of seconds. "Explorer."

"Okay. I can make gates. And I can feed you safely, so you won't starve before then."

"Thank you. Are gates only one way? Or do they disappear? The one I went through wasn't there anymore when I ended up here."

"That's a tear, not a gate. I'll have to close the gate for you."

"Oh. Okay."

Follow follow.

"He didn't have you long, did he -"

"I arrived yesterday—I—" Pause. Consider. She's already seen his magic, and it's not like the knowledge itself will change much if she can't order him and Thorn already knows all about it—" I'm not from the mortal world you're used to, and we have a kind of magic you're unfamiliar with, and I have a particularly versatile brand of it so I used it to make myself forget I had it for twenty-four hours and when I remembered—that's when I contacted you."

"...clever."

"Thank you. But I only forgot I personally had the magic—I also made it so I'd subconsciously ignore the constant feedback this magic gives me, I can see magic everywhere, I can even see you even though you're invisible—it hadn't occurred to me that I should forget the fact that magic existed at all and I handed him the best plan I could think of to obtain more magic from my world."

"- what did you tell him to do -"

"The gist of it was obtain a metamancer—it's the kind of mage I am—and then obtain other kinds of mages to serve as mana batteries—metamancers can use any kind of magic but can't generate our own. We're also reviled and practising metamancy is heresy so it won't be easy to find one, at least, the easiest way would've been to get the names of people who might know where repentant metamancers are but I never got around to giving him those names."

"- okay. He probably has people besides me who can make gates - did you describe any locations in geographical detail -"

"No, you need that for gates?"

"To aim them."

"Oh. That's—an extreme relief, then."

"Did you have any drawings or writing with you that might have included geographical representations or descriptions -"

"I had books, they were mostly historical, but—yeah."

Sigh.

"—is the other mortal world controlled by fairies?"