pumpkin princess

[imeanforever]

Promise settles in. Her garden grows. Her tree grows; she stores her map and the rest of the notebook in there, first, and after she's been there for seven days, she can fit inside it herself. (At that early stage it's only an improvement over the outdoors when it's raining, but it's her tree. It'll get bigger.) She slowly broadens her diet as she learns the peculiar local plants and which ones she likes. She coaxes her tree into flower, picks one and ensorcels it, wraps cottony fluff from one of her trees in a giant flower petal of the same kind her bag is made of, and she has a pillow. The other flowers turn into haw berries that taste like home. She practices fairylights and then more complicated spells all around her new turf with her map, then without, until she has it memorized by feel and by the response of the magic when she casts.

When she doesn't need to do magic to her plants every single day to get and keep them producing at a rate sufficient to sustain her, she goes to the library and tells them things about the continent she came from in exchange for a half-century's membership. She brings home books. She makes paper to take notes on.

She doesn't have any near neighbors, but she has distant ones, and she trades foreign seeds and candied dewdrops for glass and books. She drinks her stream and writes her thoughts (a lot of her thoughts are about Arcane). She decompresses. She reads and thinks.

Time goes by. It's dark at night; sometimes she watches the stars.

Comments

[imeanforever]

"If you stay away from there until my friend closes the gates you should be fine now," Promise says.

[feel_so_free]

"Good."

[imeanforever]

"May I command you to tell me the truth now to double-check your secret?"

[feel_so_free]

"Okay."

[imeanforever]

"Answer my next question honestly. What is your magic?"

[feel_so_free]

"I don't and can't have a name that works to vassal me with, and anytime someone would become my vassal if I was a normal fairy, instead they stop being able to be anyone's vassal ever, even if they already were they're not anymore and can't be again."

[imeanforever]

"My name's Alisyrrabel," murmurs Promise very softly.

[feel_so_free]

Secret grins at her. "That's a pretty name."

[imeanforever]

"Thanks. But I'd prefer it if you called me Promise anyway. Where are you going to go?"

[feel_so_free]

"I dunno! Somewhere. Around. Turns out being able to do whatever I want doesn't mean I know what that is."

[imeanforever]

"I have room in my tree if you'd like to stay there to start out while you think of something. You're a little tall for the layout but if you duck it should work."

[feel_so_free]

"That sounds nice."

[imeanforever]

Promise takes off and leads the way.

[feel_so_free]

Secret follows. Whee!

[imeanforever]

Promise's tree is pretty far away. When they get there, Promise shows the various amenities to Secret and then writes a letter to the Princess's former court, and asks one of her neighbors if he wouldn't mind dropping it off in exchange for a little sorcerous climate control, and he agrees and takes the letter away. Hopefully it will clarify the situation for all those confused fairies. Promise comes back to her tree to have some dinner and go to bed.

[feel_so_free]

Secret is indeed a little tall for the tree's interior, but she manages. It is a nice tree. The tree is cute. She likes the tree.

[imeanforever]

She is welcome to live in it. Promise is very nice to her and doesn't tell her to do anything except in unenforced suggestion format.

[feel_so_free]

Promise is so nice! Secret likes Promise. Secret volunteers her help with household tasks. She's a really good cook.

[imeanforever]

Cool! Promise doesn't like cooking that much so that's nice.

[feel_so_free]

Secret likes cooking.

[imeanforever]

Then this is convenient. Although Promise does ask if Secret has any plans to find her own place.

[feel_so_free]

"I don't know," she says. "I don't really know how. I haven't ever done anything except be somebody's vassal and live with you."

[imeanforever]

"The thing is, at some point Arcane is going to visit," says Promise. "And he's really smart, and he works for the Queen, and I think he'll know something is up if you're living here then, possibly before I can give him berries and rescind his no doubt very thorough Queenscourt orders."

[feel_so_free]

"Oh," says Secret. "And then what? The Queen tries to steal me I guess."

[imeanforever]

"The Queen tries to neutralize you. You are impossibly dangerous to the Queen and she is much smarter than the mortals who had you before."