"Because... um... I'm guessing but maybe it's because it's a lot of work to find the best person and then you wouldn't get to keep them very long, so instead you try lots of people and maybe they can all learn from each other and if one of them is not very good at least they aren't there forever?"
"From what I recall of the relevant books I've read, there were a handful of very bad kings and queens in the relevant countries, and the people got fed up and kicked them out and decided that they were going to decide who was going to be in charge next, and picked a method as far from the old one as possible because the old one had failed so badly."
"Well, if you were a democracy here then if people wanted spaceships they could try to get rulers who'd cooperate right."
Mehitabel continues peppering the fairy with a variety of questions while riding around his unicorn and taking pictures. Eventually, though, it is bedtime, and she gets off the unicorn and they go back to the tent to camp.
Even though there are two mattresses, Anaphiel doesn't sleep. She pretends to--she lies down and closes her eyes and breathes the even breath of the unconscious--but they are in an unfamiliar location and not for example an actual campground where someone would be liable if anything happened to them, and she doesn't need to sleep, so she keeps her divine senses focused on their surroundings through the night.
In the morning: "What other things are good to see in Fairyland?"
"Is there anything in particular that you wanted to know that Scalz didn't have a good enough answer for yesterday?"
"I'm kinda curious if I can get a noble to talk to me without having to tell them I'm a Christ child."
"...Well, given that the odds of anyone in Fairyland finding out that I've been spending the past decade and change hanging out as a small-town librarian instead of doing the kinds of things angels usually do on Earth is somewhere between slim and slimmer, I could admit to being an angel and claim you as a human fosterling I picked up somewhere without bringing your true nature into it."
"In that case, it would have to be one of the ones who already knows for sure, if we don't want to have to deal with the tedium of someone having their first Close Encounter of the Third Kind."
"Oh, it's a classification system usually referring to aliens. Hypothetical aliens. A close encounter of the first kind is an alleged UFO sighting, a close encounter of the second kind is an alleged physical effect like a crop circle, and a close encounter of the third kind is alleged contact. I'm not an alien, but the principle holds."
"I'm not an extraterrestrial." Beat. "I'm not from any planet that isn't Earth, anyway."