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He's moving her to a different court to see if it'll improve her attitude. She's allowed to fly. It's been a long, long time since she was allowed to -
She is only allowed to fly to her destination, not anywhere else. She notices that she is not where she should be, that she cannot progress to where she was told to go, and she careens out of control when her wings won't flap anymore, and she crashes.
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imeanforever
thisvorlunatic
"It's... not exactly that?" he says. "I'm - I might have mentioned I'm a problem-solver by nature. You have problems. I'm not sure how to solve them. But making you aware of all the cool mortal stuff available seems like a better plan than not doing that, for the goal of generally improving your existence, you know? I am also entertaining some hope that if I offer you lots of cool mortal stuff I might get cool magic stuff in return, but, I don't know, I am a bit freaked out by this accidental magical liege lord thing and may be overcompensating."
imeanforever
"I want pretty simple things to start. I want to be safe. I want privacy and my own tree and a way to eat on a regular basis and to be safe. After I'm... more confident of that... we can talk about getting me a planet. But, um, making it look like you really really want cool magic stuff makes me wonder if you want it more than to not so much be my magical liege lord."
thisvorlunatic
"Well - I see your logic," he says. "And I'm not sure what to do about it because most of the things I can think of to say that would be very reassuring to me would probably not be helpful to someone of a less twisty paranoid mindset, and if it were just me on the line I could tell you my name as reciprocal security I guess, but it's not, it's an entire galaxy full of hundreds of billions of other mortals who I would be putting in harm's way if I turned out to be misjudging your intentions badly enough."
thisvorlunatic
"My numbers are inexact, I'm just guessing based on what I do know. One or two hundred inhabited systems with a minimum of one inhabited planet or station each. Planetary populations go from about one to twelve billion and tend high; station populations go from a few thousand to a few million and tend low; planets are commoner than stations. So one or two hundred billion should be about right for the galactic population. And growing, of course. I can look up the actual number at the comconsole if you want it."
He makes a pass over his lovely mountains and turns back toward the lake. (There are some lakes up here, too, and a few mortal villages visible from the air.)
He makes a pass over his lovely mountains and turns back toward the lake. (There are some lakes up here, too, and a few mortal villages visible from the air.)
imeanforever
Promise peers at the villages. "Fairies usually don't live in groups that large."
imeanforever
"Well, sometimes courts get that big, but it's hard to hold that many. You have to be really good at it and accumulate a lot of vassals."
thisvorlunatic
"...oh," he says.
He contemplates this mental picture.
It seems to be a lot to process.
imeanforever
"I met a mortal once before so I know you don't arrange yourselves like that but fairies... pretty much always live alone or in vassal nets of one sort or another."
thisvorlunatic
"Does that turn out as badly as it sounds? Because it sounds like it turns out pretty badly but I only have limited information to go on."
imeanforever
"My master was unusually bad. Many of them are better than that." Shrug. "I may mind being a vassal more than the average vassal, too."
thisvorlunatic
"Sorry. I can stop talking about how upsetting I find the fundamental rules of your existence if you prefer. Well, I can try, anyway."
thisvorlunatic
"Well in that case: the fundamental rules of your existence are really upsetting! The immortality part's not bad, admittedly, but in context it also means that the magical unilateral liege relationships have more staying power. If I had somehow found out ahead of time that I would be meeting a magical immortal fairy and somehow believed this information I would've predicted my reaction was going to be 'immortal, you say? where do I get some of that?', but in fact it's mostly," he lifts one hand from the lightflyer's controls briefly to make an expressive gesture and accompanies it with a somewhat self-consciously dramatized moan of dismay.
thisvorlunatic
"...sorcery continues to be very exciting but still not exciting enough to make up for the existence of vassalization," says Silver. "It's like... I can't think of an analogy." Reflective pause. "I can think of an analogy but I'm not sure you'll understand any of its component parts so it isn't a very communicative analogy."
thisvorlunatic
"I could try."
He sighs and looks out the canopy at his beautiful, beautiful mountains.
"Do fairies have families?"
He sighs and looks out the canopy at his beautiful, beautiful mountains.
"Do fairies have families?"
imeanforever
"Some kinds. ...It is however very different because if you have one or more parents, well, they name you."
thisvorlunatic
"...ugh. So. Mortals have families," he says, glancing at her. "And we don't end up magically envassaled to ours, so we tend to be very fond of them - not invariably, but usually. And mortals, as the term implies, die. And since we don't have magical vassalization influencing our power structures, we have to come up with other ways to organize large groups and then maintain that organization in the face of inevitable turnover, and one of the commonest ways especially early on in the development of human society was for someone to assume rulership of a group and then pass that rulership on to one of their children when they died, and then that heir passes it to their own heir, and so on and so on. I am in line to inherit such a rulership myself."
He looks at the mountains again.
"So I was going to say, 'it's like inheriting the Countship'. Because the Countship I'm going to inherit from my father one day will come with many advantages, some of which are pretty exciting taken out of context, none of which will make it okay."
He looks at the mountains again.
"So I was going to say, 'it's like inheriting the Countship'. Because the Countship I'm going to inherit from my father one day will come with many advantages, some of which are pretty exciting taken out of context, none of which will make it okay."
