"Thank you," says Earth. "Does it count if the name I'm usually called is the default used for every single elemental of my type who isn't otherwise named and is also the name of my element? It could be very awkward to conceal it if so."

"I have no idea, no previous examples."

"Are nicknames safe?"

"Yeah. Mine's Promise."

"Right, call me Revelation."

"Given how our local version acts when she has my amulet, I'm not especially worried about telling you mine as a test," says Earth.

"If you want to, and we need the information for some reason, I won't stop you, although then you probably want to avoid being in a room with me and anybody who can get my name or otherwise vassalize me. Uh, how do we know that me and him and this other person and so on are the same... personality or whatever?"

Revelation opens his mouth and gestures at the bar, rethinks what he was about to say, and says, "Informative napkins, but it's possible you shouldn't interact with their source."

"Okay. And you were so concerned because?"

"The bar's name is Bar."

"Are beverages usually a problem?" wonders Earth.

"There are two ways for my kind of magical servitude to happen - learning somebody's real name, or feeding them. The feeding thing is mostly a problem between fairies and mortals - I can go foraging and not worry if somebody has some long lost claim to a tree I pick nuts from or something as long as I'm not actually stealing - but I wouldn't take food from a strange sort of person without being sure."

"Well. Would you like to help us out?" inquires Earth. "If so, I should probably tell you my element, because it's not very likely that you could interact with elementals for long without learning someone's."

"I think I want to know more about what's going on first, but I am generally opposed to the servitude thing and haven't got anywhere with my world's version yet."

"In my world, there are elementals and humans. Elementals have wings and halos, like my vines or his sparks, and are very magically powerful in our own element; magic-using humans have affinities for multiple elements, but can do much less with them than we can. Magic-using humans can also create amulets that bind elementals to obey whoever last touched them. Elementals can't interfere directly at all with our own or others' amulets. Humans consider it unsafe to let any elementals go free, and we're very valuable and useful for doing magic with, so they capture any of us that they find. My friend and I are part of a university collection, and we've been trying to find someone who seems like they might be able to steal and break all the amulets in the collection. But I don't know if it's possible to break an amulet without using my world's magic to do it."

"If I got the name of a human who could do magic, I could make them do it, but I wouldn't want the human to get hurt following my orders."

"If you stole all the amulets and brought the elementals here and explained everything to them first, that might not be much of a problem. Humans think we're unavoidably destructive, but I don't. I would avoid surprising busy elementals with sudden freedom, particularly if they're upset or traumatized, which we frequently are, but I think we have the chance to do a much better job than that."

"The human will probably be upset and traumatized regardless, but I suppose I can put them back afterwards? How does the door work?"

Cam hands her his rundown on the mechanics involved.

"So - where are you, exactly?" she asks the elementals.

"We were just coming back into the building where the university elementals are kept when we're not in use. If I hold the door and someone walks out and goes around front, and deals with the amulet-minder somehow, they could take all the amulets right off their hooks. You might want a bag to put them in so nobody sees you carrying off a double armload of amulets before you get back here."

"Are there none checked out right now?"