She does not, technically, have nothing more to lose just yet. Still, she's straying rather closer to it than she'd like, and she will absolutely not stand for it. She would like to leave. Actually, Evette would run off into the night if she thought she could pull it off. Realistically, she can't, not successfully. She hasn't had the preparation time. If she takes time to prepare, then her asshole ex-boyfriend-who-is-somehow-very-confused-about-the-ex-part will also have time to prepare, and when he's the bastard son of the lord of this land she would really not like to see how that'll go.

Especially not after, uh, the past couple of hours. Apparently she has shit taste. Who knew. She hadn't thought he'd be the sort to respond to a breakup with a bloody marriage proposal, nor the sort to respond to a refusal of that inane question with, with—how he decided to respond to that. Evette is having a bit of trouble comprehending what very nearly just happened back there, her mind is skipping over it like a stone over water, but she does not particularly want to see how he'll respond to that broken nose she gave him. He did not respond well to her much more reasonable actions earlier, and while she very much thinks he absolutely deserved that broken nose, he's likely to think otherwise. And he's the one with the lord for a father, so. Best to have some kind of leverage that he's not expecting.

Thus, the fairy ring. This is incredibly dumb, but, look, apparently a lot of the decisions she'd thought were smart, or at least reasonable, turned out to be really dumb, so clearly she needs to broaden her horizons of possible actions, here. She has a basket of herbs, the knowledge of how to use them, and the firm belief that even fairies need practical herbs for things. Maybe nothing will happen, maybe the stories will be wrong after all, and it's all just made up nonsense spread by bored fishwives. But she learned most of what she knows of real use in the world from such fishwife based stories. Sure, sometimes they need some direct and methodical testing, but she's seen (and cataloged, and leveraged, and built her livelihood around) the truth in them.

Evette Lyon sucks in a breath through clenched teeth, steadies the shaking in her hands, and steps deliberately into the fairy ring.

Okay, fairies, what have you got for her, because the wonders of humanity are not filling her with warm fuzzies and delight.

What the fairies have right now is a cool breeze sending shivers down her spine. And have the noises around her gone a bit quieter? It's probably just her imagination. Or just a coincidence.

This is dumb, this is dumb, this is so dumb. This is dumb if she's right and if she's wrong, why is she doing this, this is awful, the waiting is the worst, she'd have tried something else first if she'd known that the fairy ring would involve waiting.

She stays in the fairy ring anyway. She does not say the sentence she's thinking out loud, because she's not actually an idiot. Still, she can think it in perfect safety. 'If the almighty fae would just hurry it the fuck up I'd be very grateful,' would be a very bad thing to say, because those kinds of open ended offers are not the sorts of thing that the clever people who got out of the fairy tales better off would have said. Evette would kind of like to channel the essence of clever fairy tale protagonist who gets what she wants. So she stays silent, and she waits.

It's definitely not her imagination, now. Could be just a coincidence, but the cool breeze has turned into stillness, and even the leaves around her seem to feel it, unnaturally still as if they're holding their breaths.

It takes a few more minutes until she hears a voice: "You're one of the fun ones, aren't you."

It's coming from... below?

She jumps a little, and then looks down towards the voice.

"I make no claims for or against my level of fun," she says promptly, in a business-like tone. Aaa! Aaa! It's working! It's working!!!

"Hello," she adds, cautiously, because it's always a good idea to have manners in these sorts of situations, at least according to the tales.

And there, sitting on a flower, is...

...a very small man. He'd fit in her hand, probably, and given how he's barely bending the flower he's also probably very light. It's hard to make out his expression from this distance but it looks like he's beaming. And also maybe like his ears are pointy.

Also, he's wearing nothing but a loincloth that seems to be woven out of leaves.

"I guess there have ever been visitors who waited and who turned out to be boring. Or maybe I am just too impatient to wait the proper amount of time to figure out if you are one of the fun ones."

"I'm glad, if I'd waited much longer I'd have started fidgeting, which would have been quite irritating. Especially for my hems, the poor things." That's not one of the clever fairy tale protagonist things that she should say, whoops. Instead she should say:

"I'd like to do you a favor."

"Okay that is definitely a thing only a fun one would say," he replies, grinning even more widely. "What's your name?"

She raises her eyebrows at him. "What's yours?" she asks, syrupy sweet.

"You pass the test!" he says, and laughs. "What favour do you want to do me?"

Okay this terrifying and somewhat exhilarating conversation is made more annoying by how he's, like, a handspan tall, and she's standing above him. She carefully sets her basket of weaponry (or, well, herbs) down on the ground, and then gingerly sits beside it so she can speak to him at a more reasonable level.

"I," she says delicately, "am an herbalist. I would like to offer you the knowledge of what these herbs might be used for, and then your pick of one to keep."

"And what," says the fae, hopping down from the flower, "makes you think I want that?" he asks, his voice getting muffled and more distant as he quickly hops away from her without turning around to look where he's going or taking his eyes off her.

"Because they're practical. If there's anything I've learned from tales of fairies at all it's that while you all have quite a lot of impressive magic and fancy boons and whatnot, you do not have, say, a concoction capable of inducing sleep, or something to cause you to vomit something you'd eaten unwisely."

"You shouldn't trust all stories," he says, now just near a tree.

Then he steps behind the tree.

And when he steps out on the other side, he's no longer tiny. He is very, very much no longer tiny.

...or maybe he is. Was that tree so green before? And did its leaves resemble petals so much oh darn no actually she's tiny, now.

Eep.

Still, it wouldn't do to squirm just because... this is happening. Fairies deal in misdirection and manipulation, if she jumps she's giving him what he wants. She stays in her seat, placidly looking up at him. If he were going to hurt her, standing wouldn't help her at all; it's the things she says and what she agrees to that are dangerous.

"I don't. If there's nothing of all that you'd like of me from this basket after I've explained all things the contents might do, you are free to turn me away, no favor given or taken."

"Oh, but you see, you came here. That's an invitation. You can't just leave." He walks towards her again and sits on the ground cross-legged in front of her—at that size he's taller than her by almost a head.

Aaaaaaaaaa.

"I'm not planning to. You wouldn't allow my departure, just to know if the flowers in my basket do anything at all? Or just what sorts of things each and every one might do? You're not," her lips twitch in something like a smile, "just a little bit curious about the fun little human that made an invitation?"

"Oh, about the human I am," he readily says, leaning forward and staring into her eyes. "You're running away," he continues, a statement and not a question. "You could run away with me."

She supposes that was fairly obvious, wasn't it, she tries not to let his correct supposition unsettle her. It kind of does anyway.

"And why would I do that?"

"Because you have nowhere else to go," he says, again not as a question. "Because you are curious about the attractive fey creature who didn't want your herbs. Because you've heard enough stories to know that the visitors who are smart and who stay a while, those are the ones who get the greatest gifts. If they please."

"Yes," she agrees, because, well, he's right, and he is very pretty, and distractingly not wearing anything but a leaf loincloth, and he has pretty eyes and she is not going to be distracted right now, thank you, "but didn't you tell me not to trust all stories?"

"Well, that part of the stories is right."

And she knows he cannot lie.

"Neat. If I wanted to be under the power of a mysterious and pretty man, then I do not need a fairy circle for that." That came out a bit snappier than she'd intended, he's clearly succeeding at unsettling her. Or, well, she supposes she was already quite unsettled.

He raises both eyebrows. "Was he actually mysterious, or were you just surprised?"

"He was mysterious, thank you, and then once I figured out the mystery I didn't like very much what I found, will you give me a straight answer on the herb front or not, or do you want something else to let me leave?"

He tilts his head. "Let you?"

"I do not know by what mechanism things are set square for the invitation and I'd be able to leave, what counts and what doesn't count. If nerdy herb knowledge doesn't count, what would?"

"—ah. There is not any... specific thing." He pauses, clearly trying to think about how to phrase something. "It needs to have been... worth the while? Of whoever accepted the invitation. Me, in this case. And I cannot trick the fairy ring any more than you can."

"Oh. That's... much less alarming, actually, I was worried it was stricter than that."

"Stricter how?"

"'Worth your while' is simpler than... I don't know, needing to give you something you didn't already have, or something precious to me. My firstborn or something, maybe."

"Well, not just for stepping into a fairy ring, no."

"Right. Only if I do something stupid, like ask for a boon without trying to figure out how to pay you first. Do questions and exchanges of knowledge not count as possible payment?"

"Not ordinary ones."

"So I can actually just go, 'Hey, how does this work, what do you want, what sorts of things would actually be helpful for a fairy.' Okay." She considers this, then smiles brilliantly at him. "Hi! How does this work, what do you want, and what sorts of things would be helpful for you?"

He laughs. "Isn't the guessing game part of the fun? Come, now, just coming over and making a deal like that, that's so transactional."

She snorts, amused. "You have clearly never worked in any kind of business, transactions can be quite fun to negotiate, if both parties are dealing in good faith."

"Good faith? What stories have you been told?" he asks, with a mischievous grin.

"Inconsistent ones! It's been very frustrating, actually."

"Or maybe it's just because the fae are inconsistent."

"Then I suppose that means the fae are very frustrating, doesn't it, aren't you glad I blamed the stories instead of your pedigree."

"I think my pedigree," he says, standing up and streeeeetching—that loincloth is not actually long enough for this movement to be anywhere near decent—"is doing just fine."

That earns an actual laugh out of her, and a faint coloring in her cheeks as she looks away.

"Suit yourself. Still trying to convince me to run away with you, I see."

"Just for one night, why not? By the light of the moon I'm sure your worries can fall away." He offers a hand.

"Sure they will. For that one night. And then that can lead to a surprise nine months later, sir, or other surprises I might not welcome, so no thank you."

"Nine months? Am I so charming that you expect to be tempted into having a child by me?"

"No, but it was the first example to come to mind of unintended consequences."

"...humans can have unintended children?"

"... Yes. There are, uh, certain acts that lead to children that they can avoid, but. Yes. One of the things humans most often come to me about is unintended or unwanted pregnancy."

"Well, sex with me won't cause any children by itself," he says, shrugging. "And sex is not the thing I have in mind for a night with you."

She tilts her head. "Oh? And what do you have in mind?"

"I will show you the inside of a tree. We will dance with the rabbits and ride the deer, and we will climb above the canopy and chase fireflies. We will burrow under a rock and find crystals to feed the rock hounds and we will sail on the back of a leaf and do battle against salmon. And we will dance again under the moonlight and hear the stories told by the stars. If you come with me."

"Well that all sounds very charming and whimsical, but, uh. Why. What would that get you..?"

Shrug. "Novelty. Adventure. Excitement. Fun."

"You can't go chasing fireflies and doing battle with salmon without a mortal along? Or do you just think me so charming that you'd like to bring me on an adventure?"

"Yes."

She snorts. "I suppose that's what I get for asking two questions at the same time, isn't it, silly me."

The answer to that is a smile and an offered hand, again.

Evette looks up at him, amused. Then she shakes her head.

"No, thank you. I'm still here to try to figure out how to go back to my old life safely, not... leave it entirely for something I don't know. Even for just a night."

"What if I vow to return you safely to your old life in the morning, better off than you are now?"

"... Maybe. Depending on how 'better' is defined and whether or not it'd be anything I'd regret."

Wide grin, followed by a serious expression. "Then I do promise this. Come with me," he says, and it's the third time he says it, and that has a certain weight to it, a thrumming of the air that she can feel down to her bones. "At the end of the night, I will return you to this fairy ring, and you will be able to return to your old life, safe and sound, if you so desire. You will not regret having thus spent the night, and I will grant you a boon," and that word, too, has weight, "for the favour of accompanying me tonight. Your boon will be useful to you, whatever it turns out to be. I do not promise you you will not be harmed tonight, nor that there will not be any danger. But I do vow to see you here tomorrow morning, in full health and better off than you are now, by your own reckoning." He extends his hand a final time. "Will you accept this?"

Oh, she's in trouble. She's in so much trouble. This is much more tempting that it really has any right to be. It would be much smarter to just decline, work out a deal simpler and less risky, with payments that both sides could properly quantify on more than just promises. Maybe she could just resist. Maybe, if she hadn't been chafing for years in a society that has trouble seeing her value in anything but a dutiful wife and broodmare, maybe if she didn't just have a fantasy ripped away from her by the harshness of reality, maybe if he wasn't so damn charming...

Evette looks up at him with wide, longing eyes. The deal doesn't protect her from harm or danger, just imprisonment and regret, but that's... fair, fairer than most everything that's been offered to her by humanity.

".... All right," she whispers, gingerly reaching out to accept the offered hand. "I will."

He clasps her hand and grins, wider than the moon and with a joy almost childish in its purity. "I knew you were one of the fun ones."

The weight is gone, the thrumming is gone, the silence is gone, but the forest isn't quite back to what it was before. It has a certain new quality that it previously lacked. It's like the shadows can hide more things, and the patches of light reveal more details than they did before. Everything seems... more, somehow.

"Oh, come on, wasn't I at least fun before I recklessly agreed to accompany you for the night?" she teases, carefully standing. Her voice is surprisingly even, but the rest of her is all... nervous and fluttery and filled with aaaaa that was very crazy aaaa.

"Oh you were fun, but now I know for sure you're one of the fun ones."

"I'm not sure how that's meaningfully different."

"You'll see," he says, slowly letting go of her hand by pulling his and sliding the tip of his index finger along her palm.

She snorts. "I suppose I will. So, adventure? Does the proposed adventure opportunities have to have quite so much dancing?"

"Dancing is fun!" he says, twirling around and starting to jog away from her. Clearly slow enough for her to follow him, but not as slow as a walk.

"So is that a no? That sounds rather like a no," she laughs, picking up her skirts to follow after him. Not quite so fast as his jog, but not quite so slow as a walk either. It'd be boring if she just kept up with him without incident.

He doesn't slow down, either, but somehow she manages to barely keep up with him, always catching glimpses of his shadow behind flower stems or flashes of his feet weaving around blades of grass.

Eventually she finds him stopped, staring in marvel at a file of ants bringing food into an anthill. Relative to them, the ants are about the size of a very small dog.

Following a fairy off into the woods is surprisingly fun, even if (or possibly because) it doesn't quite make sense in physical space.

"You realize," she informs him as she catches up to him, eyeing the ants warily, "that ants at this size are... no, of course you realize. Do please try not to aggravate the whole nest, I do not want to be swarmed by ants and carried off to be eaten by their queen."

He scoffs. "Ant queens are not the ones that we need be careful about," he says, hopping over the ant line and making his way up the anthill. The ants ignore him entirely as he peers into the hole at the top. "Maybe we could go in and explore."

"No?" she wonders, picking her way gingerly over the ant line after him. "Well. I wouldn't mind exploring, if they're content to ignore us."

'Wouldn't mind,' is an understatement. She's curious. She has a vague idea of how ant colonies work, but it'd be interesting to see how the strangely organized little insects conducted themselves up close...

He gets down on a crouch then looks up at her. "Behind you," he says.

"Mm?" She turns to look behind her, carefully taking a step towards her—guide? adventure buddy?—to hopefully get out of the way of... whatever is behind her.

It's an ant. A very, very large ant. About the size of an elephant, towering over her.

Except, no, she's just gotten smaller again, the grains of sand under her feet more like smooth stones. And the ant seems content to keep ignoring her.

O...kay, then she'll just stay out of its way and do her best not to get stepped on. That sounds like a smart idea. And look at her, she didn't even make an eeping sound, she's so proud.

"Are you in control of the size changing thing, or just... more accustomed to it?"

"Yes," he says, grinning. "Come on," he calls, and hops into the hole that's now more than large enough to let them in.

"Oh, come on, pick one instead of just saying yes!" she huffs, stifling her laugh so as not to discredit herself too badly. Fine, yes, hopping into the ant hill after him, is there a way to do that with anything resembling lady-like grace, maybe a gentle decline to take advantage of...?

Yes, the hole isn't a straight drop and the ants themselves need to be able to walk in and out of it. There is a slope, and down it she can see the fairy running up ahead of her. Until, that is, he takes a left.

He's doing this on purpose, the jerk. It's admittedly somewhat charming but look he's still being a jerk, just a charming jerk!

Fine, fine, yes, up ahead and to the left, she's going, at an almost jog, even, since he insists on taking this so quickly.

They have much to see and only so much time to see it in! He takes the middle tunnel up ahead and then disappears down with a "Wheeeeee!" that suggest maybe more velocity than expected.

"You know that if I have fun and am returned safely I'll probably want to do this again, right, there's no need to take things at such a rush!" she calls after him.

... But she will slide down after him. It's sliding, right? It seems like it'd be sliding.

The physics makes no sense—it's gravel, stones, sand writ big—but yes, she slides. Down and down in a spiral, and she can hear the fairy "wheeeee" down just ahead of her.

Most of this doesn't make very much sense, actually. She's okay with that. Actually, she finds herself laughing with delight without quite meaning to, so it's perhaps safe to say that she's a bit more than okay with this.

She keeps just enough control to manage not to make a complete fool of herself, but not enough that she can actually prevent spending most of the slide on her butt. She's fine with this too. Wheee!

They coincidentally weave between the ants, sometimes even under their legs, but never colliding with any of them, until eventually they're launched forward into an enormous chamber. There are many tunnels dotting its walls, with the elephant-sized ants walking along them and into and out of those tunnels easily, always busy with taking something here or there. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of them. And though it should be dark, there is a soft omnipresent light permitting them to see all of that.

She interrupts her delighted laughter with a little squeak the first time she weaves between an ant's legs, and then she puts a bit more effort into trying to steer, but—yeah, no, this is still really fun. Soon enough it's back to laughter.

At the end of it, she lands in a... somewhat graceless heap, if at least not an indecent one. Evette covers her mouth with both hands, giggling helplessly.

The fairy is also in a heap, but "graceful" was certainly never part of his portfolio. He, too, is giggling helplessly as he rights himself and sits up cross-legged, looking up to watch the natural clockwork marvel that is the insides of the ant colony.

His companion is not actually paying attention to the ants right now.

"That made—no sense," she giggles between her fingers. "How, how was the timing of that so we wouldn't get stepped on, and why weren't any ants on the path that we were on, and, and, this is—how could we have been sliding, there's nothing slippery..."

"You're paying off your debt," he says, turning his grin to her. "The world likes cooperating when people do that."

"So if there wasn't a debt to be paid would this have been less cooperative and, and, silly?"

He shakes his head. "Don't worry about it. Look," he says, pointing at a particularly huge ant on the floor of the chamber. There are eggs behind it, and other ants every now and then stop by it to give it food or touch it with their antennae or just generally be of service.

"But—" but she looks as directed, which distracts her from her protestations of how little sense this all makes. "Oh, my." She makes a face. "Look, I can respect having servants to wait on you hand and foot but, my, it must be boring being stuck down here."

He shrugs. "They are ants. I don't think they get bored."

"Let me anthropomorphize and pity the ants if I want to, it's part of my adventuring experience!"

"Just don't do it too much. You wouldn't want it to become true."

"Wait, does that happen??" she says, straightening up in a bit of alarm.

Another shrug. "Can't rightly say. Just make sure not to do them any favours."

"Huh. Okay. Toning down the anthropomorphization, then, thank you for the warning."

Wide, boyish grin again. "No problem!"

"Does doing favors, I don't know, make you more powerful, even if I'm just accompanying you?" she wonders. This wouldn't, she feels, be particularly unfair, but it'd be good to know in case she meets a fairy she doesn't like quite as much as this one. Or if this one turns out to be secretly evil.

"What, you doing favours or me? To whom?"

"Does, say, me doing you this favor make you more powerful even though I'm not... giving you anything but my company?"

"Hmm, yes and no."

"... Okay? What happens, then?"

"This," he says, springing up to his feet and striding towards the presumably-queen ant.

"Uh," she says, furrowing her brow and standing. Is he about to do something impressive, or really, really dumb?

Yes.

The ants mostly ignore him until he starts getting close to the eggs. There's a certain clicking noise in the background that starts just as he begins analysing them as if he wanted to... to...

Pick one up and run like hell in the opposite direction?

And Evette might want to do that, too, because suddenly all of the ants are looking at them and clicking loudly and then they start chasing.

"Seriously?"

Well, she did sign on for 'not protected from harm or danger,' didn't she, this was absolutely predictable.

"What would you even do with an ant egg!" she cries, picking up her skirts and bolting after him.

"I'll figure it out later!"

He walks straight towards a wall and—

—up the wall? Is gravity not working?

"I don't think you are ready for the responsibility of ant parenting!"

Does. Does running up the wall after him work, because otherwise she's going to be having some problems with the various ants behind her. Please work? Nothing else makes sense, she should just be able to follow the fairy, right?

It works! What it feels like is as if gravity had just decided to agree that wherever she's stepping next is the new down, which may be a bit disorienting but is nothing if not convenient.

The fairy dodges an ant trying to snip him in half, much nimbler than he should be while holding the relatively enormous egg, and makes his way to a different tunnel than the one they came from.

Okay, so, while the fairy is probably nimble enough to dodge murderous ants until possibly the end of time, she definitely isn't, especially not in a dress. It occurs to her that she should think of something clever. Well, the most expedient way to stop the ants from chasing them is to give them a bigger problem to deal with, and she does seem to be near the ceiling, and just because gravity's not working for her doesn't mean that gravity's not working...

She was really expecting that if her little iron herb knife were going to come into play, it'd be for stabbing a fairy. Or maybe stabbing an ant. Stabbing something, surely. Instead, it can get wedged in between bits of sand or gravel or whatever that look particularly load bearing, and then it can be her lever to do the only reasonable thing to do when one is being chased by ants, which is: cause a cave in.

Well.

Whether this would normally work under normal physics is up in the air, but she's not operating under normal physics, is she? So now the ants definitely do have much bigger problems than two egg thieves (or one egg thief and his unwitting enabler).

She can hear the fairy's laughter up ahead from the tunnel while the cave behind her collapses.

She's not really sure if she counts as 'unwitting,' but enabler is certainly accurate enough. Her mayhem appropriately allocated, she can now make her escape. After that egg thief!

The egg thief seems to be choosing paths approximately at random, but between luck enforced by the universe and the fact that lots of ants gave up the chase to go dig stuff up they can easily find their way back out.

By the time they're out of the ant hill, she's flushed and out of breath and honestly kind of a mess, with a death grip on her knife. This is terrifying and exhilarating and she might just strangle her adventure buddy once they're done with this, but being out of the ant hill is not actually being done. There are ants behind them. Most of the ants are still underground, and they can kindly stay that way, so she's just going to cover their escape by causing another cave in to block the entrance.

The world is unfortunately not quite that kind—anthills have multiple entrances. Still, the one they came out of is the one the ants knew they were taking so it'll probably take a while for them to route around to the other exits to continue chasing them so she at least bought them time.

Look, it's fine, she doesn't need to block off all entrances. Sure, she'd do that if she had a way to pull it off, but since she can't: this is fine. Not as thorough as she'd like, but fine.

Back to running, yes? They are not actually in the clear yet, where is her fairy adventure buddy running off to now?

Oh, some direction, who can tell when they're this small, but he's over there, trying for a completely straight path now that he doesn't have to weave between ants so that he can cover as much distance as possible.

She huffs an exhausted sigh, comforts herself by briefly imagining throttling her fairy, and then runs after him. Of course.

After just a few more seconds of running, though, he abruptly stops, drops the egg, turns around, and holds her by the waist, twirling her while bouncing and laughing excitedly.

She squeaks affrontedly, then the sensation of being twirled entices a laugh out of her, and then she remembers she has a knife made of iron in one of her hands and should really be careful about waving that anywhere near the fairy, and laughs, "—Put me down, put me down, I don't want to accidentally stab you..."

He puts her down and takes a step back, looking only mildly alarmed by the iron knife but still mostly exhilarated, and then he takes another step back to grab the egg—which is now about half the size of a watermelon—oh, they're handspan-sized again, when did that happen—" I told you you were one of the fun ones!" he says, brightly.

She snorts and delicately puts her knife back in its place, then slides down to the ground to giggle with her rapidly fading adrenaline.

"I guess you did, yeah! Oh, oh those poor ants, now I feel bad, I hope their queen's okay from the cave in. That I. Caused."

He shrugs and flops down to the ground, too. "They're just ants. And I," he says, holding the egg high, "got treasure."

"Excuse me, we got treasure, because I covered your escape, half of that egg is mine." Pause. "I have no idea what to do with an ant egg."

"I'm sure we can make it magical somehow. It would not be a proper fairy adventure if we couldn't make our first bit of treasure magical."

Snort. "Okay. Makes about as much sense as anything else here." She flops down on her back to attempt to catch her breath and try to... absorb... all of that. Now that she's not in the middle of a crisis.

"Are you going to do that every time I get distracted asking questions?" she wonders, after some reflection.

"I don't think we are going to visit any more anthills tonight," he replies speculatively. "We still have some rabbits to dance with."

"I meant more in a general sense, instead of specifically stealing from ants. It wouldn't be as fun the second time around anyway, you'd know what I'd do."

"It would probably not work a second time anyway." He peers at her. "I should have something to call you. I think I'll call you Herb."

"No, pick something more interesting, 'herb' is a general blanket description, not a referral to something specific."

He pauses to ponder it for a while longer, then goes for "Knife."

"Pass, makes me sound like a murderer, no thank you."

"Hmm." He pauses, realises this is going to be his third suggestion, so it has to be right. He chews on his bottom lip, folds his arms, and tilts his head, looking around... and then his eyes stop on a flower, its golden-orange petals above them. Then his eyes are drawn to Evette herself again and he smiles. "Calendula," he says.

It's right.

"... The marigold?" she says, placing the name after a pause. "Good for infections, swelling, preventing muscle spasms, also bright orange and pretty..." Her mouth twitches. "All right, I'll take it."

"And I think I know how to make this ant egg magical," he adds, walking over to the marigold he saw. He starts climbing it one-handed, the other hand holding the egg.

She sits up, tilting her head and watching.

... Partially out of curiosity, but partially because he. Is certainly still just in a leaf loincloth, isn't he.

He certainly is! And she certainly has a view from where she is.

He quickly reaches the top and just places the egg there, in the center of the flower, then unceremoniously hops back down to the ground. "We'll pick it back up in the morning," he declares.

"Okay. So you just kind of play it by ear, or did you learn all of this apprenticed to an elder fairy, who told you the ancient fae secrets of ant eggs and marigolds..?" she teases.

"Yes. Now let's go find some rabbits."

She giggles, then offers her hand so he can help her get up. She's too damn tired to bother attempting to stand on her own, since he's gone to all of the trouble of already doing it.

He pulls her up to her feet easily—and maybe she's a bit too close for comfort, or maybe she's just close enough, as he lingers there, holding her hand and looking into her eyes with an intense look—then lets go, picks a random direction, and saunters off in it.

Adventures are fun.

She chuckles softly to herself, then follows after him.

Every now and then the fairy climbs more flowers to try to look for rabbit burrows. Starlight and moonlight continue to behave weirdly, and she can see more than she by rights should, but this is nothing if not convenient for rabbit-hunting.

Evette isn't particularly skilled at rabbit hunting, so instead she just follows along after her fairy adventure buddy, and enjoys the strange unearthly beauty of the giant moonlit world around her. Being this small is interesting.

"There!" her fairy adventure buddy eventually exclaims from atop a flower, before he drops back down and darts away.

She snorts, then dutifully picks up her skirts to chase after him to see rabbits.

She can soon spot a heightened mound, the exit of a burrow. There are no rabbits outside, though.

"Hmm, we should not wait for them here, they'll be out gathering food, probably."

"Okay. You're very focused on introducing me to rabbits, aren't you?"

He twirls around to look at her, both fists on his hips. "Do you not want to meet rabbits?" he asks, mock-crossly.

"I," she says, mock-imperiously, "am neither for or against meeting rabbits, I am merely fulfilling my end of our bargain of accompanying you tonight, wherever you go. I'd follow after you to watch grass grow if you really wanted to."

"You would get bored out of your mind."

"Not out of my mind, my mind is a bit stronger than that, but I would get a little huffy and very sarcastic. And be very bored, yes."

"Well, what do you want to do next, if not dance with rabbits?" he asks, dropping onto his butt huffily.

She sits delicately beside him, amused. "I don't know. I haven't so much been having expectations of how this would go."

"Well, then! Time to come up with some." He beams at her. "I'd consider it a favour if you came up with what we will do next."

It goes without saying that if she does him favours then her boon at the end of the night will be all the better.

Evette snorts with laughter, then says, "All right, ah, hm." She taps her chin, reviewing his earlier list of fairy adventure activities.

"Doing battle against salmon?" she wheedles, amused. "How does that work?"

"With pointy sticks!"

"That doesn't... really... okay. With pointy sticks. Sure. We can do that."

"Grand! Let's go to the river."

She smiles at him, then rises to her feet. "Lead on, oh fairy adventure buddy."

"'Fairy adventure buddy'," he quotes with a smirk, starting off in a decidedly-not-random direction.

She strolls after him. "Is there another name I should call you?"

"It just sounds like a mouthful is all."

"And 'Calendula' isn't?"

"Single word," he says, shrugging. "And it sounds pretty."

"That's true. 'Fairy adventure buddy' isn't very pretty or flattering, is it."

"It is not."

She chuckles, then says, "Well, would you like a better nickname, then? Since you've gone to all the trouble of thinking of one for me."

"That would probably make everything easier!"

Evette hums thoughtfully to herself. "Venture?"

"Nah, that doesn't have a very nice ring to it."

"Oh, I see, you want something fancy."

"Do I?"

"Something a bit more artful, at least," she snorts. "Hmm. Caper?"

That makes him laugh. "One would think you didn't enjoy being around me."

"Capers are fun! Stealing the ant egg counts as a caper, and it's more flattering than calling you 'egg thief'! Or knife, actually."

"They're just ants," he reiterates, waving a hand above his head. "And knife is about being—initially unassuming, deceptively common, but deviously resourceful and most of all with the capacity to be dangerous."

That word has a definitively approving tone, there.

"That is admittedly quite flattering, now I'm a little sorry I didn't accept it."

"Calendula is also initially unassuming, deceptively common, a pretty smile and a pretty face and a pretty colour. And yet she hides powers that most people don't know about, and you should not ignore how versatile she can be."

He's not looking at her, walking a few steps ahead and to the right, but he's smiling as he says it.

"Also good for burns in a pinch, if you don't have any aloe available!" she adds brightly, giggling.

"More than meets the eye, for certain."

She snorts. "What about Reverie?"

That makes him pause. "I like it."

"See? You wanted something fancy."

"Was that the sole criterion?"

"Nope!"

"Spin me a pretty tale."

"Oh? All right then. Once upon a time, there was a fisherman's daughter, who lived by the sea..."

He laughs but doesn't interrupt her tale.

"One day a lord of the selkies stepped onto the shore, set to woo and wed her, swearing not to return to the waves without her. Delighted, the fisher's daughter said she'd gladly go and wed him, but for the little problem of how she'd drown beneath the waves if she ran off into the ocean with a pretty selkie lord."

"The poor couple," he says solemnly.

"Quite. The seal lord was loyal to his chosen lady, though, refusing to abandon her to return to the sea. He swore to stay one night beside her, and be her husband, though it would mean his death." Her lip quirks. "His chosen lady was having none of that."

"Was she not?"

"Definitely not. She would not wed him just to watch him die. Instead, she'd bring him to speak to her wise grandmother, who might know of a way to let them be together for longer than a single night. Her grandmother knew of no way to aid the seal lord, but her mother had hidden a magic seal coat that she'd buried beneath the tree, and whomever wore it would become a selkie. In the single night the seal lord and his lady have on land together, they find and unearth the cloak. Just before the stroke of midnight, they make it back to sea, and she goes hand in hand with him to their watery kingdom."

"Awwww that's so romantic!"

"It is! The story's better when sung, though. I'm afraid I don't remember it quite well enough to properly sing it to you."

"Maybe someday," he sighs. "It does seem sad that she left her family and life behind for this mysterious stranger, though."

"Yes. Though since the seal coat had been hidden by her great-grandmother, perhaps she was indulging in a family tradition."

"Oh, were they planning to return? What about their children?" He pauses. "I suppose perhaps she would keep the girls."

"The song doesn't say!" she laughs. "It's just something to think about. Maybe the end is not quite so bittersweet after all."

"It would be a fair trade," he shrugs. "Ah, I can hear the river!"

And off he darts in the direction of the sound.

She snorts, then picks up her skirts to follow.

He disappears from view a couple of times but following the sound of the river will eventually lead her to the sight of the fairy hanging from a flower and trying to break a leaf off it.

She watches for a couple seconds, amused, then calls, "Do you want some help?"

He looks at her upside down, still hanging from the flower, and grins. "Why, yes, I do believe you might have a sharp object that would help!"

"I do believe I do! I'm not sure if you can hold it, though, it's not clear to me how bad iron is for fairies."

Reverie releases the flower but somehow manages to land on his feet. "I think I would prefer to not find out." He takes a step back from the flower and gestures for her to have a go.

She raises her eyebrows. "I'm in a dress," she points out.

"...yes, you are."

Evette rolls her eyes, huffs a sigh, and looks down at the dress in question. Well, it's admittedly a little silly to worry about modesty in front of a fairy who's wearing only a loincloth, and she does have on stockings, so...

She retrieves her knife, systematically begins tying up her dress so it'll be out of her way, and then. Yep. She can go climb a flower and see about cutting down a leaf. She is not going to be very good at this, but she does have a knife, so she'll probably do better at it than Reverie will. Probably.

He had made some progress! A very little bit of it! Probably with his nails or teeth or sheer force of personality.

The knife is better at this job than all of those things.

The leaf falls before her! Take that, leaf!

... And then she has to figure out how to get down. Uh. She does not think she can gracefully land on her feet like he did. She'll just carefully climb back down.

He can catch her if she falls, at any rate. He waits for her to get down.

She does not fall! She will not be doing any of that being caught nonsense, even if it'd admittedly be kind of fun, she's against it on the principle of the matter. She is a strong independent woman who can cut down her own leaf without assistance.

... Once she's down, though, she'll fix her skirt. Because. Because look, she feels more naked than she'd like right now, okay, and what if she gets cold.

The fairy certainly seems to care not a whit one way or the other about anyone's state of dress or undress, here. He beams at her once she's back on solid ground and grabs the leaf by the tip then starts pulling it towards the river.

She helps! After she's fixed her skirt.

When they're almost at the river: "Hop on!"

She does!

"Don't we need sticks first, though? For the salmon?"

He reaches down under the leaf and, what do you know, there are two handy pointy sticks right there at hand. "Already covered it, my pretty flower." He offers her one of them.

Evette takes her pointy stick. "Excellent, thank you." Then her lip quirks. "Your pretty flower?"

"A turn of phrase," he says as he walks behind the leaf, then he pushes it and it's going right down towards the river and he jumps onto it and whoof it falls onto the water and now they're on the river.

Eeeeeeeee she's on a leaf boat it's so quaint and charming and wow shouldn't this thing be an absolute pain to balance, how stable is this thing? They don't exactly have buckets on hand if their leaf springs a leak.

Seems to be stable enough, approximately like a raft but a bit more concave.

"Now to find some salmon!"

Oh, good.

"Is there some fancy trick to finding salmon?" She looks down at her pointy stick. "And is this supposed to double as an oar, because otherwise I'm not seeing how we'll steer this thing."

"Oh we're not steering," he explains. "Salmon swim upriver, so if we go downstream we will eventually find one. Probably. They are not yet all nocturnal, it's not winter, but there are always some that switch sleep cycles earlier."

"Oh. Not steering. Great." She's going to get drenched, isn't she. This is a natural result of her choices, but she doesn't have to be happy about it, okay.

Well, for now the river is calm and tranquil, slowly leading them down in an approximately random zigzag of the leaf.

It's very pretty. She looks at the giant moonlit scenery and smiles fondly at it. Then something occurs to her.

Wait, how big is a salmon in comparison to them? Uh. She picked this one because it sounded like the most ridiculous, but now that she's actually here, on a leaf, doing battle with salmon sounds... rather like doing battle with a whale. That. That sounds like a lot. Especially in a dress. She's not taking it back now, because that would be admitting weakness, but she is perhaps regretting some of her life choices right now.

"Something on your mind?"

"I decline to answer that question! Also, I know you can't lie, but what happens if I do?"

"You become more in my debt."

"Great! Then I won't tell you pretty, pretty lies."

"Tell the truth instead."

"I do not see how that is in my best interests," she teases.

"Staving off the boredom of spending however long without talking?"

"Are you going to refuse any and all conversation unless I tell you precisely what was on my mind the moment before you asked?"

"I did not say you had to tell the truth about that."

"That's true! But it feels like it'd be unsporting to dodge the same way twice so soon after the last time I did it. I want to keep you on your proverbial conversation toes."

"Oh, bother."

She giggles. If nothing else, the banter helped her nerves.

Reverie would never admit to that being a goal.

"Come on, salmie salmie, it's time to show uuuuup," he singsongs.

"I don't think the salmon are likely to follow orders, you know. They're just salmon."

"Sshhhhh, they don't know that."

"That's. Technically true, I suppose..."

"Exactly."

Then he flops down onto his back (the leaf-boat sways but not too much), both hands resting on his stomach, and looks at the stars.

"Still, I don't think they have the language skills to really grasp the depth of your arguments here," she says, propping her chin on her hand and looking down at him.

"They don't need to, so long as they show up."

She opens her mouth, then realizes that it's pretty pointless to argue with him because he's not making very much logical sense, on purpose, and then huffs and closes her mouth. She crosses her arms.

"Heeeeeere, fishy fishy."

He giggles. "That's the spirit!"

"Yep. I bow to your difficult to refute arguments. Heeeeere fishy, fishy, fishy...."

"Heeeeere, fishy fishy!"

"Come on out, little fish that's bigger than we are because we're tiny right now, we just want to poke holes in yoooou...."

...

Okay, there is admittedly only so long this can amuse her, even if she comes up with more ridiculous things to call in a vain attempt to summon salmon.

"It is much easier to poke holes in them when we're this small," the fairy protests, still lying on the leaf and watching the stars while the river steers them. "I guess fishing hooks might be better at it..."

"Or nets, if you're willing to allow methods that involve not poking holes in fish."

He turns onto his stomach. "This is booooooooring. Last time I did it it was much easier for salmon to appear, they were just jumping all over." Then he scoots over to the edge of the leaf to peer down into the water.

She giggles.

"It's been maybe ten minutes."

"BORING!" he declares, flopping back onto his back.

"Is your entire life just a nonstop parade of interesting things, without even being able to stand a whole, awful, mind-numbing ten minutes of boredom?"

"I nap."

"Oh, I see. You could try napping now, I'll wake you up if I see anything."

Pause. "I guess. Good night."

"Good night," she says, amused.

He closes his eyes.

...

...

Okay, so she has, perhaps, made an error.

Because now she's bored too.

Auuuuughhhhhh.

The surroundings are pretty. And very large.

There is a frog croaking in the distance, as well as the faint sounds of crickets. The stars shine down on her, and the fireflies weave in between blades of grass and flowers every now and then.

It's very pretty!

But it's basically still the same outdoors that she's used to, just bigger than she's used to. And she went and pointed out the ridiculousness of getting bored after just ten minutes, which is clearly just asking for her to also immediately get bored, especially because now she's thinking about how there's not much to do right now, and she only definitely has tonight for fairy adventures, and she's spending it drifting down a river with a napping fairy and....

Auuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

There's a watery noise a ways ahead.

Are they fish like watery noises? She would feel really dumb if she got twitchy and woke Reverie up early. She is on a mission. A very boring mission.

A bit too far and faint for her to make it out.

...wait, this stream eventually passes through some rocks, doesn't it?

Uh.

"Hey, Reverie, uh. No fish but I don't think being bored is the biggest thing we have to deal with right now."

Reverie opens his eyes. "Hmm?" He sits up immediately. "Why, what happened?"

"I think we might be ever so gently floating towards a couple of charming rocks."

He jumps to his feet...

...and beams hugely. "A struggle for our lives navigating the waters of the rapid! That's more like it!"

"Uh huh," she says, retrieving her knife and getting to shortening a hem of one of her skirts. Screw that mess. She's going to try to turn this pointy stick into an oar.

"Did you know salmon lay their eggs upstream of falls and rapids?"

"Mhmm," she says, getting to work trying to split the non-pointy end of her pointy stick with her knife. If she can get it split into a 'V' shape, she can string the orphaned bit of hem through it, and that'll possibly work as a better oar than just a stick...

The sounds get louder. Reverie starts swinging his pointy stick in swift, practised motions, readying himself for a fight.

She checks to make sure if there are salmon and rapids up ahead, or if it's just rapids. While carefully pulling the bark off of a section of her stick so she can use it to wedge open her newly created 'V.' She can look and tie knots at the same time. Briefly.

What luck that she chances to catch sight of something silvery disappearing just under the surface of the water.

Oh. Great.

She pokes more holes in the orphaned section of fabric, so she can string the halves of the stick through them. Then she can... tie that securely with more bark, yes, that sounds like a good way to make this hacked together monstrosity a bit more sturdy...

"Come on, cheer up! We're going to fight some salmon!"

"I'm not unhappy, I'm just busy," she snorts, eyeing her makeshift monstrosity. She experimentally dips it into the water; does it hold?

Perhaps a bit better than could be expected, if that's saying much.

Wow, she's impressed with herself. It didn't immediately disintegrate upon contact with the water. She tries to make it a bit more sturdy with what little materials she has, but, yeah this is probably the best she's going to get before it's fish stabbing time.

The rapids are now visible in the distance. It would have been generous to call them that if they were big, but at this size? Very, very much.

And there's a whale—no, just a fish, jumping there upstreamwards. "Ha!"

Oh, boy.

"Okay, so it seems like the best thing to do is I try to steer our leaf towards the fish, and you do the stabbing?"

"You ruined your pointy stick so I suppose!"

"Excuse me, the pointy end of my stick is still quite pointy, it's just talented at multiple things now!"

Okay! Steering! She has maybe five minutes to get a handle on this before she'll be dealing with rapids, she'd better learn really quickly! Where is the nearest salmon, can she steer them towards it?

The nearest salmon is swimming upstream in their direction. A couple more jump up the rapids and start swimming, too.

She, uh, attempts to steer towards the nearest salmon. Is she helpful towards this goal?

Hard to say, but probably? Especially given the

huge

whale salmon

that leaps over them, soaring majestically through the air and dripping water onto their leaf then splashing back into the river right behind them, creating a wave that pushes them forward.

"Come back here and face me you coward!!!"

"Reverie, we do not need the fish to turn around and face us, there are other fish available," she says, a little faintly, trying to keep their leaf balanced and steady from the salmon wave. Okay, so, not that salmon, since that salmon is behind them and they'd be fighting the current to follow it. What about some other salmon for her to steer towards so Reverie can face them in fair, fishy combat?

There's other salmon for them to fight, and Reverie grumps a bit but concedes this point by turning back around and facing the closest one.

Great! She can steer them towards the closest one so Reverie can fight that fish with honor or whatever. Is the steering, uh, helping, or should she join him on the honorable combat front for lack of a better idea, she really should have planned this whole thing out a lot better, maybe she should stop expecting the fairy to have literally any kind of plan.

The fairy literally has no kind of plan whatsoever.

"En garde !" he exclaims, swinging his stick in the direction of a salmon that's just close enough to be hit by it. It makes a noise. Do fish make noises? Unclear.

Yeah, okay, joining him in honorable combat it is, she guesses. Stabbing! Stabbing with her oar-spear! Stabbing that she's actually not great at because she's distracted by other things, but she's trying, okay!

(Somewhere, she wonders how they're supposed to keep within range of a fish that is actively moving in a completely different direction? If they stab it twice and then get swept away and never see it again, that's not really a victory, is it. It's just a mildly inconvenienced fish.)

Who said this was supposed to make sense? Either the same fish keeps going back downriver and then up just to fight them or they're fighting the essence of fishdom instead or something, but it is definitely the same salmon every time.

Oh. Uh. Okay. She would have expected to come up with some kind of system to attach the leaf boat to the fish with a harpoon-alike or—actually, stop thinking back to stabbing.

Is it bad that she kind of wants to just jump off this damn boat and directly stab the fish? Grappling a fish is a bad idea, probably. She'll just. Stay on the boat and try to stab it. She guesses. For now.

The salmon, which definitely came from further downriver and is definitely not the same salmon from before except for how it looks the same and has the same minor wounds they've inflicted, bumps against their leaf boat, sending it rapidly in a direct collision path towards a rock.

"Coward!" exclaims the fairy once more.

Oar time, it is oar time, it is oar time and she is going to do her very best to steer the boat away from the rock! No rock! Rock bad! Rock is very bad!

Rock very bad! They have picked up enough speed by now that the water is splashing them and if she's not drenched she soon will be.

They dodge certain rocky death, but the swirling currents make them bounce between said rocks at a rather alarming speed. Collision paths seem unlikely given that they're still light enough that the leaf can just be carried by the currents between the rocks, but the encounters are very much terrifying and there's always a chance...

Mrrgh to stab or to steer, that is the question.

Steer them, and watch for an opening for a really good stab? Not these dumb minor stabs that barely hurt it, something that would have a lot of leverage and may or may not involve jumping off of the boat entirely. And onto the fish. Not that she's, uh, planning to do that. Nooo, definitely not.

Reverie is definitely doing the ineffectual stabbing while shouting imprecations at the fish. Who does seem to be acting smarter than fish usually do.

Maybe that "do not anthropomorphize animals" advice from earlier is smarter than expected.

This is so stupid, he's doing this on purpose, isn't he.

"Stop calling it names that imply its intelligence!" she shrieks, and then she loses all patience with this dumb nonplan, and does her extremely dumb half of a plan. Which is: leap onto the fish, pointy end of spear first, and stab it. Preferably somewhere vital, she'd like an eye or maybe the gills.

She can hear him cackling from behind her as she lands pointy-end-first onto the fish's eye.

It absolutely makes a noise that fish were not meant to make, and starts thrashing about.

His cackling is just more proof that she’s been kind of set up, and she growls a little under her breath. This is infuriating even if stabbing this damn fish is exhilarating, and damn it, but that just makes her even more angry. So she twists her spear deeper into the salmon’s eye, at an angle, both to do as much damage as possible and to keep from being flung off before it’s dead. Is this smart? No, absolutely not. Is it very viscerally satisfying? Oh, yes.

Well, it definitely has not evolved the opposable thumbs it would need to get rid of her, so after some more increasingly feeble thrashing it... dies.

Except now instead of on a leaf boat she is on a dead fish.

This was perhaps something of an error.

“Fuck,” she says, and then she’s absolutely caught up in the rushing rapids and thinking that, actually, dying to kill a small insignificant salmon was really, really dumb.

"Yeeeeehaaaaaa!" says her fairy companion, leaping from the leaf boat just as it gets lifted up by the currents close to the fish and just before he would have been smashed against the rock. He sweeps her into a bridal carry and, as the fish conveniently approaches the river bank, jumps off its carcass onto it as if Calendula weighed nothing at all.

But he doesn't manage to make the landing graceful, and they land in a heap.

She takes a moment, to be an angry, soaking wet heap.

“You were playing with it,” she then accuses, crossly.

He giggles and pushes himself up into a kneeling position. "Yes! Wasn't it fun?"

She wants to petulantly say no it wasn’t just so he can’t win, but that would be lying, wouldn’t it, damnation.

“I don’t appreciate being set up!” she says instead, because that is definitely completely true.

That stops him. "Wait, set up? Who set you up for what?"

“You! You were playing with it and, and ineffectually stabbing, and calling it anthropomorphic names to see what I’d do!”

"Oh! Yes, I was. It wasn't that ineffectual though! And I do not think the anthropomorphic thing works like that..."

“I consider that setting me up! I’m not a, a toy for you to poke and prod and watch for interesting actions!”

"...you're not a toy, you're a person, and a very fun one at that. Are you angry?"

She has to bite her tongue to stop herself from saying something bitingly sarcastic that would probably be taken as lying. In her head, she counts to five, and lets out a breath through her teeth.

“Yes. Obviously. What, do you think I just start yelling when I’m perfectly fucking calm?”

"Well, no, I guess not. Just—confused. I thought you were having fun."

“….Rrrgh!” she hisses, and then she turns away and pouts. “I am having trouble expressing myself right now because all of the ways I know how to are bitingly sarcastic and may or may not count as lies!”

He chews on his lower lip for a bit. "I am not... trying to manipulate you. I've just—fought many salmon. Many, many salmon. It is always fun, but it is the most fun with someone else. They can do new things, unexpected things! It's the whole reason I like bringing people with me, to watch them—shine."

“I do not need your help, nor your coddling to shine, I shine plenty on my own. You do not need to set me up in a, a small safe little playpen that you’re familiar with and bored of. That you can shake as much as you want to see what interesting thing I do.”

"I was not coddling you! But admittedly all we had to lose there was our lives," he says, shrugging a bit. "If you want to see real danger, I can show you real danger." He stands up, dusting himself up—oh, dust is now the right size, they're not tiny anymore. "The stakes can get much higher, dear marigold."

“Nope,” she sniffs. “Absolutely not. I am mad at you, and feeling obstinate and stubborn, and that sounds like precisely what you would like to do, and so out of sheer spite I refuse.”

"...well, I wasn't actually planning on anything that dangerous, before. It's just an idea I had, you know, since you didn't want to stick to something that can only kill you. But if that's what you prefer, we can play it safe. Maybe go poke at a beehive."

“Now you’re taunting me. I don’t appreciate that, either.”

"I'm not! That's not the kind of fae I am, you don't need to read into everything I say like that, I'm not trying to trap you." He falls onto his butt, again, then leans back to look at the stars. "I just want to have fun with you."

“It’s not the level of danger,” she eventually clarifies, still sounding surly. “It’s, it’s. You not doing your very best to see whatever insane, absurd goal we’ve set through. It’s you showboating when I was trusting you to stab the damn fish and let me steer.”

"...you were? I did not know that. I wanted to kill the fish before we hit the rocks and hope we didn't drown!"

“And you were playing with it! You were taking forever and purposefully holding back at the thing you apparently have so much practice at! So I went and did it for you because it was infuriating.”

"I was not holding back!" he says, now his turn at sounding affronted as he gets back to his feet. He looks around—there's the river, when they're human-sized those rapids are not that rapid at all—and the carcass of the dead fish is floating a few feet away, so he walks over to it and brings it back. Calendula's pointy stick is sticking out of its eye, probably having gone through into its brain, but it's also stained red along its length on the handful of cuts Reverie managed to land. They're thin enough that if it weren't for the bleeding they might be invisible, but Reverie shows her the fish and pulls one of the gashes open and—there is absolutely no way a tiny pointy branch should have been able to cut that deep but those are absolutely some fish innards right there.

“Oh,” she says. Then she huffs and looks away. “… then I’m sorry for not trusting you to be taking it seriously.”

He beams and tosses the fish over the shoulder. "It's fine! Sorry for, you know, the thing." Back onto his butt, his soles held against each other while he hooks his index fingers around his big toes and sways back and forth. "So! What next?"