She appears above a bit of frozen wasteland. She falls, conscious but without making a peep, to the ground, and breaks a few more bones.
She lies there.
She appears above a bit of frozen wasteland. She falls, conscious but without making a peep, to the ground, and breaks a few more bones.
She lies there.
Leareth heads off.
The usual routine resumes. Promise is offered supper at the usual time, and curious staff swing by once in a while to be impressed by her tree and garden. Copies of books she requested arrive.
It tastes weird, with few of the visual correlates to flavor that Velgarth foods have, but it's tangy and good.
"Well, yes. Which doesn't seem too bad, you're nice, but I'm not sure it's generally worth that kind of irreversible move just to try an interesting salad."
"- Wait, what? I'm suddenly so much more confused about what happens in Fairyland instead of that!"
"Oh, I explained this to Leareth when I was showing him the map - maybe not very thoroughly - lots of places in Fairyland spend most of their time in a particular season or part of the daycycle. Lots of places do one or the other regularly, though usually not both. I lived in a place where it was usually afternoon and autumn, with my first tree, and Thorn was from a region with a regular season cycle except for long summers but it was mostly noon."
Sapphire is making a face as though that hurts her head. "Huh. I suppose that must seem normal to you, but it's very odd to me!"
"It's not that it's odd for here to be a place with a regular season and day cycle, but for everywhere to be the same in lockstep is very weird, yes."
"It is not actually quite the same everywhere! Sunrise and sunset are at different types depending on latitude. Here in the north, the days are longer in summer and shorter in winter compared to further south."
"Huh! I don't actually know if Fairyland places have days longer in the summer and shorter in the winter, considering."
"Astronomers here think it's because we're on a planet which is round, and - something about it being tilted differently at different times of year? I overheard Leareth explaining it once in the dining hall but I never quite followed it. Fairyland might not have that at all, since it's not round." Her eyebrows suddenly lift. "Does Fairyland have one sun, or lots? If it's infinite, you'd think that one sun would have a hard time getting everywhere."
"I'm not sure the sun in Fairyland is... a thing, as opposed to something it looks like there is, so I'm not sure how to count."
"Huh. Are there other natural phenomena in Fairyland that are - illusions, like that, just look like they're there but aren't really?"
"Nothing here either, I don't think, but there are parts of the world I don't understand." She chuckles. "Probably there are even a few things Leareth doesn't understand."
"Anyway, what's your impression so far of how Velgarth compares to Fairyland, better or worse? I guess worse for you in that you can't eat conveniently our food, but now you've got this lovely garden."