"Is that what you'd do if they surrendered?"

"I'm not in charge. And anyway I wouldn't surrender to Day. If the Sun King wants to rule me he'll have a fight on his hands."

"Often surrenders are conditional, at least with humans. I don't know the details but they go like, 'you win and can have most of whatever your objective was but we get to keep our pre-war borders and head of state, otherwise we keep fighting'. And humans mostly don't like fighting so that often works."

"Maybe you should talk to the Queen about this stuff," he suggests. "I'm just a scout."

"That seems possible. In this country what happens if the Queen doesn't like somebody?"

"...they don't get to be her secretary or anything, I guess?"

"That makes sense. Most human countries today have temporary, elected rulers, and while we have had monarchs historically they are known for abusing their power to do things, especially by being awful to people they don't like."

"Oh. No, the Queen isn't like that at all. She's really fair and stuff."

"Cool."

"D'you think you'll want to meet her soon, then? I could take you to Silver Falls! I'm the best at going places!"

"It does seem like the obvious next thing to do, but you're probably so much better at going places than me that I might have a hard time following you."

"Oh, don't worry, I'm used to guiding groundfolk. I could bring my squad, too, Button's plenty big enough to carry you if you'd rather that than hike for days."

"I did mention I'm not very good at walking."

"How are you at riding bears? I guess if you don't have any bear-folk you probably haven't done much of that."

"I have not. I'm probably not awful at it though."

"Okay! Should I go get everybody and bring them here?"

"Sure why not. About how long will this take?"

"I should be back in a few minutes. Might take longer than that for everybody to straggle in."

"Okay, thank you."

He takes off, and soon he's over the hill and out of sight.

May inspects her chair.

It is a bit rattled but not actually damaged in any substantial way. It is also defnitely completely unsuited to this terrain.

She folds it up.

Starlight is back in a few minutes, as promised, with friends. One, a white fox with sparsely-feathered wings that seem half made of light, is almost certainly Charm. There's also an unsettling silhouette that resolves on approach into a long winged snake, and a blur in the air that trails indistinctly behind them.

The winged snake lands a conversational-but-not-crowding distance away and coils herself up. She has dark glossy scales and dark leathery wings, and looks to be about twenty feet long. Charm settles in next to her, with an affable nod of greeting. The blur lands beside Charm, and when not in motion turns out to be a dark-skinned pale-haired humanoid maybe two and a half feet tall, with wings like delicate sprays of long silver leaves, wearing grey leather and a watchful expression.

"Hi!" says Starlight, circling above her since her wheelchair is looking less perchable this time. "These are my squadmates, Charm and - uh, Ebb," he dips his wings at the snake, "and Reflect," the humanoid. "Button and Snowfall are on their way."

"It's nice to meet you all."