Kayla took her up on it, choosing a pile of grass that put her in a fairly central location and allowed her to face as many as possible. JC brought her a very simple pottery cup with surprisingly cold water in it. Jo perched on one of the rough stools, her grey skirt in a graceful sweep around her that seemed wildly at odds with their surroundings. Callie just sat on one of the piles of grass.

It wasn’t getting much easier to admit that there were things she didn’t know and things that no one could fix, but she gave them the best rundown she could on what was available and what their goals were. Being reassuring and being honest weren’t always as compatible as she might like, but if in doubt, she went with the latter. For the most part, the rest listened quietly, with Jo asking questions and Callie speaking up now and then to verify points from her own observations.

“Nice promises,” said one of the pair leaning against the wall. He looked like an honest-to-god fantasy elf, aside from being about Suzi’s height—blonde, pale-skinned, long-limbed and slender, with pointy ears and angular facial features, wearing greenish-brown leggings, an oak-green tunic down to mid-thigh, and knee-height green boots folded at the top. Kayla wondered what kind of fae blood he had, because she had no idea. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

His companion shook her head. “It’s worth hoping it’s real.” She was covered in short fur, a soft autumn-leaf brown brindled with low-saturation dark green, and had a long thin tail. She wore only a simple knee-length sleeveless tunic of mottled greens and browns with a braided cord belt. Each had a bowl; the female had her tail coiled around hers to help steady it.

“Kay will do everything she can,” JC said firmly.

“That’s enough for now,” Callie said. “Kayla, you should really have a bowl of soup or a couple of cookies, just to help stabilize your blood sugar. Healing repairs everything but it does use resources.”

“I’d rather not steal the cookies,” Kayla said. “Is the soup safe for humans?”

“Yes,” JC said. “And I’m not the only one who can improvise something tasty with available ingredients.”

“I’ll get it,” the shadowy woman said, leaving the counter and returning to the fire. She picked up a bowl from the fireplace mantel and began to fill it from the pot.

“That’s Emma,” Jo said. “Vanessa’s in green and Charity’s the thin one. Benji’s asleep. You know Sly, they’re also asleep.”

“Obviously we know who you are.” Ghostly Emma brought Kayla the bowl of soup, dropping to one knee to hand it to her. “You’re looking a little glazed. Too many odd faelings?”

“Um, no, I can deal with that,” Kayla said. “Although it’s going to sink in sooner or later. I seriously don’t mean to be rude, but it’s really hard to get my eyes to focus on you.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t know that. Mostly we just interact with other faelings.”

“It’s okay. I’m getting used to not being able to look at one friend for long because she’s a wisp. I can get used to anything. Just be forgiving if I can’t actually make eye contact while saying thanks?”

“Of course. Can I ask how I look to you?”

“Um... basically just a shadow in the shape of a person.”

“That has to be seriously creepy. I’m trying not to apologize again but I want to.”

“Eh, a bit, but you sound nice. Don’t worry about it. Thanks for the soup.” Actually, it was distinctly on the unsettling side, but she was no more going to be rude and potentially hurt feelings over that kind of thing than she was going to even let on, let alone act on, the way her eyes drifted towards JC at moments with fantasies that just weren’t appropriate. She was dealing with people, traumatized ones at that, and whatever it took, she was going to treat them as such.

Besides, she had a sneaking suspicion that this particular transformation was more about shyness or something adjacent than it was malice or a desire to frighten.

“Kay doesn’t get rattled very easily,” Zach said lazily, stretching and rearranging to let the rest of him absorb the heat. “Des was the first faeling she saw and she hardly missed a beat. I think she’ll manage.”

Des nodded. “Curious, not scare’.” She tilted her head. “Very focuse’ on fin’ing Theo an’ all of us. Some things ma’er. No’ how we look, I think.”

“Smart kitty,” Kayla said. “I’ve hung out with people of every colour, every gender, including watching some of those change, and a whole lot of other diversity. I’ve had people try to cram me into boxes, like they can define me on sight with one label and that’s all I am. I know odds are pretty high that there are people in this room who could hurt me, kill me, screw around with my mind, or god only knows what else, but I’m also trusting that you have no reason to do that.”

“Would not allow,” Zach growled.

“Doesn’t hurt that I have three protective friends nearby,” Kayla admitted. “But that isn’t it.”

Jo shrugged. “One thing we all learned fast after being released here is that friends are essential, both psychologically and practically. You hardly need to apologize for having faith in your friends to back you up if necessary. You don’t know us, and being cautious is sensible.”

“Friends are the most important thing here,” one of the foxes said.

“I think I’m still operating in the kind of pragmatic mindset that seems to be the best survival strategy here.” Kayla looked at Emma, who hadn’t moved. “Since I can’t see you properly, how do you look to other faelings?”

“Near-black skin, hair, and clothes,” JC said. “It’s not a big leap to silhouette. After all, house fae are supposed to have methods of keeping humans from registering our presence.”

“If I move into a corner,” very slim Charity said thoughtfully, her voice on the low side and slightly husky, “or behind tall furniture, humans look right over me. Isabel kept me at the house for a few weeks until I realized there were other house fae and ran away. I kept away from grabby hands that way a lot.”

“I think Jo probably really does look like a ghost in the dark,” Callie said. “The darker parts of her clothes fade out of sight.”

“I could imagine that,” Kayla said. With the darker extremities of her skirt and sleeves hard to see, in twilight Jo would probably look a lot like a floating apparition that would give ghost hunters an orgasm of joy on the spot. “This soup is really good.” Not as good as JC’s, but that could be due to less access to ingredients, or just personal taste.

“Thank you,” Jo said. “We do our best with whatever we have.”

“So I see. We’ll do what we can to give you more to work with. Our friend Niko is working on construction projects right now, including places for us less-resilient human types to sleep. I’ll ask him what else is saved in the building templates and all.”

“Templates?”

Kayla, around bites of soup, told them about Alcaios. JC had a lot to contribute about the function of the island, based on what she’d read. Neither mentioned the mirror interface.

“I doubt there’s a handy dorm template saved,” the elf said. “Or that we’d all be able to tolerate it if there was.”

“Might be things other than buildings,” Zach said. “Dunno. Won’t know until we ask him.”

JC nodded. “Nothing in the library had a list of locally-available templates. Niko’s clever. I wouldn’t be surprised if he found a way to subvert what’s there into something we can properly use. We can ask him about it when we get back. But I know he’ll try.”

“You’re very sure about the intentions of a wizard,” the elf said.

“He’s been my very good friend for several years. I understand why he didn’t tell me that he’s even almost a wizard—he had multiple good reasons. He was planning to make sure that we were safe, but Isabel and all snuck in just a little too fast.”

“If he’d moved faster,” Zach said, “Isabel and all would still be doing their thing. Shit works out. Thought you wanted to start a list.”

“A list?” Jo echoed inquisitively.

“Well, two lists,” Kayla said. “But I bet Jace already took care of the one about specific things you might need here. The other one is basically a census. Isabel’s records have info she considered important but it’s not the info that we’re going to need in order to help people. In order to figure out what resources we need, short-term and long-term, we need to know who we’re trying to help and what they need. I can absolutely understand being cautious about voluntarily going on a list, but otherwise...”

“Without that list, planning will be difficult if not impossible, and organizing a strategy for how best to approach the problem will be at best a wild guesstimate.”

“Pretty much, yes.”

“Hm. Well, you can start with five house fae.”

“And me,” Callie said. “Sly will very likely be fine with that when they wake up.”

The three foxes looked at each other. “You can list us,” one said. “We think you’re nice and we want to live somewhere that isn’t here and we think you’ll probably help. But we want to go anywhere we go together. Crimson and Clover and Vester.”

JC brought Kayla her notebook and pens.

“Thank you for trusting me,” Kayla said. “I talked to our new allies, and we came up with a few things it’s going to be particularly important to know. I’m hoping they aren’t too intrusive. The name you prefer to go by, how much you remember about where you were before here—the most important part of that is details like full name, home address, that kind of thing, but I don’t need to list all of it now, just whether you know it—and how long you’ve been here, what kind of fae, and any special needs, adaptations, diet, preferences, urgency because of other issues, whatever. We’re expecting that one to be a highly-individual catch-all category. That will include things like groups that want to stay together, and we will make sure no one is separated unwillingly.” Well, as long as all parties agreed to that. Kayla had no intention of forcing someone to continue to tolerate a one-sided relationship.

“Callie,” Callie said promptly. “I have complete memories of my home and family and legal name. I’ve been here something like five years, give or take a few months either way. I’m a caladrius. I very much hope Sly will want to stay with me, since I find it difficult to ignore suffering around me and without them I’m not sure how long I’d have before I absorbed too much or went mad with frustration. Obviously that needs their consent, though. I want...” She faltered. “I badly want to see my family again and for them to not have to wonder, but you can assume that I will insist on being the last one to leave. I have a responsibility and I’m not abandoning that.”

Kayla hastily flipped open the notebook and started jotting down info.

“Likewise,” Jo said. “While any faelings remain, I intend to be here—making sure Callie, Sly, and anyone else has what they need as best I can. Jo without an E, full memories, eight years which makes me by far one of the longest-term living residents of this place, house fae, and I can’t think of anything else particularly noteworthy.”

Slender Charity, shadowy Emma, and blonde Vanessa all added their own data. The foxes did as well—the twins Crimson and Clover, and Clover spoke for Vester, since apparently they could understand him but no one else could, aside from the ASL alphabet Callie had taught them. Kayla had to pause and take a deep breath, covering it with a couple more bites of soup, in an effort to keep her temper when she learned that the red vixens’ memories were virtually nonexistent. Vester, as near as the three foxes could figure out, had better memories of his furry fursona role than he did of any real life details—it had taken them time to figure out the difference.

The elf’s furry companion looked at her friend, shrugged, and gave her own info; more slowly, so did her elf friend. Apparently they both considered themselves woodland fae, not green fae but at home in and around trees. The elf remembered a bit more than the foxes, his furred friend a bit more than that, but still not enough to find home.

“May I make a suggestion?” Jo said. “Leave the notebook here with us. Most faelings drop by here at least now and then for a meal or a safe place to sleep or to see Callie. I think more will show up in the near future, as rumours spread, because they’ll be looking for reliable information. We’ll start asking them to let us add them. Anyone who declines, we’ll simply count, so you have some idea how many others there are. Will that help?”

“That would be great,” Kayla said. “I haven’t the faintest doubt that a lot are seriously traumatized, and I don’t want anyone feeling pressured or anything. They might feel safer with you asking. I don’t know what my word is worth, but the only use I’m going to let that be put to is making sure everyone gets what they need. As best we can manage, at least.”

“I believe you.”

“And we don’t have as much to lose as we might under other conditions,” Emma sighed. “Are you done your soup? Would you like a slice of carrot cake?”

“Oh, that’s tempting,” Kayla said. “Mm... I’m going to pass, since I’ve been eating better recently, and I’d rather it went to someone who needs it more. But thanks. I could use more water, though. How is it so cold?”

“Winter is only a short walk away,” Jo said. “It isn’t much below freezing, but it is possible to get ice, bring it here, and keep it in an insulated container with fresh water. When they’re around, there are three different fae with an affinity for winter or ice who help.”

“I keep forgetting about the season thing. And the cup? This looks handmade.” It lacked any kind of decoration, just a simple cup about the size of an old-school can of pop, of fairly-glossy earthy red, the sides smooth and vertical and fairly thin, the base heavier.

“Not all house fae do cooking or cleaning. Pottery apparently falls within our range, although less often. We had a house fae for a while who was an experienced potter. Finding useful clay and all, with a bit of help from an earth fae with geology knowledge, and ways to fire it took some experimentation, I gather. She disappeared before Callie came. We can’t make anything as good as she did, but the method she invented lives on.”

Kayla sighed. “Well fuck. There are worse ways to be remembered, but the best way is to still be right bloody here to talk to. But I’m probably going to just keep right on being impressed by the sheer resourcefulness.” And angry about the number who had vanished.

“Vanessa isn’t the first to arrive with an artisan’s knowledge of making soap—and other things, but that’s in the highest demand. Other faelings have been kidnapped who know how to do things that might not be of much use to the mainstream but appealed to them and resonated with who they were. We try to share skills as rapidly and thoroughly as possible. That’s given all of us an eclectic collection.”

“You told us what’s coming,” Emma said. “We heard a short version of how you’ve managed to overthrow the bad guys from Zach when he came to get Callie, and a few more pieces Callie picked up. I’d like to hear exactly what happened. If that’s okay.”

“We heard it from Theo,” Crimson said. “It’s a great story. We could listen again.”

They were, Kayla reflected, as starved for entertainment as they were for a dozen more immediate practicalities, and this story was something of great importance to them.

She accepted her refilled cup from Emma. “Jace? You’re a storyteller, feel free to help. So. A couple of weeks ago, in the real world, there was a city-wide power blackout...”