finding the way

[msmortal]

She's a four-year-old girl, and people (especially her Dad) insist she's a boy.

Not that she isn't sometimes. She is. But not today! Today she's a girl. And Dad keeps saying that's not true, that God made her body perfect and she shouldn't second-guess God's plan for her. God made her a boy, so she's supposed to be a boy. And on the one hand that kinda makes sense. God doesn't make mistakes, right? So if she were really a girl sometimes, then she'd... what? Her body would change, she guesses. But on the other hand, she knows she's a girl. She's a girl with a peepee, that's obvious. She'd prefer not having a peepee when she's a girl, but it's not the worst thing ever. And if God doesn't make mistakes, God also didn't make her feel like a girl sometimes on accident, right? It must be part of His (because God is always a He, even though God made everyone, boys and girls, in His image, he's always a He, Dad says) plan.

She tells Dad that, today, and Dad gets angry, and yells at her, and she doesn't know why he's yelling. It makes sense to her! But he won't explain why she's wrong, he's just yelling, Dad's so mean, she hates him, and she's not crying, shut up, you're crying!

And now Mum's coming and she's talking to Dad, and that usually makes Dad stop yelling and go away but he won't stop now and Sadde's angry and afraid and hurt and she's running away. A part of her thinks that it doesn't make much sense to run away, the park is pretty open and she can't really hide anywhere, and she'll have to go back because she'll get hungry (not now, though, she just ate a sandwich).

So she runs until she finds some bushes where she can hide, and she hides there, and she doesn't cry, and she spends a long time not crying. Mum and Dad don't come after her, though, and after she's done not crying she doesn't wipe her eyes and her nose, and she comes out the other way of the bushes she was hiding in.

And she's pretty sure that's not the park.

Comments

[mrmortal]

"Some order phrased in such a way that people who heard it would feel compelled to make more people hear it and such that new fairies without it wouldn't be able to exploit their lack of masters, and whose content went something like 'don't order anyone who doesn't want to be ordered.'"

[imeanforever]

"That wouldn't do anything about the Queen unless you vassalized her."

[mrmortal]

"Right, that would be after I vassalised her. As for how to vassalise her, I don't know nearly enough about her defences and how her court's set up. The subversion from the inside thing still sounds like a solid meta-strategy, though."

[imeanforever]

"Maybe. Taking over Queenscourt is probably harder than taking Thorn's but might have less horrifying consequences for failure."

[mrmortal]

"Yeah. Anyway, any more good ideas for feeding people?"

[imeanforever]

"You don't need a thousand ideas, you need one which will work."

[mrmortal]

"Yes, but contingency plans are useful, he probably has lots of safeguards and the more alternatives we have the less likely we are to actually fail. Put another way, we don't actually know which one will work, and no plan survives contact with the enemy."

[imeanforever]

"All of these ideas will require prep, keeping things straight in our heads, and sneaking further equipment and supplies into the monitored areas."

[mrmortal]

"I'm not saying we should actually implement them all, but if we know what's at our disposal we'll be able to better choose what to actually deploy. For instance, I think we should probably if possible try to do the juice on crops thing regardless of what else we do because it passively gives us more resources."

[imeanforever]

"It's hard to verify, there's a lot of turnaround time, and if it's noticed he'll have his guard up. If he's nervous he's more than smart enough to switch to eating only berries straight off Sugar's antlers and stop personally going outside until he's found us."

[mrmortal]

"...point, so it's not an immediate yes. But still, my point is just, we gather the ideas we have until they stop coming easy and then only revisit them if it turns out the ones we do have can't make a workable plan."

[imeanforever]

"There are a few fairies in the court who will also have names, so if we get them we don't have to feed as many others. The torturers between them probably know almost everyone apart from Blossom and a couple of the other higher-ups who invariably get Thorn's personal attention if they make mistakes."

[mrmortal]

"Oh, yes, of course. If we could map out a web of master-vassal relationships we could use that to get all the way up to Thorn minimising the number of actual moles we need to manage..."

[imeanforever]

She flips a page on the notepad. "I don't know all of it, and some of this is guesswork, and it's been a while." Scribble scribble.

[mrmortal]

"Ideally we'd capture someone high enough that they'd have a more thorough view of that and who could disappear for long enough to give it to us. ...also wards and physical disposition of the court is a good idea, perhaps a logistical disposition as well, who usually goes where when and stuff."

[imeanforever]

"I don't have much about schedules and they'll have changed in twenty years. Nobody can disappear without being noticed within a few hours, though."

[mrmortal]

"One hour should probably be enough for a rough web of relationships, map, and a first mole, I think. What do you know? Outdated information is still better than what I have, at least to start. Like, do you know where exactly his court is? Something about the physical layout, where his vassals are likely to be... What were they even doing in that library, Yellow said it was three hours away from his court," he says, looking at Yellow at that last part.

[imeanforever]

"He has several sites, and I know where one of them is and how it's laid out, and have guesses about some more locations. Three hours is perfectly convenient transit time for a library; I don't know how many libraries you think there are. I assume they were there to borrow a book or renew their collateral or something."

[mrmortal]

"Several sites. Of course." He sighs and shakes his head. "Anyway, it sounds like quite a coincidence for one of his vassals to just happen to be visiting the library at the same time as my mother was, prepared to vassalise her. She only really used to visit the library once every several months, after we'd exhausted everything a book had to teach, and she wouldn't just give them her name, they'd have to force-feed her or dart her or what-have-you."

[imeanforever]

"It's possible he laid a trap for her but not that implausible that there would be a coincidence and an attack of opportunity. His sorcerers would be better than her and know the territory better, it wouldn't have to be a dart, any fairy food out of their hand would work."

[mrmortal]

"I will be really annoyed if I find out it was a coincidence."

[imeanforever]

"...Why is that worse?"

[mrmortal]

"It's not worse on any objective scale, it's just, emotionally, a coincidence is just pointless." He shakes his head again. "Never mind."

[imeanforever]

"It's more likely to have been a coincidence or they'd have caught you too, unless you reacted very quickly to her capture and they didn't know you existed."

[mrmortal]

"The only time I visited the library was fifteen years ago, when I was yea small, and I never visited fairyland when she was going to the library."