A FEW MONTHS AFTER SIDHE, PROBABLY
It was kind of like a tea party, if one was allowed to host a tea party in a library-ballroom sort of place.

Specifically, it was a ballroom-like space, decked out in shelf after shelf of books, centered by a table of tea-party implements. Fenn was pretty sure his mind had cobbled the place together out of different places he’d been to before. The oaky shelves seemed as if they had been pulled straight out of the Tarot library. And the floor — glassy, smooth ice. It reminded him distinctly of his time in Sidhe.

Banrion rolled with it. While her herald explored this amalgamation destination of his own accidental making, she waited patiently at the tea-table and sipped her brew. Or, one of her heads did. The other head grumbled quiet, polite complaints about the selection of drink and its taste.

Fenn hadn’t known they could act that independently.

There were wayward books lying in piles against the shelving, which would be a damn shame in a real library. The little fae stopped to look at these piles more often than the ones actually on the shelves. Usually, books in dreams were intangible somehow; impossible to read. They were blank, the text swam on the page, the contents of the book change every time one looks away; so on and so forth. The typical shifty stuff. Fenn thought that perhaps the books in his dream would be this way — and most of them were. Yet, several of them were surprisingly legible.

They weren’t written in Tradespeak, but in the swirly-foreign alphabet the fae used. Sidhein was one word for it. There were other words for it too, as it always seemed to be for the fae. Banrion had taught him the letters and some words in some of their previous shared dreams. It was a struggle to read.

Still he got the general gist of the books.

One stately black tome held page after page of decree and document on… well, it seemed to be the running of the Winter Court. Trade deals, pacts between neighboring Courts, defining the borders of territories, balancing some ill-defined pool of gold, and even a few reminders about paying the musicians for an event. All of anything he could actually understand was stale and dryly-worded — even the bits discussing executions, oath-breakers, and murder! Fenn didn’t quite get why running shit had to be so boring. It seemed like a really frustrating way to live life. He was glad that he himself just kind of lived outside that bullshit.

Banrion didn’t though. Fenn stopped and shut the book, frowning. This was probably stuff pulled out of her head.

One of the legible books thankfully was not boring governing stuff. Unthankfully, it went the opposite direction. This read like a weird children’s fable; patronizing in its simple language, stupid easy to get through. Or, it would have been if it was in a language the young puck had a full grasp of. The fact that it was as vexing as the literal paperwork stung. Fenn mostly skipped through it in his irritation. Some story about a greedy grub, a viper, and a wolf. There was some poison and the wolf died in the end or something.

That book, Fenn tossed aside after he was done inspecting it.

Feeling a little disappointed, he plodded his way back to the tea table, pulled up a chair and plunked his ass down. He grabbed a cup for himself. Tall and green, with little white snowflakes on it. Cute. <Hiya,> he greeted the Chancellor. <Books here are annoying.>

Banrion looked up at him, her mouths curled up in amusement. “Are they now?”

<Your language is being stupid and they say boring stuff,> Fenn mentally mumbled, trying to enjoy his tea. It tasted like… blood? Not human blood, not itchy and metallic. This was sour and sticky. It was the way his own blood tasted whenever he bit his tongue.

“You have much to learn — even if one is not talking about our language. Pigwidgeon, don’t you know? The easiest way to get away with anything frightening is to wrap it up in dullness. And in order to make a vapid thing interesting, one wraps it in eye-catching colors and decor. That’s half the purpose of Glamour…” Banrion laughed, the left head a bit more morosely, and flickered out like a mirage. Fenn stared at the space she had just occupied. Damn. It seemed he was waking up now. But he didn’t want to leave yet! The library ballroom started to fade away into stark white around him. He grabbed for his teacup, but it became as dust in his hands.

Everything faded. Everything except the faint taste of blood.