Ten minutes ago someone found their way in through the fire escapes and a broken window. No wallet, no identifying receipts or anything like that - Just twenty bucks in a jeans pocket, a tear-stained face, a T-shirt, and a light windbreaker.

She stumbles - 

She stands up, taut and nervous, looking around the strange dwelling. It's obviously a dwelling of some kind, with furniture that's half familiar and half outlandish and equally obviously abandoned. She recognizes clothes, counters, chairs - that glass-fronted box is probably good for something but it doesn't react when she tries to use it. And the air tastes heavy and outside the window is a sprawling, massive city, vaster than any she's ever visited, with wide streets lined with steel carriage-things-

The building is a crazy nonsensical mess of connected dwellings on the inside. She goes back to the one she started in after half an hour of searching. The food she finds is mostly rotting or at minimum rather stale and she doesn't know where to get water. Clearly she can't stay here. She finds paper and something for writing while looting a half-emptied child's bedroom and prepares two short pages, then she goes back down the fire escape and picks a direction to head down the alley from.

On the other end of the alley there is a street with steel carriages moving on their own accord. Two boys are enthusiastically performing tricks with contraptions which appear to be small planks with wheels, while some other kids watch, cheer them on and chat.

Wendy still has absolutely no idea where she is, no idea how she got here. Where 'here' even is. Don't panic. Panic does nobody any good. Watch, learn.

...She watches the two boys doing tricks on that toy, not having to fake looking interested and a bit impressed, and listens in on the banter and chat.

The wheeled boards seem to be called "skateboards". The kids talk about the skateboarding, gossip about other people they know, and laugh about some creatures which multiply rapidly when they get wet and shouldn't be fed after midnight. The way they quote lines about the latter makes it sound like they might be from a play or poem. One of the boys sees her watching and waves.

She waves back with a polite smile and turns around and walks away. Doesn't risk talking quite yet - her accent will be weird.

Nothing seems... Overtly dangerous about this city. Even if it's all so very tall and loud and crowded. But why is she here?

She talks to herself a little bit, trying to throw her accent some, and risks asking a cleanly dressed adult man, "Excuse me, do you know which way it is to the library?" (...Hopefully there is one.)

"Take the 71st/Ryan Northbound to 63rd, then head West until you see the library on your right."

"Thanks!"

She has no idea what the fuck that means. But, clearly, asking would be weird.

She takes out her looted notebook and pretends to look at something in it until the man leaves and resumes wandering. She observes paper currency and works out that she has a little bit of it, enough to wander into a store and buy some strange packaged food and a bottle of water and - huh, actually she should wander around this store for a while. You can learn a lot from what's on sale in a store. Apparently. Like how those glass-fronted boxes are able to contain moving pictures.

Someone wearing a uniform approaches her. He seems annoyed.

"Are you buying anything?"

"I already bought these actually." She pauses eating and shows him the open box of Pop Tarts and the bottle of water. The weird accent is definitely there. "I'm just looking around for anything else I might want."

"Did you. Then I think you should come with me."

He sighs. He doesn't sound like he believes her.

"I think you can ask her." She points at the cashiers. "And she'll say I bought these. I had twenty dollars when I came in and now I have seventeen and fifty five cents."

"I think I should check the video footage. Come with me."

He attempts to grab her arm.

She takes a step back sharply. "Check what? I'll follow you but don't touch me."

"Do you have a receipt?"

He sounds like he doesn't expect her to.

She has to think for a moment. "...Oh. That paper. It's in those bins at the front. I can show you."

"Right." He grabs her more forcefully.

Walta steps back again but stumbles and falls. "I bought these, ya jerk! The hell you doing!"

She reaches for her notebook as the guy reaches down and grabs her by the arm-

He places her in some sort of hold. He makes no attempt to keep her from reaching for her notebook.

She rapidly flips pages, touches some sort of scribble-

That guy is now asleep. She disentangles herself and grabs her pop tarts and runs for the exit.

Someone shout "Demon!", but no-one keeps her from running.

Maybe she should have talked her way out of it. Bit late for that now. She's out the door, she finds an alley and is invisible for a little while and comes out on another street in a decidedly run-down area.

The invisibility fades and she sits along a run-down wall.

"What the hell am I doing? I don't know this place. I'm gonna get stabbed or something at this rate." Sigh. She sits and eats pop tarts.

On the street is a woman with a sleeping bag made of unfamiliar fabric and stained clothes.

"What's up?"

"...Oh, not much. Just. No idea where I'm gonna sleep."

"Ah. Wish I could be more help. A church might take you in if you're good enough for them. Otherwise, [gesture] the Army Disposal sells sleeping bags cheap. At your age you'll get into trouble hooking. People won't take you seriously as a beggar until your clothes look worse than that, but at that point pickpocketing gets harder. You look respectable enough to go pickpocketing in the nice neighborhoods, don't try it here or you'll get a tire iron to the head of you get caight."

"My age? I'm t-" No. She moves her limbs experimentally. She isn't. Another strange change. "Ah. Thanks. Less than seventeen dollars cheap?"

"Yes, less than seventeen dollars."

"Yeah, I'll definitely do that." Long sigh. "I wouldn't mind pretty much any kind of work, I just don't know where to begin for something not illegal."

The woman looks thoughtful.

"How old did you think you were?"

...She starts rapidly writing in the notebook.

"So, first, tell me. Do people show up around here and not know anything about anything and be in the wrong body? Is that a thing?"

The woman grins.

"More or less. Started twenty years ago. An apartment or alley or something twists into a maze and everyone in there gets their memories messed up."

"Great. Fucking great. At least there is a sort-of-explanation." She stops writing. "What's your name, anyway? I'm Wendy. Or so I think."

"Sheila. Remember me if you turn out to be rich?"

Sheila offers a hand to shake.

Wendy will shake it. "Aye. And I doubt I'm rich. Twenty bucks and nothing else in my pockets. Maybe I'm a runaway."

"Or maybe you were just going to the shops. What do you remember about your family? Some of it's probably true."

"Mom and dad were poor and not great at resolving marital disputes and I ran the hell away as soon as I had a ride out of town and was good enough at charting to feed myself with it. When I was seventeen in my memories. I don't remember cities like this though, this is crazy huge."

"Well, sounds like you probably are a runaway, then. What do you mean, 'charting'?"

She flips around the notebook to reveal strange letters scattered across the page. "...This sort of thing? Magic?"

"Wow."

Sheila looks impressed.

"You got magic."

"Yep. And apparently that's new and all these - the roads and walkways look like carefully melted stone, you have boxes that can show moving pictures and carriages that move themselves. But I have magic. That said, want to be nice and cozy and warm for the next twelve hours? I can do that with fifteen minutes of writing."

"Yes I would like that!"

"If you have magic, you should not have trouble getting money. Did you not remember that magic is rare? What does your magic do?"

"Almost anyone can chart where I'm from. Paper and ink are expensive, and you have to learn to write just so, but it's not rare. It does... A lot of things. I'm not sure how to sum up what's easy and what's hard or impossible." 

The writing starts again, on a new page.

"Here the only people with magic are Warped, and even for Warped it's rare. But some people walk into Warps just for the chance of getting magic."

"And that's the name of - 'having your memories all screwed up'?

"Yes, the thing that happened to you. Warps are the places it happens."

"Okay. You think anything will chase me for - They said I was shoplifting, but I actually wasn't, and I used magic to get away when some guy grabbed me."

"Dunno'. Depends if anyone tells the police."

Sigh. "What a busy day I've had."

"If you want to find people who'll know what to do with magic and won't let the cops find you, I know where to find who knows someone."

"I mean, I'm sure a lot of the things I already know how to do with it are the same. Less idea how to straightforwardly turn magic into money, admittedly... And I'm still totally not used to this place. I'd appreciate it tomorrow, I think, and tonight I'm gonna go to that store and then write out some charts."

"'Kay. 'Night."

"...People won't bother folks in sleeping bags in alleys? The cold is less of a problem for me, but homeless weren't exactly looked upon kindly, where I remember being from."

"Yeah people will bother use. Can your magic get us a house tonight?"

"Nope. Can't spawn houses out of nowhere. Even if there were space around here."

"Then I'm sleeping on the street, like it or not. You could still see if a church will have you for the night."

"Wait for me to warm you up at least. 'Nother five minutes."

"Yeah."

Watching someone else write is really kind of boring, isn't it?

After another few minutes, Wendy looks at Sheila, touches the paper in front of her, and Sheila is now comfortably, cozily warm despite the autumn weather. "I'm off. I'll be back here in an hour or two. Thanks for being a sort of guide."

"You're welcome. Later."

Off to the army surplus store. (They really do have lots of well-made, cheap stuff, this is a rich place...)

She manages not to be accused of theft this time. Rather than try to find a church she just goes back to Sheila with the sleeping bag and a canteen and sits down nearby and writes.

Eventually Sheila gets to sleep.

The next morning, "You were going to introduce me to some folks who can make money off magic without involving police, yeah?"

"Yeah. This way"

Sheila leads Wendy to an apartment building.

"Someone's going to have to explain how to get around, how to find a library, at some point..."

In the apartment building, Sheila explains the situation to a muscular man with tattoos. He threatens Wendy not to "make trouble for Leon" and suggests that he can introduce her to someone named Pearl, who Sheila explains is "one of the biggest criminal wizards in America".

She suspects this is largely bluffing, but plays along.

(She's preparing defenses and nonlethal knockouts again as they talk.)

He gives her directions to a house in a slightly more spacious part of town, with a small not-very-well-kept garden.

"Any rules of respect, like? I know a pirate-king who gets ticked off if you don't 'majesty' properly."