"I'm considered your child and a minor-incapable-of-self-care? Wow, that's sure a situation. Glad I have you here to be a reasonable person, that could have gone very badly very fast. Let me wrack my brain and see if I can connect up the memories..."

She closes her eyes and focuses, nodding to herself a little as each memory flares in her mind, the dominoes clicking one by one into place. With more of an idea what to look for, the memories are easier to find, and she finds it easier to assemble a shaky but consistent chronology between then and now. 

"Right, first I spilled out the purse like I just did but on the hall table, and then - we looked through the cards - and we exchanged some basic information about each other's worlds - and then I wasn't sure what age I was, and this seems to answer that question - wait, that wasn't me, all that was Audrey - and then I, me personally, switched in, and we decided to go talk to - the police - and leave the bag here - and I sang badly - and then there was the police station where the EMT looked at me - and then we had lunch, and then clothes shopping, and then I had my attack in the car..."

"... because I didn't know when my medications were from and was scared that I might be on an anti-psychotic."

She takes a deep breath. 

"Well, I can answer that at least now, I think. I don't remember being on any anti-psychotic on the day I was at the DMV. I was on... a long-term cycloterine, estrogen, progesterone and persine extract implant, which I got implanted... One year ago, so it should still be good for two years... And it was implanted in my abdomen above my right thigh. I don't need to take pills, it's all in there. I suppose that if I'm stranded here for two years then we might have to worry but until then I think I'm okay." 

"That much is settled, but I don't know why I got such a premonition of doom when we were in the car or why it stopped when we arrived and suddenly did this, and I don't know how to get back. Just thinking about the memories of when I was twelve doesn't seem to be doing anything." 

"We are going to have such an issue if you can't produce a twelve-year-old me on demand." 

"How do we..."

She frowns and drums her fingers on the table.

"Well the first time you did it, you wanted it."

"That's a good point. It's kind of hard to want to be twelve in this place though. But we should try." 

She looks at the other contents of the purse, and slides the coloring book across the table to settle in her hands, along with the set of side-advance coloring pens. 

"I'm an age regressor," she says without preamble. "I don't mean just magically, I mean that I like childish things and want to experience them often. On my world you'd say I pleat as a child - identifying as younger than I am is a core part of my identity. This power is... In a real sense answering one of my desperate wishes, that I could be a child again and stay young and be taken care of by my auntie forever." 

"It's not such an uncommon desire, on Terra. There's enough of us out there for there to be demand for things like these colouring books." 

She opens the colouring book, and flips through the pages. Almost all the pages depict women in fantastical situations; rowing boats across seas crowded with jellyfish, weaving galaxies from stars kept in a basket on their arm, standing astride a horse in full medieval armour...

And a few pages have nude women, often eating fruit and lounging on couches, usually with piercings and tattoos as linework to colour in as well. There are no depictions of sex, but all the anatomy is depicted with a frankness that would shock many Earth humans, particularly in this context. 

Many of the pages are coloured in, either fully or partially. The Songbirds seem to like both types of subjects about equally, from their choices of what to colour. 

"We color when we want things to be simpler for a while. If anything can knock us back in age it'll be this. But it'll take some time to do one of these pages properly."

"Oh. Oh girls, i..."

She takes a breath, her expression very tender. "I understand completely. That... is not a common or well-known or well-accepted way to be, here on Earth, but you've landed on probably the safest person. I lean caregiver in the same way y'all lean little. Can I give you a hug?"

"Absolutely."

She smiles softly, steps around the table, and hugs Lily tightly.

She hugs back.

"Thank you. It's a huge comfort to have you here, even if this world seems... frankly kind of terrible."

"You're not wrong. Yours sounds like a massive improvement. But as long as we're both here, I'll do everything I can to protect y'all."

"If I were to figure out how to go back," Lillian says, after a long moment. "Would you want to come with me?"

"Um. I... don't know how I'd support myself there, or where I'd live, or..."

"There's the life-float for everyone in Asterion, which isn't enough to have luxuries on but will keep you alive, immigration won't be an issue most likely, and you'd almost certainly have support from my clan after it was explained to them that you had kept me safe in an entirely different, much worse universe. My auntie Sable would tell me you deserve so much better than this place."

"I mean. If I figure out how to get back. And if I figure out how to bring other people with me. Cart before the horse a bit. But it's a real offer, if we ever figure it out enough to undo whatever I did that first time."

"That's the kind of thing I would say. Have said, to other people here."

She giggles and shakes her head. "I guess I'll take you up on that. Can hardly argue with my own words, can I?"

"I guess not!"

She squeezes Sable one more time and then lets go. 

"So let's see what we can do with what we have on hand. No time like the present."

"Yep. If there's anything I can do to better set the mood, let me know."