It's a very different sort of place!

It's dark, or at least a medium yellow-tinged dimness, the half of the streetlamps that are still working sending out a hazy orangey light into the fog. She's on the sidewalk next to a street sign, an asphalt street splaying out nearby. Neon signs rear up above glass storefronts on both sides of the road.

There aren't many people around, in downtown Reno at 2 am on a Tuesday morning. But there's still some street traffic, and - unless she moves to hide in the meantime - someone will notice her within 10 minutes. 

Oh, cars! She doesn't usually see cars this close up! And she definitely hasn't seen ones with wheels before...

- no, she shouldn't get distracted, she should figure out where she is and what she should do about it. She's in... some sort of city? She's seen pictures of the cities on her planet, and this doesn't look like any of them; Echitov is mixed human and ozottil, and the ozot have their own aesthetic that's nothing like this. So, off-planet, then, probably. Should she expect to be able to get home? ...well, really, is there a reason to? She'll miss the other kids, but it's not like she was going to stay in the long run; she's left a little earlier than she was planning, but if things work out here there's no real reason to go back. She'll trust the Force about it.

She is going to need food and a bed and things, though. Which means finding someone in charge to ask about it. It's really too bad she hasn't figured out how to get the Force to help her talk yet, but she can probably manage without it. If they're patient with her, at least. She examines her prospects and picks a direction to start walking in, looking for a sufficiently official-looking building.

In that case, she'll make it as far as the (reasonably official-looking) fire station, the one next to the bridge over the river. 

There's a police car parked at the curb beside it. The young, bored, female police officer on night duty is sharing a cigarette and some gossip with the young, bored, male firefighter also on night duty. 

- both faces turn toward the teenag– no, not a teenager, younger than that - the child apparently walking toward them, alone and oddly-dressed, but walking with purpose. 

Heloise steps away from her definitely-not-boyfriend. "Hey. Are you all right?" 

This looks and feels like a pretty official-type person! "Incomprehensible?" she asks, trying to enunciate carefully but still only managing it with a bit of a lisp.

That's definitely not English! It's...probably not Spanish, either, Heloise is fairly sure she would recognize Spanish even though she doesn't exactly speak it, but - well, she did memorize how to say 'do you understand me?' in Spanish and she might as well try. 

She takes another step toward the child. "Me entiendes?" she says, as gently as she can manage. 

"Incomprehensibible. ...Incomprehensible. Incomprehensible?" Everybody knows Basic, right? Where is she?

Apparently somewhere far enough away that they don't speak Basic! The young uniformed woman is looking at her with expectant and hopeful blankness. 

...Heloise sighs, and falls back on mime, since this young girl clearly doesn't speak the language. She seems to be trying to understand, though.

Will enough emphatic gesturing get her to follow Heloise to the firestation back entrance, so she can bring the kid to the break room and sit her down and offer her a glass of water while she tries to figure out who to call? 

She visibly considers her options, once she's got the idea, but shrugs and nods and follows her in.

Great. Heloise will sit the mysterious kid down on the somewhat decrepit breakroom sofa, and offer her a plastic cup of water from the water cooler, and then...look up some numbers on her phone to call. 

....Oh, good, it turns out she does have the night support worker's direct phone number, this would take forever if she had to call the general help number for the state social services and then wait on hold. 

"- Hey. I - sorry, it's Heloise. Reno police department. I have a young girl here," pause, static, "- no, I'm sorry, I don't know her name. As far as I know she doesn't have ID on her." (Heloise is very much not in the mood to try to pat down a ten-year-old for hidden ID.) "I just need to find her a place to sleep for tonight– yes, and ideally for the next few days until we can find her family -" 

Longer pause. 

"- Great. Thank you." 

She looks over at the kid, trying to smile. "Good news!" She says it slowly and carefully, in case the girl speaks a bit of English but not well. "It sounds like there's a family who can take you for tonight, and the next few days." 

"Incomprehensible," she agrees levelly. "Incomprehensible?" she gestures at the door to the garage; it seems like she wants to go look at the trucks.

...Uh, sure? The foster parent who is apparently willing to take this child for tonight (and maybe the next several weeks) won't be here for at least fifteen minutes, and in the meantime Heloise's main focus is to avoid any dramatic arguments. 

She does, once she's on her feet, pause briefly and point at her own chest. "Heloise," she says, and then looks expectantly at the mysterious child. 

"Deskyl," she replies carefully, patting her own chest.

And then she goes to look at the trucks! She's hesitant to touch them at first, and will refrain if Heloise seems to want her to, but she wants to examine them closely all over. This will easily keep her occupied for fifteen minutes.

Heloise is not even slightly going to stop her! That's adorable. 

And then, more like eighteen minutes later - there was an accident on the usual bridge and no one was hurt but she had to check, and then awkwardly detour around the scene - Evelyn Steel pulls into the parking lot, and heads into the fire station to meet her new charge. 

It takes her a couple of minutes to track them down in the garage, at which point she approaches slowly, not making any sudden movements. The amount of information she got from the night duty worker was barely more than zero, but 'kid who doesn't speak English, wandering the streets of downtown Reno alone at 2 am' doesn't suggest someone totally un-traumatized, and scared kids are jumpy. 

"Hi," she says, bobbing her head and smiling but not too widely. She points at herself. "Evelyn. ...Deskyl, right?" 

She really doesn't look traumatized, though she's surprisingly alert for the time of day, and the casual confidence she carries herself with is a little odd in its own way. "Mn, Deskyl," she nods. "Incomprehensible incomprehensible?" she enunciates, not very successfully but with clear effort put in. Maybe this one will speak Basic.

Huh. A kid who's used to being on her own, Evelyn suspects. And not used to early bedtimes on school nights. The combination isn't that unusual by itself, there are plenty of (relatively)-benignly neglected kids with absentee parents who wouldn't actually stop them from wandering downtown at night, but that doesn't explain the not-speaking-English. 

She shakes her head, apologetic. "I'm sorry. No English at all?" Though the reaction so far is making her suspect that the kid doesn't even recognize English, which is even odder if she's been here for any length of time at all. 

She's trying not to be obvious about it and make the poor kid feel inspected under a microscope, but she's looking closely at her. You can tell a lot about a kid's background, and their parents, from how they dress and their haircut and how clean and generally well-groomed they look. 

"Mn," she offers, in the negative.

She doesn't object to being looked at, but watches closely in return. Her clothes aren't too odd, simple durable things being the practical choice to give to children everywhere, though the details are a little strange - the shirt has a standing collar and sleeves slightly longer than you'd expect to see, the pocket openings on her pants have a sharp bend rather than a curve to them, the seams on her shoes are in the wrong places, and there's a subtle impression that the fabric might be unfamiliar, too, though it's hard to be sure just by looking at it. Deskyl herself seems to be in good shape - well fed, with long hair recently-enough washed and combed and no particular sign of injury or illness. She could use a bath, maybe, but the dirtiness is more suggestive of an afternoon in the woods than any number of days wandering around a city. In fact, if Evelyn has a sharp enough nose, she might notice that Deskyl still smells of the farm, just a little.

Evelyn doesn't have quite that sharp of a nose, and is very much a city person - to her, a nice walk beside the river in town is "outdoorsy" enough for anyone. 

The young girl's appearance leaves her with more questions than answers, honestly. The clothing might be foreign, but surely this child didn't just get on a plane by herself and fly over from overseas? Maybe she flew in with her parents and they misplaced her, but in that case she's bizarrely calm about being lost in a foreign city. 

Evelyn has cared for children before who didn't have a lot of English, but never someone who didn't even know the words for 'yes' and 'no.' She'll have to call her supervising social worker in the morning and ask if they have any advice - or better yet, community resources - on language lessons, but for now the thing the poor girl needs most is to get to BED. At least it sounds like they won't have to worry about school for the next couple of days. 

She talks to her anyway, because it feels too weird and awkward not to, though she's also going to use some exaggerated gestures to coax Deskyl to follow her out to the parking lot. "You're going to be staying in my house for a few nights. We're a bit out in the sticks, I'm afraid, but it's a nice big place, and I don't have any other children with me right now, so you'll have your own bedroom with an en-suite. It's about a quarter-hour drive, assuming we don't run into another traffic accident. ...By the way, you're in Reno, Nevada." She's not sure if any one mentioned it so far, and if the kid did fly out here with family and get lost, she might recognize the name of their intended destination. 

Deskyl gives the truck a little pat before following, but does so amiably enough, and hums an acknowledgement to Evelyn's words rather than putting in the effort to speak again.

Then she can get in Evelyn's station wagon for the drive to her temporary 'home'! She's big enough not to need the booster seat from the very well-stocked trunk, though Evelyn still sits her in the back seat. She thinks kids often prefer it, when they're just getting to know her, it's less up-close-and-personal. 

It's a rather ancient Subaru, with a few scratches and dents on the exterior (none the result of an accident, Evelyn is a very careful driver, but she's had some rather angry children over the years.) The inside, however, is immaculate; she ends up dealing with enough spills and various bodily fluids that she's made a habit of having it professionally cleaned at the end of every placement, and there are seat covers. They have a flowery pattern, which usually leads to no end of ribbing from the under-ten boys who think it's hilariously "cringe" and "old lady."  

"The seatbelts are a bit confusing - here, let me show you." Rather than do Deskyl's seatbelt for her and risk invading her personal space, Evelyn flips on the inside light and demonstrates on the other back seat how to pull out the seatbelt through a slit in the seat covers, and plug the metal tongue into its socket. 

The way she's watching suggests that she's not familiar with this procedure, but she follows along well enough and doesn't seem bothered by the idea.

Then they can drive! 

They spend a few minutes traversing downtown, with tall glass-fronted buildings on either side of the street and a few cars and late-night partiers out and about. There isn't a lot of downtown Reno, though, and after they cross the river, they're soon in low-density residential suburbs. There are trees, and lawns. It's much cleaner, and all of the streetlamps actually work. 

Evelyn's house is a fairly new construction, about a decade old, identical in layout to the houses on either side but painted in a cheery sunflower-yellow. There's a large plastic play structure on the front lawn, toys for various ages scattered around it. 

She parks in the driveway (the garage was relegated to bonus storage space years ago) and ushers Deskyl to her front door, waving her hand to trigger the motion-sensor that flicks on the porch light. The front-hall interior has an elderly welcome mat, its nap almost worn away in the center. There's also a wooden bench (with a flip-up top and storage space inside, it's where she keeps the spare shoes and some of the sports equipment), and a coat tree and shoe-rack and a closet full of currently-unnecessary spare raincoats and cold weather gear, thrifted over the years and suitable to fit children of various sizes. A sample of the children-of-various-sizes appear in a row of photographs above the closet. 

Evelyn sits down to untie her shoes and replace them with slippers, then stands so she can open the bench and offer Deskyl a pair that look like they should more or less fit. 

"It's just you and me tonight," she says brightly. "I'm divorced, and my adult son Jeremy is at college in town now, though I'm sure he'll visit us tomorrow for a homecooked meal. Are you hungry?" She's trying to mime everything as well, but 'hungry?' is a lot easier to convey via gesture, by rubbing her belly and then pretending to nom on an invisible sandwich, than the concept of divorce. 

She is hungry! Or at least nods at the gesture. (It's a little early for dinner, according to her internal clock, but getting to be that time.) Aside from that she's more attentive to Evelyn than curious about the house; she does look around while the woman is changing her shoes but looks back as soon as she stands up again, and switches to the slippers when they're offered, sitting down herself to take off her slip-on sneaker-type shoes and then tucking them away beside Evelyn's.

Then they can head down the hall to the kitchen! It's newly remodeled, with a marble-topped island equipped with bar stools. There's a truly enormous fridge, special-ordered because their local Walmart didn't stock the model Evelyn had found in the catalogue and set her heart on. It has a built-in ice machine, a freezer the size of a small boat, and enough room to stock the heroic quantities of food you need to feed three picky eaters mid-growth-spurt while keeping the grocery shopping down to once a week. (There's also a chest freezer in the garage, kept stocked with both healthy home-cooked meals divided up into single-serving Tupperwares, and a wide selection of ready-meals for the kids who are suspicious of anything that doesn't come with a brightly-colored supermarket label proclaiming exactly what it is.) 

It's nearly 2:30 am, though, and Evelyn is doing her best not to visibly yawn but she'd rather keep this simple. Here's the toaster, and the pre-sliced bread in the freezer, and the fridge-door shelf with the array of jams and other condiments. Deskyl can choose between ice water from the dispenser, apple juice, and milk. 

(Evelyn will have a glass of water, incidentally demonstrating how the dispenser works, and valiantly resist the urge for a snack. She's on a diet again. It feels like she spends about half of her time on a diet, and the other half reversing any progress by stress-eating during the most intense foster placements.) 

Something about the offered food seems to confuse her, and she looks around as if for another person and makes a querying noise.

Evelyn blinks at her, unsure who or what she's looking for. She'll...just go flick on the living room light as well, and gesture to show that there's no one around. 

...Maybe Deskyl doesn't know how to use an American toaster? Are toasters different overseas? Evelyn hasn't been much of a traveler. She can smile at Deskyl and do the put-bread-in-toaster for her. 

Putting the bread in the toaster does seem to de-confuse her, though not necessarily in a positive direction. She observes the situation. somewhat incredulously, rather than making any move to investigate the contents of the refrigerator.

Well, Evelyn isn't going to make any progress on figuring out what she's so weirded out about until she speaks at least a little bit of English! She would wonder if Deskyl just isn't used to being allowed to do things herself rather than waiting for an adult, but that really doesn't square with her independent manner.

Three minutes later, she presents Deskyl with two slices of perfectly-done toast on a plastic plate, and a butter knife for condiment-spreading; the child doesn't seem like the type so far to either accidentally drop or deliberately throw dishes, but Evelyn is still going to wait a little while before pulling out the ceramic dishware. 

This part at least doesn't seem to be weird for her. She takes the plate and sits at the table, and attempts to en-condiment her toast.

'Attempts' is the correct word; her fine motor skills are atrocious, and the unfamiliar flatware isn't helping. She is mostly getting the butter onto the bread, but only mostly, and the bread is taking some damage in the process. She's taking it slowly and methodically, though, and seems much less frustrated by the process than you'd expect from an eleven-year-old, especially a hungry eleven-year-old at 2:30am after a stressful day.

Huh. It's not the first time Evelyn has seen a child struggle with cutlery - she's cared for neglected kids who had never used it, as well as a developmentally disabled young boy - but this seems different. It's such a contrast, the obvious struggle with a basic physical task combined with Deskyl's calm, systematic manner. 

Evelyn doesn't step in to help; without a shared language, she can't negotiate it politely, and most eleven-year-olds are going to be touchy about a random strange grownup taking their plate away from them to butter their toast for them. She'll leave Deskyl to it, in case the poor girl is self-conscious (though she didn't seem to be, especially, she's so composed), and take the opportunity to go poke through the storage room upstairs and find spare pajamas of more or less the right size. She would prefer something neutral, since she has no idea of Deskyl's likes or dislikes, but she doesn't have infinite options. Disney princess-themed it will have to be. They can go shopping tomorrow so Deskyl can pick out some things to her liking. 

(She's musing to herself about the mysterious fine motor skills issue, and what she can do to at least mitigate it while they figure out what's going on. She's kind of worried. What if it's some kind of illness? Anyway, in the meantime she can maybe have a Google hunt for special-order flatware that's easier to grip, and she should swing by the Goodwill and look for a butter bell, so the butter can live outside the fridge and be softer and easier to spread...) 

It doesn't take long to put fresh sheets on the bed in what she mentally refers to as the Third Bedroom. It's the one with a neutral color scheme, whereas the other two are respectively decorated in pink and blue. She remembers thinking she was very clever at the time, reasoning that the foster care agency would either send her a boy or a girl and she'd be equipped in either case. She felt somewhat less clever two years later when she ended up with three brothers. The Third Bedroom is the one she usually reserves for older children; it has a window that opens fully, definitely not safe for a clever-fingered toddler, but it's also the largest room, big enough for a queen bed, a double-width dresser, and a desk for homework, and of course it's the room with the en-suite, a boon for teenagers who like their long showers. (The shampoo and conditioner and bodywash are all travel-sized, a concession Evelyn made after remarking that some teenagers will also go through absurd quantities of shampoo if they have a full size bottle.) 

Evelyn puts out a spare toothbrush and towels in the bathroom, and sets some paper and felt pens on the desk - not for now, of course, but in case Deskyl wakes up earlier than Evelyn and doesn't immediately come looking for her, which she might not, she seems so at ease in her independence and it's not like Evelyn can tell her that it's fine to wake her. 

She's back downstairs by the time Deskyl is finishing her toast, and sits down to wait for her, smiling. 

Deskyl is indeed finishing up her toast by the time Evelyn gets back; she managed to keep the mess mostly to the plate and even put a little jam on it. She looks up when she comes in, and makes an acknowledging noise before going back to eating, and when she's done she takes her plate and knife and puts them in the sink, and then considers the butter and jam and takes them to the refrigerator.

She doesn't actually seem tired, at this juncture, but does seem to be waiting for Evelyn to indicate what should happen next.

This kid is a ridiculous night owl, apparently. ...Oh, or jet-lagged, that would actually explain it even more plausibly. 

She smiles gratefully at Deskyl for putting the condiments back - what a polite and organized kid! - and then ushers her up the stairs to show her the bedroom. There are cheerful spring-green sheets and a darker green duvet cover, rather clashing with the Disney princess pajamas. 

Obviously Evelyn can't explain anything, but she can show Deskyl around. There's a bookshelf of YA fiction, which presumably Deskyl cannot read, and a box of Lego, and some stuffed animals in the top left drawer of the otherwise-empty dresser. Here's how to work the blinds, she'll close them now for the night. She'll demonstrate turning the bedside lamp on and off, and then doing the same with the overhead light, just in case light switches are different wherever Deskyl is from. (Electrical outlets definitely are, right? She read about that in a travel magazine.) 

Oh, and Deskyl should definitely brush her teeth. Evelyn will mime teeth-brushing and show her where the toothpaste is. 

It takes a moment for her to get the idea, when Evelyn mimes toothbrushing, and when it does she makes a face and a disappointed noise. She goes ahead and tries it, though - the motor skill problem manifests here, too, but she can rest the toothbrush on the edge of the sink and prop the toothpaste tube up over it and manage that way, and she has an easier time getting the toothbrush into her mouth - whereupon she makes a disgusted face, but soldiers on regardless, brushing quickly so she can wash the taste out afterward as soon as possible.

Oh dear. Deskyl doesn't seem horribly distressed about it for now, but Evelyn is just going to sneak out and replace the travel-size standard mint toothpaste with a couple of different (full size) tubes of children's toothpaste, Silly Strawberry and cookie dough. Which Evelyn personally thinks are disgusting, but - well, at the very least she doesn't think this solemn, polite girl will squirt the entire tube of toothpaste all over the mirror or anything. 

(And she should maybe think about picking up an electric toothbrush for Deskyl, who seemed kind of unimpressed by the regular toothbrush. She seems capable of using it, but an electric toothbrush it would still probably be easier on her fine motor skills.) 

When Deskyl is done, Evelyn will make a vague gesture around the room and a questioning face - does Deskyl seem to need anything else? 

Evelyn can probably pick up on the fact that Deskyl is somewhat discontent with the pajamas, though she's not nearly as demonstrative about it as she's been about other things - she's not trying to communicate it, whereas in contrast it seems like she has been intentionally communicating in the other cases so far. Other than that - she does seem lingeringly upset, just a little, and a bit overwhelmed, but she doesn't appear to have any specific complaints.

Well, and no wonder! It's got to be a pretty upsetting situation! 

Evelyn's instincts are telling her that this wouldn't be the best of times to push and ask a lot of questions even if they had a language in common, and definitely isn't the moment to offer a cuddle. This seems like a case where the best solution for an overwhelmed kid is leaving her alone and giving her some space. She will take a moment to pad out into the hallway, gesturing for Deskyl to follow her, and show Deskyl where her own bedroom is, in case anything comes up in the middle of the night.

And then she heads to bed herself. 

Okay.

So.

She's stranded on an uncontacted world? She doesn't want to be stranded on an uncontacted world!

She flops on the bed to have emotions about it for a while - it's not even just that it's an uncontacted world, it's that it's a low-tech one; she doesn't - didn't - mind the farm but she was really looking forward to getting to go out into the world and learn how all the cool stuff works and is made and everything. And now that's not going to happen. They have some tech, but it's just not the same, knowing that there's cooler stuff out there. And nevermind that she'll never get to be a Sith now! She was supposed to be lucky, as a Force-sensitive, and this is not it.

She cries herself out eventually, and she still isn't really tired when she does, nor does she really feel like being cooped up alone in a room. She goes to explore the house, moving as quietly as she can.

She can do that unimpeded! The upstairs has enough going on to keep her busy for a while. 

For one, there are EVEN MORE pictures. There are SO MANY. Dozens of different children, mostly candid photographs. Many of them are in a backyard, presumably this house's backyard, which apparently has a tire swing hanging from a sturdy rope looped around the branch of an enormous maple tree. There's also a shed, open in one picture, revealing a glimpse of quite a lot of larger toys in storage, bikes and soccer net and an inflatable paddling pool; some photos instead show the shed locked but some subset of the toys out and in use. There's a garden patch but in most of the pictures it looks rather worse for wear. 

Deskyl's room is at the back of the house. Evelyn's room, the other master bedroom with an en-suite, is at the front of the house overlooking the driveway and lawn, and her door is firmly shut. 

There are two more smaller rooms laid out side by side, currently unoccupied with the doors ajar, the beds stripped. They're both much smaller, and might once have been a single room that was subdivided. If Deskyl turns on the lights, she'll notice that one is painted a lovely azure blue and the other is pale pink. Each has room for a single bed against one wall (arranged so the beds are on opposite walls, after Evelyn learned the hard way that some kids would try to annoy their sibling or fellow foster child by kicking the shared wall), a bookshelf, and a toybox. The pink room also has a wardrobe, white with some flowers stamped on as a decoration; the blue room has a chest of drawers decorated with rocketship stickers, and glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling as well as a solar system mobile. The bookshelves have books, thinner and with more pictures than the books that came with Deskyl's assigned room, and also lots of stuffed animals and, for the pink room, some rather worse-for-wear Barbies sharing a plastic bucket. The blue room has more Lego and a remote-controlled toy car. The chest of drawers and the wardrobe are both empty. Both rooms have windows, but much smaller than Deskyl's and very high up. 

On the side closest to Deskyl's room is a hallway closet, narrow but deep. It contains an elderly vacuum cleaner, an ironing board, some spare waterproof mattress covers, and for some inexplicable reason a glittery adult-sized mermaid costume hanging from a hanger. 

On the side nearest Evelyn's room, there's another large bathroom, equipped with a huge jacuzzi bathtub - with a grab-bar, not that that's ever specifically been useful - and a shower curtain supported by a curved stainless-steel curtain rod bolted to the ceiling. The curtain is plastic, printed with a colorful map with all the continents and countries labeled (in English, of course.) 

She looks through the pictures; she doesn't recognize most of the toys, but there's enough examples of them in use for her to get the general idea. She's not entirely sure what to make of the fact that the pictures are of so many different kids; they obviously aren't still here, but if this is just a temporary stop, why take pictures at all? It's a little creepy, she thinks, and moves on.

The pink room is mostly uninteresting, though she pages through a couple of the picture books before leaving. The blue room, she backs out of as soon as she realizes what its decor is meant to be, taking a moment in the hall to let her heart rate go back down before approaching again to turn its light off and shut its door. The closet gets only a cursory look; she lingers longer in the bathroom, memorizing the details of the map on the curtain.

She doesn't want to go downstairs, when she's done with that; she wants to work some more on her Force language effect. She is, for better or for worse, here now, and she thinks she might be able to get it doing proper translation, not just assistance with a language she already knows. She's still at it - lying on the made bed, apparently staring idly at the ceiling - when the sun comes up.

Evelyn isn't about to bother her immediately at dawn.

For one thing, she had a late night too. Not that she sleeps in much, she's always been an early riser, but it's going to be a much better start to her day if she can have her morning coffee in peace and quiet. And, of course, if Deskyl is jet-lagged - she didn't even look slightly sleepy when Evelyn went to bed, and may not have gone to sleep right away - she's likely to sleep very late. Since they're not worrying about school today, that's fine. 

...By 10 am Evelyn is feeling slightly antsy. She doesn't want to rush Deskyl if the girl is having a nice lie-in, but she did have plans to take her out shopping today, and the Walmart starts getting busier by midday. 

She will go upstairs and very tentatively knock on Deskyl's door, hopefully not loudly enough to disturb her if she's in fact still asleep. 

Yep, cozy and asleep under the covers.

Evelyn will veeeeeeeery caaaarefully nudge the door open a crack (she keeps the hinges oiled for exactly this reason) to glance in and make sure this isn't the suspicious kind of silence where actually the entire room was somehow trashed while she slept. Not that she thinks this is likely with Deskyl but she’s learned the hard way that initial impressions will be misleading.

….Not on this particular occasion, though. Sleeping Deskyl is adorable, awwww.

Evelyn creeps quietly downstairs and settles in to catch up on some online trainings, still on alert for any sound from the bedroom upstairs.

Left to her own devices, Deskyl will sleep for another four hours.

By 2 pm, Evelyn has eaten lunch and completely caught up on online training - and gotten a call from Jeremy cancelling on dinner tonight - and is trying not to get too lost in the shopping-online-for-interior-decor rabbithole. She's also starting to worry that, perhaps, Deskyl may not have gone to sleep right away, and may instead have been getting up to some kind of very sneaky and silent mischief. 

She'll slip upstairs whenever she hears the door open and/or any movement in Deskyl's bedroom (immediately over the kitchen table, where she's currently working.) 

Deskyl doesn't make any particular effort to be quiet when she gets up, but uses the bathroom and pokes through the closet in search of clothes that might fit her rather than leaving the room immediately.

There's unfortunately less of a selection than Evelyn would have preferred to have ready, since she had extremely little warning about Deskyl and didn't actually know before leaving the house what size to prepare for her. There are a couple of pairs of stretchy jogging pants, since those have a forgiving fit, and some T-shirts with unfamiliar logos on them, and an unopened pack of underwear that are hopefully at all vaguely the right size. There's a dressing gown.

Deskyl's clothes from yesterday are also still there. (They weren't incredibly filthy or anything, and Evelyn is reluctant to wash kids' clothes without their cooperation in the process unless they're a genuine health hazard; it's a very personal thing, it can feel invasive, and sometimes the smell of home is an important source of comfort.) 

Evelyn will also be up the stairs within thirty seconds! She knocks on Deskyl's door, waits a bit, and nudges it ajar without actually looking through it. "Good morning!" (Not that Deskyl will presumably understand this at all.) 

She vocables back something that's presumably 'good morning' in her native language, contemplating the jogging pants and how easy they may or may not be to get on.

Evelyn is still feeling reluctant to invade Deskyl's personal space, when it still doesn't feel like she's established much of a connection or trust (the language barrier is such a challenge.) Anyway, the clothes should fit fine for now.

Instead, she cheerfully announces - though presumably Deskyl won't understand - that she'll be downstairs. "I'll put out a spread for breakfast," she adds brightly. "Or should I say lunch - you must be starving. Come on down whenever you're ready." 

"Mrrp?" She opens the door partway to see if that improves the communication situation any.

Evelyn smiles warmly at her, points down at the stairs, and mimes a walking motion with her fingers, then picking up an invisible bowl and eating from it. "Come down when you're dressed," point at the clothes, mime pulling pants on, "and we'll have something to eat." She's trying not to feel self-conscious and ridiculous about the exaggerated miming. 

(Communicating to Deskyl that they're going to get back in the car and head to Walmart for some clothes shopping is going to be another challenge. Fortunately, Evelyn has now had several peaceful hours at her old desktop computer to consider her options, and settled on printing out a map with the route highlighted and a couple of pictures that came up when she Google Image'd 'Walmart'.) 

"Beh," she nods, and goes back to what she was doing.

She makes her way downstairs in a reasonable amount of time, in leggings and Disney princess shirt, and heads for the kitchen.

Having noted Deskyl's difficulty with the cutlery the day before, and wanting to avoid delaying their day even further with a messy lunch, Evelyn sets out a range of finger foods. She makes some sandwiches - peanut butter and jelly, as well as cream cheese - and cuts then into triangles alongside a little pile of Babybel cheeses. She also includes a platter of carrot and cucumber sticks with some colorful grape tomatoes; many of the children she takes in shun vegetables, used to a diet of fast food, but she has a feeling Deskyl won't be one of them. 

She is not! Of the offered foods, she's most hesitant of the Babybel, actually, but takes one anyway, and a pb&j and a healthy portion of veggies, coming to an entirely reasonable amount of food for a child her size who, uh, hasn't, recently missed a meal.

Well, she's still eating better than a lot of kids on their first morning waking up in a foster home. ...Or afternoon, rather. Evelyn is going to keep an eye on it, of course, but she won't worry too much unless it starts to look like a trend. 

She reads her newspaper while Deskyl eats - no need to make the poor girl feel scrutinized and self-conscious, even if Evelyn is, in fact, watching her closely. She's so hard to read. What must she be thinking, having been sent to a strange woman's house in a strange city with no one able to explain why? 

Once Deskyl is finished eating, she brings over the printed pictures - she added one of the car, since she happened to have an actual photo of her car on her desktop photo app - and endeavors, through pointing at them and making various gestures and even stooping as far as to make 'vroom vroom' noises, to explain that they're going to get back in the car and drive to Walmart and buy Deskyl some of her own clothes. 

It turns out to be pretty hard to surreptitiously watch Deskyl; the first few times Evelyn so much as thinks about her too hard she looks up from her meal. She eventually shrugs and ignores her, though, to focus on her food.

She takes the explanation of their impending trip amiably enough, nodding along as she understands various parts. When Evelyn is done, she thinks for a moment, taps a blank spot on one of the sheets of paper, mimes writing something with her outstretched finger, and makes a questioning noise.

What a weirdly observant child. She doesn't give off the vibes of tense hypervigilance that you get with children from violent homes, but there's definitely - something - about her. Evelyn can't put her finger on it yet. 

Deskyl can have a pencil to write with, sure, and a few sheets of blank paper too. Evelyn watches curiously to see what she'll do next. 

Well, first she struggles with the pencil for a minute before she remembers how to hold it, and then she writes out three words in large, atrocious handwriting and an entirely unfamiliar alphabet, one to a line. That done, she points to the first one and declares it to be behna, nodding as she does so. The second one is eerh, and gets a headshake. The third is eloh, and is accompanied by a broad gesture at the room. She goes back to the first, taps her chest, "behna," and gestures to Evelyn.

Uh. Wow. Evelyn is embarrassed by the fact that she's apparently terrible at this. 

'Behna' is 'yes', she thinks, and maybe Deskyl is asking her for its translation in English, though she's not 100% sure of that. "Yes," she says, nodding emphatically, and writes the word down on the second sheet of paper, and "No," accompanied by a headshake.

She's...not entirely sure what the gesture-at-the-room word is. Probably not 'home'; Deskyl almost certainly doesn't feel at home here, not yet. (And hopefully won't have to, because Social Services will find her parents and sort all of this out.)

She shrugs, then gestures around the room. "Here?" 

She diligently writes these down next to their respective words, in the same unfamiliar glyphs, and then folds the paper up (sliding it of the edge of the table rather than trying to get a grip on the edge) and - doesn't have pockets. Well, she'll just hold onto it, then. And she'll rifle through the original papers for the picture of the Walmart, to tap on.

"Walmart," Evelyn enunciates clearly for her, and then "Car," for the picture of her car, and "road" while running her finger along the main avenue marked on the map. Then she holds up a hand. "And wait there one second, all right?" 

It's not a cold day outside, but it's cloudy, and the side advantage of giving Deskyl a light jacket is that she'll have something with pockets. Evelyn digs in her ottoman spare clothes storage and retrieves a zip--up sweatshirt with large deep pockets on each side. It's clearly meant to be a boy's sweatshirt, based on the football theme, but for now it's what she has in Deskyl's size. She brings it over, shows Deskyl the pockets, and then sets it on the table for her. 

...On reflection, you know what would be an excellent idea? Taking a photograph of Deskyl's writing. She's not sure exactly how to go about searching for alphabets on the Internet to identify it, but she can at least email the pictures to her supervising social worker, since Deskyl was brought in by the overnight duty team and hasn't been properly assigned a social worker of her own.

She gestures for Deskyl to wait again, and goes to track down her digital camera. She attempts to mime-request that Deskyl lay the paper flat on the kitchen table so she can photograph it clearly. 

By the time she gets back, Deskyl has the sweatshirt on and the paper tucked away as expected; it takes a few seconds for her to figure out what Evelyn is asking for, but she takes it back out when she does, after the first paper she gets out turns out to be the map printout.

Pictures! Well, on her camera at least. Evelyn is not the most technically savvy person in the world, and it feels like it inevitably takes her half an hour to get a batch of pictures successfully off the memory card. She'll save that for later, once it's not delaying their shopping trip even later and risking a collision with the after-school rush. 

It's still nearly 2:45 pm by the time she ushers Deskyl out to the car. With the sun up, Deskyl will be able to get a much better view of the neighborhood, if she wants. It's a nice enough suburb; some of the nearby houses and lawns are more decrepit than Evelyn's, but the house next door is actually much more nicely manicured.

An elderly woman is out front, watering her flowers; she waves cheerily to Evelyn. 

She looks around a little, but stays reasonably close on the way to the car.

Evelyn ushers Deskyl into the backseat (it's generally recommended that way for foster children, even though she would probably let her own child ride in the front at Deskyl's age and size) and they can head out!

It's a somewhat longer drive to Walmart. They pass through the downtown strip again, which is in some ways fancier with its neon signs and tall glass-fronted buildings, but also much dirtier. It's already crowded with afternoon foot traffic, including a cluster of young adults who have very obviously been day drinking; they're being very loud, but not actually causing property damage, and the police are clearly too busy with other things to send them home when they're not actually brandishing visible open alcohol bottles.

Evelyn keeps her attention mostly on the road, but watches in the rearview mirror for any reaction from Deskyl. It's common for neglected children to have had bad experiences with drunk adults. 

She seems more confused by them than anything else, though also a bit annoyed. She's also gawking quite a lot at the scenery in general.

It's clearly very unfamiliar and strange for her. Evelyn tries to catch her eye in the rearview mirror and share a sympathetic smile. 

They pass through the downtown area and out the other side, back to wide open streets, this time winding their way up into the hills. It's about another ten minutes before they pull in the very large parking lot of a very large big-box Walmart. (Everything is bigger in Nevada, Evelyn remembers her neighbor commenting after moving from San Francisco.) 

She parks - it's busy, with lots of to-and-fro of shopping carts between the store and the parked cars, but fortunately not so packed that she can't find a reasonably close parking spot with some looking around - and opens the back door for Deskyl. 

She's still gawking, now much less at the building and more at the people, and seems a bit nervous, sticking closer to Evelyn as they head in.

At least she seems unlikely to wander off! And they can hopefully avoid a battle over buying all the candy in the place. Which Evelyn never gives into, her philosophy of boundary-setting is that you need to start out how you intend to continue, but she's looked after a lot of kids who were bought treats to avert grocery store tantrums and have thus had the behavior thoroughly encouraged. 

It had better be an efficient trip, Evelyn decides, Deskyl looks pretty overwhelmed and they're not even inside yet. She'll resist the temptation to pause in the home decor or the toys section, it's not like they have any shortage of toys and knickknacks at home, and make a beeline straight for the clothing section, pointing out the cluster of racks that has items in her size. 

Does Deskyl seem inclined to pick out clothes herself, or does she need more encouragement? 

She's a little distracted by all the people, but settles in to the task reasonably quickly, favoring sturdy clothes, insofar as Walmart offers such a thing, with bright colors and simple patterns or no patterns at all, and pockets in the pants.

Walmart definitely has a maximum sturdiness level available, but she can at least pick clothes that aren't frilly or made of visibly delicate fabrics. Bright colors are easy to find, and she can find pants with pockets (though many in the girls' section have fake pockets.) 

Evelyn decides to skip the shoe section for today - Deskyl's current shoes are in acceptable condition, and it's not an emergency for her to only have one pair - but, since Deskyl seems to be coping reasonably, they can detour to an adjacent section. Does Deskyl want a satchel or handbag, so she doesn't have to fit everything she wants to carry around in her pockets? 

Sounds good! She'll actually take a little backpack-style one, if that's all right?

Of course! She can definitely have a little backpack. And then they'll take the shopping cart of clothes to the checkout line. 

There is, unfortunately, a huge checkout line. And Evelyn knows a lot of people in town; she's been living here since Jeremy was a baby. The older woman ahead of her in line, Iris, used to work at the same office back when she was in HR and not yet a foster carer. It's been a few months since they caught up properly, and Iris lights up when she sees her and starts chatting. 

Evelyn doesn't want to be rude, but she isn't exactly in the mood for chitchat; she's underslept and starting to feel it, and she wants to keep most of her attention on Deskyl. She introduces Deskyl, and then, as the line shuffles forward, she'll nod and smile and make listening noises while Iris complains about how her legs have been bothering her and she can't see the specialist doctor for another three months. 

Deskyl meanders up the side of Evelyn's cart as the women talk - she can't exactly ask about what she wants to do, and she doesn't want to startle them, especially not in an already-noisy crowd like this - and then waits until Iris is particularly distracted to not-quite-pat her leg.

Iris is very occupied in discussion - now gossiping about her downstairs neighbor's new boyfriend - and doesn't seem to immediately notice the pat, or its effects on her, but she does notice that Deskyl is hovering close to her. "Oh, hello, dear." She ruffles Deskyl's hair. 

(Evelyn winces - a lot of foster kids hate casual touch from strangers, which is honestly pretty understandable of them, Evelyn remembers being a non-foster kid and hating it - but she doesn't want to make a fuss of it here and now unless Deskyl actually seems bothered.) 

She's not fond of it, exactly, but she doesn't protest. As soon as Iris is done with her she retreats back to Evelyn's side of the cart, now looking just slightly frazzled.

Well, fortunately they've made it to the front of the line. A bored-looking teenage cashier scans their purchases as Evelyn digs out her credit card. 

There's also a rather impressive display of rows and rows of colorfully-packaged candy and gum. Evelyn glances down to gauge if Deskyl is staring hopefully at it. Getting her one small treat seems entirely justified, given that she's just calmly put up with waiting in line for ten minutes in an increasingly loud and crowded Walmart (the after-school rush is now picking up in earnest, and Evelyn is not looking forward to the traffic on the way back.) 

She isn't staring at it at all. (She doesn't know what it is, actually.)

Huh. Even if she can't read the labels on the packaging, where in the world doesn't have candy? This child continues to be full of surprises. Evelyn will discreetly swipe a Kit Kat bar for her and add it to the pile, to give her in the car. Deskyl seems responsible enough not to be messy with chocolate in the backseat.

She pays and they can escape into the parking lot. Evelyn hands Deskyl the shopping bag of new clothes; a lot of kids in foster care are protective of their possessions, when so much else about their life is uncertain, and she wants it to be very clear to Deskyl that the clothes belong to her. 

She takes the bag without any particular reaction and heads for the car, just a little faster than Evelyn might find comfortable, relaxing a bit once they're out of the thick of the crowd.

Well, if she wants to be out of here as soon as possible, that's very understandable and Evelyn isn't carrying anything now except her purse and can hurry. (She doesn't bother to put the shopping cart back properly; someone will take it in the next ten seconds.)

Once Deskyl is settled in the backseat again, Evelyn offers her the chocolate bar, miming cronching on it in case it's not obvious to her that it's food.  

Hm, okay - yeah, that's tasty. She gives an approving chirp.

Evelyn switches on the radio to a pop music station for the drive. It's too awkward to sit in silence while they wait at endless red lights behind rows of station wagons, and it feels silly to chatter the entire time when Deskyl can't understand her. Sure, 'immersion' is supposed to be a good way to learn languages, but with most of her attention on the road, Evelyn isn't sure she can come up with anything to say. 

It's nearly 5 pm by the time they make it back to the house and she parks in the driveway. "Hungry?" she asks Deskyl, miming eating again. 

"Eh," she shrugs.

She won't bother with a snack, then, just a pick-me-up coffee for herself before she gets started on dinner. She settles Deskyl at the dining room table with some craft supplies; in addition to the blank paper for drawing and colored pencils, she has a box with colored construction paper, a set of felt pens including glittery ones, several packs of wildly varied colorful stickers, and some miscellaneous ribbons and bits of shiny cloth that can be cut out and glued on. 

She spends a couple minutes writing out her whole alphabet with room left blank for the local equivalents once she learn them, then takes her bag of clothes and heads upstairs, returning after a few minutes in different pants to go sit on the living room couch and, to all appearances, stare off into space doing nothing in particular.

…Huh. Apparently not into crafts, then. Evelyn…isn’t exactly surprised, for some reason, it fits with the hazy and incomplete picture of Deskyl she’s starting to form in her head. She really just cannot figure this kid out. 

She can’t see Deskyl from the counter beside the fridge, which is probably fine but she relocates her chopping board to the island where she has line of sight to the living room. Smiles over at Deskyl occasionally, not that Deskyl seems to be paying attention to her. 

Evelyn has noticed that Deskyl seems to maybe be avoiding animal products, though she’s not sure, it's not like they've had many meals together and Deskyl can't communicate her food likes and dislikes. She takes it into account, though; she makes pasta - elbows instead of spaghetti, which can be tricky to eat even for children with good fine motor skills - and meatballs, but sets the meatballs out in a dish separate from the tomato sauce, beside another dish of grated Parmesan cheese. She puts a big dessert spoon beside Deskyl's plate as well as a fork, in case that's easier to handle, and then calls her over to the table. 

She appears promptly, after an acknowledging chirp, and examines the pasta before putting together her plate - meatballs are a yes, spooned carefully on top of the pasta with a finger on the other hand adding a bit of stability to the process, and so is the cheese, in smallish spoonfuls so that it's not as much of a problem when she loses the one to clumsiness, and then she does seem to think that the spoon is the way to go for eating, as well.

She looks up a couple times through the meal, thoughtfully, like she's trying to figure out how to communicate something, but doesn't actually attempt it.

Poor kid, of course she wants to be able to talk and it must be so frustrating. (For Evelyn as well, who badly wants to know more about this kid’s history, not to mention how she’s feeling right now about what must be a strange and baffling situation for her too.)

Evelyn smiles at her, and talks when she can think of something to say, since it’s probably good for Deskyl just to hear more spoken English. She tries to speak slowly and clearly, and keep the chitchat concrete and related to their surroundings, so she can point at nearby objects. The photos on the wall turn out to be a good source of inspiration. 

(Deskyl clearly has some coping mechanisms to handle her clumsiness, whatever its cause, which could mean it’s not new? Maybe it’s been around her whole life, some kind of very specific developmental delay rather than an illness. Evelyn is suddenly wishing she had done more trainings in…something, she’s honestly not even sure what keywords she would have to Google to figure out what’s going on with Deskyl. She had a boy with fetal alcohol syndrome once, who was sort of similarly clumsy, but he also had learning disabilities and that isn’t the impression she’s had of Deskyl so far…)

She’s been mulling over her plans for after dinner, to circumvent the language barrier and try to learn more about Deskyl and where she’s from, but she also wants to make sure she’s giving Deskyl space to express what she wants.

So once she’s done eating - a little bit before Deskyl is, she’s more comfortable with the cutlery and also theoretically on a diet - she sets down her fork, and smiles pleasantly at Deskyl before returning to (pretend to) read her newspaper, watching from the corner of her eye and waiting to see if Deskyl has anything to— well, obviously she won’t have anything to say, but whether she seems to want anything in particular right now...? 

Not especially, while she's eating - not that she minded the interruptions to get more vocabulary - but she does take her alphabet sheet from earlier out of her pocket when she notices Evelyn watching, and slides it over before going back to her meal.

Oh, right, Evelyn still needs to get the photo off her phone memory card onto the computer, and send it to her supervising social worker. She hopes she doesn't run into the weird bug with attachments again, her email program sometimes has issues and she got a younger and more tech-savvy colleague to explain it to her once but she didn't really follow his instructions on troubleshooting it. 

If Deskyl wants her to look at the alphabet, she can do that. She smiles at her and then examines it. Does it look like it might be Chinese characters, or Arabic? 

It's not complicated enough to be Chinese, and the letters are blocky rather than the cursive script of Arabic.

Huh. That's definitely not Chinese or, uh, any of the Asian scripts, Evelyn is failing to remember whether Korean and Japanese and such have their own characters. Not Arabic, either, Arabic is all curly and this is all straight lines. 

Hmm. Evelyn pulls over the notepad she uses for jotting down todo lists when she's on the phone, and writes a large capital letter A. She points at it. "Ayyyy," she says, exaggerating the sound. Then points at the first letter on Deskyl's sheet and waits, expectantly. 

"Aurek. Aaaaaah."

"May I?" Evelyn gestures at her pencil at the space under the foreign letter, and when Deskyl doesn't seem to object, writes "A?" in tiny handwriting. And if Deskyl seems up for it, they can go through all the rest and get letter-sound correspondences. Evelyn is hardly a linguistics expert over here, but it definitely seems to be an alphabet, not a character system like Chinese. Maybe the social services department will have a translator on hand who can figure out the language from this information. 

Oh good, getting a copy of the local alphabet is what she made it for. The first two letters match their English alphabet equivalents, but the correspondence ends there, and some of the letters don't have direct equivalents in the English alphabet at all, but stand for things it represents as digraphs.

Communication! Well, of a kind. Evelyn takes a new photograph, this time including the letter correspondence to the English alphabet, and then finishes clearing away the dinner dishes. For dessert, she offers Deskyl a cookie from the tin she keeps in the cupboard above the fridge. ...And gives in to temptation, and takes one for herself as well. 

Once they've had dessert, she proceeds to the next step of her secret scheme. Or, well, not exactly secret and it's hardly Sherlock Holmes quality work, but she had an idea in the car and she's eager to see if it works out.

The bookshelves in the living room have some knickknacks as well as books, and among them is a globe. Which Evelyn takes down, and brings to Deskyl. She can point out approximately where Reno is on the map, and then she waits, looking expectantly at Deskyl. Who won't necessarily know how to find her home country on a globe, but she might; she's clearly had a decent education. 

It takes her a second to connect the globe to the map from last night, and she tenses up a bit and sighs, when she does. "Eerh, neh." No, that was the wrong sound for that translation. "Nnno?" She waves her hand across the surface of it, palm flat, like she's wiping something away, and produces an incomprehensible but clearly unhappy sentence.

No to what? She doesn't recognize the globe? But Evelyn has a feeling it's a more specific kind of 'no' than just 'I don't know what you're trying to ask me right now.' 

"I'm sorry, dear," she says quietly. "I wish you could talk to me, I'm sure you must have even more questions for me than I have for you." 

"Mmh." She takes the globe from Evelyn and puts it back on the shelf, not that this seems to help her mood very much.

Poor kid. She must be frustrated, and keeping it all in. 

For most eleven-year-olds, Evelyn would be thinking about starting their bedtime routine soon, but Deskyl is clearly jet-lagged or something and only woke up at 2 pm, she can't possibly be ready to sleep anytime soon. Evelyn can't wait until midnight or later to do her log notes and send over the pictures, though. Can she gently encourage-by-mime Deskyl to either settle in the living room with toys, or go relax in her own room upstairs? Evelyn is trying to be clear that either of these is an option and both are fine with her, but this is a subtlety she's not sure will come across in gestures. 

...actually could she go out in the backyard for a bit?

For a bit, sure! It's summer, so there are a couple more hours of daylight, and Evelyn can keep an eye on Deskyl discreetly through the window while she washes up in the kitchen, and gauge whether Deskyl seems to be playing responsibly and she can relocate to the study, which doesn't have direct line-of-sight, and check on her every few minutes. She tries to communicate via gestures at the clock, and pointing at the sun and miming its downward motion, that Deskyl can play while it's light out but should come in when it starts to get dark. (She doesn't super expect this to come across, but that's fine, she can just go out to fetch Deskyl in if she doesn't get bored first and come in on her own.) 

"Yes," and out she goes. Mostly she's looking for a cozy place to sit and mope, first - is there a tree she can sit under, maybe?

There is! There's a tire swing she can sit on under said tree, if she prefers that to the ground. She can hear the voices of younger children shouting in the distance, several backyards over, but no one else is actually visible and overall it feels peaceful. 

The tire swing is nice. She considers climbing the tree instead, but it doesn't feel necessary. She does cry again, some, just quietly, and when she's done, she reconsiders her decision to stay out of the tree.

Evelyn definitely has the impression that Deskyl is mopey, and considers going out to check on her, but it's not like she can even really offer that they can talk - they can't talk, that's probably half of what Deskyl is moping about - and kids, like adults, sometimes need space to themselves more than they need hugs and comfort. 

She doesn't immediately intervene when Deskyl looks like she's thinking about climbing the tree - Deskyl seems like a pretty athletic kid, who doesn't come across as reckless, and she let Jeremy climb the tree at eleven - but she is definitely going to hover and keep a sneaky eye on her, rather than going to the study where she won't be able to see her continuously. 

She seems pretty familiar with tree-climbing, and makes it up with no trouble, disappearing into the canopy. And once she's up and hidden away, she's apparently content to stay there.

If this were a more normal situation in any way, then Evelyn would be inclined to sit Deskyl down for a little chat, and explain that she knows climbing trees is fun but she would like it if Deskyl warned her when she was about to, so that Evelyn could keep an eye on her and make sure she was being safe. But, of course, she can't have any kind of chat, and Deskyl must be even more frustrated about that than she is. Sometimes you have to pick your battles, and in this case, she really doesn't think it's very likely Deskyl will injure herself, and it seems like a bigger priority to try, as much as possible, to make Deskyl feel at home here and like Evelyn is on her side. 

She gets out a book to pretend to read so it doesn't look like she's hovering anxiously, and still spends the entirely of the time failing to absorb any of it and being stressed that Deskyl will fall and hurt herself and, worst of all, she'll have to explain to her supervising social worker why she let her foster child engage in dangerous tree-climbing activities. 

Does Deskyl start to come down on her own before sunset? 

She does not!

Hopefully this won't be an awkward scene. Evelyn has been very much enjoying the lack of awkward scenes, she hates confrontation, but it's early days yet and Deskyl is probably used to a lot more independence than is healthy or safe for a child her age. 

She goes outside, calls to Deskyl, and points at the setting sun, then points at the tree, at the ground, and makes a downward fingerwalking gesture. "Deskyl, please come down now. It's going to be getting dark soon." 

"Mm." She points at the sun, then the horizon below it, and then taps her chest and points at the ground.

Which is obviously intended to communicate something and Evelyn has no idea what and she is trying so, so hard not to get visibly frustrated. 

"Deskyl, please come down. It gets dark very quickly here and it's not safe to climb in the dark." She will try to more emphatically mime 'climb down from the tree now.' 

This gets her an annoyed look, but then Deskyl does climb down, just as readily as she went up.

Evelyn has had crockery thrown at her head in anger half a dozen times; annoyed looks roll off her back like water. (Well, not entirely, she still doesn't prefer tension, but she appears completely unperturbed.) 

She's not going to force Deskyl to come inside if she doesn't want to, now that she's at least out of the tree. She'll give her some time to cool off before trying to have any more awkwardly mimed interactions. 

She looks back sunsetward, huffs, and heads inside to her room without interacting with Evelyn further. Fortunately it's facing the right way, even if watching the sun set from indoors isn't nearly as good.

It's been a long day; it's not surprising if Deskyl is a bit cranky. Evelyn herself is honestly a bit cranky. She stays downstairs and catches up on her log notes, emailing them to to duty social work team when she's done since Deskyl still hasn't been properly assigned a social worker. 

If Deskyl doesn't re-emerge, she plans to go up at 10 pm and gently nudge her in the direction of at least getting ready for bed, even if she wants to hang out quietly in her room rather than go to sleep yet. 

By ten, she's gotten a handful of the early reader books out of the other bedroom and is carefully attempting to sound out the text, referring frequently to her alphabet equivalency sheet; she's still noticeably annoyed at Evelyn when she turns up, but changes into pajamas without further argument before going back to the books.

Any annoyance Evelyn might have been feeling with Deskyl evaporated over the course of writing out her log notes. She's a kid - nearly a preteen, at that delicate age where it's normal and healthy for children to look for independence and test the limits - and she's without her parents, living in a stranger's house, in a foreign country where she doesn't speak the language and can barely communicate. Taking that into account, she's been remarkably well-behaved and cooperative. Evelyn smiles warmly at her and makes some impressed noises about the books. 

She makes a mental note that she needs to call the Social Services office first thing - if luck is with her, Deskyl will adjust her sleep cycle to something a bit more reasonable and in tune with the local clocks, but still sleep late enough that Evelyn has a couple of uninterrupted hours for busywork. Deskyl is clearly very motivated to learn the language, and Evelyn has no idea how to teach someone English except by continuing as she's been doing, but she expects Deskyl could make much faster progress on reading with a few hours of dedicated tutoring. And, of course, it would be great to know if there's any progress on the investigation to find her parents... 

Evelyn herself heads bedward around 11 pm, pausing at the landing to check if the light is still on under Deskyl's door. (She won't disturb her, but she wants to have some kind of sense of how late Deskyl is staying up.) 

Her light is still on at eleven; she sleeps through the morning again, and turns up yawning at 12:30 if Evelyn doesn't get her up before then.

Evelyn did some Google research on jet lag in children and mostly ended up concluding that all of the advice disagrees with itself and she has no idea what the best approach is. Her plan had been to wake Deskyl at 1 pm for lunch, if she wasn't up yet; if they can shift her an hour earlier every day, in less than a week she'll be on a perfectly respectable sleep schedule for a child of her age. 

She's made good use of her morning, and rammed through a number of phone calls. The photo of her alphabet has been passed on to Evelyn's supervising social worker's manager's manager, who will hopefully have a better idea of what to do with it. Deskyl has an assigned social worker, Christine, who will be visiting at 4 pm. They're working on getting her a language and reading tutor for a few hours a day, though that kind of thing never moves fast and at this rate Deskyl might have mostly figured it out on her own by the time anything is arranged. And, after bringing up the matter of Deskyl's poor fine motor skills - which particularly stand out now, in contrast with how confident she is at climbing trees - Evelyn has an appointment booked for her with a specialist doctor in two days' time. By which point, hopefully, Deskyl will have learned a little bit of English, whether by immersion or tutoring, and Evelyn can actually communicate to Deskyl where they're going and why. 

She's in the kitchen, reading the newspaper and humming cheerfully. She waits for Deskyl to come down rather than going up when she hears her door open, and waves sunnily at her when she comes into the kitchen. "Breakfast?" 

"Brrrekfast?" she parrots.

Evelyn beams at her and says "Good job!" even though Deskyl probably hasn't picked up enough language by immersion to understand her. She plops some toast in the toaster for her. The butter has been out in a dish since she got up, and should be nice and soft and easier to spread without causing a lot of damage to the bread. She takes out the container of fresh vegetables and dip she prepared earlier and sets that on the table as well. 

Yep, that's food all right, and the butter is indeed easier for her to deal with like this. She kind of wants something a little heartier, though, is there anything in the fridge she can ask if she can have?

Evelyn smiles at Deskyl and does not object to her riffling through the fridge! She seems to be a carbs-y sort of person in general, based on the range of available leftovers, but there are yogurt cups and more Babybels and there's a drawer of deli meats? 

A couple Babybels should do it, if that's all right with Evelyn?

Evelyn has absolutely no objection to Deskyl eating food out of the fridge - which is, as long as she lives here, her fridge too - and smiles reassuringly at her. They can have a pleasant breakfast, with Evelyn chatting to Deskyl about nothing in particular just for the language exposure. 

They've still got two and a half hours before the social worker's arrival. Evelyn is going to attempt to convey via gestures and visual aids how the clock works, and that when the hands get to here, a person will be coming to see Deskyl. 

Analog clocks are ancient tech by her reckoning but fortunately she's at least heard of them before, enough to have the first idea of what Evelyn is trying to get across; she nods agreeably at the explanation.

And then... hm. She doesn't feel like working on the books anymore for now; she might work on her Force effect, but she thinks she's got it as good as it's going to get for making sounds with right now and she can't get it to help her with the local language without knowing more about it... well, or doing mindreading, but she's not sure how to do that yet and doesn't really want to go poking through Evelyn's head at this point, what if she messes something up. At home she'd have classwork, or she'd go see what the other kids were up to, but that's not an option here. Maybe if she just dithers in the kitchen Evelyn will have a suggestion?

Evelyn was actually hoping they could do some language practice! She still doesn't feel like she knows what she's doing, but Deskyl seems to be able to make headway, and if it's going to be weeks to get a language tutor she's not going to just waste that time twiddling her thumbs. She found some ESL worksheets on Google and printed them out. They're definitely more aimed at six-year-olds than eleven-year-olds, with cartoon pictures that need to be matched up to the correct written English words, but hopefully Deskyl won't be offended. 

Yep, that works! She's not bothered by the age level issue, it's not like the material is too simple for her. She goes through the material at a reasonable pace, slowed down by wanting to take notes; she'll want to take a break to walk around in the backyard (or around the block, if Evelyn seems likely to be receptive to the request) after an hour or so but comes back to it when she's done and will still be at it when the social worker arrives, if there are enough worksheets.

A walk is a great idea! It's lovely when children don't have to be nagged and bribed and threatened with taking away their television time to get them to exercise. And there probably still aren't enough worksheets to fill two and a half hours, but Evelyn is happy to find and print out more. 

The doorbell rings at about 4:05 for the social worker. 

Deskyl startles just slightly at the unfamiliar sound, but finishes up the question she was working on, and then she'll follow Evelyn to the door.

Christine Barbey stands on the doorstep, with perfect posture as always. She's midway through slipping off her designer sunglasses, perfectly moisturized hands and tastefully manicured nails snapping shut the bespoke sunglasses case before slipping it into its designated pocket in her designer handbag, which never has the residue of gum wrappers and spare bandaids and hair elastics that Evelyn's collects. She's smiling her best bright designer smile, showing off tasteful pale lipstick and flawless natural makeup, wearing ballet flats that would last about six hours if Evelyn were wearing them, a pencil skirt, and a shift blouse in light summery fabric that somehow doesn't show her bra straps. It's a warm day, but her makeup doesn't look sweaty or shiny at all. 

"Evelyn! I'm very sorry about being late. Is now a good time, may I come in?" 

"Yes, of course!" Evelyn takes half a step back, gesturing for Deskyl to move out of Christine's way as well. And tries very hard not to show that her hackles are up, because kids can tell, and it's important that Deskyl has a good relationship with her social worker. 

(It would honestly be easier to like Christine if there were anything Evelyn could straightforwardly criticize about her - if she were as fake and plastic as someone who looks like that should be, or if she were a box-checker or a stickler for protocol and rules at the cost of an actual child's actual happiness, or if she pushed toddlers off her lap rather than let them get their sticky hands all over her perfectly made-up face, or if she made naive assumptions based on her old-money family and her sheltered perfect life. It's not that Christine is perfect - she sometimes drops things, or misses emails, or has to reschedule visits at the last minute because she's behind schedule - but she's solidly in the better half of social workers in terms of reliability and conscientiousness, and she's not fake, she seems to genuinely like everyone she meets. Pencil skirt or not, she's not above getting down on the floor with kids to play with Lego. She's new enough to social work to be a little naive sometimes, but she's not grating in her assumptions.

Just - and Evelyn is aware this is an absurd and childish way to feel - in how she looks perfect at all times, and moves about the world with the serene confidence of someone who takes for granted that everyone she meets will be basically decent and reasonable and they'll work as a team to sort something out. And then most of the time this works, which is in an objective sense not surprising because people like feeling treated like decent and reasonable human beings, and it makes it even more galling how Evelyn knows that if she were a better person, she would respect Christine for it rather than bristling about it. 

And, of course, there's the awkward history where the one time Evelyn was convinced Christine was getting it wrong, it turned out that she was - arguably, at least sort of - the one out of the two of them getting it right.) 

She smiles brightly, and - doesn't put a protective hand on Deskyl's shoulder even though interacting with Christine always makes her want to. "This is Deskyl! I'm not sure how much she understands of what we're saying, but we've been making great progress with some educational worksheets today. She's been a pleasure to have around so far." 

Deskyl scoots out of the way as indicated, and... contemplates Evelyn, for a moment, before turning her attention to Christine and offering a reasonably-friendly chirp.

Evelyn smiles reassuringly at Deskyl, and tries harder to drag her mood back to cheerful and focused. "Well, then, let's go have a seat in the lounge. Would you like something to drink - tea, coffee...?" 

A professional-yet-warm smile. "Whatever you're having is fine!" 

They can have seltzer, because Evelyn is a ridiculous person who feels self-conscious about her 'mummy tummy' whenever Christine is around, and it's too hot for tea and too late in the day for coffee (and besides, Christine is a fancy espresso machine sort of coffee drinker and Evelyn is always self-conscious about her jar of instant.) 

She brings the drinks over on a tray. Juice for Deskyl, since a lot of kids don't like seltzer. 

Christine slides a beautiful leatherbound folder out of her handbag and flips it open across her knees. "Let's get the formalities out of the way first. There isn't much paperwork, we didn't find any leads on her parents. No one's made any reports about missing children under fifteen in the last week - we checked the photos just in case she's a really young-looking fifteen, but no matches. The police passed her description around at the airport and no one remembers seeing her either. I believe they're trying the Greyhound station next, but I'm not hopeful, and of course they might well have driven in." 

Nod. "Have you had any luck with the sample of her native language's alphabet that I sent in?" 

Christine looks politely puzzled. "What's that? No, I don't recall seeing anything sent in." 

Is little miss perfect behind on her email today Probably not. Evelyn frowns, thinking. "...Oh, right, I sent it to my supervising worker, I didn't have your name yet. She must not have gotten around to passing it over yet."

And, of course, Evelyn could have thought of it this morning, she has Christine's contact information, and she didn't and so really it's her who screwed it up. Humiliating. She will smile apologetically. "We can show you now, if you want to take a picture of it yourself. Deskyl?" She'll try to gesture at Deskyl's pocket and hope this conveys what she wants. 

She has a few papers in her pocket, and rifles through them for a second before pulling the right one out and showing it to Evelyn. "This?"

"Yes!" Evelyn beams at her. "And that was really good, you said it right."

(And surprising. Did they cover that word specifically today? She decides to operate under the assumption that Deskyl is retaining enough from worksheets and/or language immersion more broadly that she might well understand any given sentence.) 

She reaches out to indicate that she wants to take the paper and show it to Christine, without actually taking it because that would be rude. 

Yep, that's fine, she hands it over.

Christine examines it closely for a couple of minutes, glancing up once to give Deskyl a friendly smile. 

Eventually she turns back to Evelyn. "Are you sure this is a real language?" 

Wow. What a spectacularly rude thing to say, especially when Deskyl continues to be RIGHT THERE! Evelyn is smiling so blandly. "What else would it be?" 

"It's not that rare for very bright children who grow up isolated to invent their own alphabet as a game, or a secret code no one else can read. It's nothing to be concerned about," she adds with a reassuring smile. "I suppose this could be a really obscure language, but most of those don't have their own alphabet, and this isn't even close to any of the ones I recognize - I took a comparative linguistics course in college."

Of course little miss perfect knows comparative linguistics shut up, Evelyn's brain, that's immature and beneath her. "Well, do you think we could send it to an expert who might know more about very rare languages?" 

(Though technically Deskyl didn't tell her this was the standard alphabet for the language she speaks at home. Surely a child who invented a code so she could write seriously wouldn't just show Evelyn how to translate the code, though??? Especially when they've only known each other for a day!) 

"We can certainly try it." Christine retrieves a brand-new iPhone from the side pocket of her purse, toggles to the camera app, and, tongue between her teeth, lays the paper flat on her lap and takes a picture, before politely offering it back to Deskyl. "What we could really use is a speech sample. I know she doesn't have much English comprehension yet, but if you give me a moment to pull up Voice Memos, can you try to ask her to say a few things in her language?" 

Uhhh. Okay. Evelyn is kind of unsure whether to expect Deskyl to freak out or be embarrassed or anxious if she realizes she's being recorded (Evelyn hates being recorded), but she will try to mime talking, pointing at the pencilled-in English-alphabet letters and saying "I'm talking in English now," and then pointing at Deskyl's alphabet and at Deskyl herself and making a talking gesture with her hand beside her mouth. She feels utterly ridiculous in front of Christine but so be it, she can pull up her big girl pants and do it. 

She considers for a moment, and then recites a short poem, perhaps a nursery rhyme, in Basic.

And then she goes and gets the little globe that Evelyn showed her yesterday, and points to the Aurebesh and then to it. "This not this."

Christine clearly doesn't know what she means, but does look curious. "Oh! Maybe she means it's a conlang, like Klingon or something?" 

Is Evelyn supposed to know what the hell she's talking about? She will smile blandly and try to pretend she isn't some kind of ignorant plebe. 

Hmmm. Ah, okay.

She points to one of the lamps on end tables at either end of the couch, "this," and then to the sun, visible out the back door, "this. This this." She points back and forth. Then she places the globe on the table, and carefully recites: "one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. Evelyn here, Christine here." Looks at the adults to see if they're getting it at all.

Then she goes to the other end table with its lamp, points between the lamp and the back door, "this not this," and recites a different nursery rhyme in Basic. And then she taps her chest, "I this," pointing to the second lamp, "I go," she walks back to the first one, "I here."

Evelyn watches her intently, because Deskyl is clearly trying very hard to communicate something, that seems important to her. She isn't exactly sure why the Dr Seuss rhyme is meant to mean, what are the fish here– oh, maybe it's not intended to be meaningful so much as just 'the longest stretch of English Deskyl has memorized' - come to think of it, the thing she said in her own language had the cadence of a nursery rhyme too... 

She does follow that Deskyl is using the lamp as a prop to mean the sun. It's very clever! ...And then Deskyl goes to the other table and points at the other lamp and says 'this not this' and Evelyn can't help but make the leap.

Deskyl isn't just claiming the language isn't from here. She's claiming that...she, herself, is from another planet...? 

Evelyn has several dozen clarifying questions and also the last thing she wants to do is have that conversation in front of fucking Christine. 

Who continues to look politely puzzled. After a few moments, she glances over at Evelyn. "You've spent more time with her, do you...?" 

Deskyl will probably (rightly) be upset and hurt if Evelyn pretends not to have any idea what she's trying to say. She looks over at Deskyl, gives her a reassuring smile and tries, almost certainly unsuccessfully, to communicate via eyebrows alone that they should talk about this properly LATER. 

"I think what she's trying to say is that she came here from another planet," Evelyn says, as neutrally as she can. She is mostly not even assessing the question of whether she believes Deskyl, but she wants Deskyl to know that she's really trying to listen and understand, and she also isn't at all expecting Christine to believe that it's literally true. 

Christine smiles at Deskyl. "How imaginative!" 

Evelyn...had not really expected a different reaction, but also, ugh. "Christine, why don't we come back to this later? We have a lot to cover." How is Deskyl reacting? 

She's watching both adults carefully, with her attention more on Evelyn.

Evelyn gives her a reassuring smile. "We'll come back to it, Deskyl, I won't forget."

She turns back to Christine. "Thank you for figuring out the specialist appointment. I'm going to need permission from social services to book her for a regular doctor's appointment with my pediatrician, and dental check-up. And where are we at on the language tutoring? She's making a lot of progress - actually, maybe what I could use is advice on working with her at home, I've never done this before. I'm wondering if we could arrange something sooner," and at a cheaper pricetag for Social Services, presumably, "if I can just have a call with someone knowledgeable who could send me some resources to use at home?" 

Christine looks thoughtful. "You'd be up for doing that? It would certainly simplify things, and - you're right, I can already see she's made progress, one-on-one tutoring might be redundant by the time we can find someone. I think the best advice for young people is immersion, anyway, we should consider getting her in regular school as soon as she has basic comprehension down and can communicate her needs in the classroom." 

Evelyn isn't sure how much of that Deskyl would have followed, so she turns to smile at her. Or whether she knows what school is given how she might be from another planet. "Deskyl, Christine thinks you would learn faster if we brought you to a place with lots of children your age and a teacher." 

"Uh?"

Evelyn shakes her head apologetically. "Sorry. Christine, I'll try to explain it to her later with visual aids, that usually works well. It'll be a few weeks anyway, I want to make sure to prepare her for it."

Christine nods. (Christine is capable of picking up on conversational subtext.) "Of course. It seems like I should leave you two to get to it - let's just get everything signed?" She passes Evelyn the folder of paperwork. 

(Okay, well, that's some kind of progress, she's pretty sure. She sits back down.)

Whatever Evelyn might think of Christine's other qualities as a person, she always has her paperwork organized. She's even neatly marked all the little spots Evelyn needs to sign with a little X. It takes them about five minutes to sort out all the paperwork - Christine printed extra copies for Evelyn's records, which is something that the less organized half of social workers often forget - and to go through the parting pleasantries, before Evelyn sees Christine out the door. 

Aaaaaaand then Evelyn and Deskyl are in private. 

Evelyn takes a deep breath, and turns to smile at her. "You were trying to tell us something very important before, weren't you? I'm so glad you were able to do that. I'm, er, not sure I understood it right."

Because Deskyl coming from another planet seems impossible. Right? Even if there are aliens - Evelyn honestly hasn't thought very hard about whether there are aliens - they wouldn't look human, right? She remembers Jeremy complaining that Star Trek was unrealistic that way, back when he used to be into it. 

"I not..." she mimes talking, and then taps her ear.

Evelyn ducks her head. "Yeah. I'm sorry." She tries to remember the exact words Deskyl used. "You said - not from here? This not that?" Maybe they should actually just do more worksheets, Deskyl is picking up English quite fast even with Evelyn's inexpert tutoring and this conversation will be vastly easier to have once it's, well, actually a conversation. 

She picks up the little globe. "Not this, yes. ...Evelyn," she points, "Deskyl, this?"

Wow, Evelyn is really wishing right now that she had two globes. ...Hmm, there might be something in the toybox she can use as a prop. Leaving Deskyl still holding the regular globe, she hurries over and digs in it, pulling out one of those squeezy foam stress balls, this one with blue and green Earth-globe pattern on it. 

She takes it to the living room and sets it down by the first lamp. "This is here. This is the sun." She points at the lamp and then out the window at the actual sun, like Deskyl did before. "This planet is Earth. Here." She taps the stress ball and then points down at the floor. "Earth, we speak English, 'Red fish blue fish'. Evelyn is from here."

She points at Deskyl, still holding the actual globe. Wow, she's glad she isn't doing this in front of Christine, it feels right but it would be so humiliating. "Deskyl is from - where?" 

"From Echitov. English, yarva."

"Echitov," Evelyn nods. "Your language is yarva." ...She's going to go grab her notepad and write that down. And then not email it to Christine because aaaaaaaah. "Echitov is - far?" She makes an expansive gesture with her hands. 

"This," she points to the one lamp, "not this," the other. "Far." She mimics the expansive gesture and then shrugs. "Eva dax," she points to the second lamp again, and then counts off on her fingers. "Not earth, not earth, not earth, Echitov, not earth, not earth, not earth."

"Mmm-hmm." Does she mean other planets in the same solar system? Ugh, the solar system mobile is upstairs and she doesn't want to keep dragging Deskyl around from pillar to post, it feels like it might ruin the moment. Is it even that important? - everything is important right now, she thinks, Deskyl is trying to convey something that matters a lot to her, and how Evelyn reacts will affect how much Deskyl feels like she can trust her and is safe here. 

(Is she maybe, slightly, deciding to take Deskyl's story seriously because Christine obviously didn't? Possibly! Evelyn is just not going to stare too hard at that particular petty motivation, right now, the main thing that matters here is Deskyl.) 

...They could just go to the computer, where she'll have Google Images at her fingertips to use for visual aids. (She has Safe Search on, she shouldn't accidentally turn up anything terribly inappropriate while Deskyl is watching.) 

She gestures for Deskyl to follow her to the study; there isn't really room in the closetlike room for both of them to sit side by side, but she can put a kitchen chair a little behind the office chair, if Deskyl would rather sit than stand. She wakes up the computer, opens Internet Explorer, and googles 'Solar System', clicking to embiggen the clearest-looking picture on the first few rows of results. 

"Like that?" she asks Deskyl. "Not-earths and Echitov around the -" what was it, "- Eva dax?" 

Nodnodnod "beh!"

Evelyn beams at her, resisting the urge to reach over and give Deskyl a hug since she's not sure they're on that level of closeness yet; she does pat Deskyl's arm. 

Right. Hmm. What's her next question? Evelyn hasn't really...processed any of this...enough to know either what she's personally curious about or what seems most relevant to Deskyl's care and day to day routine, but she has an instinct to keep the conversation going. 

Try to figure out how Deskyl got here? Though, uh, if Deskyl was dropped off in a spaceship then...surely...that would have been on the news...? Evelyn will pull up the first Google Images page of results for "spaceship" anyway, which turns out to contain a mix of real photos of space shuttle launches, concept art, and what she thinks are screencaps from sci-fi TV shows. She makes a questioning face at Deskyl. 

She looks them over, somewhat perplexed. "This, earth?" she tries, eventually, pointing at one of the more obviously photographic images. "Echitov," wobbly hand-gesture, "this", one of the concept art pieces, given another wobbly hand gesture.

Presumably she doesn't mean that Echitov is literally from - whatever that image is even from, she clicks it to see more of the website preview underneath and still isn't sure if it's a TV show or a book or a science website. It's unclear to Evelyn whether she followed the question Evelyn was trying to ask, of 'how did you get from there to here'? Evelyn could apply more persistence to that but it honestly seems easier to just come back to it once Deskyl has a bit more English vocabulary. 

What she actually wants to know is more detail on Deskyl's day to day life on Echitov - did she go to school? did she live with her parents? come to think of it, do her parents have any idea where she is - but she's failing to think of good idea for how to Google Image that. 

- oh, right, she said she would try to explain school. 

She closes the Internet Explorer window with the spaceships, to indicate that they're moving on to a different conversation, and then pulls up a new window. "Christine talked about school," she says, making a talking-mouth gesture, and then gets up a google image, probably a promotional photo of some kind, of a generic classroom full of happy-looking children. Then open a new tab, pull up a Google Map routing from here to the local secondary school. (She's not sure what grade they would put Deskyl in, but starting seventh grade in the fall term seems reasonable, and then - planning for the long term, if she ends up being with Evelyn for the long term - she could stay at the same school through high school graduation.) She points out at the driveway. "Deskyl go to school, here." Point at the map and then the classroom. "To learn. Like the worksheets." 

Does any of that seem to be making it across? 

She seems pretty happy about something, at least!

Good! 

...Ugh, Evelyn already closed the tab with the concept art. "Echitov school?" she asks. "Did Deskyl go to school on Echitov?" 

She nods, then gives a handwobble and says "worksheets", points at one of the pictures of kids, makes a horizontal height-measuring gesture at shoulder height, taps her chest, and makes the gesture again at chin height.

Evelyn is not entirely following that; she's pretty sure it's a claim about ages? She's not sure if it's meant to be 'Deskyl went to school from when she was this size to that size' or 'Deskyl went to school and was bigger than the other kids' or 'Deskyl was in a higher grade than the kids in the picture'. Evelyn feels very stupid - she's supposed to be good at understanding what kids mean - and tries to set that feeling aside, she's pretty sure it's mostly that interacting with Christine often leaves her with some lingering defensiveness about her competence as a foster carer. 

"You were at school when you were this big?" she guesses, repeating Deskyl's chin-height gesture. 

"Mmm..." she gets out her alphabet sheet again, and one of the worksheets from earlier. Makes the lower height gesture, points to the kids and then the alphabet sheet, "this this," then taps her chest and the worksheet, "Deskyl this," and repeats the lower height gesture but raises her hand to the higher position.

"Oh! You were - ahead, harder work?" Evelyn has no idea if those words are in Deskyl's current vocabulary. 

She shrugs and taps her ear.

Apologetic face. "Sorry. ...More worksheets?" 

"More worksheets." She would like all the vocabulary, yes please.

It feels like such a privilege to have a child who, not only doesn't need to be bribed and cajoled into schoolwork, but is self-motivated to learn and seeks it out. Evelyn can obtain more worksheets, though she's having trouble figuring out which Google keywords will get her sheets that are harder as opposed to just different, and really hopes Christine will figure out arranging a call with a tutoring advisor for her sooner rather than later. 

As long as she's getting different words, Deskyl is not going to complain. She takes another walking-around break after a while and opts to try puzzling out some more of One Fish Two Fish afterward, bringing it downstairs so she can ask Evelyn to confirm her guesses about how the words match up with the pictures.

It's a lovely pleasant way to pass the evening together! Evelyn calls a break for dinner at 6ish - she's not incredibly in the mood to cook a lot, and makes fish fingers and sweet potato oven fries with a coleslaw salad - and then finds more worksheets again. (She's also trying to at least make sure they're including new words, though they're all at the level of concrete nouns and verbs and propositions, objects or activities that are easy to make sense of for children and can be depicted in cartoon illustrations; it doesn't give Deskyl much in the way of abstract vocabulary. Despite a lot of Googling she can't track down a space-themed one even though it seems like it should be a thing.) 

...As sunset nears she is slightly stressed that they're going to have a tree-related fight again. Does Deskyl make a move to go out into the backyard? 

Deskyl seems to maybe anticipate a problem too, from the way she's keeping an eye on both Evelyn and the angle of the sun in the hour or so leading up to it. She isn't particularly sneaky about it, though, when she judges the time to be right and heads out back.

Evelyn really doesn't want to have a fight about it! She could have, uh, tried to figure out some visual aids to explain "I'm scared you're going to fall if you climb down in the dark" but she didn't remember the issue in time to do that. It's clearly important to Deskyl, even if Evelyn hasn't figured out why, and not just a whim or her being stubborn about being told to stop doing activities by grownups. Maybe it's a religious ritual from her home planet Evelyn's brain can stop that please. ]

When Deskyl starts to head for the backyard, Evelyn holds up a hand in a stopsign-gesture and says "wait!" which should have been on one of the worksheets. She runs to the garage - hopefully it's in the box she remembers putting it in - aha! 

She's back thirty seconds later with a headlamp! It's the kind with an elastic that goes around your forehead like a headband, that can be clicked on by pressing it. Is Deskyl, in fact, still on the ground waiting for her? 

Yup! And she chirps approvingly when Evelyn demonstrates the headlamp. And now can she go?

Yep! This is perhaps not maximally approved fostering practice, and Christine would probably have a heart attack. (Evelyn has trouble picturing Christine having ever climbed a tree in her life, though probably that's unfair, people contain multitudes and all that and who knows maybe Christine does judo on weekends or something). But Christine isn't the one trying to build rapport with this particular girl – this bright, diligent, self-sufficient, fascinating and confusing girl. 

Evelyn definitely hovers nearby worriedly, but she tries not to look worried and instead be smiling, and she doesn't push for Deskyl to come down when the sun starts to set. 

Deskyl stays up just until the first stars begin to show, and then clicks on the headlamp and makes her way down the tree just as readily as she went up. She seems inclined to keep the headlamp, though she does turn it off as soon as she reaches the ground.

She's welcome to it! Evelyn isn't actually sure why she owns it - oh, right, it's from when Jeremy went caving on a school trip, but she's pretty sure it hasn't been used since. 

...She will start trying to nudge Deskyl toward getting ready for bed. It's edging toward 9 m, and she doubts Deskyl is tired at this point, given how she woke up at 1:30, but routines are good and Deskyl will eventually need a 9 pm bedtime once she's in school. 

She has no particular objection to brushing her teeth and changing into pajamas and getting into bed with her books, but, yeah, she doesn't seem tired at all. She wakes a little earlier the next morning, at one, and spends the day in much the same way as the previous one; by the end of it she's managing simple sentences reasonably often. The following day, with her specialist appointment planned, she'll be up half an hour earlier again, at least if Evelyn leaves her to her own devices.

The appointment is at 3 pm and so Evelyn doesn't especially have to rush Deskyl. 

Deskyl's vocabulary is coming along brilliantly, but Evelyn does still plan some visual aids to explain it, even though by now some of the worksheets and children's picture books they've been going through has covered the concept of a doctor's office. After they eat, she takes Deskyl to the computer, but this time she's gone higher effort and collected images in advance. In a Powerpoint, because she doesn't know a better file format for gluing a lot of pictures in a sequence, even though it makes her feel like she's about to have to get up in front of a roomful of new foster carers and give a training presentation. 

"We're going to the doctor today," she says. "Like Flopsy the bunny in the book." She's obtained a screenshot of the map again and a picture of the front of the hospital that she found on its website. "But this is a special doctor, we'll see him at the big hospital. His name is Dr Emblin. He's a neurologist, so he can check out problems with brains and nerves." She has brain and nerve pictures. "I noticed you have more trouble with cutlery than most children your age." A picture of someone spreading butter on toast with a clip art on it of a child's face looking frustrated. "I think it's probably just how you are, but I want to make sure nothing is seriously wrong." 

"Huh, okay. Nothing wrong."

"Hopefully there isn't! But we don't have any of your medical history so I'll be happier if we check." 

Evelyn can, by now, recognize the face Deskyl makes when she's trying to decide if something is worth the effort of trying to communicate, but apparently the answer is no, this time.

Plausibly Deskyl has already seen a doctor, or multiple doctors, and knows the cause of her fine motor issues and just can't communicate it. Maybe medicine on other planets is more advanced and she sees the doctors here like Evelyn sees medieval doctors equipped with leeches. Whatever the reason, it must be frustrating not to be able to communicate it, but - well, even if Deskyl could explain, it's not like Social Services can just take her word for it without any documentation. 

Evelyn shakes her head apologetically. She points out the time they need to leave, 3:30, on the clock. 

She's ready with ten minutes to spare.

Then they can drive over to the hospital! Evelyn is finding that she's actually kind of nervous. She's looked after children who had medical needs before, but she's never taken a child here for a diagnostic specialist appointment like this, where both she and the child in question are meeting the doctor for the first time. And certainly not in a case where there was a language barrier and she couldn't even explain everything. Not having her computer with Google Images at her fingertips feels a bit like she's missing a hand. 

They arrive early. The outpatient clinic isn't specifically for children, and in fact most of the other patients in the waiting room are elderly. One very thin older lady is in a wheelchair, her hands visibly shaky when the nurse brings her a consent form to sign. 

You know, in retrospect she should probably have expected most of the people at the doctor's office to be sick.

She'll just wander around and see how many of them will let her tap them on the knee or whatever, how about.

Uhhhhhh. Is she being reasonably polite about it? Evelyn doesn't actually have grounds to stop Deskyl from being friendly while they're stuck waiting here anyway - and doesn't even disapprove, it's sweet - but getting up in people's faces without checking if they mind is rude. 

She's trying - her language skills are definitely not up to 'strike up a conversation with a stranger' level, and she's pretty good at expressing herself via body language and facial expression but there's only so far that goes, especially when she's clearly worried about people rather than just being a silly friendly kid. On the other hand, she does seem to have an excellent sense of when she's getting on someone's nerves, and she's not happy about backing off in that case but she will do it.

In that case Evelyn does not incredibly have grounds to object, though she'll try to catch the eye of the various people Deskyl is approaching and wave with a friendly smile, just so they know this child isn't unaccompanied and that Evelyn is the person to approach if they have an issue with her friendliness. 

She's...kind of confused? Deskyl hadn't seemed that extroverted at home, and - it's not exactly like she wants to meet people here, either, she mostly looks stressed. Maybe she hasn't spent a lot of time around disabled elderly people and it's upsetting for her - Evelyn should probably have thought of that, actually, and tried to prepare her with visual aids, but it completely failed to occur to her. 

Evelyn's brain wonders if this means Deskyl is from another planet with better medicine Evelyn's brain is getting ahead of itself and should, as Jeremy would say, "chill out."

She smiles pleasantly and tries not to worry. 

The elderly people mostly don't seem bothered! Waiting rooms are boring and Deskyl is a cute harmless-looking kid. 

...The overweight man who Deskyl approached second stands up when the nurse comes to fetch him in and - looks surprised - but doesn't say anything. 

They still haven't been called up by the time Deskyl has made the rounds of everyone willing to let her approach. 

Evelyn...is pretty sure she has a question...but she's not sure exactly what the question is and is also impaired by the lack of Google Images. She tries just lifting her hands palm-up and making a questioning expression. Maybe Deskyl can string together enough of her current vocabulary to answer. 

She does look significantly less stressed when she gets back; she considers Evelyn's question, and shrugs, and shakes her head and taps her mouth, but does offer a sotto voce "I help."

Awwwwwwwwwwww. "I'm sure you did help, love." 

The nurse comes out a few minutes later and asks some questions, which she's not at all trying to express in Deskyl-friendly vocabulary and which Evelyn mostly doesn't know the answers to either. The nurse crosses off most of the boxes on her form and puts 'N/A', has Evelyn sign since Deskyl is a minor, and then ushers them back to an exam room, where she slides over a machine to take Deskyl's temperature and blood pressure. 

(Evelyn hopes that Deskyl won't be alarmed by this. One of the picture books had a teddy bear who went to a doctor and had his blood pressure taken, and Evelyn showed her some Google Images photo clips, she should hopefully recognize it?) 

Honestly there being machines involved here is the most reassuring part yet, even if they aren't autonomous ones. She whines a little when the blood pressure cuff squeezes her arm tightly but is otherwise perfectly cooperative.

Deskyl's blood pressure is normal (to Evelyn's relief, the nurse's at the pediatrician's office are usually good about remembering that kids might have a high blood pressure reading because they're stressed about the doctor, but this isn't a kids' clinic.) Her temperature is fine. The nurse calls her over to the scale to weigh her and measures her height and writes the numbers down; she doesn't comment about whether it's normal for Deskyl's age, probably because unlike at the pediatrician office she doesn't have a growth chart right there. 

There's a more detailed questionnaire to fill out, which Evelyn does herself because Deskyl can't read English; it has a lot of boxes to check whether a problem is present or not, and space for comments if the answer is yes.

She isn't worried about Deskyl's vision or hearing. Deskyl sleeps a normal amount (well, Evelyn assumes, once you account for her ongoing jet lag and late bedtime) and doesn't seem to get tired unusually quickly. Deskyl's gait is normal as far as Evelyn's non-expert eye can tell. The examples given to assess gross motor skills are "using stairs", "throwing a ball", and "riding a bicycle". Evelyn has only seen one of those but she's also seen Deskyl climb a tree like a squirrel and she's not worried. Fine motor skills gets a yes, and she writes in that Deskyl struggles with cutlery and has very messy handwriting. There are a lot of other questions she can't answer confidently and leaves question marks and "language barrier" written in, but she doesn't think Deskyl has trouble concentrating or remembering facts or events, she does great with the worksheets. Presumably all of the questions are relevant somehow but Evelyn is still kind of irritated with all the paperwork - don't they already have the notes she wrote earlier when she asked for the appointment, also what's the point in doing it now when the doctor will have like three minutes to review it, have they never heard of sending forms in advance by email - but she tries not to let any of her irritation show where Deskyl might notice it. 

The nurse comes back in to ask if she's done, and takes the clipboard. They're left to wait some more. Evelyn is starting to wish she'd thought to bring extra worksheets in her handbag. She's bored and Deskyl must be more bored. 

Deskyl is staring into the middle distance by the time Evelyn is done with the paperwork, as seems to be her default activity when there's nothing else going on, even at home. Fortunately, she seems quite content to do so for fairly arbitrary lengths of time.

...Okay, fine, maybe Deskyl is not more bored than Evelyn, and is capable of using her child's imagination to entertain herself indefinitely. Evelyn used to be able to do that when she was Deskyl's age. She's not sure if aging made her less imaginative or if it's just that she spends so much time tracking things happening around her that she's out of the habit of losing herself in an inner world. 

Evelyn will wait, trying to keep herself from exploding of boredom by reading the posters on the walls, which seem to be mostly drug promotion advertisements. 

Fortunately they don't have to wait much longer; soon there's a knock on the door. "Hi, I'm Dr. Emblin, and this is - Deskyl, am I saying that right?"

Deskyl doesn't seem inclined to answer and may not have caught that the second part was a question. "Yeah, you're saying it fine. I'm Evelyn, Deskyl's foster carer. She doesn't know much English. I've been using visual aids when I have to explain anything complicated." 

"All right. And what are you bringing her in for today?"

Did she not just spend like ten entire minutes filling out a huge form, and being annoyed that doing it on the spot meant the doctor wouldn't have a lot of time to review it Evelyn is polite and friendly and helpful and not annoyed, at least not where the doctor can see it. 

 "I'm a little worried about her fine motor skills. I haven't had her for long, but she struggles with cutlery and using a pencil. I don't think it's just a lack of familiarity, she arrived knowing how to write in her own language and we don't think she was neglected. I checked no for most of the boxes on the form - a lot of them I can't be sure of because of the language barrier, but her gross motor skills are actually pretty good, I've seen her get up a tree like you wouldn't believe. She doesn't seem bothered by it or scared that something is wrong and she may have had a diagnosis in her home country," or other planet do NOT bring that up with the doctor, "but we don't have her past medical records and haven't been able to locate her parents. I just - don't know what sort of things could be causing the symptoms, and whether any of them are progressive or need urgent treatment." 

"Okay." He holds up a finger in front of Deskyl's face. "Can you have her watch my finger?"

Deskyl knows the word "watch", and Evelyn will try to convey this instruction by saying it, making an 'eyes here' gesture with two spread fingers pointing at her own eyes, using the eyes-here hand to pivot around as she follows the movement of a finger on her other hand, and then pointing at Deskyl and at the doctor. Does that get it across?  

Yup!

He moves his finger side to side, then up and down, then away from her and toward her, and then turns and picks up a large tuning fork from a tray on the counter. "I'm going to touch this to her fingertips and her wrist, and I need to know if she can feel it buzzing and when she stops being able to."

Hmm. How to communicate that... (Also that's a really weird test, she has no idea what it's supposed to be checking!) 

"Can I borrow that for a moment?" She takes the tuning fork from the doctor, raps it on the back of her chair and lifts it close to her ear. "Sound. Start," she says, very slowly and clearly; she thinks Deskyl knows both those words, but she's less sure 'sound' was covered enough times for her to have retained it, so she does it again and hums along to the note and then repeats "start." 

She presses the tuning fork to her wrist and makes a "bzzzzt" noise with her mouth that she hopes conveys the concept of 'vibrating' and then - tries to point with her chin at her wrist, since both hands are too occupied to point. "Bzzzzzzzt start. .....Bzzzzzt quiet." She waits. "- Bzzzzzzt stops." 

She takes the tuning fork off her wrist and lifts it. "Deskyl do it, Deskyl's turn. Feel," no wait have they covered that word, "- touch bzzzzzt. Tell doctor bzzzzt. Wait, tell doctor bzzzzzzzt stop. Okay?" 

"Okay."

She pulls her hand back reflexively the first time the doctor touches the tuning fork to her finger, with a startled but amused 'bzzt!' The rest of the test is straightforward, and she can feel the fork on all her fingers and at her wrists.

After that, he checks her reflexes by tapping her knees with a rubber mallet (after having Evelyn explain, of course), and has her walk heel-to-toe across the exam room and normally up the hall as far as the next exam room and back.

"And you said she's sleeping normally?"

"- I'm pretty sure she's sleeping the usual number of hours for a child her age. She's not waking in the night as far as I've noticed, or seeming tired when she gets up. She was pretty nocturnal when she first arrived - we thought jet lag, or just that she didn't have a regular bedtime at her home before - but I'm working on getting her back to a normal schedule." 

"All right. I'm not seeing any nerve damage but she does toe-walk in addition to the fine motor skill issues; I'm going to write you a referral for an autism assessment, but you should probably wait until you have a translator to set the appointment up. If she doesn't start sleeping at normal hours, you can try melatonin; I'll write you a prescription for that just in case or you can get it over the counter if you can find a brand that's 300 micrograms. You'll want to give it to her an hour before her bedtime to give it time to work - it's very gentle and mild. Was there anything else?"

Evelyn is - surprised at that - she wouldn't have flagged Deskyl as autistic? Though what does she know, she's not a specialist, and she does know that autism symptoms vary. She's probably disproportionately seen the kids with, well, serious disabilities or behavioral issues, whether because they ended up in care after their family couldn't cope with them anymore, or because they had so little support and treatment in their early years. 

She kind of wants to ask questions but it feels incredibly inappropriate to do it with Deskyl right there, even if she can't understand that much English yet. "No, I don't think so. Melatonin sounds good, I can try in a week if she's not on a normal sleep schedule by then. Are there, uh, any resources for parents you would recommend I go read?" 

"That's not really my area. The neuropsychiatric assessment office's phone number will be on the referral, they might be able to help you out."

"Okay. Thank you." And they can head out and return to the car. 

- the elderly wheelchair lady from before is - not currently in her wheelchair, she looks frail and not entirely steady but she's walking holding her probably-daughter's arm. She waves eagerly at Evelyn. "Your daughter is blessed by God!" 

Uh. What??? ...Evelyn hates this sort of interaction and will just smile politely and wave back and then try to usher Deskyl out before it can get even more awkward. 

Deskyl looks so pleased with herself, but lets Evelyn herd her.

Evelyn is not really going to process that interaction until they're safely in the car and backing out of the parking lot, but - what - that was really weird, actually. Not just the fact that it happened - old people will be old people - but in Deskyl's reaction to it. What happened back there? Does Deskyl have alien supertech medicine implanted in her hands that doesn't even feel like the right kind of theory, separate from how it's ridiculous.  

Evelyn doesn't exactly have the vocabulary to ask about it. She'll drive home in companionable silence. 

Deskyl watches the scenery as they go, still looking smug.

After a few minutes, though, she makes an unhappy noise - it looks like she might be a bit carsick.

Oh no. Evelyn is trying to drive smoothly but it's pretty peak rush hour traffic and there's a lot of start-and-stop. 

She'll pull over into a fast food parking lot as soon as she sees an opportunity, and they can sit for a couple of minutes before they drive the rest of the way? She has a bottle of water she keeps in the glove compartment and can offer it to Deskyl. 

Deskyl's stomach settles after a few sips of water and a few minutes of not being jostled around. "I okay. ...what?..."

"Sometimes when cars go - fast, slow," she makes a hand gesture to try to indicate the stop-and-start traffic, "or - turn lots," dramatic hand-turning gesture, "it makes your eyes confused," ugh Evelyn doesn't think Deskyl knows 'confused' unless she picked it up via a non-worksheet method, it's a pretty abstract word now that she thinks about it. She will try to do a sort of head-wobbling hand-wiggling eyes-popping mime routine that hopefully conveys it. "Then your tummy might feel sick." That at least she has a cached gesture for. 

"Mm. Bad."

"It's not nice! I can open your window," point, "fresh air helps. And deep breaths." She can mime that easily. "And look," eye-pointing gesture, "outside, at things moving, not at the car. So your eyes and tummy," point and point, "both know you're moving." 

She will give Deskyl another couple of minutes before asking-and-miming if she can keep going and drive "slow, gentle". (Conveniently, "gentle hands" is a phrase from one of the worksheets, it was about petting a rabbit but Deskyl should be old enough to generalize.) They're not in a particular hurry or anything, and Evelyn has never gotten carsick - she must have lucked out that way, her sister did when they were little - but she's had the stomach flu and nausea is BAD. 

"Thank you."

She's a bit more subdued for the rest of the ride home, but doesn't get carsick again.

It's lateish for dinner by the time they get home and Evelyn parks and unlocks the front door. "You don't have to eat right away if your stomach is still upset," she's telling Deskyl, "but I bet you'll be ravenous soon, it's nearly seven." 

There's a clatter from the direction of the kitchen, and a voice. "Mom? Where've you been?" 

...Was she expecting Jeremy today? Evelyn definitely didn't have it on the calendar or in the notebook planner she keeps in her handbag, but it's possible she missed a text. Jeremy doesn't exactly tend to wait for her confirmation before showing up. 

"Hey!" she calls out. "Sorry. Appointment went long. I suppose you should meet Deskyl."

Evelyn reaaaaally hopes Deskyl isn't going to be too startled or overwhelmed by having unexpected company after what must have been an exhausting afternoon. She turns to her. "My son Jeremy is here for dinner. Is that all right?" She thinks Deskyl should know enough of those words, if she's speaking slowly. 

"...huh. All right." She's not upset, but does seem just a bit wary, maybe, of Evelyn as much as of Jeremy. Not very wary, though; she heads into the kitchen as soon as she has her shoes put away. "Hi."

"I'm sorry. It would have been good of me to tell you but I didn't realize he was coming, which was probably my mistake." Deskyl knows fewer of those words but maybe enough to get the idea, she should at least know 'I'm sorry' and 'tell you' and 'mistake' from worksheets. 

Jeremy is by the kitchen table, scooping up his fallen bookbag from the floor. He smiles and waves at Deskyl. "I'm Jeremy. I used to live here but I moved out for college." 

"I'm Deskyl. I not... many... words." She gives him a somewhat self-deprecating smile. "Evelyn good!"

"Awwww." Jeremy sits down, still smiling at her. "- And I heard you had no words when you came here. You're learning very fast! ....Mom, what's for dinner, I'm starving." 

Evelyn rolls her eyes, but in a fond way. "Jeremy, you're perfectly capable of finding leftovers in the fridge. Have you just been sitting here waiting?" 

"I'm nostalgic for the homecooked meals of my childhood, sue me. What are you making?" 

It's kind of distracting trying to guess how much of the random family banter Deskyl can follow based on the vocabulary Evelyn knows was on her worksheets. "...Mac & cheese. But I'll do the kind with ricotta and onions, just for you, it only takes a bit longer." 

Jeremy nods. "You continue to earn the 'Mom of the Year' mug, I won't take it back just yet." 

He turns back to Deskyl, speaking more slowly. "You like living here?" 

Nod! "Is... not same, Echitov, but not bad."

"I imagine it's not the same. ...Echitov? Is that a city?"

It sounds sort of vaguely Russian, maybe? He doesn't think Deskyl has a Russian accent but he's bad at accents, and Russia is definitely somewhere that has white people who don't speak English. 

"Dunno word. Evelyn?"

....Oh no this is abruptly a very weird conversation, isn't it. In hindsight this is so predictable. At least it's not as awkward to have weird conversations with her son, but - Evelyn honestly has very little idea what he's going to think of the whole thing. Not that it really matters. Jeremy has thought all sorts of things about his mother over the years, and it's not like it's going to threaten her fostering career if he thinks she's crazy over this. 

"Deskyl isn't able to explain very well yet," she says matter-of-factly, "but she did a little demo with two globes and lamps as suns, and I believe she thinks she's from a different planet than this one." 

.....Yeah, okay, Jeremy in fact does not have the slightest idea what to do with that. Especially given that Mom is saying it in the casual-but-serious kind of voice instead of the -casual-and-not-winking-but-sort-of-metaphorically-winking voice. Mom does try very hard to take kids seriously and show that she's listening and trying to understand them, and sometimes Jeremy feels like that makes her a little bit gullible, but this is on a WHOLE OTHER LEVEL. 

Um. Um??? UM????????

"...That's neat," he says, smiling at Deskyl again. 

You know what, she's not going to fight with him about it. What else can they talk about. "You..." she gestures vaguely at his backpack.

(Jeremy isn't definitely not believing Deskyl. He's just tired because he had a stupid 8 am class this morning, and hungry, and he was prepared for normal foster kid stuff but absolutely not prepared for...that...or for whatever Mom is currently trying to signal to him with her eyebrows.) 

"I go to college now!" he says brightly. "It's school - did Mom tell you about school? - for once you're my age and done with normal school, if you want to keep learning things for your career." He honestly has no idea if he's going too hard on talking like he would to a four-year-old and being horribly patronizing, or not doing it enough and using words Deskyl doesn't know yet. 

"School! I know word, I not know... not-Echitov thing. Things." (She's not following much, but it doesn't work so well to let that stop her, so she won't. She'll pick some of it up, at least.)

"Was there school in - on? - Echitov? What was it like?" 

"My place, big person live this," she gestures at the room in general, "kid live... other place, kid place, bed and food and school and play. Other thing, not kid not big person, in kid place, do food and..." she pulls out one of her worksheets to check. "teach, and other thing. I do small school, worksheets, sleep day."

Jeremy nods along, attentively. "Not kid not - the word is 'adult', or 'grownup', I think - hmm. Animals? Like - pets, dogs or cats? Or farm animals like cows or sheep?" Those are easy words, right, that you'd learn early on, kids' books love having animals and farms. 

"No, animal other other thing. Hm, word, this and this and this?" She points to the refrigerator and the stove and the toaster oven.

"Appliances?" No, that sounds too specific. "Machines? Machines means, like, those and also cars and computers." 

"Beh. -Yeah. Other thing, machine, not person, do person things."

"Ohhhh. Like a robot? Or an android, maybe, I'm not sure." ...That wasn't a word definition, was it. "Uh, it's gonna be a bit to dinner, so - I can find you a video of a robot and you can tell me if it's that?" 

(This is fine. Jeremy is too tired to think about whether Mom's foster kid might somehow be an alien who looks human, but he's capable of having a conversation.) 

"Dunno word, robot," she shrugs. "Video, yeah."

They can go watch some robot Youtube videos, then! ...The first few that come up are of giant rampaging robots, which seems like probably not the thing Deskyl is pointing at, so Jeremy refines the search a bit and gets metallic humanoid robots. 

Yep, those are robots! "Other robot do other thing, this robot do person thing," she adds. "Robot do... a'mal? thing, not shape person."

Frown. "Oh. - it's Ah-nih-mal. It sounds like there are robots that do - farming work? - and robots that do housework? Like...cleaning? Cooking?" 

"Work is... Evelyn work food, now? Robots do all work," she nods.

"All the work! That must be luxurious." ...That's not an easy word at all, is it. "- Sorry. 'Luxurious' is - having everything done for you, not having to do any of the annoying work yourself." He grins a little. "Though it sounds like the robots wouldn't do your schoolwork for you?" 

"Robots good," she nods. "Robots do... robots do school work, say school things for kids; robots not do worksheets, robots do worksheets silly."

Giggle. "I suppose it would be silly, if you're supposed to be learning things! ....The word is 'teacher', that's the person who tells the kids in school what to do and gives them worksheets. We, uh, don't have robots that can do that. There are some robots here, I think, but they do things in factories - uh, places that make things like toys, or cars..." 

This conversation is completely ridiculous. Deskyl is not even SLIGHTLY screaming for no reason, though, and - honestly he's enjoying talking to her? And Jeremy is so qualified to quickly find a video of a factory assembly line with robotic arms making colorful plastic toys. 

It's a cool video! "Robots Echitov place make food," she mimes a plant growing out of the ground, "do animal things. Other places robots do this. Here, robots make food?"

"Not in people's houses! I think maybe robots can make, like, prepared food in big factories?"

...He will have to quickly Google that.

"- Yeah, I think that's right, we have robots that can do a lot of the work to candy that's sold at the store in bags. Things like that. Maybe the frozen TV dinner kind of food, too?" Those are probably mostly words Deskyl doesn't know and Jeremy doesn't feel like Googling to confirm anyway.

"...Does, uh, Echitov have robots that can cook like Mom - Evelyn - is cooking right now?" 

"Behna. -behna Echitov word yes, I know yes but," she makes a vague gesture.

"Yeah." Jeremy hasn't been in this specific situation before, but he knows that Mom thinks that it's very important to support a foster child's culture and religion, and presumably speaking a different language that might or might not be from a different planet is the same sort of thing. 

"'Beh-nah'? Am I saying it right?" 

"Beh," she grins. "Like 'yeah'. Eerh for no."

The second one is actually kind of hard! "Erhh? Eeghr? ...Sorry. Uh. Eerh? Is that better?" 

"Yeah." She's not laughing at him but it's pretty obvious that she's amused.

That's super fair, he's really pretty meh at languages and he's probably butchering it. He's also perfectly capable of chuckling at his own incompetence. 

"...Tell me more things about Echitov?" he says, more to make conversation than anything else, though he's also actually kind of curious at this point what else she'll come up with. 

"My place Echitov for make food, big place, not many persons. Have.... video but..." she gestures in front of herself, indicating a three dimensional space, "other place, or school things... teacher things? or silly things. Have trees, have water place, have animals... big persons have car, I not go car, I go my place and not other place."

Yeah, she doesn't look old enough to drive. Though who knows what the driving age is on another planet this is stupid. 

Big place, not many people, for making food. "Did you live on a farm?"

He will go search for a video of a farm with lots of machinery. It take a couple of tries to pull up a video. 

"Farm! Beh, thank you. Echitov farm place."

Huh. 

"Did Echitov only have farms and schools? Or were there other things there too?" 

"Other things other places Echitov, I not go."

Nod. "You - never travelled very far from where you lived and went to school?" 

"Dunno words. Echitov, my place, kid house not have car, I not go car, I go not-car places, I not go car places. Not-car places - kid house, big persons houses - I not go big persons houses - farms, water place, tree place, animal place. Kid house have school. Other places, I not go."

...Nod. 

"What were the big people - the adults, grownups - like?" 

"Different adults different. Adults go kids house, do teacher, do other thing like teacher, good, I like. Other adults, good, or," she wobbles her hand and wrinkles her nose. "Enh. My mom, my dad, enh. -more good my two brother, enh me."

Jeremy wonders what 'other thing like teacher' is meant to be referring to.

"...Your parents weren't nice to you? But were nicer to your brothers? I'm sorry to hear that." And it's, tragically, one of the most normal-for-a-foster-kid things she's said so far. 

"Beh." It's clearly not her favorite subject, though she's handling it well. "I okay, kid house good, kids good, robots good. Evelyn good, too."

Jeremy is also pretty good at noticing when a kid doesn't really want to be talking about a particular subject. "I'm glad you like Evelyn," he says lightly. "Always nice when a foster kid has good taste in who the best mom is." 

Hmm, does she want to try explaining to him about the Force? ...there's probably not enough time, and she still hasn't figured out how to do it with the vocabulary she has. Maybe after dinner. What else... well, there's always vocabulary to gather. "Foster?"

"Foster is - you're living here, Evelyn is taking care of you like a mom, but you weren't born here and you probably won't live here forever." Social Services is presumably looking for her parents, but if all Deskyl is giving them to go on is claiming to be from another world, that doesn't sound very promising. "I'm Mom's only kid who was born here, but we've had kids in and out since I was tiny, it's Mom's job to - well, look after children who don't have parents of their own, or whose parents aren't able to take care of them."

Deskyl makes a face at 'like a mom' and doesn't particularly stop making it through the rest of the explanation, and spends a couple seconds thinking about it afterward.

"Echitov teach, other place, not kid house, kid only mom, dad, brother, sister. That, here? Persons say, kid, not mom, not dad, go other mom? Dunno I want. -Evelyn good," she clarifies, "Evelyn good Evelyn not do mom."

Jeremy did not incredibly follow all of that, but it's not like it's the first time a kid in care has made faces about Evelyn being described as a surrogate parent figure. 

"Evelyn might not do the things that your mom and dad did where you're from," he allows. "But, yes, the way it works here is that if someone is a minor - if they're not grown up, here we say people are grownups when they're eighteen - then they need to live with someone who is grown up and can - make them food and take them to school and things. That's what Evelyn does." 

"Mm. You not have house robot, want person work food, I not do," she holds up a hand indicatively, letting it dangle uselessly from her wrist. "Want person work food different want mom, but... person not see kid house, person not see kid okay no mom." She shrugs, and huffs in mild frustration.

Jeremy is kind of struggling to follow. "You...lived in a house with only kids before, not the one where your mom and dad were, and you looked after yourself? Or I suppose maybe the robots looked after you." 

"Kid house not have moms, not have dads. Kid house have robots, robots do work, robots do Evelyn things. Moms and dads go kid house small times, no times, kids okay."

Nod. "Those must have been some very trustworthy robots! ...Well, I suppose it sounds like Evelyn is acting like a childcare robot to you, then, and not like your parents did. We don't have robots that trustworthy here so children normally live with their moms and dads, and their parents do the things like cooking and cleaning and driving them places. Not to mention paying for the house." 

"Trustworthy?"

"...Mostly good enough at things, I guess. Kids need lots of things to be safe, and we don't have robots here that are smart enough to make sure of that. We don't even have robots that can drive cars safely, and I think lots of taking care of kids is harder than that." 

"Dunno words. Echitov robots - persons do thing, robots do thing, not all thing, but small not all thing."

"It's 'people' for more than one person, not persons," Jeremy says absently. "Robots were - almost as smart as people, could do almost all the people things but not quite all?" 

"Dunno word smart, dunno word almost. Almost..." she holds her hand out palm down and gestures to it, "all," then folds her thumb under, "almost all? Robots do almost all people things, yes."

"'Almost' is like - yeah, if you had a cup," he mimes one with hands, "and it was full up to here, it would be almost full, and you could put more water and then it'd be all the way full. Smart is -" he taps his head, "can think, can read books, can write and do math and things. Computers are a bit like being smart, but not almost as much as people. Your robots are almost as smart as people?" 

"Robots smart as people, not almost! Different and people, different smart. Is - person say, I want for me, robot not say. Person want many things, robot have work, want work thing, not other thing. Smart work thing, maybe not smart other thing. Kid house robots do teacher work, smart many things. Farm robots smart farm, do farm smart as person, not smart other thing."

"Wow! Those are very advanced robots. We don't have robots that can do farming as well as a person, at all, there are machines that can do plowing or water fields but people have to run them." He frowns. "...Are they people? I think if someone is as smart as a person they're - kind of a person - even if it's different smart. Be kind of creepy and dystopian if they were people who were just, like, programmed to be slaves." 

"Robots say robots not people. I say, okay, robots happy? Robot say, robot robot, robot not person, robot not not happy. Robot say, persons have robots good, robots do work, persons happy. No robots, persons do work, persons not want do work, no good."

...Nod. "Maybe they're programmed to say that. I guess it could also be true, maybe something can be as smart as a person and still not have feelings like a person, if it's made that way on purpose? And it'd be pretty horrible to give your slaves feelings and then program them to lie about it."

He looks thoughtfully at Deskyl. "It was good of you to ask them if they were happy."  

"Beh. Is... dunno word... sunset thing, robots okay."

"...Sunset thing?" Jeremy does not follow. 

"Is... hm..." she gets a worksheet out of her pocket to refer to. "Big feelings thing," she concludes, having found the relevant word. "Not happy, not sad, big."

"...Mmm. Yeah." Jeremy is not sure he exactly gets it but he gets something, he thinks. That it's a big deal to her, and - there is something admirable about that. 

He smiles at her. "You like watching the sunset?" 

"Yeah, sunset good. Big feelings, happy. Here sunset like Echitov, good."

Awwwwwwwww. "Yeah. Sunsets are really nice. ...Especially over beaches. Have you ever been to the ocean?" - she might not even know the word. He'll pull up "ocean sunset" on Google Images. 

"Ooh." She's a bit enraptured, for a minute.

"Echitov have video other places sunsets, two sun, big sun, different place things, all good."

"Two suns! Wow. ...I think there's a TV show that has videos of that, but they're - pretend, made with computer animation, we don't have actual videos of other worlds."

Proooobably neither does 'Echitov' but Jeremy is rolling with this conversation by not really assessing that question right now. He can try to find a sci-fi show clip for Deskyl. The CGI is pretty good. 

She watches this video just as happily. But when it's over: "Pretend is - girl," she taps her arm, "pretend girl?" she points to one of the cartoon people on the emotions worksheet.

"...Yes, more or less. Pretend is - a story for fun, or for a school example like that one. We don't have real spaceships that can go between stars, only pretend ones in stories - there are real spaceships, they can go to the Moon and stuff, but not to other stars." 

"Dunno words."

...Yeah that's fair enough. "Sorry." It must be really frustrating for her, not to be able to talk about her thoughts and have people understand them. (Jeremy is still not even really assessing whether she's from another world, since that would be weird and absurd, but it seems perfectly normal to be annoyed if you're saying repeatedly that you're from another world and nobody believes you.)

He smiles at her. "You're going to learn more words, though, right? With the worksheets. And then you can explain everything." Glance over in the direction of the kitchen. "I think dinner's nearly ready, want to go help set the table? It's a great way to get on Mom's good side." 

"I work words, beh. Help table," she nods, and heads in that direction.

Her clumsiness comes through again here, but she's not hesitant about doing the work, at least once Evelyn points Jeremy at the unbreakable plates, and she's actually fairly meticulous about nudging the silverware into the right spots.

She's neat. Jeremy likes her. (Jeremy likes most people, honestly, but Deskyl didn't even make it hard.) He...feels like there's going to have to be a Conversation with Mom, about this, but it can wait until after dinner. 

Evelyn carries over a large casserole dish of mac&cheese, smiling at both of them, and is very curious what they were just talking about but now is not the time to ask. 

Food! Deskyl doesn't generally tend to be chatty during meals, and today is no exception, aside from thanking Evelyn before she starts eating.