She appears to have landed in... a graveyard. The nearest tombstone bears the name NERO and an uncomfortably larger-than-life carving of a scorpion, the curve of its stone tail framing the name, its barb angled threateningly to guard the grave.

There's a house in the middle distance, a tall sprawling thing with dark walls and dark roofs and lots of pointy bits. A winding path leads down to it from the graveyard's wrought-iron gate, through gardens of black flowers and strange spiky plants.

She appears to be, if not completely in the middle of nowhere, definitely not in the sort of urban environment where you can find a police station by picking a direction and walking. Better to try to get a ride from someone. She starts walking towards the only visible building.

The house (unless it's a church? It's pointy and next to a graveyard) looks like it belongs to someone very rich with fantastic taste in house architecture and questionable yet based taste in landscape architecture. Nearly anyone would be nice to a lost blatantly harmless tiny person; hopefully they're part of nearly everyone. (For that matter, hopefully this is a part of Earth that speaks English and not, say, Italy, or the twelfth century, or a fantasy world. It at least has a recognizable alphabet, basically normal grass, and the concept and probably the reality of scorpions. She doesn't recognize any of the plants in the garden but she's not a plant expert so that doesn't mean much.)

A figure emerges from the house and turns up the path toward the graveyard. Small, but larger than Miranda currently is. Dressed in black. Rather overshadowed by an umbrella. (The sky is clear, but maybe she knows something Miranda doesn't.)

Oh good, the house is definitely inhabited and probably not a church. And maybe a kid is more likely than an adult to answer some weird questions without asking awkward ones in return.

Once they're close enough to hear each other without raising their voices, she waves. "Hello. Do you know where this is? I'm lost."

The umbrella tilts backward to reveal a face, small and pale and framed by twin black braids.

"This is my house," says the small pale individual. "How did you come to be in our graveyard? Are you a ghost?" Her voice is mostly very level but she sounds like she is provisionally considering becoming excited about the prospect of a ghost.

Dang, good questions. "How I got here is complicated. I don't think I'm a ghost, though, I don't look like one. Not that I know what ghosts look like or whether they exist." She previously would have said they didn't, but then she also would have said that about body-transforming memory-eating closet lights, so what does she know about anything? The universe is probably a simulation anyway. "What country are we in and what year is it?"

She lets out a sigh of restrained, genteel disappointment at the ghost-related news. "Two thousand eighteen, in the United States of America." With a hint of wistfulness, "Are you sure you don't remember dying?"

Huh, she doesn't remember what year she was in yesterday but she thinks it was a few years later than 2018. Also she really wants to tell this kid she's a time traveler because it sounds like she'd believe it and think it was cool, but she needs to have a consistent story laid out and not say anything that could land her in a mental hospital if the kid repeats it at an inconvenient time.

"Pretty sure, yeah." Actually she should try to rule out that this isn't an alternate earth where people who die on the previous earth spontaneously appear in graveyards as children routinely or something. "Are ghosts definitely real or is that why you were asking, because you don't know if they are or not?"

A slightly quizzical look. "Of course they're real. The trouble is that they're much rarer than I would prefer."

Okay so either this is an alternate earth/secondary world/whatever or she's got a bit of advantage in a he said/she said. Not that that makes it safe to just say everything, because maybe this is a world where ghosts are normal and time-travelling dimension drops are not. Or maybe whatever messed with her memories also messed with her memories of the world being purely reductionist. Pretty much any amount of Doubt is justified at this point. But all you can do is start with the priors you have and move swiftly from there.

"Huh. I wonder what else exists that I don't know about."

"I've heard that there are some people who don't believe in ghosts..." she says, slowly, doubtfully. "Do you also not believe in vampires?"

"I would need to examine the evidence for and against vampires before I came to any sort of confident conclusion on the matter."

She blinks, momentarily taken aback; then her lips tug sideways into just the faintest hint of an approving smile. "That's very reasonable of you," she says. "What's your name? I'm Wednesday."

"Miranda." Her last name appears to have gone wherever her home city and the previously current year did. "It's nice to meet you." 

"Rarely if ever," she says. "If I invite you in for tea, will you tell me how you ended up in the family graveyard?"

That's a tricky one. She doesn't want to spin an elaborate lie, and she doesn't want to tell the truth, and she doesn't want to walk goodness knows how far looking for someone else who may well immediately present the same problems. Also when you're expressing Cartesian doubt re: the existence of ghosts and vampires and don't know your full name or what day of the week it is, it's kind of questionable to devote too much effort to not getting your brain checked over.

"Yeah, okay."

"This way."

She spins neatly on her heel and leads Miranda toward the house, every step precise. As they walk into its shadow, she closes her umbrella.

The door opens at her approach, revealing a tall blank-faced man smoothly standing back out of their way as he opens it; Wednesday nods to him, and he nods back, and this seems to be the extent of the interaction they prefer to have at this time.

Miranda follows, and smiles politely at Wednesday's family member or butler or something. Housemate.

Is the inside of the house as aesthetically coherent as the outside?

Very extremely much so, yes.

The floor of the foyer gleams spotlessly, tiled in square panes of black marble two feet on a side. Their ghostly white veins seemingly serve only to better highlight the deep rich blackness between. There are a few cobwebs in the corners of the high black ceiling; these, too, gleam spotlessly, as though designed and maintained by professional spider artisans to enhance the look of the room. The light they catch is provided partly by ornate wall sconces that seem to bear ordinary electric lights, but mainly by hundreds of candles set in an iron chandelier high overhead.

Ahead of the girls, a black marble staircase rises toward the second floor, splitting halfway to turn to the left and right; the chandelier hangs directly above the foot of the stairs, in the center of the large square room. From the edges of the ground-floor area and from a balcony covering the three non-exterior sides of the second-floor area above, ornate wood-paneled doors set in ornate wood-paneled walls lead to the rest of the house. Everything is either dark and desaturated or pale and desaturated; Miranda is by far the most vibrant object present.

Wednesday ignores the staircase and makes a beeline (a spiderline, perhaps?) for a door on the right, which when opened lets out into a long, narrow hallway that continues the themes established in the foyer. She leads Miranda almost all the way to the end of the hall and then takes a hard right into a small sitting room, with bone-white armchairs and a bone-white couch arranged around a dark wooden coffee table with a lacy white runner. The man from the door, or possibly a different man cast in the same mold, is just setting down a large tray with a teapot, two cups and saucers, and a plate of assorted scones and biscuits with accompanying dishes of butter and jam; he nods to Wednesday, and she nods back, and he departs without a word.

Wednesday sits in an armchair, folds her hands neatly in her lap, and subjects Miranda to a piercing gaze.

"Your house is beautiful," she murmurs as they cross the foyer. She clashes terribly with everything in her galaxy print hoodie, but doing a totally different aesthetic is less embarrassing than doing the same aesthetic poorly or not doing an aesthetic at all.

Once they're sat down she looks levelly back at Wednesday across the tea set. Not having any adults obviously listening makes it much easier to tell the truth, because she'll at least have a chance of switching to a lie later. "Until a few minutes before we met, I was an adult living several years in the future. An unexpected phenomenon in my closet de-aged me, teleported me to your graveyard, and has also mangled my memories so I don't know where I was living or exactly when it was. I can recall some historical events from up through twenty twenty-two but nothing of my personal history. Unfortunately that's all I know of the matter. I'm kind of hoping you've heard of this sort of thing happening before, because if I have I've forgotten that too."

"No," she says slowly. "No, that is... new. And interesting." She frowns slightly, deep in thought. "If you were an adult in twenty twenty-two then you aren't the age you would be if you'd only been wound back in time, right? Do you remember enough biographical details to look yourself up and find out if there's an... older-younger version of you out there? Or—if you only remember impersonal history, could we triangulate by figuring out which history you remember? It should be possible to narrow you down to a city that way..."

"Yeah, I would have been older than this in the previous twenty eighteen. I don't remember any of the cities I've lived in or the people I've known but I could try--looking at a list of cities and seeing which ones I know a lot of facts about? One complication is that I'm not sure I'm even on the same earth; we both speak English and stuff but I should check that the histories match up. Uh, also, do you have parents and will they decide I'm insane if they hear any of this."

"Of course they won't think you're insane. And even if they did, what would it matter? Insane people can still be excellent company; just look at my Uncle Fester. Actually, don't. He's on the run from the law and might not take kindly to witnesses."

"Don't worry, I have a terrible memory for faces. If you have any song lyrics on the run from the law you should definitely keep me away from those, though." The joke buys her time to process the statement a bit more. Hopefully Uncle Fester is either himself the subject of a joke or innocent or guilty of something relatively harmless and is not, for example, a vampire. "I'm glad your family won't think I'm insane, or at least won't be dicks about it."

"So you have no personal history, and we must assume no legal identity, and nowhere to go, and you're a time traveler from a mysterious future. Inside your head you're an adult, but outside it you're younger than my little brother."

She pauses, then smiles, a real actual smile that occupies considerably more than six square millimeters of her face.

"I think I'll tell my mother to adopt you."

She's pretty sure that's not how adoption worked last week but it would certainly be nice to have a roof over her head for the next while. "That would be very kind of her. Especially if she has any idea of how to get me a legal identity." Probably what she'll get is a ride to a police station and a comment about how imaginative children are but that's fine too. Right now she just needs to keep moving forward because if she stops to think too seriously about any of this she's going to have an emotional breakdown.

"Don't worry," she adds, perhaps sensing some doubt. "She won't balk. She'll be ecstatic. You're a living human being who I'm provisionally willing to speak to. She can't possibly pass up an opportunity like that."

Even with no details on her own childhood this is so relatable that Miranda laughs out loud. "Fair enough! I suppose I'll try to keep being entertaining, then." 

"You're a very intriguing mystery! I will graciously forgive you for not being a ghost."

"If I happen to kick the bucket and an opportunity to come back as a ghost arises I shall almost certainly take it. But for now I much prefer being alive."

"Chacun à son goût. Shall I fetch Mother?"

"Sorry, my French is terrible, what to their what? I'd be happy to meet your mother."

"I believe the English proverb is 'to each his own', but I prefer the French."

She gets up.

"Please don't leave the room without me; I cannot guarantee that exploring the house on your own will not lead you into any deadly traps," she says, and on that ominous note, departs in a swirl of black skirts.

The tea tray is still there, if Miranda is interested.

Between the probable eggs and the comment about deadly traps and what she's tentatively calling isekai jetlag, she doesn't end up touching the food.

She does, however, relax just enough to start crying silently about how she's probably never going to see any of the people or things she cared about again and doesn't even remember what they are and has very little control over her life and not a lot of avenues for getting more. If the tea tray happened to include napkins she'll get a lot of use out of those.

There is totally a neat little stack of paper napkins on one side of the tray.

Well now there's a gross wad of napkins in the back pockets of her pants and her eyes are red.

A tall woman in a long black dress sweeps into the room, sleeves trailing like wings behind her.

"Miranda, is it?" she says, smiling. "My name is Morticia Addams. It's so lovely to meet you."

(Wednesday, as a consequence of her shorter legs, is trailing behind.)

"It's great to meet you too. You have a lovely home." 

"Thank you!" she says, with a small but glowingly sincere smile. "I've worked very hard on it."

She seats herself at the end of the couch closer to Miranda; Wednesday takes an armchair across from her, leaving Miranda in the middle of the arc the three of them make around one end of the coffee table.

"Now," she says seriously, looking at Miranda. "My darling girl has told me all about you, but I'd like to hear you tell it in your own words, please."

Oh boy. Time for truth and/or consequences.

Morticia isn't looking at her like she thinks she's a silly kid playing a pretend game, or a brain damage victim who needs to be prevented from walking out a window. She's looking at her like a person having a conversation. Miranda repeats the story, mysterious closet light and sudden discontinuity and memory wipe and everything. Ends with an embarrassed shrug and the keen awareness of being broke and homeless.

Morticia nods slowly.

"Wednesday has suggested the direct approach," she says. "I could adopt you, and create a legal identity for you along the way. It would solve quite a few problems, and of course if it would make Wednesday happy I would be glad to welcome you into our home. But I think it would not be as simple as it sounds. Although you arrived in our graveyard under mysterious circumstances, I think there is still a risk that you might be..." (she pauses momentously) "...ordinary."

(Wednesday looks confused.)

"It would be very kind of you to do that. But I'm afraid I don't know what you mean by ordinary and it's entirely possible that I am whatever it is." There are so many psychological, legal, or magical possible things Morticia could mean that Miranda's speculation engine crashes trying to list them.

"An ordinary person is one without any supernatural origin," Morticia explains. "My family are what is now called 'outcasts'—those who have some connection to powers outside the mortal. And I think, though your origin is clearly supernatural, you might nevertheless be ordinary in your nature. Which would mean," and here she turns to Wednesday, "that Miranda may be much more fragile than you are used to, and if we adopt her as your sister, you cannot treat her the way you treat Pugsley."

"Pugsley is weak," Wednesday grumbles, not meeting her mother's eyes. "He would never survive without me."

"Look at me, darling, I'm serious. I will not adopt this girl if you cannot promise me that you will respect her differences, just as I will ask her to respect yours. That means no torture, Wednesday."

She glares uncomfortably at the tea tray.

"I have no reason to believe I will not die of--being stabbed, or any other thing that would kill a baseline human from the society I remember." She should probably be scared, this really seems like a fear kind of situation, but what she in fact feels is embarrassment at her lack of robustness. Something something social model of disability. "Uh, also possibly this is obvious but just in case it isn't, I will be permanently damaged both physically and mentally by a wide range of nonlethal injuries." Ah, there's the fear, showing up fifteen seconds late with Starbucks.

Wednesday takes a deep breath and tries to smooth the hint of a scowl off her face as she finally looks up at her mother.

"'Ordinary' means 'like the kids at school'," she says. "Doesn't it? It means—" She stops, breathes, starts again with more precise and careful diction. "It means that she is like a pet. Easy to hurt and hard to care for."

"A sister is not a pet," says Morticia, raising an eyebrow. "But I see what you mean. Yes."

"Isn't there anything we can do? Any dread ritual—?"

Morticia is already shaking her head. "It's said that the witches of old were once fully human, but I don't know how to change an ordinary person into someone like us. It may not be possible. If you are going to ask Miranda to be your sister, you must assume it is not."

She sits still for just a second, considering.

Then she turns to Miranda.

"If you agree to be my sister I will swear a blood oath never to harm you except at grave need or with your informed and uncoerced consent," she says. "Will that suit you?"

(She's slightly disappointed by the apparent lack of dread rituals for giving people more hit points. Maybe more than slightly.)

Oh, they're the kind of people who have oaths. That's--quite good, actually, she's pretty sure most people don't. Another reason to throw in her lot with them rather than the state.

"It will. And--if by harm we mean specifically violence and not something I might do on accident--I would be willing to swear the same to you." The prospect of swearing an oath is if anything more frightening than the previous topic, but--these people met a lost stranger and immediately chose kindness and friendship and peace. She's going to extend her own olive branch back.

"I don't need that," she says, shaking her head slightly. "If anything... if anything, I'd ask you to swear to be careful with your own life and health. If you're going to be my sister while being—'ordinary'." The word seems to discomfit her, but she regains steadier conversational footing as she continues, "If something did happen to you, it would be such a tragic waste if you couldn't figure out how to come back and haunt me afterward."

Awwwww? That's weirdly sweet? This whole conversation is making her feel like a tiny delicate flower and actually being in a tiny body is not making her any less off balance.

"I'll be careful. I ought to have another seventy or eighty years in me if this body is what it looks like. Plenty of time to research dread rituals." That last bit is somewhere around 40% joke and the rest is a question.

"I'm sure Wednesday would be thrilled to help you with that, as would I," Morticia puts in. "Here is what I suggest. You can stay with us for a week, to get to know the whole family. We'll introduce you to everyone—my husband Gomez, Wednesday's brother Pugsley, and of course Lurch and Thing. After that, if you decide you really want to join the family, I will ready the adoption papers and smooth over any legal difficulties with your identity, and you and Wednesday may make whatever oaths to one another you wish. Does that sound reasonable?"

"Very much so. And, uh, if there turns out to be some reason it won't work out you can just point the way to the nearest police station and I won't tell anyone anything about you that you'd rather I didn't."

She nods. "If it does not work out, we will of course offer to have Lurch drive you into town, to a destination of your choosing. But if you prefer to make your own way, you may do that as well."

Cool, cars exist and they have one. "That'd be good, thanks."

She really needs to get oriented to either the alternate earth she's on or the masquerade she just got dropped on the other side of. "So, are--witches and vampires and suchlike--common knowledge, or a secret?"

"That is a complicated question," she says. "Of course among our own kind it is common knowledge that witches and werewolves, vampires, gorgons, sirens, all are real. But even there, some knowledge is hidden, and some has been lost. And Wednesday, I think, has in some ways led a life sheltered from the knowledge that they, the ordinary ones, are real. She knows that she is different from the other children at school, but does not understand how, or why; I think they feel the same about her. I grew up among outcasts myself, so I cannot tell you what the ordinary people say about us when they are alone together. Certainly many of them know that my family is different from theirs in more than just our lifestyle. Do all of them know that? I think not. I think that if you asked an ordinary person who had never been friends with an outcast whether magic was real, they might well say no. It is... not polite, in their society, to speak of such things."

"Hm. It sounds like I might not be on the same Earth I started out on, then. There it was less about politeness, people were more likely to say that they had looked for evidence of magic and found none. Or claim they had found some and present obvious hoaxes. But maybe they were just looking in the wrong places, or you're more hidden than things like Wednesday going to school implies. Or whatever sent me here wiped all my memories of magic and then put me somewhere I'd immediately find out about it for some reason. Maybe we should compare histories and geographies and things like that, see if everything matches. Or I can look at things on the internet if you have a computer you don't mind me borrowing."

"We do have a computer and of course you may use it. I would be fascinated to investigate differences in our histories."

"Remember to investigate the depth of your knowledge of different places," Wednesday puts in. "It could be the key to learning where you came from."

"Definitely. Should I do that now or should I meet people first or is there some third thing?"

"Gomez and Pugsley are on a little fishing trip with Thing at the moment. They should be back in a few hours, which I imagine leaves us plenty of time to get a start on comparative history. I noticed you haven't touched the refreshments; do you have any dietary restrictions I should know about?"

"Uh, I try not to eat anything with animal products in it but I recognize that this is inconvenient and" what's a polite way to say beggars can't be choosers "you're already going out of your way for me so if you don't happen to have anything vegan--" Shrug. Embarrassed staring at the table. Mental note to look up this world's farming practices as one of the first few things just in case they're better than the other one's.

"Hmm. A little tricky, but it shouldn't present too much of a challenge. Is honey an animal product, in your eyes? Can you think of any other little details like that that might not be obvious to someone encountering your diet for the first time?"

"Honey is fine, uh, yeast is fine, eggs are not, gelatin isn't because it's actually bones, dairy isn't and a surprising number of things are dairy?" 

She nods thoughtfully. "Yes, I think we can work with that. Though perhaps you should tag along when I send Lurch out for groceries, to make sure we get plenty of things you like, not just things you are willing to eat."

(Wednesday, meanwhile, begins to look intrigued as soon as the word 'bones' enters her ears.)

"Tagging along on a grocery run would be lovely, thank you." She needs to figure out some chores she can do around the house to mitigate her sense of dishonor.

"Then, which would you rather do first? History, or grocery shopping?"

"Depends on when Lurch was planning to go out? I don't want to disrupt anyone's schedule too much."

"I believe he was next due for a grocery trip tomorrow. In which case, shall we go to the computer?"

"Sounds good!" She's so curious what kind of computer they have and whether they've somehow made it fit into their house's aesthetic. (If she ends up living here she'll need to either start doing the aesthetic or not that, but she'll deal with the embarrassment of not having spare clothes some time that isn't now. Maybe Wednesday will have a bunch of hand-me-downs lying around.)

Morticia gets up to lead the way.

As Wednesday follows along beside Miranda, she asks curiously, "Why don't you eat animal products?"

"So, this is one of the things I need to check if it's the same here, but on the Earth I came from most animal products you could get at a restaurant or grocery store came from farms that--used farming practices I thought were unethical. They treated the animals poorly. So I don't want to--have anything to do with that. It's just a personal choice; I don't judge other people for what they decide to eat."

"I have never in my life cared about anyone else's judgment of me and I am hardly about to start now," she says dismissively. "Does that mean, though, that you would eat animal products if they were, say, Father and Pugsley's fish? Or is fishing also unethical?"

Not caring about other people's judgement is a solid life choice. "I don't have nearly as much objection to fishing or hunting. I think I didn't know anyone who fished, before, because I don't remember what fish tastes like. And do remember what other foods taste like."

"There is some allure to the idea of not eating any animal I didn't personally see killed," Wednesday says thoughtfully.

Miranda nods thoughtfully. Does the immense internal aesthetic coherence come with the magic or is that separate.

"Maybe we can all try eating like you for a week and see how tolerable it is."

"That sounds like a lovely idea," says Morticia from up ahead; they've gone back through the foyer and she's picking up her skirts to ascend the black marble stairs. When the stairs split, she turns right.

Oh no, was she a pressurey jerk? She doesn't see how she can possibly have pressured either of them given the circumstances so she's going to go with tentative happiness and an attempt to remember some good recipes. Onwards up the stairs.

The computer proves to be located in a sort of weird anti-solarium; there's a skylight and a whole wall of windows, and a cleverly rigged system of star-speckled black curtains to shield the room from them all. Tentative hints of daylight sneak in around the edges and find themselves unwelcome.

The computer is a bit old, especially from Miranda's slightly futuristic perspective, but perfectly serviceable. The case, naturally, is glossy black, and set into a specially made cabinet in the desk, so that Morticia has to open a little door to press the power button. (One side of the cabinet is a sort of carved wooden screen rather than a solid panel, for airflow.) The monitor is inset into the wall behind the desk, decorously concealed by its own set of starry curtains, which open at the pull of a tasseled black rope. The keyboard and mouse are out in the open, but the keyboard is made of wood with round typewriter-style metal keycaps and the mouse, also made of wood, has the silhouettes of bones woodburned into its surface to form elaborate vaguely-floral patterns.

Heckin fabulous confirmed. Watch them run some kind of cryptographically ethereal obscure Linux distro where you have to write a Haskell script to open the browser. Whatever it is she'll git gud, of course.

Tragically, although the aesthetics of the interface are heavily customized, the mechanics are a bog-standard home edition of Windows 8. The Addamses are not Computer People. It will absolutely suffice to get her on Wikipedia, though! Morticia gestures for her to take a seat after demonstrating that the password is unspeakable.

Even numbered Windows, now that's spooky. But it indeed doesn't matter, because: Wikipedia!

Is the current US political situation the same as she remembers? Did James Randi still offer a million-dollar bribe for magic users to break the masquerade and get no takers? Is chicken farming still horrible? Are the top 50 US cities all recognizably real city names?

Politics are broadly similar but some of the specific names are different. James Randi's Wikipedia article depicts a career as a magician, a fight with another magician about the latter claiming supernatural powers he didn't have, and no mention of any prize offered at large for verifiable real ones. Chicken farming is just as horrible. (Wednesday leans forward in fascination.) The top 50 US cities all seem real and normal.

She declares the world "Not my Earth but very similar." She leaves the tab about chicken farming open in one window taking up half the space so Wednesday can read it while Miranda scrolls boringly through the list of cities and contemplates how many facts she knows about each one. It turns out she can describe the public transportation systems of Boston (especially Cambridge) and Pittsburgh, and knows good restaurants in both and more facts about their history and geography than baseline.

Wednesday turns to Morticia after finishing the chicken farming tab and announces, "Mother, it is unacceptable for my food to be tortured if I am not the one to torture it."

Ethics win??? Also she's in a parallel universe and even if she remembers enough facts to deduce where she's from she has no way of getting her old life back unless she also figures out parallel universe travel. But that's fucking depressing and she doesn't even know what was good about her old life for her to want it back so she's going to not focus on that. Instead she will poke around Wikipedia some more to see if she can find any other evidence of the supernatural, including conspicuous absences. Dracula? Ghost hunter TV shows? History of witchcraft trials? 

It takes a few article perusals to really begin to notice, because the difference is pretty subtle and mostly consists of omissions, but while Wikipedia in this universe presents a similar neutral and detached tone about supernatural phenomena to Wikipedia in Miranda's home world, it rarely quite gets to the point of outright denying things are real unless they are outright fictional with a specific author and everything. So Dracula is a fictional character invented by Bram Stoker based partly on legends of Vlad the Impaler, and ghost hunter TV shows vary widely in how much they present themselves as investigating actual phenomena—and might also just be less popular?—but the witchcraft trial articles, when investigated in detail, are willing to say some people were definitely not witches but are oddly silent on the subject when it comes to the rest.

What a weirdly porous masquerade. Is human psychology slightly different here, such that no individuals arise who notice that magic exists and immediately choose to throw it all into the light? Or is there a magic illuminati who ensure that nobody ever gets that far? She's not going to reveal other people's business that they don't want to be common knowledge, not when they revealed it to her in good faith, but it's entirely possible that if she had arrived in this world in different circumstances she would have been both a cause and a recipient of Problems. 

However real counterfactuals in general or that one in particular may be, this Miranda is not currently dealing with that. "I think I'm decently oriented to this world now," she says. "Enough to be getting on with in the short term, at any rate."

"I am glad to hear it!" says Morticia. "I would be fascinated to hear all about the differences between our worlds."

"I as well," says Wednesday, slightly disgruntled to be agreeing with her mother but not about to let this stop her from getting at the cool alternate universe facts.

Different politicians! Different witch trials! Different background attitude towards investigation of weird phenomena! One of the Pittsburgh funiculars has a different name for some reason! The broad outlines of history both human and natural are basically the same but the little details are different. If her guess is correct that her previous earth had no magic, then under her very shaky understanding of the model of physics that was generally believed by experts on the other earth, the worlds must have diverged a long time ago, which means the similarities are a priori unlikely enough to plausibly be the result of careful selection, which along with the level of complexity involved in the de-aging and memory wipe suggests she was put here by some intelligence for some purpose. As to what that purpose could be, she has only the vaguest of guesses.

"It's interesting that you say 'diverged a very long time ago'," says Wednesday. "I would've expected something more like... one universe is a dark mirror of the other. It does make sense, now that I think of it, that if you change the past, the future will change along with it... but it seems hard to be sure about that sort of thing. And what do you mean, about careful selection?"

"I mean, if you list out all the ways history could have gone, starting from a point, I dunno, two thousand years ago, there are a lot of them, and most of them by the time you get to twenty eighteen wouldn't even have recognizable English let alone Bush V Gore. And yet I end up in one where I can communicate with the first people I meet--which means not even a particular timeline but a part of the world where English is spoken rather than the ocean or China or something. So either it's a big coincidence or some kind of mind decided to make it like that. But all of that depends on the hypothesis that all possible histories are equally real, and the theory that predicts that doesn't predict it being possible to travel between them, so maybe I'm barking up the complete wrong tree. It still seems like if there are at least two Earths there are probably loads, but maybe it's not the branching histories thing. Clearly I should study quantum mechanics until I can have an actual informed opinion."

"I'm not sure whether quantum mechanics will have the answers you seek," says Morticia. "If I had the same questions, I would turn to divination first. But perhaps you're right, or perhaps we're both wrong. Who can say?"

"Oh, I should definitely also study divination! Assuming it's a thing you can study and not a thing you have to be born with." There ought to be some branch of magic she can theoretically get good at with enough effort, isn't that in the Isekai protagonist union contract somewhere she should just be grateful she didn't have to learn a language by immersion.

"That, I cannot tell you, yet. But you may be assured that if you join our family, I will work tirelessly to find ways to bring you alongside us in our command of the occult."

Giant grin. "Thank you. For a lot of things. You're being so amazingly kind and I appreciate it a lot." And someday she will be in a position to pay it back or at least pay it forward, whether she can learn magic or not. She was strong enough to make her own way in the world once and someday she will be strong again.

"Someone my Wednesday is willing to accept as a friend is a rare creature indeed."

Wednesday's impassive face takes on a faint air of having told someone so.

She totally did get told so! That doesn't make it not admirably generous. 

"You're awesome too, Wednesday. And I look forward to meeting everyone else."

"I won't bias your impressions by trying to summarize anyone," she says after a moment's thought. "Oh, though I should warn you, my parents are physically incapable of keeping their hands and/or faces off of each other for longer than about five minutes at a stretch. It's moderately revolting."

"I will not apologize for being in love," says Morticia.

Cute??? She shrugs and says cheerfully, "None of my business. I continue to have the mind of a twenty-something; I won't have my childlike innocence damaged by the sight of kissing." And if they go any farther than kissing she will simply point her eyes elsewhere.

"It's not damaging, just very irritating. But perhaps you'll have a higher tolerance for displays of affection than I do."

Shrug. "Might be more irritating when it's your parents." This is a weird topic and she doesn't know what things are reasonable to say so she reaches into the Topic Bin and grabs the first thing available. "By the way, the whole family is magic, right? Are there multiple kinds of magic people or just one?" In particular she remembers there having been an ambiguous remark about vampires earlier and if the awkwardness of being a vegan living among omnivores is going to be turned up to thirteen that would be useful information to have soonest. Even if it means jumping out of the complicated topic frying pan into the complicated topic fire.

"There are numerous kinds, if by 'magic people' you mean to include witches, werewolves, vampires, sirens, gorgons, and all the other little oddities that fall under the outcast umbrella," says Morticia. "I come from a long line of witches, myself; my darling husband's ancestry is more muddled, but there have been many fine witches in his family as well."

"Cool! My earth actually has fictional stories about beings with all of those names but I just realized I don't know if they line up--witches can cast versatile magic on purpose, werewolves involuntarily turn into wolves on the full moon or possibly voluntarily turn into wolves whenever they want, vampires are immortal but have to drink human blood, sirens can hypnotize people by singing, gorgons petrify anyone who looks at them? Is any of that accurate?"

"Gorgons only petrify when they let down their hair; it's meeting the gaze of the snakes that does it," says Morticia. "And the petrification is temporary. I'm told some people even find it relaxing. Werewolves... I'm not close with any, so perhaps I'm just repeating stereotypes, but I do think the lunar transformation is involuntary—though they are also capable of transforming the rest of the time, in moments of strong emotion, and perhaps deliberately as well. I believe vampires need not confine themselves to human blood, certainly not to ordinary blood. As well as their hypnotic voices, sirens also have a transformation of their own, into an aquatic form that I've always thought was very beautiful in its own way. The powers that run in a witch's blood are complex and hard to summarize, but versatile magic cast on purpose is certainly a part of it; a certain resilience to injury is also an ability whose potential we are born with, but which we learn to use better as we grow."

"That's awesome. O brave new world that has such people in it." Heeee she got to say the line and mean it completely literally. And it sounds like the vampires have figured something out, good for them. 

Morticia smiles warmly.

Even Wednesday seems potentially slightly pleased.

"So, what's the next thing I should be doing? Meeting people, grocery shopping . . . or if you have things to do I can spend the next however long reading more Wikipedia; I realize you weren't expecting a random person today."

"I was only planning a walk in the graveyard with an aspirational umbrella, and I can do that anytime."

"The boys will be coming home with freshly caught fish for dinner, so I think grocery shopping can safely wait until tomorrow," says Morticia. "Unless you'd prefer to have alternatives in case fish turns out to disagree with you?"

The prospect of eating unfamiliar flesh that might turn out to cause problems for Miranda's digestion takes on the prospect of inconveniencing the Addamses unnecessarily and gets its ass kicked. "I expect I'll be fine, thank you." There will probably be bread or rice or veggies or something on the side anyway.

"Then let's just get you properly introduced to Lurch and then you girls can amuse yourselves until the boys come home," she says, standing up and stepping out into the hall. The tall servant from earlier follows her back into the room.

"Lurch, this is Miranda. She'll be staying with us this week while we decide whether to welcome her into the family."

Lurch nods gravely to Miranda.

"Miranda, this is Lurch, our butler. Please don't hesitate to ask him for help if you're lost or in need of anything. He's a man of few words, but he always gets the job done."

"Pleased to meet you, Lurch."

Oh dear, he is a butler, this is the kind of house where there's a butler, she doesn't know how to behave in this circumstance and is quite certain she never has known. (Also is Lurch his first name or his last name or his only name and did he pick it himself or inherit it, but that's a complete side issue.)

His grave face lightens slightly, though certainly not all the way to a smile, and he says in a deep slow voice, "You as well, miss." Then, with another respectful nod to the assembled ladies, he departs.

Okay, that was less than maximally awkward, good job everyone.

"Incidentally, Wednesday mentioned the house containing deadly traps. If that was meant literally, would either of you mind explaining how to safely get to and use a bathroom?" 

"I said I couldn't guarantee that there aren't any."

"I'll look over the house thoroughly this afternoon so I can certify it safe to wander. In the meantime, there's one just down the hall that should be all right. Just a moment while I check and make sure." She steps out again.

"Ah, yes, that's an important distinction," she says to Wednesday with a smile. "Have there been deadly traps in the house at any point in the recent past?" If she in fact builds traps in her house as a hobby that's cool as heck; if she simply quips about them that's valid too.

"I went through a phase last year. I think we've probably gotten them all by now. But Mother's right that it's worth checking, just on the off chance."

"I'm almost sorry I missed that. It sounds like a fun way to learn mechanical engineering."

"Would you like to help me build a steam-powered guillotine to behead my dolls with?"

"You bet I would!" Wow, imagine if she had landed among normal people and had to pretend to be six and go to grade school and shit. But she didn't, she landed here and she's gonna learn stuff.

"I was thinking of making that my next project."

Morticia steps back into the room. "I am happy to report the nearest bathroom clear of mortal hazards. Shall I show you to it?"

"That'd be great, thanks." And then they can design a steam-powered guillotine!

The bathroom proves to be just down the hall, and just what you'd expect from this household. There's black marble tiles, and a claw-footed bathtub enshrouded in black curtains, and the knobs on the faucets are shaped like little black skulls. Morticia leaves her to it with a promise that it will also be safe to walk back to the computer room when she's done.

Then she will return to the computer room in a few minutes. (This place is so aesthetic. She should definitely acquire some black hand-me-downs; it's not the sort of place that's improved by a single contrasting note so while she's here she'd rather harmonize.)

Wednesday has gotten out a sketchbook from somewhere and is drawing possible steam guillotine designs.

"Nice. So, is the plan to have the blade go faster than you can get with just gravity or reload itself or both? Also what kind of tools and materials do you have; is there a wood shop in your basement or similar?"

"There's a workshop on the ground floor, near the back of the house. The basement is mostly dungeons. I'm not sure if we have all the materials already, but we can at least start prototyping. Here—" She displays her plans, beautifully sketched and tidily labelled. There is indeed a mechanism for propelling the blade down and another mechanism for pulling it back up, at least in her most recent drawing; the first few thumbnail sketches are less elaborate.

Miranda has intelligent questions about pressure vessels and sensible suggestions about pistons and is very clearly conceiving of her goal here as "Help Wednesday execute on her vision, while learning things." This is so much fun.

Wednesday is pleased to have help executing on her vision! She develops a few more sketches with Miranda's assistance. Probably the most sensible option is to prototype the mechanisms individually, then assemble the complete system once they've got all the pieces working... would Miranda like to see the workshop? "Though we should probably keep you away from the dangerous parts... there are some things in that workshop even I shouldn't touch. Not until I am older and wiser and can reattach lost fingers."

"Arbitrary fingers, or just your own? Very cool either way. Also I have used power tools before but not with these tiny hands, so yeah, I'll hold off." 

"My own to start with. Other people's if I get very good at it. Thing—oh, you haven't met Thing. Thing is a severed hand. He's been with the family for ages. He says he'll let me practice stitches on him when I'm a little older."

"A disembodied hand who's a guy? Like the whole guy is one hand? Coooool. . . . Sounds inconvenient but whatever works for him I guess."

Hint of a smile. "You'd be surprised how resourceful a disembodied hand can get. But we help him out when he really has trouble with something. Mother has little spa nights with him where he gives her a neckrub and she puts his favourite lotion on him, it's atrociously sweet."

"Awwww." No wonder they weren't phased by an amnesiac time traveler. "I take it he communicates by writing?"

"Sign language, mostly, but he'll write if someone can't keep up."

"Ah, makes sense. I know the alphabet but I'm not, like, fast and I don't know any words. I'll need to practice."

"You might be able to persuade him to slow down for you while you're learning. I make no promises."

"I can see how slowing down would be super annoying. Maybe you could help me practice. . . . Also does he see or hear or both or something else?"

"Both. I suppose helping you practice wouldn't be too tedious. And I could use a brush-up on the signing side of things myself; I hardly ever need to use it. One gets rusty that way."

"Awesome. Want to do more engineering but you sign at me instead of talking?"

Instead of nodding, she signs 'yes', which is like nodding with your hand instead of your head.

The way she signs looks weird to someone who has a vague idea of what ASL normally looks like, because she learned it from a hand, so a lot of the signs are modified for a context in which your right hand is your whole body. She deliberately slows things down to give Miranda a chance to follow along, and repeats herself out loud or in slow fingerspelling when asked. It does slow down the pace of their engineering, but it's still fun, and Thing will appreciate it.

Miranda's signing proficiency goes from "utterly lousy" to merely "embarrassingly incompetent" over the course of the next hour. (Her knowledge of ratchets and cams is still decent.)

The sound of indistinct voices drifts down the hall. Shortly, Morticia opens the door, and sweeps into the room with two unfamiliar figures trailing in her wake.

"And here we are," she says. "Dearest, Pugsley, this is Miranda. Miranda, this is my husband Gomez, and our son Pugsley. Thing is in the kitchen helping Lurch put the fish away."

Behind her are two individuals.

One is a snappily dressed short round man wearing a slightly rumpled pinstriped suit with small dark cufflinks, white shirt and tie. His hair is black, shiny, and well-coiffed. Upon seeing the two of them, he reaches out warmly towards his daughter, offering an embrace. 

"Good afternoon, my little storm cloud," he says, his voice full of unrestrained happiness. "Let me see the young lady that have found room for under your black umbrella."

The other is a small round boy, smaller than Wednesday, in a green and white striped shirt and a pair of dark shorts. His hair is short and black, and though it clearly has seen a comb in the past it hasn't seen one lately. He stays hiding behind his mother, peeking out from behind her to look at the girls. 

(Wednesday, as usual, dodges the hug with a sort of resigned tolerance.)

(The dodge, rather than dismaying the man, has the opposite effect, and he lowers his arms with a smile as Wednesday successfully evades.)

She smiles at them. "Pleased to meet you both. It's very nice of you to let me stay over. How was your fishing trip?"

"Oh, quite excellently, we caught nearly four dozen of them, Lurch is cleaning and freezing the extras in the icebox as we speak. My young rabbit even managed to get five at once with one truly inspired toss." He tilts his head to indicate Pugsley, who shrinks further behind his mother's skirts. 

"Nice! How do you do that? I don't know if I've ever fished but I thought there was only room on the hook for one or maybe two."

"Not when you're fishing with grenades."

"Gosh. That doesn't pulverise the fish into inedibility? Cool." It sounds like it probably kills them a lot faster than piercing them with hooks and pulling them out of the lake to drown in the air. She tentatively approves.

"Oh, if they're far enough from the blast they just swim away after a minute or two if you don't scoop them up fast enough. They're hardly pulverized at all." 

"Wow, cool. Oh, I mixed up the kinds of grenades and had a mental image of frag grenades for some stupid reason. Concussion grenades makes way more sense." This conversation is making her want to watch Mythbusters. Or possibly do some things Adam and Jamie always tell you not to do. If she's staying at a friend's house it doesn't count as "trying this at home", right?

"Nothing to worry about. So my darling jasmine tells me you come from us with a mysterious and uncertain origin and a clouded past." He looks at her with piqued curiosity and attention. 

"Yes. I have an adult mind from the 2020s swapped into a child's body, I can remember facts about the world but nothing about my own past, and based on what I can remember I'm not from our future but from the future of an alternate timeline. It's a weird combination of things."

"A most peculiar circumstance. Well, given that my little dart frog has taken an interest in you, we would be happy to be a waystation as you find your bearings, or even a haven for you if you wish to linger in our home for as long as you may desire." 

"I appreciate it." She's not sure how to express her desire to get back on her feet and contribute to society in a way that isn't super socially awkward and laden with class assumptions, so she just says "I hope I'm in a position to pay it forward eventually. And Wednesday's awesome. Couldn't've picked a better person to turn up next to if I'd tried."

"You're surprisingly tolerable," says Wednesday. "And a useful engineering assistant."

(Morticia quietly beams at this display of, for Wednesday, effusive praise.)

Miranda is aware (mostly as a fictional trope, though whether this reflects her actual distribution of experiences or simply which ones survived the memory wipe is an open question) of the sort of person from whom "surprisingly tolerable" is a compliment, and is not put any farther off-balance than she already was (which is a fair bit; she feels as though she's about to Wile. E. Coyote right off the end of her social scripts at any moment).

"A rare endorsement from my little tarantula," he says, in smiling brightly in complement to his wife's shining countenance. "Is there anything you need from us while you get settled here? I would like to be certain that your stay with us is smooth and comfortable."

(It has been too long, i.e. perhaps as many as three entire minutes, since Morticia touched her husband. She steps closer and takes his hand, intertwining their fingers in a familiar gesture of affection.)

"At some point we should probably talk about where I'm going to sleep? And whether you have any spare clothes in my size on hand."

"You can wear my old clothes if you don't mind them smelling of attic," Wednesday suggests. "Or Pugsley's more recent castoffs, if you prefer them smelling of Pugsley."

Ah, sibling rivalries. Based on her current tiny sample size she prefers Wednesday's fashion sense, but she's not going to come out and say that and saying something about 'girl clothes' as a dodge would be beneath her. "Thanks! Just point me at a box of yours whenever is convenient?" 

She nods acknowledgment.

"As for where to sleep," she squeezes her husband's hand, "I'll have Lurch prepare one of the guest rooms for now. Would I be right in assuming you want something aboveground, with windows, perhaps close to the computer?"

"Those all sound like excellent traits in a bedroom, yes. Thanks!"

(Gomez squeezes back, lacing his fingers through hers in a tight embrace. It is not long before he wants more from her touch, and so he lifts it up to his lips and begins to kiss each finger in succession, lingering over each finger as he does, smelling deeply of her and her perfume as he does.)

"Perfect," she says, smiling warmly at Miranda before turning to gaze soulfully into Gomez's eyes.

"It has begun," says Wednesday in a dry undertone.

Miranda nods. Married people being adorable: are adorable. Was she married don't go down that road. She should probably try to interact with Pugsley in some way, she's been kind of ignoring him, but also he's been kind of signalling that he'd rather be ignored. She'll hazard a friendly smile.

Pugsley isn't sure what to make of this girl his sister likes. She doesn't look like she's going to torture him, but he has no good way to be sure, and her sister likes her. He defaults to staying behind his mother, where it's safe, shrinking back a little when she smiles at him. 

Wednesday, observing this, turns to Miranda and helpfully translates, "Pugsley wants to know how likely you are to torture him."

"I'm really not interested in that sort of thing. Especially not with anyone who doesn't enthusiastically consent." She wouldn't necessarily mind having some intense sensory experiences of her own with someone who knew what they were doing what the fuck, brain, do not let an eleven-year-old cut you up just to see what it's like, you will get PTSD and nerve damage and shit. You need to do something stupid, organize a hot pepper eating contest.

(Wednesday's face shows the faintly puzzled look of someone trying to decipher a phrase they're not familiar with.)

He isn't entirely sure what the girl just said either, but he understands at least the basics of what is meant. "Oh, thanks," he says in response, quietly and still hiding a little. He's still not entirely sure what to make of this sparkle-covered girl, but he's at least a little bit less worried at the moment. He'll have to see what she does have in store. 

Super valid to be worried the unexpected housemate you didn't get a chance to vet will turn out to be some kind of asshole. She'll just have to be easy to live with until he comes to believe it. . . . Also hopefully Wednesday isn't actually traumatizing him in a way he needs someone to intervene in? Morticia seemed to think it was normal siblings-being-jerks behaviour and she'd know and Miranda wouldn't, but she'll keep her eyes open and her conscience functioning, because that's what one does.

"Would you mind telling me a bit about yourself? 'Mind your own business' is a perfectly reasonable answer."

Tell her about himself? He's not sure what to say to that. "I dunno," he tells her. "I'm Pugsley. I... live here?" He has a feeling his sister wants more from him, she's always like that, but he doesn't know what she wants from him this time. 

"Tell her about Aristotle," Wednesday suggests.

"Aristotle is my pet octopus," he starts. "He got stuck in my hair and mom said I could keep him. He was really little when I found him," he gestures, moving from behind his mother to show them his thumb and forefinger only about an inch apart, "but he grows up real fast, and he's already this big!" he holds his hands as far apart as they will stretch. "And when he's fully grown he's gonna be even bigger! A lot bigger. We started him off in a little fish tank but we made him a really big aquarium in one of the spare rooms when we figured out how big he was gonna get, full of stuff for him to do. He gets bored really easily, and won't stay put if he's bored. And he really likes playing hide and seek, even if he's still in his tank." 

"Oh my gosh that's so cool!" She's gonna research octopus psychology and make sure Aristotle has everything he needs, but provisionally: So Cool. "What species is he? How big is he gonna get? Can I see his aquarium?"

"He's a Giant Pacific Octopus, and they get really really really big. We had to fill nearly all the room with aquarium! Uncle Fester and I designed it with temperature control and water pumps and filters and everything! And then Lurch and Dad and everyone and I put it together! Wednesday helped too, a little bit." He suddenly shrinks back a little, noticing just how far from behind his mother he's come. "You can see it if you want, I guess." 

"That sounds amazing. I'd love to see it." She has landed on an entire family of engineering types who are also magic. Whoever or whatever sent her here may have been trying, in some alien way, to do her a favor, and she appreciates it.

"Then let's all visit Aristotle. I think that's a wonderful idea. Though I might duck out for a moment to see how Lurch and Thing are getting on with the fish and let them know about your guest room preferences."

She turns to her husband and kisses him passionately, for perhaps somewhat longer than really qualifies as a valid conversational pause. Then, straightening his lapels and gazing into his eyes, she says, "Darling, can you lead the way? Remember that Miranda is ordinary—we should be very sure not to let her stumble into any of Wednesday's old traps."

"Of course, my alabaster masterpiece," he says, looking longingly into her eyes, the taste of her kiss still on his lips. He spends a moment to run his tongue over them, his eyes closed in bliss as he savored the sensation. Then he too straightened, still looking his beloved in the eyes. "I shall make sure the fragile soul will be kept safe and secure in our halls." 

She succeeds at not giggling by a great exertion of will and by her mouth doing something geometrically ridiculous. Time to go visit an octopus!

Morticia smiles at everyone and sweeps off to go check on Lurch and Thing, leaving the rest of them to follow Gomez to Aristotle's room.

Once he has finished watching his ruby-lipped goddess saunter off, he turns to his children and their new friend, and smiles at them. He steps to the side, gesturing out the door. "Come with me, it isn't too far." 

He leads them through a short maze of passages, past (but not down) the stairwell. The floors are made of two different colors of dark wood, dark red and purple-black, styled in a geometric pattern, and the wood-paneled walls are colored in yet another dark shade, ornamented with scrollwork of skulls and thorny plants and thistles and other such things, along the ceiling and on the lintel of doorways. 

It isn't long before they come to a stop in front of another wood-paneled doorway. "This is Aristotle's room," Gomez tells them. 

This house is giving her the Crafts Hunger. She wants to learn woodworking and stoneworking and carpentry and architecture and every other skill that makes beautiful things.

Pugsley takes a deep, nervous breath, and opens the door. 

The room is dimly lit, and murky, which is to be expected aesthetic for the house, but this time it is not because of curtains over the windows. It is because the light is filtered through a room full of water and transparent acrylic and aquatic plants and toys. 

The ceiling above them is made of transparent material, save for a pair of holes at a diagonal to each other, one near the door and to the right, the other near the far wall and to the left. Both holes have ladders leading up them. The ceiling is mostly straight (and nearer their heads than normal, though only Lurch needs to stoop and only a little) until after the far ladder, at which point there is an obvious seam, and the acrylic curves downwards until it goes straight up and down after another melted seam. The water makes it difficult to tell just how much room is left behind the wall, especially with the acrylic at the other end, but it's clearly more than a few feet. That space near the floor is at least partly full of dark pipes leading upwards and carefully-enclosed electronics, partly obscured by the bubbles rising upwards from one of the pipes.

Similarly, the seaweed and fake coral and craggy rocks and full-sized treasure chest and other objects make it hard to tell how high the aquarium goes, but the room is clearly taller than normal room height, either the room is naturally a double-height room or the floor was removed between this floor and the floor above to make room

Aristotle is not currently immediately visible, amidst the water and pipes and toys and plant life. 

"This is amazing! It must have been a ton of work." And cost a ton of money, but hey, if you're going to spend a ton of money on a home renovation this is an extremely cool one. "Did you have to take part of the ceiling out?"

"We took the whole ceiling out," Pugsley explains, beaming a little from the compliment. "I wanted to make sure he has enough space as he gets bigger, and no one was using this room or the one above it." He walks over to a ladder and pauses for a moment. "Do you want to come up?" he asks, worried about if that's the wrong thing to say. "He might come out and say hi, especially if we feed him."

"I think I'll go check on your ravishing mother," Gomez says. "And see how the fish are doing. You can find me if you need me, and make sure our wayward fledgling stays safe, yes?" 

"I will take responsibility for Miranda's safety," says Wednesday.

"That's my little storm cloud," he says, smiling at her, and leaves through the door, heading down the hallway. 

"I'd love to get a closer look! Especially if Aristotle makes an appearance, but even if he doesn't." She goes up the ladder like someone who is only a normal human amount of fragile and has no reason to fear most of the things that can be bought at Home Depot. (Everyone's concern is too sweet to be really annoying.)

It's a long climb to the top for a seven year old body, but quite accomplishable, even for an Ordinary human. The cylinder of acrylic Miranda climbs through is only slightly cloudy, and the whole tank and all of the objects contained inside can be seen, including what appears to be gold and gems in the full-sized treasure chest. 

The top of the tank stops at around bottom-of-window height on the upper level, and is covered with wooden criss-crossing slats over a wire mesh. It's tall enough for children to walk around in, but a full-sized adult would have some trouble. One corner of the room has set of pipes leading out from some moulding in the wall down into the tank, along with a set of wires, carefully enclosed in acrylic. There's a pair of small fishtanks in another corner, far from where Miranda came up, Pugsley is already making his way towards them. 

Wednesday follows behind, but stays closer to the ladder rather than follow Pugsley to the feeding tanks.

Miranda follows Pugsley because this seems like the option that maximizes her chance of seeing the octopus up close.

Once one gets closer, it's a lot easier to tell that the pair of tanks contain a couple different kinds of sea life. One of them is full of oysters and mussels and clams, resting on the rocky bottom of the tank. The other tank has shrimp swimming in it, making slow circles amidst their fellows. 

"He might not come out," Pugsley warns Miranda as she gets closer. "He's really good at hiding, and likes to sneak up on his prey. And sometimes he really wants privacy when hunting." He takes a plastic net from beside the tank, opens it, and scoops up a half-dozen molluscs. "But sometimes he'll come out and play." He reseals the molluscs tank, then opens a latch on a square of metal lattice, pulling it upwards, before carefully lowering the sea creatures onto a small platform. "There. We can wait for him to come out now." He pauses. "I mean, if you want to. It may take a while. If it happens at all. You don't have to stick around if you don't want to."

"I definitely want to stick around. If I see him, great; if I don't, I still got to see your awesome tank." She peers into the water, wondering which of the many hidey-holes contains an Aristotle.

A few minutes later, Aristotle unfurls from one of the crevasses and glides towards the molluscs, tentacles undulating with dozens of individually articulated suckers. He sweeps the oysters underneath himself one at a time and then sits, head-surface rippling in the currents, while his venom starts to digest them. Eventually he walk-swim-swoops back into his den, prey nearly tucked away.

"He's gorgeous."

"Isn't he great? He's going to get so big. Maybe at some point later he'll be more playful, I think he was just hungry right now. You can help me feed him regularly, I bet he'll take a liking to you then!" 

"I mean, if you want."

"That would be awesome. I love octopi. Octopuses. Octopodes. Did this timeline ever reach a consensus on that?"

"As far as I know we haven't," he says. "I like octopodes though, it's fun." 

"Fair enough; language is a spook anyhow. How much maintenance does this whole tank setup need? Like taking old water out and putting new water in, replacing filter cartridges, stuff like that?"

"That's what the pipes over there are for," he says, gesturing. "They change out the water and filter out the bad stuff, most of which ends up down the drain. I have I swap out the filter every once in a while, which is gross" he makes a face that's half-disgusted and half-delighted "and make sure the salinity and PH is correct and stuff, but most of the time it's not so bad."

"Cool! I don't think I ever had a fancy fishtank myself, but I've heard they're a pain to get into a good equilibrium and then relatively simple to maintain once you're there. Course, I've also heard it's easier if you have cleaner shrimp in the tank and Aristotle would probably eat them."

"Oh, he totally would." He nods in the direction of the shrimptank. "These are for feeding him too, you know. I just figured if we wanted to see him I should pick something that doesn't move around much." He looks a little sheepish when he admits that. 

"Yeah, makes sense. And it worked and he's great. Say, do you actually know he's a boy or did you just pick a philosopher and roll with it?" This is purely an idle question; it's not like Aristotle gives a shit.

"One of his arms doesn't have suction cups all the way down, so he's a boy. That's how you tell a boy octopus from a girl octopus!" He grins. 

"Cool! You learn something new every day."

"...so that's Aristotle," Pugsley says, after a few seconds, his ideas for conversation exhausted. "We can go back down now if you want, he's probably not going to come out for a while right now."

"Yup, makes sense." She makes her way back to the ladder and descends, facing outward with her back to it because it turns out she has that habit from somewhere.

There is a hand waiting at the bottom. As promised, the entire guy is a hand. He has some fairly drastic-looking stitches on him, at the base of his forefinger and along the slope from thumb into wrist, though the most eye-catching is definitely around the wrist stump. He flips up onto his stump to give her a little wave, then signs "nice to meet you" at a speed and clarity that she can just about comfortably follow if she tries hard and believes in herself.

That's mildly disconcerting for reasons that boil down to "oh no he has skin and bones and things" but it would be utterly hypocritical to mind this while also having skin and bones and things herself, and rather more of them at that, so she smiles politely and resolves to get over herself ASAP.

"Hi Thing. Nice to meet you too. I'm still terrible at sign so apologies in advance for all the times I'm going to ask you to repeat yourself."

He spreads his fingers in a remarkably legible hand-shrug, waves at Wednesday coming down the ladder behind her, and asks something that might be "how did you like meeting Aristotle?" if that unfamiliar squiggly gesture that starts with an A handshape is how he renders Aristotle's name.

As long as she has enough context to fill in the gaps with educated guesses she seems to be doing okay. "Aristotle is cool and his aquarium is awesome!"

Emphatic handnodding, thumbs up, a slurred sentence that might be "so glad you agree".

As Wednesday sets her feet on the floor, Thing scuttles over on his fingertips.

She bends down to offer him her hand so he can climb up her arm to her shoulder. "Where to?" she asks him. He responds with indecipherable finger-drumming, perhaps because the angle is a little awkward for her to watch him sign. "Miranda, how would you feel about seeing the conservatory?"

How fortunate for her apparent social competence that she has not been asked to pick anyone up don't borrow trouble.

She answers "Sure!" to seeing the conservatory before realizing she doesn't remember if a conservatory is an indoor garden/greenhouse thing or a music room, but probably it'll be obvious once they're in there. If it has both plants and musical instruments she can inquire further.

Wednesday leads the way through the mazelike halls. She doesn't look back to see if Pugsley is following; that's his own business.

Pugsely has, at least warily, decided to tag along, and is following behind the rest of the group. 

Miranda is trying to learn the layout of this building. She really is. She just sucks so immensely at it that the results are going to resemble those achieved by someone who isn't trying at all. Probably within the next few days she'll have memorized routes between the three locations she sees the most often.

It turns out the answer is plants! A ballroom-sized greenhouse full of plants!

The entrance they use is on the second level, and opens onto a lacy wrought-iron balcony with a little spiral stair off to one side and a walkway proceeding forward along the spine of the room, its floor just a little below the level where the slopes of the glass roof meet the vertical panes of the walls. The walkway is straight, but the far end is obscured by greenery, potted plants hanging from the ceiling and indoor trees growing up from the floor. Most visible flowers are white, but some are red and there might be a few in other hues. All together it's the most colour Miranda has seen in one place in this building.

"Do not eat anything you find in this room," Wednesday instructs. "Most of it is poisonous."

Eeee it's so pretty and verdant and plantsome! It doesn't have the thing that is good about being outside but it has its own thing that is good.

"Roger that; anything I should also avoid bumping into?" If there was ever a collection of people who would keep poison ivy in their greenhouse for kicks it'd be these ones.

"Not up here," she says, with what might possibly be an approving look. "The plants that aren't safe to touch have their own section, on the lower level at the far end."

Thing, from her shoulder, helpfully adds something that might be "it's fenced off but not very well".

"Good to know!" Happy staring at plants. "It must be a lot of work to keep everything looking this nice. Does it have some kind of automated sprinkler system?"

"I helped with that!" pipes Pugsley. "Um. Yeah, most of the stuff is set up to be automatically watered one way or another." He trails off towards the end, looking slightly embarrassed.