Ayla awoke to Durc's insistent crying.  She nudged him over to her breast, and he was nursing before she was even fully awake.  Her head ached, and the beginning sunlight stabbed at her closed eyelids.

A sudden shock of adrenalin roused her; she certainly hadn't fallen asleep outside! She opened her eyes, then shot to her feet in terror.  She stood by the edge of a stone river, with great beasts speeding along it faster than she had ever seen anything move.  They had shining eyes that seemed almost brighter than the early morning sun.  One of the beasts slowed, and moved across the river towards her.  She scrambled backwards, bumping into a strange barrier, and scrambled over it.  There seemed to be nowhere to hide, no trees to climb.

The highway shoulder just outside Reno is not really a good place to pull over, but Debbie Wilson is pretty concerned at - whatever she just caught a glimpse of. 

That's a woman with a baby. ...A very young woman, she's quite tall but a closer glimpse confirms that she's a teenager. A young teenager. With a baby. On the side of the freaking highway. Well, on the other side of the barrier now, looking terrified. And wearing - what even is that...? 

She parks mostly on the gravel, flips on the four-way flashers, and gets out of the car. "Miss, are you all right?" 

The beast stopped, and opened a great gap in its side, and a person got out! Ayla is still terrified, but now also deeply confused.  This person looks like no one Ayla has seen before, and is covered in even stranger clothing.  Is this what people of the Others look like?

She stands, frozen, but does not flee farther.

Debbie is also spectacularly confused. At least the poor girl isn't fleeing off into the desert. Has she been out here all night? How did she get here? Teen-with-baby makes her think runaway, but it seems almost impossible she made it this far from the city on foot. 

"I'm not going to hurt you," she says, though it's not entirely clear to her if the girl understands her at all. She takes a few steps closer, hands held palm-up, and then points at herself. "Debbie. My name is Debbie. Do you need help?" She's trying to get as good a look at the girl as she can. Is she hurt? Does the baby look okay? What on earth is she wearing? 

Ayla is wearing a cured hide wrapped around herself and secured with a long leather thong, with a bag made of the full cured pelt of a beaver with head and feet attached secured to her hip.  The baby is naked and tucked into the front of her wrap.

The woman is making incomprehensible noises, but she seems friendly? She pointed to herself, perhaps part of that was her name?

Ayla taps herself on the chest and says "Ayla."

"Ayla. That's a lovely name. And your baby?" Debbie points, and then makes a baby-rocking gesture with her arms. "...Ayla, you shouldn't be out here by yourself with a baby. I want to call someone to help you, okay?" 

The woman is making noises again.  The part at the beginning maaaybe sounds like her name? It's very fluid and elongated but it sounds like her name. 

This woman certainly won't know the language of her own clan.  Ayla signs in the formal, universal language of the Clan "This woman is Ayla. What is this place?"

The only verbal utterance is "Ayla"

...Debbie does not even entirely notice that Ayla is trying to communicating in sign, as opposed to just gesturing a weirdly emphatic amount. Is...Ayla trying to point out that she's saying her name wrong? She - can try again? 

"I'm going to call someone," she adds after a moment. Specifically, the police. She's not sure the police are the best people to call about this situation, but she's pulled over on the side of the highway twenty minute outside town and doesn't own a smartphone, and she definitely feels uncomfortable about bundling this kid into her own car. 

This woman does not seem to understand the universal language.  What.

...wait, didn't Iza and Creb say that she had had to learn it, when she first came to the clan? Maybe the Others don't know it?

What. Should she do.

She seemed to understand that Ayla's name was a name? Maybe she could get this woman's name?

Ayla again taps her own chest and says "Ayla," then taps the baby and says "Durc."  Then she points to the woman with a questioning expression.

"Debbie." So apparently that didn't get conveyed the first time. Debbie is so confused about where this child is from, and honestly feels pretty in over her head. She's...going to get out her phone and actually call the police, rather than having any more confusing not-conversation. 

"Duh-bee?" Ayla repeats.

She isn't sure the woman caught it though, she seems to be getting a strange rectangular object out of her bag and poking it intently.

Durc starts to fuss before she can do more to get the woman's attention so she starts nursing him again.

The dispatcher on the phone seems extremely skeptical of Debbie's claim that there's a young girl who looks maybe thirteen by herself, with a baby, apparently not an English speaker and wearing an animal skin, on the side of the highway halfway to New Washoe. Which is fair enough but Debbie is feeling quite stressed at this point and could do without the polite skepticism.

She can eventually confirm that they're sending a squad car, and...very awkwardly try to communicate this to the girl in mime? She feels like a complete idiot waving her hand above her head and making 'weeeooo' siren noises - clearly she's not cut out for a career with kids - but maybe she can get the point across that the police are going to come help her and the baby?

The woman - Duhbee - made a lot of incomprehensible noises into her box - which also made noises - and now she is making even more incomprehensible noises and waving her hands around in ways that make no sense.  Maybe she should try communicating again?

She repeats her previous pointing. "Ayla, Durc, Duh-bee?"

"Debbie!" Debbie agrees, pointing at herself again. "Ayla. Durk?" This has got to be some form of reassuring the baffling teenage mom by bonding with her, right? 

Ayla nods happily! She is also starting to notice that it has been a long time since she last ate, whereas Durc has been doing a lot of eating.  She mimes putting food in her mouth and chewing, and signs "food."

Oh no poor kid. Debbie doesn't have a lot to offer her and feels pretty weird about handing her an unmarked Tupperware of mac&cheese from her packed lunch, but she has a safely packaged-and-unopened granola bar and an apple. Here you go, poor hungry probably-horribly-mistreated teen mom from some sort of cult where they wear animal skins. (Though "Ayla" doesn't look especially underfed or unhealthy - slim and fit, yes, but very healthy.) 

It's going to be a while before the police get here to rescue her, and Debbie is kiiind of out of ideas for social interaction that work without a shared language. She can play peekaboo with the baby? She's honestly not very good with babies either but she's pretty sure they like peekaboo. 

Ayla recognizes the apple (though it's much bigger and, when she bites into it, sweeter than she's encountered before) but is absolutely mystified by the granola bar.  She looks at it from a few angles.  The woman gave it to her when she asked for food, can she eat it? She puts a corner in her mouth and bites down, then makes a face and takes it out.

Definitely a bizarre cult, who doesn't know what granola bars are. Debbie is kind of grossed out by the fact that it's now been in Ayla's mouth, but she tries to gesture to take it back, and can tear open the wrapper on the non-spit-contaminated side. 

...wow the baby is really ugly and weird-looking. That's probably a horrible thing to think, and honestly Debbie has always thought that people's social media photos of their newborns looked weird and gross, but this baby is too big to be a newborn and, yet, looks Like That. Not that Debbie would dream of saying anything, and she can awkwardly play peekaboo anyway. 

What is this substance the food was wrapped in? Ayla has never seen anything like it! She tries a bite of the food.

It reminds her a bit of the concentrated travel food made of grain and honey and dried fruit and fat, but it is so sweet!  She restrains her impulse to gobble it down and eats it slowly.

Durc is both fed enough and awake enough to spend several minutes being very interested by the game of peekaboo.  He might even exhibit his relatively-recently-acquired smiling skill.

Okay the smiling baby is at least kind of on the uglycute side of weird-and-ugly. Debbie experiences a brief intrusive thought of wishing she could get a video, which is just, wow, it would be so rude and weird to share a video on Facebook of Runaway Cult Teen Mom's baby. 

The police car drives up a few minutes later. It's not actually using the lights or sirens, and in fact drives past them - Debbie wasn't very able to give exact directions - before managing a turn that would definitely be illegal for non-police drivers, and pulling up just behind Debbie's car. 

A couple of men get out. They're both wearing different clothes from Debbie, dark and bulkier with a lot of pockets, and have walkie-talkies on their belts (the gun holsters were removed, they don't want to terrify the poor kid). One of them - the moderately overweight man with very curly red hair - waves and smiles at Ayla. 

There is another beast with more people.  Does that hand gesture mean something? Should she do it back?

Ayla clutches Durc closer and gives a halfhearted wave.

That does seem to be the expected response, here; the man relaxes slightly and his smiles looks a bit more genuine. The two of them approach her in as nonthreatening a manner as possible. 

"Her name is Ayla," Debbie says helpfully, still not really pronouncing it right. "The baby is Durk." 

One of them gets out a bulky reinforced clipboard. "Ayla, what city are you from? Where are your parents?" 

"- She also doesn't seem to speak any English," Debbie reminds them. 

...Fine. One of the officers goes back to the car and digs a map out of the glove compartment and shows it to Ayla. "Can you point to where you came here from?" 

What is this material? It is thin like leaves but large and brightly colored in complicated patterns.  Since it is being held out to her she takes it, and turns it over and over in her hands, examining it from different angles and figuring out how it folds up.

That sure does look like a kid who's never seen a map before! 

One of the police officers tries Spanish. This doesn't work either. It...looks a bit like she's making hand signs, maybe she's deaf? They can get someone who "speaks" ASL at the station, probably.

They'll try to nudge her in the direction of the car. There's a carseat for the baby. Can Ayla be coaxed to put Durc down in it and then let one of the officers do her seatbelt? 

Ayla is very confused and pretty terrified but also these are men and they seem to be giving her instructions so as long as they don’t try to take Durc out of reach she will try to do what they want?

They don't try to separate her from Durc. She can sit right next to him in the space inside the back of their metal beast - which turns out to be comfortable, its insides soft and padded and covered with a fuzzy nap of very short fur. One of the officers offers her a bottle of water, and then they thank Debbie and promise to take care of things from here, and drive out along the stone river. 

The world goes by very fast on the other side of the clear hard not-skin of the beast, which vibrates and makes a humming roar as it moves; one of the men seems to be directing it by turning a circle he grips in both hands. The terrain where she first woke up was very flat and dry-looking with nothing much else except rocks and shrubs, but soon they're rushing past strange boxy structures - stationary and fixed to the ground, unlike the beasts, some of them flat stone and some made of a lot of smaller very regular stones, some with similar clear squares like the one Ayla can see out through. There are tall tree-like poles with globes of light on top of them. The stone river is getting more crowded with other beasts, and if Ayla looks closely, all of them have a person or people inside.

Ayla will make herself small and keep her hand on Durc and watch the strange things out the window unless something interrupts her. 

The officers mostly don't try to talk to her; it doesn't seem like there's much point. The man who isn't driving explains when they get into the city that it's going to be about five more minutes. There are SO MANY of the metal beasts around them now, and some of the boxy structures are very tall, taller than the biggest trees she's seen, and shiny on the outside like water catching sunlight. 

Eventually they pull up in front of a less tall but quite wide blocky structure, and the front of it opens and the beast goes inside, where it's open like a cave except everything is very regular and square, and the box closes up again behind them. It's not dark, though; there are lights on the inside of the top, very white and not really like firelight or sunlight. The beast stops moving and stops vibrating, and one of the men gets out and opens Ayla's door for her and then goes around to take Durc out of the car seat. 

Ayla races around the car to take Durc from him, and tucks Durc back inside her wrap.  Being moved rouses Durc again, and she feeds him when he begins to fuss.  The familiar motions and sensations are calming, and Ayla looks around.

Nothing is familiar.  The people are strange and their clothing is strange and the not-cave is strange.  Everything is clearly constructed, but what is it even made of? She doesn't see anything she recognizes.

They lead her into the station itself, which has ugly industrial beige carpet, grey and worn down in the middle by years of footsteps, and chipping beige-painted walls and fluorescent ceiling lights. Eventually there's a metal door, and a boxy room on the other side of it, with no windows and different-colored carpet - blue and brown patterned, this time - and some chairs and a dingy sofa.

Ayla will be pointed in the direction of the sofa. Someone brings her a Styrofoam cup of water, and says some more incomprehensible words. (They're trying to tell her that an officer will be by shortly to talk to her, and ask if she's hungry.) 

This is VERY strange.  Nothing looks at all familiar.  The people are pointing? Do they want her to go over there?

Ayla walks over to the strange lumpy shape and stands in front of it.  She clutches Durc closer to her chest, and looks back over her shoulder at the people who brought her in.

Has she never seen...a sofa...before? Does she think she's not allowed to make herself comfortable? Someone will demonstrate sitting down and then try to beckon her and pat the sofa beside them to indicate that she's allowed to sit. 

A couple of minutes later, a female officer - the one on duty today with the most experience with children - comes over. She's wearing plainclothes rather than a uniform, which will hopefully be less intimidating. 

She also has a slice of pizza on a paper plate, reheated from the leftovers they ordered last night for the overnight duty officers. Kids like pizza, right? She offers it to the girl, mimes rubbing her belly and then eating. "Are you hungry?" 

Ayla will sit on the object? It is so soft! It is as soft as if she piled three people's sleeping furs together!

The woman who is coming and sitting next to her seems to be indicating that this is food.  She picks it up and takes a cautious nibble.

It is SO GOOD!  She has never had anything like it before.  There are so many flavors and it is rich and savory with fat and unidentifiable substances.

Ayla eats quickly but neatly, licking her fingers when she finishes.

Awwwwwww. The officer smiles warmly at her. 

"Nicole," she says, pointing at herself. "You're Eyy-lah?" She pronounces it separated into two very distinct syllables. 

This seems like an exchange of names.  Ayla nods and taps her own chest and says "Ayla", then taps Durc and says "Durc"

She points at the woman and says "Nih-gull?" questioningly

"Nicole!" Nicole confirms brightly. "Yes." Nodding vigorously. 

...And now she needs to convey "where are your parents?" to a kid who speaks neither English nor Spanish, apparently not even a few words! Which is really weird in itself. 

"Why don't we do some drawing?" Nicole was planning for this, and brought paper and colorful crayons. She drags the slightly sticky coffee table closer and starts drawing. "This is Nicole." A stick figure with a puff of curly brown hair like Nicole's. "And this is Ayla." Smaller stick figure with long straight yellow hair. "This is Durc. Durc is Ayla's baby." She emphasizes the word 'baby' and draws a baby figure in the Ayla figure's arms. "Yes?" 

The sticks make bright colors on the flat thing! What is the flat thing? It doesn't look like a hide.  She picks it up and turns it around.  It maybe feels a little like a leaf?

She puts the paper down and points at each figure in turn. "Nih-gul, Ayla, Durc. Baby?" 

She gestures with her arms as though she were rocking a baby.

"Yes! Durc is a baby." Warm smile. "Nicole has a baby too!" She's continuing to try to put a lot of emphasis on the key words, assuming Ayla won't understand the connective words. "Nicole's baby is at Nicole's house." Well, technically Ralphie is almost four, but close enough. 

She draws a road - two parallel squiggly lines in black crayon, a yellow dotted line down the middle - and then a house, the stylized square-with-triangle-roof shape. She draws a square for a crib and another baby figure, standing up to indicate that he's a big bigger and older. She points at the baby-figure and house-figure in turn. "Nicole's baby, at Nicole's house. Yes?" 

Ayla points to the relevant stick figure and says "Nih-gul baby"

She has no idea what the square and triangle shape is supposed to be, so she doesn't comment.

"Yes!" This kid is clearly bright, Nicole thinks, even if she doesn't speak a word of English and seems kind of baffled by almost everything. 

- okay, that's still not getting her to the vocabulary for 'where are your parents'. This isn't the first time that Nicole has dealt with a child welfare case involving a kid who didn't speak much English, but she's never had this little shared vocabulary to start from. 

She gets out a fresh sheet of paper, and draws another stick figure with Nicole-hair, this time with a round pregnant belly. "Before, Nicole's baby was in Nicole's tummy." She adds a progression of shorter stick figures with Nicole hair, down to child-size and then baby size. "Before before before, Nicole was a baby!" She draws two big adult figures. "Nicole's parents. Mummy," the one with long hair and a skirt, which is maybe sexist but sue her she's trying to communicate, "and daddy," the taller one with short hair and pants. "Mummy, daddy, baby Nicole." Then she points at the Ayla figure again. "Durc's mummy is Ayla. Yes?" 

She thinks...maybe "mummy" means mother? Ayla tries making the sign for mother while saying "mummy."

Nicole does, actually, manage to notice that this is a hand sign and not just a random gesture. ...Huh, does she speak ASL? Unfortunately, Nicole doesn't speak ASL and can't confirm if Ayla's guess about the word-correspondence is right. 

"Baby in mummy," she says, pointing to the pregnant-Nicole figure and her belly. "Before before before before," she adds a pregnant Nicole-mom figure, "baby Nicole in Nicole's mummy." Hopefully that's pretty clear? 

She takes another sheet of paper and draws - less carefully, she's hurrying - a pregnant-Ayla, a smaller Ayla, a tiny toddler Ayla, and a baby Ayla. "Before before before, Ayla baby." Two stick figures, which she doesn't bother to give particular features. "Ayla's mummy and daddy?" 

Nicole is asking about Ayla's mother? She has no idea how to even begin to express that.  The woman seemed to notice her sign for mother, though.

She says "I do not know who my mother was. I do not remember her.  The only mother I have ever known was Iza of the Clan."

There are a few gutteral words interspersed with the signs, including the name "Iza".

Nicole makes a note of it. She's...not really sure what to make of it? She's pretty sure that Ayla understood the question - which is impressive in itself - but she can't interpret any of the maybe-ASL answer. Ayla's body language is - apologetic, she thinks. 

"Iza Ayla's mummy?" she tries. She points at one of the adult-figures with baby-Ayla in the picture. "Iza?" 

Iza was not the woman who gave birth to her.  Iza and Creb told her she was probably four years old when they found her.  She picks one of the intermediate smaller Ayla-figures and draws a new stick figure next to it, which she points to and says "Iza mummy."  She signs "mother" again for good measure.

This kid is impressively quick on the mark and good at figuring out communication across a language barrier! ...The fact that Nicole is now fairly sure that Iza is Ayla's adoptive mother does not actually get her incredibly far, aside from opening a few additional questions. 

She points at the house figure. "Nicole's house. Nicole sleeps there," she mimes putting her head down on pillowed hands and closing her eyes. "Nicole cooks," miming stirring, "and eats," miming eating with a spoon, "there. Nicole here," she points at the ground under them, "now. Before, Nicole was at Nicole's house." She finger-walks along the drawing of the road and points at the house-drawing again. 

"- Ayla's house?" 

Ayla thinks she might understand some of these words.  "Ayla eats?" she says, pointing to the pizza plate.

"Yes! Ayla eats here." Gesture around them at the room. Then she quickly scribbles another house-shape and road-line on the Ayla piece of paper. "Before, Ayla eats at Ayla's house?" She points at the road and the house in the picture, then points outside.

What does this woman want? Is...is she asking where Ayla *usually* eats?

She draws a big circle for the cave, and then smaller circles for the hearths of the Clan.  She points to Creb's hearth.

She says "Ayla eat Creb" and makes the sign for "hearth".

That is indeed what she's asking. She leans in closer and frowns at the picture.

...Is that meant to be a campsite? Maybe her family is, like, in some weird desert cult. She would wonder if the girl had just arrived from Burning Man - she's wearing what could theoretically be a Burning Man-appropriate costume - but it's not the right time of year at all. 

She takes an orange and yellow crayon and leans in tentatively to draw some flames. She points at them. "Campfire?" 

Yes! Each hearth has a fire, that is a good way to represent a hearth.

She says "campfire" while making the sign for "hearth", then says, "Ayla eat Creb campfire"

Successful communication! 

...Which does not actually get her any closer to a solution, and she's sort of despairing that it will. Honestly, at this point, it doesn't really feel like an option to send the young woman back to her adoptive parent(s) at their random desert camp even if they do manage to locate them today. 

She sighs, and slides her own house-and-family drawing back over. She carefully draws a car. "Car. Nicole at her house, before, then Nicole in car, on road, then Nicole here." She pulls out another piece of paper to draw an approximate map of all the turns she has to make to drive to work, and then accompanies the explanation with gestures and pointing. "Nicole's house there. ....Ayla's - Creb," she's not 100% sure if Creb is a person or a favorite toy or the word for 'campsite' in another language, "- Ayla's campfire, where?" 

Does "where" mean where? Ayla isn't sure, but she also has no idea where she is right now anyway.  She shrugs.

Nicole isn't entirely sure whether Ayla is failing to understand the question or just actually lost. She...is sort of running out of stamina for playing drawing games to communicate words, even if Ayla is shockingly quick at it and doesn't at all seem to be trying to conceal anything, which makes it far less frustrating than it might be otherwise. 

...Ugh, it's definitely not doing right by the girl if she doesn't try to explain that they're going to find her a temporary foster family while they sort things out. And she does not yet have the vocabulary to explain that. 

Mostly she just needs the word 'after'. That's....probably doable? 

...She finds the paper with the Nicole-baby and pregnant-Nicole and younger-Nicole figures, and - puts a new piece of paper on the other side and draws another Nicole figure, now with a puff of grey hair and a shoulder-height "child" figure beside her.

She points at the old small-Nicole image. "Nicole before before before." At the new image, the grey-haired Nicole with a much older kid. "Nicole after after after. Nicole baby, after after after." 

This seems to be indicating moving forward in time, but Ayla is unsure how to communicate her understanding.

She shrugs, then gets an idea and draws a medium sized stick figure. "Durc after?"

Nicole lights up. "Yes! Durc after!" 

...A pause. She should really check if Ayla is expecting anything in particular, here. 

"Ayla - where, after?" 

Ayla doesn't actually know the answer to that question.  Maybe she will still be with Brun's clan, or maybe the clan of Zoug's mother will have a mate for her, or maybe something else will happen.  She shrugs.

...Yeah. You know what, given her background (well, either that or the fact that she understands at best half of the question) that's pretty fair. 

She takes a deep breath and lets it out. Tries to look very decisive and calm and in control.

"Nicole and Ayla go together after." She reaches as though to put her arms around Ayla's shoulders, though without actually touching her because who knows what this kid's been through. She points ahead. ...She has no idea if that's clear or not. 

Ayla is not sure what this means, exactly.

"Ayla go Nih-gul ... house?"

That is a really reasonable conclusion to draw! And also, uh, no. 

Nicole quickly pulls out another piece of paper and draws another house. "Nicole and Ayla go here. Ayla eat, sleep, here, after. ...Nicole, after after, go to Nicole's house. Ayla stay here." 

It seems like the woman is talking about a place that Ayla will go.  She can't think of any questions that she could express or understand an answer to, so she shrugs again.

That's also pretty reasonable of her. 

"Ayla... Ayla, here," she points at the ground, "Ayla - is still a child."

(She is pretty sure Ayla does not think this about herself - she has a baby of her own, for one - or, like, she's not sure of that but Ayla is scooping the baby up and nursing it and holding it like a child she's parented since birth - and also she can't remember if she explained  the word 'child' before, separate from 'baby', and in general this is really limited vocabulary to convey 'I don't know how old you are but you're definitely not eighteen.')

...She points at the next-smallest Ayla figure she drew before. "Ayla, here, still a small Ayla. Still a child." 

"- Ayla's new mummy, there." She can draw a new mother figure in the other house. She's picking the blonde hair color half at random, because the crayon was right there, and half to convey that it's Ayla's new foster mother - which, well, single foster moms aren't that uncommon but single foster dads are basically unheard of. Probably Ayla's new foster family won't include a blonde mother, though it'd be kind of a convenient coincidence if it did. 

This woman ... seems to be saying that Ayla is a child.  Ayla contemplates trying to explain that she isn't a child in pictures, but that just seems exhausting and she doesn't understand anything that is happening anyway.  She shrugs again.

Nicole is also somewhat doubtful that she communicated the plan successfully, but at this point she's going to be seriously behind for the rest of the day if she doesn't get a move on. She needs to document what they know so far (not a huge amount), make a phone call, possibly drive the kid somewhere if the local CPS office is as understaffed as they were last time something like this came up...

It's already noon by the time Evelyn Steel, one of the more experienced foster carers in the Reno-Tahoe area, gets a call from Jessie, her supervising social worker. She's between placements, and she knows the agency has been trying to keep her open for the next really complicated case. She's expecting the usual kind of complicated – chaotic childhood, family known to Social Services, half a dozen failed placements. It's noon on a Tuesday; there's no particular reason to expect this one is an emergency placement. 

...Well. Apparently it's both an emergency placement AND extremely complicated. 

"I really don't know a lot," Jessie says, apologetic. "Teen mother with a baby - three to six months old, they thought - and young teenager, we don't have an age for her either but apparently she doesn't look older than thirteen, maybe twelve. And she turned up wearing animal skins and not speaking a word of English. The officer who assessed her thinks it's possible she grew up up in an ASL-speaking community, she seemed to be trying to use sign. They somehow managed to find out that she was adopted - adoptive mother is called Izzie or something like that - and they think she was living out of a campground just before this. She doesn't seem to know the way home, but it's also pretty hard to ask her, with the language barrier. Aside from that, we don't know a thing about her background." 

That SURE DOES SOUND COMPLICATED. 

"Any medical conditions? Injuries?" 

"I mean, not that we know of? She apparently looks healthy and fit, and seems quite bright. We'll want to schedule a doctor's appoint for her ASAP, obviously, but her assigned social worker decided against having her detour by the hospital for a checkup, it doesn't seem necessary and it would probably be traumatic for her." 

"Right. Do I need to go pick her up, or is someone bringing her over?" 

"Uh, it sounds like the station can have someone drive her over once we have a placement confirmed. If you're happy to take her, then I'll call them back and let them know?" 

Had she not made that clear already. "- Yes, of course I'll take her. The poor girl." Who's probably going to be here SOON, so Evelyn had better hurry and get a bedroom ready. The bigger bedroom with the en-suite that used to be Jeremy's is available right now, and appropriate for a teen mom and baby, but she'll have to rush to get a crib out of the basement... 

Ayla is left mostly alone on the sofa for a while. Eventually Nicole thinks to show her the bathroom facilities, since it looks like it might be a while. Does she seem to need more explanation of what a toilet is for than just pointing at it? 

Ayla follows Nicole into the strange new cave made of smooth shiny stone in COLORS.  There is a large bowl of clean shiny white stone full of water.  Is this a spring? Ayla turns to Nicole and mimes drinking, with a questioning expression.

NO nononono it's not for drinking! Drinking water is over here at the water cooler with paper cups beside it. The toilet is for, uh, peeing. 

...It is much faster and more guaranteed to work if Nicole just...demonstrates peeing herself...rather than attempting to draw pictures. It's also a lot more embarrassing, but what can you do. 

Nicole just peed in the spring and then it made a VERY LOUD NOISE!

However, the waste now seems to have disappeared.  Ayla is pretty confused, but she also really has to pee by now, so she will pee in the spring and then scamper away quickly to avoid the LOUD NOISE

The spring will schlorp her pee away too, and fill up again with clean water! 

A phone is ringing somewhere. "Nicooooooole!" her colleague calls. "CPS on the phone for you!" 

Nicole holds up a hand, gestures that Ayla can go back to the sofa, and then hurries off to take the phone call. She's not going to bother to hassle Ayla about washing her hands this particular time. 

(Does the baby need diapers? She hadn't even been thinking about that - oh well, soon it'll be someone else's job...) 

Ayla makes her way back to the couch as directed and settles in to nurse Durc, who seems hungry again.