"Sure. Thank you."

Junilla will - hang around awkwardly on the bed and do a meditation exercise and try not to fall asleep? It's so hard not to fall asleep, because the bed is incredibly soft and inviting, but ke's ordered food and it would be impolite not to be awake to receive food when it shows up. It would have been easier if ke had something to read, but it seemed too difficult to successfully ask for that.

Occasionally ke pats the egg. Ke feels like ke should be talking or singing to the egg or something to make up for the lack of multiple voices around it but ke's just too tired.

It goes 40 or so minutes before a beautiful chime gets Junilla's attention, as ke sees a small, cute robot carrying a huge portion of food just like Junilla had described to the woman, together with the necessary cutlery. A quick taste reveals that it's made from the finest ingredients, judging by how amazing all the food is.

Junilla startles awake - ke had totally lost the battle with the comfortable bed nest, it was just too tempting.

Ke takes the food from the - mechanical creature? - and says, "Thank you," just in case this is also a talking kind of creature.

The food is almost worryingly perfect! Ke wonders if they really did take kis hasty promise of working off the credit to heart, and are giving kim the luxury treatment so ke feels guilty enough at the resulting balance to work for them for a good long time. But it's hard to worry very much with a huge dish of perfectly simmered yellowfin tuna with some delightfully crispy seaweed which ke can't quite identify, but tastes good all the same.

Ke can't possibly finish the whole thing right now, as much as ke would like to; in lieu of anywhere else to put it, ke stashes it on the changing surface for now, at least ke's not going to tread in it there and it's not like ke is going to need that for a while.

Looking at the changing surface, ke can feel the worries about not having a proper family group assembled creeping back in, so ke returns swiftly to the bed and resumes meditating, to chase that delicious nap with a good proper sleep.

The blankets are all... heavier than usual? They feel really nice and spread a calming, soothing pressure all over ker body, though.

At first ke finds it kind of awkward to not tangle up kis wings uncomfortably, but with a bit of careful arrangement ke finds an extremely snuggly position and drifts deeply off to sleep.

It feels amazingly restful for Junilla; the air here is incredibly fresh, nearly indistinguishable from breathing in mountain air or forest air, and the warmth of the blankets is Just. So. Nice.

Mmmm. Zzzz.

All good things must come to an end, though, and ke eventually wakes up, confused and disoriented. This must be a dream, right? Except everything looks very real, and there's a bit of a crick in kis wing from an unfamiliar, if very good, sleeping arrangement, and kis egg is definitely there.

What was ke meant to do next. It's probably got to be summoning the nice - overgrown smooth monkey - and asking about things?

No, right now it's using the amazing huge bathroom, ke ate rather a lot last night. And, ke is reminded, working out what to do with the leftovers, which have now been out all night and are probably not quite so great as they started out...

The bathroom doesn't have any kind of special toilet; it's just a relatively squarish human toilet, in white. Junilla would presumably just sit down to use it?

Junilla does indeed plop kis cloaca down on the obvious hole above the nice little pit of water and let go with a sigh of relief. Then shake a bit and... okay, where are the wipes, there have to be wipes somewhere, maybe ke will just get a flannel...

A surprise stream of water splashes against Junilla's nether regions for a few seconds, before a wave of slightly warmed air dries ker off rapidly.

...oh of course, it's one of the really fancy toilets. Ke should have expected that, being as the bathroom is super fancy and all.

Ke pats kis feathers to check they're really dry, but it seems to have worked well, so ke shrugs and heads to the call button, brushing against it with exquisite gentleness because ke is kind of embarrassed ke has to summon someone at all, but ke doesn't know if ke is even allowed to go wandering off, and anyway there's no-one else to keep watch on kis egg.

Ke takes a moment to take some deep, regular breaths and absolutely not freak out about being stranded a long way from everyone who was meant to be helping kim with this, in a totally unfamiliar place. Okay. Maybe just freak out a little bit.

It's only few minutes of waiting before a different woman walks in, also wearing a transparent mask like Candice did. She jumps on seeing Junilla. "Hi why did you call" she says on instinct. "Do you need help or information?", she continues.

"Uh, information? Possibly some help too?" Ke feels bad about upsetting all the nice hospital staff, but they seem to be kis only source of, like, what is going on here, or food.

"Information about what? Just tell me everything, there are no dumb questions." She does a good, if imperfect job, of hiding her shock at seeing a bird inside a human's room.

"Okay. So. Uh. This is going to sound weird, but you already know this is weird, because you are - you don't have feathers?

I just - appeared - from a place that only has people like me - nothing else speaks, there are a few animals that kind of have a little bit of their own communication but it's pretty basic...

And - apparently you don't expect this kind of thing to happen either - so I have no idea how to, like, get food, or start contacting people to see if there's a family group looking for more that I might be able to get placed with, or even if you do anything the way that I expect it to happen?"

Junilla is getting steadily more shrill of tone and ruffling her feathers in a kind of awkward fidgeting pattern throughout kis attempted explanation.

"And I have some leftovers in the bathroom but I left them out overnight and don't know what to do with them now."

"Yes, we don't have feathers! That's the... unusual part? We'll have to find out what to do next. We can help you find a family group, there's probably lots of families that are happy to have a cool bird like you in their family, together with your cute bird baby! When it comes to the inedible and foul-smelling leftovers, just let me handle them." She walks into the bathroom, quietly tossing the food into the diaper pail kept under the changing table before the lid seals it up and blocks any odors. It feels weightless as she pulls it, thanks to the motorization of the hinge that it's attached to.

Oh right there's a bin. Of course there's a bin. A really nice bin that probably empties itself or something.

Junilla kind of wants to sink through the floor and never interact with anyone ever again, but ke has an egg to think of.

"Do you have, like, a terminal I can go to, and... set myself up a local account to use?" Surely a huge hospital vessel like this would have a good information system, everything else they have seems to be perfect. "That might be easier than trying to think of... everything.

Although if the terminal room is very far I'll, uh, you probably don't even know what to watch for in an egg, do you..."

"You won't need to leave your room at all! I can give you a phone to use, and it lets you have a terminal, if you can call it that, anywhere you go! I can go find one for you. And no, we don't know what to watch for in an egg and really want to leave it in the hands of someone who does! Please don't leave this egg in our hands!"

"Oh, you have a portable terminal! Even better. Yes please, I would like a portable terminal and if it doesn't have its own tutorial I might need a bit of initial help on how to navigate your local information system. Hopefully that will mean I don't have to keep calling you for everything!"

"Well, I'll... come back with one! Yes. Soon enough." She turns around, leaving Junilla alone for a while.

Junilla goes to fuss over kis egg. Ke gently turns it, and tries to sing something from memory.

"Sleep now my little one, dawn is soon breaking,

Dream now my little one, dream deep of the world,

Squirm now my little one, your freedom is coming,

Dance now my little one, dance deep in your mind,

For soon you will dance in the light."

It's probably two hours before the woman that saw Junilla most recently comes back with a simple, cheap smartphone. She lets ker tap a button that leads to a site with lots of information about the skyscraper maternity care center that kes in, with information about the medical center, 24/7 daycare, rooftop garden, pools and its vast range of other amenities, including detailed plans of every floor.

Ke finds it a little awkward, as kis wing-claws are really not very compatible with a phone screen! Ke kind of awkwardly finds an angle to lay a wing-finger sideways on the screen and get an area with sufficiently soft scales to make successful contact, after a few tries.

Ke looks wistfully at the pools, but ke is absolutely not going to attempt to carry the egg anywhere and the '24/7 daycare' apparently emphatically does not apply to eggs.

"Is there some kind of - forum, matchmaking form - for finding potential family members?" ke asks. The screen and the navigation is extremely impressive, so maybe... "Or some kind of... general index?"

"Well, I'll bring you the site showing info on families that desire to have additional members? Families seeking expansion, Parent City Curie". Many different group photos of several adults with quite a few children, or a few babies, show up on Junilla's phone. She's spoiled for choice if she's looking for a family wishing to add another member to it. Although none of them would presumably have had an egg as part of their family before?

"Oh good, yes, your exchange board has pictures!

...how do I get a picture of myself to include? I think that people might think I am just making things up if I just send them text about it, I don't want to get moderated.

And is there somewhere I can look up anything I don't understand, so I don't have to waste your time asking you everything? Like, a dictionary will probably do, I don't expect I'll be running into complex scientific terms or anything."

Their - babies - are weird looking. It is not at all appropriate for her to point out their babies are weird looking. It's probably just the lack of feathers, if the grown ups were not bundled up as if they were very cold and didn't have that long head fur they'd probably look weird too.