"I'm pretty sure you don't have to farm onions," she says. "Unless you decide to take that up for money."

"Magic girls fly things for money a lot. It's called cou-ri-er."

"That might work," she says, "if you plan on telling people you're magic, and if you can go faster than cars, or maybe even planes. We have– lots of fast ways of getting around."

"Dunno how fast cars go. I beat a little bird in a race before, but not a big one, and magic girls get faster when we are adults until the magic goes away when you get old."

"How old?"

"Um, the strefesa are all less than thirty I think? But Lady Ilia still heals people, just lots less, and she's almost sixty."

Evelyn nods. "What other things can you do, then?"

"Um. Light, then so much light it hurts things, flying, a shield... And my special magic. Dunno what that is yet."

Shrug. "I'm not really sure what will happen to you if your family isn't around – you'll probably be looked after by, uh. Do you know what adoption is? Foster care, that sort of thing?"

"Like when Gemril's parents got divorced and banished and he moved in with Trevor's family?"

"Probably?" She shrugs. "The hospital staff will probably try to work something out, try to call the right places to have things happen."

She has some pretty mixed feelings about this prospect, but doesn't say anything.

"Is there anything you need right now? Food, or…?"

"They feed me things. They even listened to 'no onions'. I just don't know what to do next. I... I was going to follow mom and Errie, and if, if I couldn't I was going to join the magic girls army and now I can't do either of those and I don't know what to do sitting still feels like falling!"

"What do you mean– sitting feels like falling?"

"I'm magic, magic people have to help everyone it's what magic is for all the stories say so but I can't."

"You're injured, though, and it's important that you heal up?"

"I guess... If I was home they woulda had a healer come find me. Magic girls are supposed to be important."

"We have medicine and stuff, but not magical healing. Because, you know, no magic."

"You have other stuff, yeah. I don't know any of it yet but I will know it when I get to go to school."

"I think they'll probably do that quickly. You might need to be caught up on some things like reading, though."

"And more English. I've been listening to people talk."

"That's good, yeah!" she says. "I don't know what your language is like or if we have something similar to it."

"I tried that with someone else a while ago and they said I was making it up."

"I mean, we could try it now? I'm just assuming you're not making it up." She gets up and turns the light on, then gets her phone out again and opens up Google Translate. "If you say a phrase, this should be able to write it down and translate it if it's a common language we have."