"Anything specific I can help you with?"

"I'm just trying to get these into memory so I can look at them later when I have some spare time. They're all very well crafted."

Book book flip flip.

"Okay, one major difference between us is technology." 

She lowers her voice a bit.

"That book was not individually crafted, it was made by mass production." 

She finds her a book on assembly lines. 

Pascale can't actually read the language yet! But she can follow along with pictures, if there are any.

"Oh, that is cool."

Mostly diagrams, but they're fairly clear.

"There are other things about technology you should know, but we can wait until we get home." 

"Yeah. Do you mind if we stay here for a bit? Or I can come back later, now that I know where it is."

"We can stay, but the way public libraries work is you can check out books. We can take some home."

"It'd be pretty hard to carry all of these. I just need a quick look at each."

"Okay. See that on the wall? That's a clock. When that line moves all the way around the circle, like so...it starts to go back around. This one marks a minute. You can have sixty of those, and I can bring you back here tomorrow." 

"Okay. Thanks again."

"If there are any you like enough to take home, I'll be waiting in that sitting area."

She points it out and leaves her be. 

Pascale is taking them all home. In a manner of speaking. She browses through the shelves rapidly and efficiently. Near the end of the hour, she prioritizes getting introductory texts.

She finds Melissa in the sitting area right on time.

"Ready? I'll help you with those."

She chats politely with the librarian about current events. How about those poor soldiers? Isn't it sad about that natural disaster? Who's your favorite to win the Superbowl.

When they get to the car, Melissa looks expectantly at her.

"Questions?"

"I think my next step is going to be learning how to read your language. I picked these books because they looked like they could help with that?"

"I might not be the best at teaching you to read a new language, but we have been speaking just fine. Should I thank your god for that, by the way? You didn't mention it as a blessing." 

"Gods are innately panlingual, she's been translating for me. Reading I'll have to pick up on my own, but I don't expect it to take too long."

"Sure. Since we can talk just fine, teaching you to read shouldn't be a big leap. By the way, I have a son who lives at home. He shouldn't bother you too much."

"I'll try not to scare him."

"There are some things I should tell you about this world that not everyone knows about. Secrets. You'll need to know them if you're going to be living in this town and so obviously out of place."

"Secrets?"

They're in her car. Nothing is going to go wrong. She is safe, Scott is safe, everything is fine-

"In our world, there are animals. Humans are animals that are also people. People think, we reason, we suffer. With me so far?"

"Yeah, we have that where I'm from too."

"There are some humans who turn into other things. Like werewolves. Werewolves look like humans, but they have fur and sharp teeth and claws."

"...We don't have that."

"There are also hunters, humans that try to kill them. There are other things too, which I know less about. Recently, there's been a couple of murders. They might be the work of a human serial killer, keeping to a pattern. Or they might be...secret in some way."