"I don't have any new ideas about getting you in touch with your aunt, but I can definitely help with reading."

She nods. When she knows how to read she can read all of the things in all of the libraries and then she can know everything. This will work because she has a whole forever, but she needs to start soon because she doesn't want to wait very long.

So after they have finished breakfast Rozben clears their dishes and starts teaching her to read. "Once you know how to read, you can get this kind of computer that you control with your brain," he tells her; he is currently using his to make a projection on the table produce letters and words as needed.

That will be SO COOL. Trying to figure out which words the letters all make is hard because English is a WEIRD LANGUAGE, but it will be SO COOL SOMEDAY. She does her best to figure out this whole reading thing.

He can acquire her books, in the meanwhile before she'll be able to train a computer! Ones with physical pages she can turn.

Zana works hard for about twenty minutes, which is about the limit of her three-year-old attention span even when something is really important to her. After that, she slides off her chair and goes and hides under the kotatsu.

It's not turned on, so it's a pretty good hiding place. "Are we playing hide and seek?" wonders Rozben.

"No," says Zana, offering no further explanation. She forgot her stuffed pig, though, so in another minute she has to go back out and get him. She looks like she's been crying.

"Do you want a hug, Zana?"

"No," she says, and then slips under the kotatsu again.

This time there are audible crying sounds.

...Rozben doesn't really know what to do about that if she doesn't want a hug. He waits. Eventually puts on quiet music.

Zana tries conjuring a picture of her family. That will be a tiny bit more like having her family with her. Hell would be pretty OK if it had her family.

This will work if she has a picture that already exists in mind.

She does. She conjures all of the pictures on her Auntie Kalia's wall under the kotatsu, because she doesn't want the pictures to be lonely. There's her mommy, and her daddy, and Auntie Kalia, and Grandma and Grandpa from when Mommy and Auntie Kalia were kids, and there's her brother, and there's her and Daddy again, and there's her mommy and her daddy and some other people from the station she doesn't know very well, and there's Connor and Morris and Morris's brother and her, and there's Auntie Kalia and Cam.

There. That's everybody.

All the pictures appear just as she pleases.

She snuggles up with Porkcullis and takes a nap. Naps are good when you've been crying.

When she wakes up, she gets to work moving the pictures from under the kotatsu to her room.

Rozben is reading a book when she comes out. "Hello there. Is it cozy under the kotatsu?"

"Yes it is. Can you help me move my pictures?"

"Sure. You want them in your room?"

"Mhmm! They should go on a wall but I don't know how to make things be on walls."

"I can put them up for you. Do you want them in frames?"

"Frames are good for on a wall. On Auntie Kalia's wall they have frames."

He frames each picture and puts them up on her wall. "This one is Cam?" he asks, pointing at the picture.

She nods earnestly.

"Huh. I don't know if there's a way to find him with the picture or not but it'd be better than just a one syllable name."