(Ant's fine, there's not a thing wrong with em, ey's a perfectly healthy teenager.)

"We good?" Shin asks, almost casually.

"Yes, ey's fine."

"Of course I am, I've got these two idiots looking out for me."

(Aww, cute.)

   "It's better to be too careful than not careful enough."

"If you could teach Ira that, we'd sure appreciate it. The number of times he comes back blee-"

That jerks Ira into motion, a hand on Ant's shoulder gently propelling em out the door. "Okay, you got school, I got work, bonding with the strangers later."

He glances briefly to Shin. "You good?"

"You're going to be late."

And then the siblings are gone. Shin looks over to DZ and Deskyl, and tilts his head.

"So, I wasn't accidentally making things worse for Ant?" (He seems invested in that answer.)

"No, ey's in excellent health."

"Good. That's- good. We do our best, but like," he gestures around. "We're living out of suitcases in motel rooms for a reason."

Deskyl nods.

    "We can help with that, probably. What would you need, to have a better place to stay?"

"A few things. We got pretty decent fake IDs, but they're still gonna want to run a credit check, and none of us are on the system enough for them to find anything, and we can't afford to pay anyone to fix that."

    "That's exactly the sort of problem Deskyl can solve with magic. Once she's recovered, anyway, she'll need to speak to do it."

Shin snorts. "It'll give Ira time to get used to the idea. He's not good with accepting help."

    "It'll be a few days, yes, even if she spends the whole time asleep."

"-Option two is we just don't tell him till it happens. But I'm not sure he'll respond any better to that..." Pause. "I should probably let you sleep more, Deskyl?"

    "It's better to do any planning we need to do now, if we can. Once we're ready, she's going to make herself very asleep, and we won't be able to wake her."

"-yeah. That probably is wise. What exactly does Deskyl need for her to do this magic anyway?"

"For this in particular, she'll tell them something in a language that they understand, and they'll believe it. She has to understand what she's saying, and it works best if they can see her."

"-We should be able to arrange that. I'll get a viewing we can go to. How long will it take her to learn enough to understand what she's saying?"

"We're not sure when she'll be ready to actually learn the language, but she can probably learn the words for this within a week if it's something predictable."

He nods thoughtfully. "It probably should be. Would telling the landlord they've already done a credit check and it's fine work?"

"Yes. Or that your credit is fine and they don't need to check. If they find evidence later that what she told them isn't true, that can break the effect."

"-Then telling them they don't need to check is going to be smarter. I'd prefer them to barely acknowledge we exist once we have the place."

    "She'll be able to help with that, too, if it's a problem."