"Mm-hm." Winona types call medical examiner on her to-do list.

His friends probably remember more, if that will help. She doesn't know who he was friends with but she knows how she'd find out.

"How would you find out?"

She'd sneak in at night and ask Janet who his friends were and what part of the building they're in, and then probably sneak into the records room to find out what rooms they're in exactly, and then go ask them. There aren't that many staff at night and most of the rooms are locked up, she'd have to be careful but she should be able to do it.

"That sounds really dangerous. I'm going to see what I can find out with my usual methods."

Okay.

"But it's too late to make phone calls now, so I'm going to get ready for bed. See you tomorrow." Forehead kiss.

She's only seen a little of the neighborhood around the house, and that only from the air. She goes to have a look around.

They live in a house in a residential street off a main drag with more stuff on it. The houses on their street have yards, but not big ones; but the houses are old and kind of fancy.

Hmm, yeah let's go see the stuff on the busier street. Being careful to keep track of landmarks on the way so she doesn't get lost, of course.

There's a convenience store, a pet store, a bank, a post office, a coffeeshop, a bookstore, a laundromat, an Indian restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, a lamp store, a mattress store, a used car dealership, a Catholic church, a shoe store, and assorted apartments in this direction.

She could go in and pet all the animals and read all the books but she doesn't, she's very well-behaved. She does look, though, especially at the pet store.

The pet store has kittens and rabbits and hermit crabs and fish and guinea pigs and gerbils and mice and rats and snakes and supplies for all of these!

Ee.

She will have to come back when they're awake. For now - anything interesting in the other direction?

Movie theater, Japanese restaurant, thrift shop, art gallery displaying collages, kitchen appliance store, children's clothing store, army recruitment office, another coffeeshop, pub, bodega, toy store, dollar store, drugstore.

The collages are neat. She wonders if 'this particular piece of artwork' works as a theme for magical girls; she'll have to ask about that later.

She heads home. Reading; bed.

Her room is currently furnished and decorated in a very guest-room way and it has an office corner that Winona presumably works in when there are not guests, but at the moment it is all hers.

Not like she's used to having any say in her room's furnishings anyway; she has no complaints.

She gets to bed at a reasonable hour, i.e. 4am or so.

By the time she wakes up it is two p.m., Winona's gone, and Julie's in the living room checking her email. "Afternoon. Your lunch is in the fridge, you want it cold or nuked?"

Whatever. Nuked is fine.

Julie gets up and warms it for her and plunks it on the table. "I'm supposed to be back at work in two days," she says. "We think you're more than responsible enough to be left home alone while Winona's at the office, but if anybody figured out who you were, or just showed up and wanted anything unexpected, presumably it'd be better if you were with someone. We can hire a friend to be here for you."

Yeah, that's a good idea.

She wants more of a plan than that, for if somebody figures out who she is and tries to take her back.

"We're looking into adopting you, and if that goes through, we get a lot more control over the situation if anything happens. Winona can bring you to the office a few times, but can't keep doing that for even as long as it'll take me to get back from my deploy."

That's not really what she meant, she thinks.

If someone comes and is trying to take her away right then, having a friendly grownup around will help but she's not going to stick around and find out if it helps enough, she's going to run. And she doesn't know if it'll be safe for her to come back, if that happens, and even if it is she's not sure she'll be able to tell.

"- oh, gotcha. Okay. Let me find you directions to the next nearest church besides Flora's, does that work?"