"My mom was really excited about this camp because she wanted me to meet other people like me but - there aren't, really, there's people with superpowers."

"Yeah. - well, I mean, sort of? I think of the people I know so far there's - there's one girl who got made invisible because people ignored her, and she can't turn it off and it's got a lot of upsides but it's also kind of rough in a lot of ways. And there's a boy who gets horrible splitting headaches every time someone nearby is in trouble, and he wishes it would stop but he also can't just ignore it, you know? And Callida rips her sheets on her spines a lot and Jasmine is blind but can see movement but there are still a lot of things she can't see, and - I think everybody else's powers at least come with something good attached to them, yeah, and your thing is - from here it just looks scary and confusing and it's not even clear how to really classify something like that. And it does sound really really hard, I don't want to minimize that for like a second. But - I think a lot of kids here can probably kind of relate to it at least a really little bit? Because their scary confusing things are more, uh, obviously useful, but they're still kind of scary and confusing sometimes. ...I dunno if that helps any."

"It does a little bit, yeah. I was - maybe I was just expecting everyone to be exactly like me and then when their trials were shaped differently I decided I wasn't going to get along with them, and I shouldn't have."

"That makes sense. - um, so, I did think of a thing, when I was thinking about how you'd do a baptism? And that's, um - so, the water that gets used in a baptism counts as holy water, and holy water burns vampires, so that means that if you do a baptism with otherwise normal water and you save the water, then, uh, you can maybe check whether it turned into holy water and then I think that would tell you whether the baptism you did was valid, and therefore in this case whether the person you tried to baptize is, uh, a person? At least I think if you can be baptized then that probably means that you're a person. I think it'd have to. Uh - I'm just saying if the mindreading doesn't pan out then there's still another thing we can do to check. Uh, I wanna run the logic by my priest friend and see if it checks out and if there's anything else we should know before we do it, but I think it makes sense?"

Technically she didn't think of this but it would be super awkward to pause here to explain that she's been having telepathic conversations with the camp director.

"That's - huh - but can you validly baptize someone who isn't human even if they're a person -"

She considers.

"I don't know. But I bet my priest does. He's very good at knowing things."

"Oh. Okay. Does he know about - I guess he'd have to -"

"Hm?"

"When I tried telling my priest about the egg-laying and then about there being a secret world of all this stuff he was really concerned I was crazy so I mostly stopped mentioning it but I guess if you were the Slayer you'd have a lot more related to it to confess probably."

"Ohhh. Yeah, he knows about weird stuff. I could ask him to come down here, if you wanna talk to him about stuff. I dunno if he's busy or not, but if you wanted?"

"Aren't you from far away from here?"

"Yeah, I don't know if he'll be able to come. But I can ask. Tiny maybe-people lizard babies that nobody knows how to deal with are, like, important and stuff."

She swallows and nods. "You're really good."

"I try! I don't always succeed, but the trying is important."

"If you want to skip mornings Sarah and me take waffles back to our cabin and play Pokemon."

"I think I better not. I have this thing I said I'd do next week. But maybe sometime? Waffles and Pokemon are good."

"Yeah. Thank you."

"Mhm!"

Paging Matt Carter. Emmy'd like to see Father Michael, if you can pass that along.

Will do.

Cool. 

So that's one and a half out of three. And on Monday she shows up at climbing class.

The climbing instructor is serious and short-haired and calls her "Karen" rather than "Slayer" and sets everybody up with belaying equipment.

Promising. She listens to see what they're learning today.

They're mostly practicing, with pointers given out as appropriate. Once everyone's set up she finds Karen. "I'm thinking that we're probably going to want to customize your lessons a little. Have you been climbing before?"

"Not, um, the real way, where you have equipment and stuff. Actually not so much the other way for a long time, either. Let's go with no."

"Okay. This is pretty much all 'how to not get killed', and I think it's probably too conservative to be very useful to you - I mean, if you're climbing for fun, then please follow the same rules as everyone else so anyone who sees you doesn't panic, but if you're ever climbing because you need to get somewhere, these precautions are probably going to make you less safe because they're going to slow you down. I've never actually worked with someone with your abilities before, though, so if you're willing to start with all the precautions that's probably the best way to start figuring out which ones are necessary."