Margaret Peregrine is a high school sophomore. Most of the time, she's either at school, at the school robotics club, at the school chess club, or doing schoolwork. Today, she's cleaning out her late great-grandmother's attic.
"Huh. Neat. Anyway, I wonder where we can find someone who can read that writing we found."
"Do any of our characters even know what's on the other side of these woods? Mine sure doesn't. I guess we'll find out next week either way."
"That works too. Speaking of outside these woods, how's the rest of your life been lately?"
"Those both sound pretty neat! I've never really gotten into art; my thing is robotics club."
"We're making a robot that can swing around on a network of ropes. I'm working on the control system that takes in joystick input and turns it into moving the arms."
"Yeah, there's a lot of fiddling around with wires. A trait it shares with my mental image of jewelry-making, though I might be totally wrong there."
They reach Brenda's house, which she shares with an also-lamia mom and sister and a satyr little brother.
"Hey, who's that?" asks the little brother, looking Margaret up and down.
"Margaret from D&D," says Brenda. "Margaret, that's Dennis, and my sister over there with the headphones on is Cynthia."
Cynthia's head bobs to inaudible music; she doesn't respond. "Nice to meetcha," says Dennis.
Brenda leads Margaret through the hall and to her room - it's a ground floor flat, probably convenient if you're mostly snake. There are display racks of wire-wrapped jewelry and a couple of sculptures - a wire tree with gem chip fruits, a wall-hanging rectangle made of chunks of metal and smears of paint.
"Oooooh!" says Margaret, gazing at the jewelry. "I especially like this tree, it's really well done."
"I'm afraid I can't afford to buy anything; I've been spending most of my allowance on restaurant lunches the days I'm at the library all day. I bet you'll find someone to buy it, though, it's great."