"...Slai?" says Holly, waving. "Srenpuumhikuefamuilgi glu?"

"...srenpuumhineniuple tu," she says apologetically.

"Sren-puum-hi-ne-niu-ple sin!" she says, loud and clear.

She rolls her eyes and starts investigating the feasibility of going around him and out the door.

"Srenpuumhineniuple sin!" she shouts. "Nlul!" Now she's investigating the latches on the windows.

The girl is frustrated at the two-stories-up thing. She swings her bag - and the mouse cage attached below it - around in front of her so she can rummage through it.

"Soo," she growls at him, and she continues rummaging. But apparently she doesn't find anything useful. She closes the top of the bag and reaches into her mouse cage, poking at the animals. They seem to be asleep. "Praspai...!"

She looks over her shoulder. Uncomprehending, but paying attention to him instead of ways out the window.

"Pyay," she says, pointing at herself. "Ruum, Sohng. Tlaa."

"Sin, Mahks," she approximates, pointing at him. "Mri, Pyay." She points at herself again.

"Mri Pyay," she says agreeably.

"No! No- I meant- specifically- you-" he gestures more emphatically at the ground. It doesn't seem to be working- he throws in a few different sorts of peekaboo-type charades, to try to convey something appearing and disappearing.

Pyay spreads her hands. "Mripuumhinehutple tlir!"

She edges towards the door, apparently not interested in being shut up in a room with him whether he's still shouting at her or not.

"Hey! Where are you-" He tries to step down from the chair, but trips and crashes into another desk.

She's going out the door, apparently, tentatively but not slowly once she no longer expects him to be able to obstruct her.

She looks over her shoulder at him, but continues down the hall. "Tiim tupuumhitaoneniuple Nlaaki?" she calls.

She looks over her shoulder at him again, with a look of utmost "you have got to be fucking kidding me" on her face, unaccompanied by any further gibberish. She moves on, apparently looking for someone or something. "Tiim tupuumhikueniuple Nlaaki, raa?"

She finds what she was looking for. If he comes up behind her close enough to see and not close enough to prompt her to scurry away from him, he can see that she is also holding a map. The page she's trying to compare to the United States on the wall is also a map, complete with flocks of triangular mountains and blue-painted bodies of water. There is a big black blotch in the middle of it, and cities and political boundaries marked out around that. The United States is... not on it.

The girl is now peering at the insets of Alaska and Hawaii to see if she can find those. Nope.

"A-me-ri-ka," she says slowly. She starts pointing at things on the map. "Kuigao?" A little political unit, south of the blotch. "Kloofmuur?" The blotch itself, apparently.

...The girl seems absolutely bewildered by the globe. She spins it. She finds America, and murmurs "...A-me-ri-ka." Eventually she locates Hawaii and Alaska too. Apparently there is no Kuigao here, and no kloofmuur either.

"What? You..." He points at her map, and then to the globe. "No Kweengow?" She must... have trouble finding...

"Amerika." She points. "Raotfkiol." She pats the ball of the globe with both hands, describes a sphere in a separate gesture. "Kunue Kuigao." She points at her own map. "Kuigao. Kloofmuur. Slasmuug -" She smooths her hand over the map, then over the floor for good measure.

"Slasmuug," she corrects, smoothing the floor and the map and the wall too.

"Ert," she says, "raotfkiol..." She looks dubiously at the floor under her feet. Then she mimes writing.

Oh, that part is easy. They're in a school. He steps into the globe classroom- that'd be, what, Lansa's social studies?- and starts looking for looseleaf in the cabinets.

When she is presented with paper and a writing implement she starts making careful notes in an unfamiliar alphabet, in two columns. She narrates helpfully - her transliteration of "flat" and "slasmuug" share a line, for instance - but other vocabulary isn't so directly translated (America has what looks like a short sentence in the column beside it).

Whether it's the quality of the drawing or some unexamined assumption, she doesn't have an answer for him.

She spreads her hands. "Tlaa?"

She makes a dubious face, but makes a drawing of - a monster. A snake with a big eyeless face. Chasing a stick figure Pyay.

She looks at her mice. "Mais," she repeats obligingly, and she writes this down.

She startles when the lights and air conditioning change.

"Lait." She transliterates this.

She crosses out his stick figures but draws one of her own, a taller, blonder stick figure, farther away from the snake with the door-sized face. "Praip ruum Fwaysyee."

"And... is he here?" And then he remembers words, again- how does he keep forgetting this, moment to moment?- and lays this stick figure's drawing on top of the piece of paper with Earth on it, and draws an arrow between "Praip room fwaysee" and Earth, to match the arrow he used to ask how she got here. He traces the movement of the arrow with his finger a few times, to emphasize the movement.

She gestures around the room. It is empty of tall blonde boys.

She seems pretty bewildered. She looks at it for a while, then starts a new drawing: snake monster, herself, tall blond stick figure. Solid arrow from snake monster to herself; arrow from herself to a doodle of the United States. Dotted arrow from snake monster to blond stick figure, and a much more sparsely dotted arrow from the blond stick figure to an empty, blank circle.

She follows him, anyway.

When he makes a sudden movement she scrambles away from him. Her noise of alarm sounds like "leep".

She looks really confused, then slowly holds up her apple-core-turned-weird-peanut. And bites into it again.

She blinks, then holds out her other hand, open, empty.

Pyay resumes eating her peanut-thing.

She seems mildly surprised to receive the papayapple, but after she has eaten up her peanut she takes a bite out of that too.

She doesn't seem to know what he wants her to do with the drawing.

She seems to find the stuff mildly interesting; she holds the papayapple between her teeth so her hands are free and sifts through it. Chalk: not that interesting. Chewing gum: bizarre. Paper clips: momentarily intriguing. Staples: bewildering. Beef jerky: she offers this back to Max without doing anything to it.

She laughs at him. She picks up two pieces of sidewalk chalk, swaps their colors, puts them back down, makes a gesture at them that might be accompanied by a "ta-da!" if she spoke English and didn't have her mouth full, and takes another bite out of her papayapple.

She taps the ex-wax-apple in her hand, confused.

She squints at him. She picks up two more pieces of sidewalk chalk. She swaps their colors a few times - and then offers the chalk to him.

And she can't help him. She shakes the drawing, as though she wants him to do something with it.

She tilts her head. She draws something else: a stick figure with a motion-blur of its head going up and down. She points at it and tilts her head again.

...She draws a large speech bubble on a fresh piece of paper, and writes something five letters long in it, and holds it pointing to her mouth, and says, "Traas?"

...he nods. And then says "Tross". There are too many words for speech, and her meaning too uncertain, to try to give her an English word. He... thinks she's correctly interpreting the meaning of the speech bubble? If she's not, this could get confusing.

She looks at the paper again, then smiles and nods.

Okay, so... he points to his drawing of the nodding stick figure and says "yes", and his drawing of the head-shaking stick figure and says "no".

She nods and approximately repeats "yes", then more ably does the same thing with "no" shaking her head.

"Nlaaki word," she corrects, after a moment's thought, pointing at her speech bubble. "English word." Nod nod.

She writes some things down. "Pyay, no, Pyay -" she picks up some chalk. "Sohng, English word."

"Sohng. Yes."

"Yes, taan. Suug, hitao. No, kunue."

Sohng writes this down.

And... "Soog? Heetow?" He's not sure what those were meant to mean. Maybe she picked up some syllable and thought it meant "maybe"?

"Taan means yes. Hitao means yes."

"And means ruum," she tentatively concludes, taking notes.

"Ruum no means soog."

This one she seems less confident in. She makes a wobbly gesture.

Sohng jumps.

It's Gloria, of course, and she's very surprised to see Max and Sohng and Sohng's mouse-accessorized backpack. "Wh- huh? Max, who's this?"

"So... yeah. Sorry. She's some kind of... wizard, or something. She can switch... things, properties of things, I don't know- but it's clearly the same level of... thing, as appearing out of nowhere, so..."

"Oh my god!" exclaims Gloria. "And - Max, I've got a class of kids who speak Spanish and Chinese and Korean and - what do you expect me to do with a wizard from another planet? Why does she have mice -?"

"Oh, god, I don't know about the mice, I don't know enough to ask her to explain them- she- I- I thought you'd be... you'd have more experience than me teaching people languages in general, just... ignoring the magic thing, that you could do what you usually do? Until the bell rings and I can figure out what to do with her."

"Usually I have textbooks that refer to their native language, Max! I - what have you got her to pick up so far...? Anything?"

"I've usually got something to go on. And usually there's - context. I'm not sure if a wizard from another planet will even understand that she's in an ESL class. I'll try, at least for today, but is she even enrolled? I can't quite tell how old she is, I could believe anything between fourteen and twenty-two."

"I... seriously doubt she's enrolled, given that she teleported into my classroom less than an hour ago- she doesn't know how she got here, she says the last thing she remembers is... being eaten by a snake monster, if I read her drawing right? But... I taught her 'teach', and 'Gloria teach Sohng English', so... she knows that much."

"How sure are you she's got all these words? Kids will smile and nod - have you seen her use all of them?"

"That... when I first met her, she introduced herself as Pyay, I thought? And she answered to it for a while, and then suddenly got really insistent that her name was Song? I don't know. 'Room' is her 'and', so... it could be a last name? Maybe they introduce themselves with a formal name, but after you've talked for a while you're supposed to use an informal name?"

"Sohng no mean Pyay," says - whoever she is - firmly.

"Pyay means -" She draws a plant. The leaves look sort of Christmasy; it's got berries. "Sohng means -" She gets up and taps the window glass.

At the end of the day, Sohng and Gloria are still in the classroom. Sohng's bag, mice and all, has been squirreled away in a cupboard; Sohng is peacefully going over her notes while Gloria grades worksheets.

"Hello, Song." He looks at her curiously. "You learn English words?"

"Well, hang on, let's take this at face value... does she know 'why'?" He looks at Song- "Why you no sleep?"

"Mouse sleep," says Sohng. "Pyay sleep mouse."

His eyes widen. "Pyay sleep..." He raises his hands and mimes the swap-magic motion as before. "Pyay... Nloggy word, sleep to mouse?"

"Yes."

"Muilsroo."

"No."

"No -" She picks up another pen, draws more assorted monsters and one amorphous slightly stippled cloud. "Tlaa," she says, pointing at the snake, and, "tlaa," she repeats, pointing at each subsequent monster and the blob. "Klaon," she adds of the blob. "Klaon eat sleep person. No klaonso?"

"We... no have mice, in school. Earth has mice, but... no mweelsrow, no clown, person no need mice."

"What do you have against scientists, huh? Who else is gonna help her? She- she got teleported here by a demon snake, it's not like social services is gonna have any idea how to deal with that!"

"They'll be... possessive, if nothing else. They'll want to reap notoriety from the research, and wouldn't want anything bad to happen to their test subject, and they'll want her happy enough to cooperate. There might be better options, if you have ideas, but it's certainly not the worst thing that could happen, and probably the fastest way to get her home."

"She needs some kind of advocate, in addition to if not instead of impersonal scientists swarming all over her because she's magic," insists Gloria.

"You know what I mean! Or you ought to, anyway!" snaps Gloria. "Being good at science doesn't make them good with children."

"Good with- this isn't about- she has bigger problems than, what, not being in an emotionally supportive environment? Who else do you have in mind that has a snowball's chance in- in June, of getting her back home?"

"What if she can't go home at all? What if it's one-way?"

"Well that's not the sort of thing you instantly assume, is it? If we find her someone capable, willing to help figure it out to the best of their ability, and they can't do it... then we can give up on that, and... worry about whatever what-if you're implying."

"And of course the scientists will let us take away the only magic teenager in the world out of concern for her welfare!"

"If you're certain she doesn't need the mice for anything then you understand her a lot better than I can claim to," says Gloria tartly, heading for her phone.

Pyay or Sohng follows him. "Mouse?" she asks.

She peers at the cars, then shrugs and goes down the stairs.

Max leads her outside to where his Volvo's parked, and opens the passenger-side door for her. He gestures for her to sit down.

She peers at the car. She is suspicious of the car. Eventually she sits in it.

He goes around and gets into the driver's seat, and then starts the engine. The car begins to back out of the parking space.

She is alarmed! But she calms down pretty quick, especially when she sees other cars moving on the road.

She also didn't know about really tall buildings, apparently.

"It's... a long story. That involves her being a wizard. She did some wizard stuff to the mice too much, or something, and a bunch died, and now she needs new mice to do wizard things to. D'you guys sell live feeder mice?"

He shoots her an annoyed look. "...Pyay, mice. How many mice? One, two, three, four...?"

Pyay peers into her cage. "Eight," she concludes.

"Eight," he tells the clerk. "Eight mice, for crazy wizard purposes."

When they are outside of the store, Pyay pauses to remove the dead mice from her cage. She then picks up very small pieces of grit from the ground near the decorative shrubbery outside the storefront, and puts down larger pieces of grit and smaller dead mice. She puts her new mice in with the remaining live ones from her initial supply. One of them immediately falls asleep. Holding the last of the new mice, she extends her hand in Max's direction. "You?" she asks politely.

"Yes."

"Words, words," she mutters, and she touches his hand, and puts his tirendess in the mouse and then puts the mouse away to sleep it off.

...It's a bizarre feeling. It's not like drinking coffee- almost the opposite, and a lot faster. He doesn't feel more energized, mentally, but rather his whole body suddenly feels the way it does when he gets out of bed. He hadn't realized there was even a noticeable difference- the change, after all, is normally gradual. He jumps, and then moves around experimentally.

Pyay laughs at him.

She follows him, apparently convinced that he does know where to go from here. "What?" she inquires.

She blinks at him, then either gives up on understanding or figures out enough of what he said to get along with, and gets in the car.

"Seatbelt-" he reaches back, pulls out the seatbelt on the seat next to her, and points to it. Then plugs it in, unplugs it with the button- to make sure she doesn't think it's some sort of... trap, or restraint- and then points out her seatbelt again. "Seatbelt."

She does not seem to like the seatbelt. "No," she says.

He stifles a laugh, and gets back on the road. Signs indicate that the campus is coming up in a couple of miles.

She goes over her notes in the car. She looks queasy. She reaches for a mouse. She ceases to look queasy.

Pyay is oblivious to his inner monologue. She looks out the window and watches things go by.

"Skuul," she repeats.

He finds a parking spot- there's a meter, it's pricey, but this is important- and stops the car. He unbuckles his seatbelt, and looks over at Pyay to see if she understands the unlocking mechanism.

She undoes her seatbelt. And opens the door.

"So - show me the color thing and I'll get you the head of department, but I'm not stupid, I won't be fooled by some stupid magic trick," says the receptionist, finding a rubber band (blue) and a paperclip (red).

"Blue," says Sohng, pointing to the rubber band, "red? Pyay muilsroo blue red, red blue?"

"Yes." He points at- there's a cup of pens on the counter- "red pen" and "blue pen", to make sure she's not mixing them up with some other property.

"...Sohng and Pyay, two," says Sohng, slowly.

"Yes! Baby. Baby, one. Baby sleep - tlaa eat baby. So - two baby -" She makes a smushing gesture. "One baby sleep one baby not sleep, tlaa no eat. One baby not-sleep one baby sleep, tlaa no eat. Yes? Earth no tlaa - one person." She points at Max when she says 'one person'.

Max thinks he follows, but... he gives her a fearful look and mimics the smushing gesture.

"Muilsroo," she explains. "Mm - Pyay sleep, I no sleep. I sleep, Pyay no sleep. Yes? Mouse no person. Mouse sleep no person sleep."

"Muilsroo?" asks Sohng. She swaps the colors, green for white, and offers them back to Max.

She swaps those colors too. Black key, silver plastic.

Sohng flips through her notes. "...What Nlaaki?" she asks, confused, when she has found relevant words. "Nlaaki words."

"Uh- want go... Kweengow? Home. The-" he takes the green paper and quickly sketches the plane with the dark circle in the middle.

"Go Kuigao! Yes!" She digs out her map and points at the place she wishes to go.

Sohng puts her map away.

"Uh. Um. Well, see, that was what I wanted to talk about. The situation with... taking care of her. Since... that's... so, I'm at the physics department at Rutgers, and..."

"Oh, for crying out loud, Max, you couldn't wait for me to find her a - a social worker or something - you just - you up and took her to the scientists? Not even the linguistics department to see if they could learn to talk to her better than me, but the physics department! Max!"

"Or something. I'm not sure I'm going to find one who won't think I'm making a prank call, though, unless I lie about her special needs..."

Sohng docilely finds a chair to sit in and studies her English notes.

"Sohng," she confirms. She gets up and follows him.

Sohng peers up at the rain, but not in a particularly mystified way. They must have that where she's from.

"Kuigao rain, yes."

She flips through her notes, not seeming to care if they get a little drizzled on. "Kuigao has suns," she concludes, after a sufficient pause.

"Suns," she says. "Suns, suns." Shrug. "Not one sun."

"I... yes. Do you have a directory of... I'm looking for someone here who's... I have someone here who doesn't speak English, but not- not Spanish or Portuguese- and we're looking for a... someone who studies linguistics, more generally. Are we in the wrong place?"

"Yeah, the linguists are two doors down." The secretary-type points. "I think on the third floor."

Sohng - who has apparently quietly dried the damp notes on something when he wasn't looking - writes this down.

Someone who's either a young professor or a very run-down grad student opens the door. "Hi?"

"Ooh. Okay, fun. Has she got any English?" she inquires. "Have you figured out anything about how it's structured, what sounds are in it...? Hey, Trevor, over here!"

"Pull the other one," snorts Trevor's colleague. "Oh, I get it, it's a conlang, she memorized a few paragraphs of - or is it even, is it just gibberish? Where's the camera? You were hoping we'd say it was fucking Turkish and then you could point and laugh?"

She rolls her eyes. She takes the pens. They are now each other's colors.