"I should be getting home but I'll swing by whenever I've got a draft or more money for you, and probably sometime in between."

She'll be around. Thanks again.

"You're welcome." And off she goes.

She doesn't go outside again. Finishes her painting, dismisses it, makes some pearls, goes to bed. Works on the thank-you letters, the next day; finding three suitable example letters and digging up words to plug into them is very slow, but at least it's engaging, trying to guess which of the words she has can get her to the words she wants. She has the first two done by dinnertime, and prints them out to stick in the mail slot at Vince's house before she heads to the restaurants.

She makes a kinetic sculpture to play with at her table, today.

"That's real cute," comments the waitress, swishing her horsetail as she walks by.

Thanks.

May doesn't show up that day.

Not surprising.

She paints, again, after dinner, and reads - she got some poetry from the library - and sleeps, and the next day she finishes the third letter - the post office says there's nobody here by that name, but the librarian knows who it was, so she manages to get that taken care of. She wanders around some more, afterward; she hasn't seen all the shops yet.

Toy store, drugstore, clothing store.

It's rarely worth wandering through a clothing store this small, but whatever, she's got time to kill.

There are clothes in there! Like some of the other stores it has name-marked boxes behind the counter, special orders from the outside; what's on the rack is pretty basic stuff, and there's a price sheet for alterations.

Yeah, oh well. There's always the internet.

She heads back to the library, and - she should actually get back to doing school stuff. Not that poetry isn't, exactly, but. She gets out a book on trig that seems to be about the right level, and goes to look through the history section, see if it's close enough to history in her world to be worth reading.

It has recognizable names of wars and historical figures and such.

Looks good. She was halfway through a book on the Napoleonic wars and not enjoying it much; she picks up something on the industrial revolution, instead. And then - hm - is there any critter science?

The science in stock is not very critter-themed; things on the biology and nature of critters seems to be filed in its own section.

Makes sense, if they're secret and can't tap into the mundane science system. She gets something on the nature of critters anyway, and that's her next couple days planned.

May drops by on Wednesday to report that she's sold a couple more pearls, and she's worked something out with her mom to handle May being a minor and having accordingly throttled bank account access and long story short here's another wad of cash.

Great, thanks. Dinner can be her treat again, if May wants.

"That's nice of you but I was gonna go home and have dinner with Ren, she's making meatballs."

Of course. Thanks for stopping by. (And here's another load of stuff.)

"I'll get that listed! See you later."

Mmhmm. Back to her reading, then.

On Friday she swings by the craft store to see if they have any requests for her.

"Oh, yes, I talked to my regulars and I have some orders -" Somebody wants a few specific kinds of feathers; someone wants square coral beads; someone wants a few hunks of mahogany to carve.

She's back in twenty minutes with them. (She had to check what mahogany is like.)

"Thanks!" He does not pay out as much per item as eBay but it'll still feed her for a bit.