"Yeah. So do I like - try the different job ideas and see what works?"

"It's your first week, so why don't you try helping out with Ada-- she's the teacher-- for a few days and see if you think you could handle the threes-fours-fives classroom, and do some singing at night to see if people will ask that that be one of your jobs, and if both of those don't work out you can garden?"

"Okay. Do you ever have electricity? There are some pretty light keyboards you could maybe find somewhere if you were looking and I really don't want to forget how to play..."

"Yes, but it's pretty severely rationed. We need it for heating and running the animas and things like that."

"Even if it wasn't turned on I could like, keep the muscle memory till there was a special occasion maybe."

Lev writes it down in a notebook. "I'll do my best."

"Thanks."

"Anything else or should I send you on your way?"

"You said meals in the dining room but I don't know where that is."

He sticks his head out and says, "Can someone get one of the moms? Probably Alyssa?"

Alyssa, when she appears, is in her midteens and has a child old enough to walk. "Hi!"

"Alyssa can show you around," Lev says.

"Hi! I'm Rebecca but if that's confusing with the other Rebecca you can call me Laurel. This is Catherine."

"Hi!" Alyssa says. "I'm going to call you Laurel because the other obvious way to nickname one of you is to call the other Rebecca Old Rebecca and she haaaaates that. She's like 'I'm only 45'! This is my son Shadow."

Shadow clings to his mom's leg.

"Hi there Shadow!" says Rebecca.

Shadow buries his face in his mom's leg.

"He's scared of new people," Alyssa says. "We don't get them much here and, well."

"I'm a new person, I admit it."

Alyssa takes Laurel to her room!

Laurel's room has a bed and a desk and a closet and a window. A handful of items-- soap, a toothbrush (but no toothpaste), nursing pads-- have been placed on the desk. 

"We'll see about getting you some clothes," Alyssa says, "the other moms are doing a collection."

"Thanks! - I also gave birth like three days ago and I'm still kinda bleeding."

"That's what this is for," Alyssa says, pointing to a strip of cloth with velcro on it. "It's pretty self-explanatory, I think."

"...okay."

"Sorry, we were out of disposable pads by year two."

"I guess that makes sense. How do you do laundry?"

"You take your clothes to the laundry people and then they clean them," Alyssa says. "I'm not sure how, I'm not on laundry personally."

"Okay, cool. There's running water?"

"No, they use lake water, I think."

"Guess that makes sense. I just keep Catherine in the same bed with me?"