"Thank you!"

He's going to need a lot more information once they're gone about how humans interact so he should listen to conversations on the street while he waits.

Connor finds their map of Los Angeles and puts their lunches in his backpack and tells himself that it is probably a good thing that Karen trusts him enough to expect him to handle the weird psychic kid's problems. 

The river is a pretty long way from where they live. It's gonna take them like an hour to get there by bus. Are they, like, really sure this is how they want to spend their entire day?

Yes.

Fine.

He takes his backpack and holds onto one small person with each hand and leads them onto the bus, where they will have to sit for like an hour. Buses are full of lots of people too poor to own cars, and they smell a little funny and they stop a lot, but they have big windows and they get you where you're going faster than walking does.

He shuts his eyes tightly and is very unhappy and listens and listens because he needs to know things about people or he will never ever leave the horrible apartment again until he dies.

Eventually they get off and can walk to the river. There are fences and some big concrete riversides to keep them from actually getting into it.

"I dunno whether there are better places to look at it. I guess we could keep walking along it and see if we find one. It might just all be like this, though."

"Can we climb over the fences and jump in?"

"I think you're usually not supposed to jump fences?"

"Is it ILLEGAL?"

"I don't know whether it's illegal."

"I think we should do it!"

"We can try from here and if the river spirit can't hear us then we can climb in."

"HEY RIVER SPIRIT."

Nothing happens.

"I'm gonna climb the fence," she says, and then starts working on that.

Connor thinks this is kind of a terrible idea but cannot actually come up with a specific reason why it's a terrible idea other than that it is not the sort of thing you are supposed to do. He will.... probably follow them so they don't drown or anything. Under protest.

He's faster at fence-climbing despite being tiny and not dressed for it and still keeping his eyes closed most of the time.

He tries asking for the river spirit in Quenya in case that helps though it shouldn't.

It does not help. The river continues doing nothing besides flowing and being kind of dirty.

Poor river Maia. 

He will try singing the song that makes his clothes less grubby. It's not a good enough song to do much for the river but maybe the Maia will notice they're trying.

The river doesn't really react to this.

"Do river spirits sleep?"

"I don't know. I have never tried to get one's attention before."

"Maybe it's watching a different part of the river today?"

"I guess if I was a river spirit I'd be pretty depressed by this part of my river."

"Maybe it's closer to the source. If I were a river spirit that's where I'd wanna stay. The source has gotta be nicer than the part that runs through the city."

"We can't just hike to the source of the river, that's gotta be miles and miles away."

"How long does it take to walk a mile?"

"I dunno. Maybe half an hour."