When she thinks she can see him without crying again, she holds her baby close and walks silently back to Rana's.
The room has been replaced with - something else. She has no idea what this means. She has nobody to ask but Rana. Everything she asks places her further in his debt, of course, but it hardly matters now.
She steps inside.
"Okay. Thanks."
She decides that she should not tell Alex that Cecelia is a Karen. Because probably that would make everything weird for a bunch of people, and also she would like to defend her good twin's interests and is not a hundred percent sure what those are.
In the morning she lets herself into the Norwegian half of the duplex and makes everybody bacon and eggs and pancakes, because she is, like, zero percent confident that the medieval Norwegians know how to cook anything for themselves.
They do do that. They also, when used correctly, produce large quantities of delicious breakfast.
Alex, can you ask Cecelia if she wants to learn how to make pancakes? Legitimately could use her help feeding this many people, and probably it'll be good for her.
Hey Cecelia Karen asks if you'd like to learn how to make the things she's cooking everyone for breakfast.
I'm aiming to just pay attention to what you send at me but with people who don't have practice interacting with our telepathy, that's not perfect. Would you like me to stop?
Okay then.
She does her best to learn how to make pancakes without a common language. They're already half-made, so it isn't very hard. She learns the words "stove" and "on", "off", and "flip", though she is not a hundred percent sure whether the flip is the action or the instrument used to accomplish it.
Her kids like the pancakes. Even Tyr, who refuses to say this out loud but manages to claim three of them for himself.
And then they can maybe be introduced to video games? The Air Force wants more notice and the water park is closed on Mondays and will require the kids to possess swimsuits anyway.
She can do video games. They have a Gamecube and copies of Super Smash Bros Melee and Mario Party 4. They have six kids old enough to play and only four can play at once, but it's cool, they can practice taking turns and the older Connor can generously read a book or something.
They like video games. She can't tell if they're making progress on getting the kids to want to stay, but they do like video games.
And he can take his alt out to learn horseback riding.
They actually can't talk, since fairies are allergic to osanwë. This is fine, because horses don't speak English either.
Well, at least nobody's overtly miserable here, that's something.
She gets more words from Cassie and plays with her baby and tries not to feel too weird about... everything.
Her fairy's in a good mood when he comes home.
"How're the kids taking it?" he asks her in the fairy language.
"They're having a lot of fun. I'm not sure how much it changes things for them, but they are having fun," she says, also in the fairy language.
" - coping. Everything's still kind of weird. And - maybe feeling a little bit like I went through all of this effort to talk to people and now have to do it again."
"We could always just not talk to people, then they can't yell at us. That's my philosophy right now, anyway."
"Yeah. - kind of like being able to talk to people. At least if - I think it's less of a problem if only one of us can speak the local language, but if neither of us can then we're - totally dependent on people who don't really like us."
"I think - it was pretty easy to tell myself that you knew everything that was going on at your court and would make sure nothing bad happened while we were there. It's - maybe slightly less realistic if we don't know what anybody's saying. I do think this place has - good qualities, a lot of them, it's just also - we know less about it."
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