Walta lets Feume out for a little while longer, in the empty elixir room. He doesn't like being cooped up all day.

She is not immune to some amount of nervousness. Sleeping in an unfamiliar spot... Wondering whether she'll really get home (huh, she does think of it as home now) or they're only saying that... She sleeps soon enough.

Flora is up before almost anyone else. She cooks herself a small portion of Flora-Acceptable Breakfast, eats it, and waits for everyone else to come in.

The residents of the house start trickling in one by one, some cooking more breakfast as efficiently as they had dinner, some still half asleep. It is an oddly clear line.

Walta will have whatever requires little work for breakfast. She gets up fairly early to exercise Feume a bit, and was using the computer to look things up earlier, and has several ideas on what could be off with the water heater. And because she's the one she knows best, "Good morning Flora."

"Good morning –" she remembers her resolution from yesterday "– I'd like to say something to you away from the others, if you don't mind?"

"Um? Did I do something wrong?"

Nervously, but noticing this and trying to stop, "Nonono, you're fine, better than fine, you're good, okay. It is about me and" my silly problems again "I hope you don't mind at least hearing what this is about? I will just feel slightly awkward if I have to say the thing in a crowded room and there is an option not to, so." 

She starts taking steps in the direction of 'out', hoping furiously that Walta will uncomplicatedly follow.

She grabs her cup of milk and follows.

She leads Walta into what appears to be some sort of storage room. 

"Okay, so."

She pauses, and when she starts again she talks even slower and more deliberately. "My parents were, or are, depending on how you look at it, somewhat nasty to me. In, like, nasty words, they didn't beat me.

"One of the things my mom did in particular was deliberately mispronounce 'elixir'. Not that this in particular was a nasty thing, but it reminds me of all the other things she did.

"So when you mispronounced it – I reiterate that it was not your fault at all, you didn't know, let'sjustforget it please? But yes, when you did it yesterday I was reminded and I went into... panic mode. I knew you were you but I kept acting like you were my mom, specifically in terms of expecting you to do nasty things but also in other ways like talking to you like I would talk to her and so on. So. How do you feel about this?"

"...People have issues. It happens. Like, I'm going to be nervous around any police that aren't, like, local street cops, I can explain if you like it was a while ago. I'll try to remember to pronounce it right but I'm not good at remembering things that my brain puts in the bucket labelled 'manners' and this is one of those things."

"Okay. I should be able to spot it and calm down if it happens again, I think. Uh, if that happens again for a different reason, should I try to tell you on the spot? This will be hard for me but would make it easier to snap out of but there is a possibility of you making it worse? Is that something you want to have happen, totally fine if you don't?"

"I'm not good at subtle-touchy-feely. I'm not gonna push your buttons on purpose. Up to you whether to tell me any more things I can try to not do."

"Subtle is the opposite of what I need here, you're very frank and blunt and this helps because my parents never are, it's always either hidden meanings and subtle stuff or screaming terror and mockery. I think I will, then, if you don't mind."

"Okay. Air clear. Can you talk about the water heater at everyone? I have some ideas. You probably need to buy a part though."

"Yep, I'll handle that."

She handles that by knocking on the wall in some sort of rhythm and then announcing things. Most of the inhabitants of the house agree with the need to fix the water heater, and get vaguely annoyed by the part where it has to be turned off for hours, but acquiesce that it should be done if it gets the heater working reliably, thank you for being willing to help, Walta, and yes, it should be done while everyone is busy making elixirs. A couple people dash off to do last-minute water-requiring things.

A little boy comes and asks if it would be okay to pour stuff down the sink during that time or is it just that the tap will be cold or will the tap not work at all. Flora translates to the best of her ability; it's much harder to flip back and forth than to talk in just one.

She doesn't mind the spotty translation. She knows enough English to get the idea anyway. "Cold water and drains should still work, since this place is set up smart-ish. If you try to get hot water you'll just get nothing."

Flora translates back.

Eventually, everyone's ready for a lack of hot water. "We're good to go."

So she turns the water heater off and then does nothing in particular. Well, does some appropriately weird things while waiting.

Flora is curious about this but not enough to ask her over the protests of She Knows What She's Doing. 

If Walta seems open to this, Flora will offer suggestions and join in in some parts.

This is fine. "It's really quite funny how activating works, you know."

After maybe fifteen minutes she looks at the heater's thermostat and hooks up a hose into the house's drainage system. Out goes the water, producing only moderate amounts of steam instead of scads and scads of it.

"Kind of is, yes. What's next?"

"Now I wait for the steam to clear out and confirm my sucpicions that your heating coil is probably rusted half to pieces."

"If it is, what would be next - do we replace it or de-rust it somehow or something else? I think we had a de-rusting elixir somewhere..." She waves a hand vaguely downwards.

"Other things could be wrong too. Replacing it is probably most thorough, if it's lost big bits of itself into the water derusting won't help for long."

"Okay. Will it be hard to find a replacement?"

"This 'google' thing says no'. Three different stores that are near sell this kind of thing, and I think I will be able to pick the right one if we have to visit."