This strange and otherworldly thing is really confused about how getting caught in the rain on her way home led to this, to any of this, from the freakish weather that shouldn't have been able to get so far inland, to the disappearance of the cement beneath her feet and the streetlights glowing overhead, to the strange magnetic sensation of being able to shear raindrops and dust and debris and stranger things away from her skin the instant they touch her so that she can stagger, bewildered, in what is hopefully a straight line toward what is hopefully shelter.

There is no shelter, just more nonsense wind that seems to blow in different directions entirely in places two feet apart. The ground might have been asphalt but it's hard to tell given how weathered and cracked it has become over what must have been decades.

She keeps walking. The repulsion around her skin steadies her against the wind, once she thinks to try, and she resigns herself to a weird dream of tromping through a storm that can't touch her.

It's possible this thing used to be a building, but now what's left of the walls are barely a foot high.

This dream is stupid.

Onward.

It's much of the same for hours - a ruined barely visible landscape beneath the crazed winds.

It's irritatingly realistic about making her hungry, but the magnet-y power is helping with not getting too tired, at least. She practices with it for lack of anything else to do.

Eventually the winds thin down a bit, until it's mostly just rain with the occasional dust - the landscape looks pretty much the same, albeit with improved visibility. And half an hour after that, when even the rain has passed, there's a pair of covered wagons drawn by mules, with the dirtiest people she has ever seen as drivers.

It'd be hard to keep clean in this weather but the mules look... weird. Their tails are wrong and their hooves are too chunky. Maybe it's a strange breed or something. Or her dream just isn't big on accurate animals.

She makes for the carts.

"Hello stranger!" announces one of the men when she is still a ways away. His hand is resting on a pistol.

"Hello! Can you tell me where I am, I'm lost."

"Bout two miles west of Tulsa's ridge - where'd you get lost from?" It's not exactly typical to survive getting lost in the maelstrom, much less without even getting dirty.

"Lina?" she says. She doesn't recoginze "Tulsa" but there's lots of random Anitami towns she's never heard of, or it's a dream fabrication. "Near the Rose Stadium."

"Never heard of it - how long you've been lost for?

"I don't know. Hours." She pulls out her everything but it won't turn on, she didn't figure out how to repel the rain and dust immediately so that kind of figures. Back into her pocket it goes and she can attempt to clean it out later maybe. "Probably not days."

"That's a while to spend in the maelstrom on your own."

It's possible the maelstrom is rather thin right now and she came from the other side, or she got lost at a weird angle, but it's also possible that the tales of strange people emerging from the maelstrom itself are true. 

She does have completely grey hair despite looking like a young adult, if that's a hint. Also her teeth are maybe weird. "It wasn't great. I could use some water."

"Mmm. We can spare a cup."

Yeah, up close it's pretty clear she's been touched by the maelstrom.

"You've got something to keep the dust off it all right?"

"Mm?"

"...from the cups?"

"They're clean enough for drinking."

"...great."

If she's willing to approach them while he's definitely not quite pointing a gun at her she can be handed a tin cup filled up with water from a dirty looking canteen. The cup is not exactly spotless but the water itself looks clear.

...can she superpower away the grime on the cup?

Yep! The man who handed it to her doesn't look at all relaxed by her doing this.

"...I take it you don't want me to clean all your dishes for you," she says. After she's downed the water.

"Rather you didn't."

"Suit yourselves. Where are you headed?"

"New Lawton, with a pit stop at Kenton."

"Can I join you? I wouldn't know how to get anywhere from here."

"Hrmph, if you insist. There's room in the back wagon, don't go futzing around with our goods."

Whoever this is they have abilities and it's probably more dangerous to refuse them than to offer them a ride but really he'd prefer neither option.

"Thanks." She sits in the back wagon and tries not to be a bother.

The back wagon is somehow even filthier than what she's seen before! The floor has dirt and hay and the boxes stacked haphazardly are hardly better. Worst of all there's a truly noxious smell wafting in from the shady front of the compartment that combines the worst of sweat, feces, and piss.

Wow. She is going to be enough of a bother to fling all that crap away from her when it approaches her person, but her feet hurt enough that she's not going to like, complain out loud about the smell.

The wagons get started moving again, jostling her and the cargo some.

Yeah, jostling is fine, her weird dream power is adequate to the task of steadying her enough that she doesn't clonk her head or faceplant into the hay.

A particularly intense bump is followed by a sharp intake of breath from something in the front.

...peek.

In the shadowy front of the wagon, behind a few boxes, she can see a cage that at first glance appears to contain some sort of animal but, after Pelape's eyes adjust a bit more the darkness, she can see is, in fact, a child. A child with hair that's long and wild and full of debris and skin so covered with dirt that it takes a moment to realize that under it all the child is unhealthily pale. The horrid stench emanates from the child and the floor of their cage.

"What in the world is going on with the kid?" says Pelape in a remarkably controlled voice under the circumstances. For an Amentan.

"Cargo." calls back the driver of the wagon. "There's a stick back there if it's making a racket or something."

"Cargo?"

"Yes? You're getting this ride free missy, don't go insisting we only carry goods you approve of while you're our guest. You can do that on your own time but I've no interest in arguing it."

The child meanwhile stares with wide eyes at Pelape.

"I'm, uh, trying to assess how far I am from home, quite apart from my personal approval trafficking in people would be thoroughly illegal where I'm from."

"There are parts where that's true but not these ones." Probably - it's not like they checked with all the locals on their route before they agreed to do the delivery.

"Is this kid special somehow that it's legal in this case?"

"Special enough someone wanted it enough to pay us."

"Any idea why?"

"Not my place to say."

"Hey kiddo. What's your name? I'm Pelape."

The kid stares at Pelape for a long while before whispering back.

"Eefa."

"Where'd they grab you, from your family?"

Eefa shakes her head.

"Have you got a family?"

A long look, and then another head shake.

"How much longer till we stop for the night?" she asks the guy.

"Couple hours."

"Suppose they'll trade me some food for a story or something, there?"

"Could be." Sometimes people are idiots.

If she touches the corner of the cage can she get it cleaned out in there?

The floor of the cage has too much on it to go quickly - among other things there's a corner with feces that only mostly made it out of the cage. Still, if she keeps touching it for a bit it'll all get pushed out and to the side.

If it's the best she can do it's the best she can do. If she holds out a hand to Eefa?

Eefa looks at the hand for a second, then tentatively touches it.

Weird powers, CLEAN THIS POOR BABY.

Eefa winces and looks uncomfortable but doesn't let go about this. It seems like a better sort of experiment than most of the other options and she wants to be taken out of the cage real bad so she'll behave. 

Eventually, her body is clean, though her clothes and hair are still a mess.

Can she get ahold of the garment and the hair?

She can clean Eefa's clothes easily enough but she can't clean the strands of Eefa's hair without being in contact with each of them.

"Sorry," murmurs Pelape, "looks like my weird superpower isn't great at hair."

Nod.

"Going to leave?" Eefa whispers really quietly.

"Well, I don't know where I'd leave to."

Nod nod.

This is a dumb dream.

A couple of hours later they stop to make camp for the night, as promised.

Anybody selling food?

They do start cooking some sort of stew in a pot and if she looks hungry enough someone will probably give her some.

She hasn't eaten in kind of a while yeah.

Then she'll get a bowl of stew with vegetables and beef.

"Your buyer want live merchandise?" she asks the child traffickers when they don't seem about to feed Eefa.

"Yeah? But they didn't pay for feeding it and it's less agitated this way."

"They may've assumed food was implied as a necessary travel expense in the wanting live merchandise."

"It look dead to you? Had plenty of life when it tried to rob Manny of his keys last night."

"It doesn't look to be in amazing shape." That doesn't feel like a personal pronoun in this language - nice of the dream to give her the language - but she can't tell what sex the kid is, which appears to be information she'd need to be more polite. "Hunger makes one less resilient against everything else."

"Buyers can deal with that - you sure do have a lot of questions."

"You would too if you were this far from home."

"Got any that aren't about our cargo?"

"Sure, what's your name? Why's the weather like that," she points in the general direction of the maelstrom. "Do you have any idea why I've got a superpower now, it's new."

"Hamish. That's the maelstrom, it's been around for centuries and you must be very very lost to not know that."

"And sometimes people who spend time in the maelstrom come back with abilities," he concludes, nervously.

"Do a lot of people duck in and out for that reason?"

"Usually if they'd do that they wouldn't come back at all. Or come back all wrong."

"Wrong?"

"Different."

"In ways other than having powers? Like what?"

"They look different, or can't remember things, or act different."

"...uh-huh." She'll eat her stew without trying to make further conversation.

They don't have a spare tent but they have a blanket and she can sleep on the floor of the wagon though she better not go through their things, there'll be someone around standing watch who would notice.

"Thanks for the blanket." After she's gotten it clean.

Everyone but the look out's sleeping before long.

"Eefa, I think I can get your hair clean, can you move your head over here so I can reach?"

Blink blink.

Okay sure, she'll do what the new person wants.

She's got one hand combing through Eefa's hair, leaving a trail of clean strands behind, pausing to pick at all the tangles,

and another hand steadying herself on the cage, picking the lock with her touch-telekinesis,

noise muffled with a lullaby.

She'll manage the lock way before she manages all the tangles.

Well, might as well finish all the tangles first. Has Eefa noticed the lock.

She has! She stopped moving even a little bit when she heard it and is only taking shallow quiet breaths.

Well at least she's not jumping the gun. Detangle, detangle. Glancing at the guard to see if he's any good at his job.

The guard has not noticed anything and Eefa isn't going to mess that up!

Okay. She gets Eefa's hair in to a loosely tolerable state where she wouldn't call Mental Health Nuisance on parents who let their kid walk around in public like that, and then she concludes her lullaby and gets under the blanket. If Eefa makes a break for it she's ready to create a distraction.

"Leave?" Eefa mouths at her.

"Where?" Pelape whispers back.

"Elysium?"

"How far?"

"Hours on a mule?"

Eefa heard them saying they'd stop there during the afternoon the next day.

Well, the mules move at a walking pace, you can't sustain much more than that even if you have four legs. Can Pelape walk that far... hm.

Does the guard have a gun. Do any of them have guns, actually.

The guard has a rifle, and a few of the sleeping people have pistols in view like the first guy Pelape met.

She's not really confident in her touch telekinesis making her bulletproof.

Also this keeps... happening? And she's increasingly unsure that it's a dream.

And they put a baby in a cage full of her own shit, so.

Fuck them.

She plans out all her movements in her head. She stares at the nearest pistol trying to derive how it probably works.

Reaches out to just barely touch it with the tip of a fingernail and slide it with perfect smoothness into her hand.

Eefa can stay so still while this is happening.

And then she can shift around, oh so slowly and causally, like she's just having trouble getting comfy in the wagon, and -

"Silence," she says, holding it to the guard's head.

He opens his mouth instinctively but doesn't make any sound, his body suddenly very tense.

"I'd love it if everybody could still be alive in the morning. Unload your gun."

He unloads the gun slowly - he really hopes she's not lying, this is only his second run with this crew and he did not expect it to be all that dangerous.

Eefa doubts Pelape is telling the truth but she's not going to do anything about this.

"Hand me the ammo and put the gun on the ground. Slow."

The man does this!!

"Eefa, do you think you can get us some water to carry along, real quiet?"

Nod!

She can go and grab a couple of full canteens - she's good at moving quietly.

"Me and the kid are going to fuck off into the night. You are going to be completely quiet about that all night long - you can do it by also fucking off into the night, if you don't want to have to explain to these assholes why this is happening."

Is that really all? Sure this guy will nod about that. Sure.

Eefa glares at him in case that helps anything.

Pelape hops neatly out of the wagon and keeps her gun trained on him as she backs away, till she's far enough that she can't see him clearly and presumes the reverse is true.

Then she'll follow Eefa's lead, since Eefa seems to think she knows where they're going.

Eefa is going to lead them along the sort of a road the caravan has been traveling along. She is not sure this is the right way but knows that second-guessing herself won't help.

This is going to be a lot of walking on no sleep and one bowl of suspect stew.

They had a baby in a cage in her own shit. She'll cope.

"D'you know why they wanted you?"

She shrugs - no use giving this new person any more ideas than she already has.

Okay then. Silent hiking. She practices using her power on walking more steadily.

It's a good five hours before a cluster of buildings surrounded by a wall is visible in the distance.

She is less physically tired than she should be after walking that long because she's compensating with the teekay but she's tired as fuck. What can she make out in the moonlight?

The buildings look relatively plain but functional, with the exception of a single building that's positioned next to the wall and in fact has a whole separate entrance from the larger one that's closed up for the night.

It's got stained glass, in some places patched up from damage but it's hard to make out in the dark. It's got a tall spire. It's got armed guards up on the wall and another couple at the door, but they don't seem to be alerted to the approach of Pelape and Eefa; they aim a light at them, then move it forward to light their way to the door.

"You looking for Elysium? You found it," says the guard. "How're you paying for a stay?"

Pelape looks at Eefa. "Did you have a plan for that already?"

Eefa has a can of before-food stashed in her clothes.

"That for the both of you?" the guard asks.

"- this any good to you? Eefa shouldn't have to pay for me." Pelape holds out the rifle ammunition.

He inspects it. "Yeah. Separate rooms?"

Pelape looks at Eefa.

Eefa looks at the guard. Looks at Pelape. Looks at the guard. Decides which one she trusts more.

"No."

The guard opens the door. "Two to a room for three days pending Saffron's eval," he tells the receptionist.

"Two in one for three pending," agrees the yawning receptionist. "Here's the key to number seventeen, that's up on the second floor, third on your left. If you harm anyone in Elysium you will die. Matinees come with the room, evening shows are extra, enjoy your stay."

What a deeply puzzling world this is. Pelape takes the key.

Sounds like they havn't figured Eefa out yet which is good. Maybe she'll be safe here a day or two.

Pelape finds room seventeen and opens it. There's a freshly made bed, a desk at the window with the patchwork curtain pushed aside on the rail so a little starshine can get in, a tile floor, and a sign on the wall about how access to the bathroom down the hall is managed that it's too dark to read.

Pelape does her best to leave road dust and grime from herself and Eefa in the hallway and collapses into the bed. Holds out an arm tiredly to the kid.

Eefa blinks at Pelape in confusion.

"Suit yourself." She drops her arm and falls asleep, pistol still in her pocket.

Eefa curls up a bit away from Pelape in the bed and falls asleep herself.

Pelape mumbles in her sleep, in Anitami so it'll probably sound like nonsense.

Eefa can sleep through mumbling pretty easily.

Pelape sleeps pretty late even though the curtain is very far from blackout. They were up so, so late. She walked so much.

Eefa's been keeping odd hours but isn't going to leave the room without her protector. She has a bit of stale bread stashed away under her clothes but that's all she has so she's not eating it right now.

Eventually Pelape yawns awake. Opens her eyes and looks at the room. Closes them and sighs very deeply. Opens her eyes again to check on Eefa. "You up?"

Eefa nods.

"Good call coming here, seems like a nice place so far probably. Did you have any plans for what to do if you made it this far or are we making it up from here out?"

"Need to find food."

"Yeah."

Eefa can wait by the door for Pelape.

Pelape cleans herself up with her power, reads the bathroom sign, visits the bathroom and comes back somewhat dismayed, and will then accompany Eefa wherever she wants to go.

Eefa accompanies her to the bathroom and isn't at all disappointed by its state.

There's food in Elysium; two meals a day come with the room. It's great by the standards of the locality. It might be the best restaurant on the planet. It would probably get seven stars of ten from a reasonably discerning critic in Lina but Pelape usually eats at places that would get three to five because they're cheaper, so quality-wise it's fine, exotic but fine. Lots of fresh vegetables. Strawberries. All slightly alien to Pelape.

They get to spot Saffron in the dining hall. Prosperously plump, button shirt worn open over a shirt that doubles as a bra, cutoff jean shorts, the best-armed person in the room. She swings by where Pelape and Eefa are eating. "New faces - I never forget one and yours are new. Names?"

"I'm Pelape Milath and this is Eefa."

"Saffron Fall. You got let in overnight, and they forgot to check you for weapons - anything to declare? You haven't got to hand it over unless I don't like your vibe but I need to know."

"I've got a pistol."

"Don't have anything."

"You know the rules?"

"I read the sign about the bathroom and I was told that if we did violence we would die. Are there more?"

Not many; Saffron rattles them off pretty casually.

"And the rent situation, do you let people work for their keep here?"

"Oh, of course, lots of people like that arrangement. What do you do?"

...wow, she's just actually under no obligation to say "I'm a grey", is she. They don't seem to do that around here.

".......I have a telekinesis power that is pretty good at cleaning things and might also let me do other stuff I haven't figured out yet."

"Covering the kid too?"

"Yes."

"Sure, housekeeping has an office in room four, report there and see what use they make of you."

Eefa is not particularly good for cleaning but will accompany Pelape anyways.

It is fine with Pelape for Eefa to be her shadow.

She brings her empty but not clean dish with her to Housekeeping to show off live. They want her doing that and also laundry. They work out a shift schedule and an arrangement for someone to come wake her up for it while she's adjusting to the time zone. She'll be able to earn the room at Elysium and the meals it comes with for both of them in four hours a day and pick up credit for days off with more work. Absolutely no one remarks that really her hair would need to be purple to comply with the housekeeping dress code.

"Can I help?" It's safer to have something people need you for that's not terrible.

"I don't think so. I'm not washing them, just using my power - do you have a power like that?" Pelape asks, moving silverware from a dirty pile to a clean pile one at a time.

Eefa shakes her head - she doesn't have a power like that.

"Can sort them?"

"- sure. With the silverware, I don't know how much they'll put on our tab if we break a dish."

Nod nod.

She can sort the silverware carefully, one at a time.

It's a really tedious way to spend hours of her life but she can liven it up a little bit by playing with the edges of her power, at least.

Eefa eventually becomes proficient enough at sorting utensils that she can watch Pelape while doing so.

It's not that interesting to watch. She picks up the dishes from the counter on the left - it's not all silverware, sometimes Eefa's got lulls when it's plates and glasses instead, though some of the glasses are plastic and she can sort those - and all the mess sloughs off them into the compost bucket she was provided and she puts the clean one with its fellows on the table to the right. Sometimes other kitchen staff bring more dirty dishes or take away the clean ones.

Well, it's something to watch.

She's gotten the sense that Eefa's private about her history or just shy or something so she's not going to pry and she can't think of much else to talk about that isn't "why didn't the traffickers steal your can of food" or "are you SURE you don't have a family who miss you" or anything.

Well Eefa isn't going to talk but she will eventually get bored enough to try stacking utensils interestingly.

"If those fall on the floor, I will have to clean them again."

"Why?"

"The floor's dirty, people walk on it."

Eefa pokes the floor and inspects her finger.

"Seems like a normal floor?"

"Yes, and because it is a normal floor, people walk on it and it becomes dirty."

"It doesn't look dirty?"

"Not all dirt is visible. I wouldn't trust my power to get the dishes clean if they didn't also feel clean to the touch and I'm still not completely sure it's good enough, I just think it's probably at least as good as whatever they were doing here before."

"How do you know there's invisible dirt?"

"On my planet we've got devices that let us look really closely at things and see the invisible dirt."

"You have a planet?"

"On the planet that I'm from. I don't own the place."

"Is it different than this planet?"

"Yeah, a lot."

"How?"

"It's cleaner. I think the people here aren't the same species as I am. We don't have a Maelstrom. We have more technology. It's so illegal to put little kids in cages and sell them."

"Why?"

"Why which?"

"Why's it illegal?" What do they do with kids instead.

"Every kid has a family who wants to take care of them. Kids whose families all die can get a new family who wants to take care of them. So when everyone tells the government how they want the laws to be, they think 'I wouldn't want anyone to steal my kid and be mean to them to sell them to somebody else'. They think that even if they don't have a kid yet, because nobody wants anyone being mean to any kids who could have a family taking care of them instead."

"What do they do with their kids?"

"They make sure they have food and a place to sleep and clothes, and they teach them to talk and read and count, and they tell them stories and sing them songs and play with them, and help them pick a school and give them advice and watch them grow up into an adult."

None of that answers Eefa's real question of what terrible things they'd do to Eefa.

"Why?"

"...there are kinds of creatures that don't take care of their babies, like bugs. They just lay a bunch of eggs and leave. But people aren't like that, at least my species. We're a kind of creature that has to take care of our babies or they die. Anybody who has a baby and doesn't take care of it, doesn't have any grandchildren. And people's children are usually like them. That's how a species changes over a long enough time - the creatures that do a better job having and taking care of babies have more grandchildren, and whatever it was that made them better at that, their grandchildren will mostly have it too. And for millions of years, Amentans - that's my species, I'm not clear on what's going on with the people here - have been getting very good at wanting very much to have and take care of babies, and the Amentans who were the very best at that a long time ago are the ancestors of all of us alive today. And we all have the traits that make us want to take care of babies and see them grow up into adults who'll be good at taking care of babies themselves."

"All babies?"

"Most people feel more strongly about their own biological babies. But there are lots of people who would love to have a baby even if it wasn't their biological baby, so many that no baby on Amenta is ever without a family for lack of one that would love them."

Eefa is so skeptical about this!

"That's in the modern day. Things used to be worse in a bunch of ways. And sometimes kids do sort of get sold, if their parents do something bad enough that they can't be allowed to have a child any more, but they'd be sold to someone who wanted a child to adopt and raise, someone who wanted them to be okay, definitely never anybody who'd be just as happy to get them starving and filthy."

"I don't think those people were happy about me being dirty?"

"Well, the folks who were toting you didn't seem to think it'd affect their reception."

Nod.

"The next people might have wanted me clean like you do."

"If they'd been delivering you to Amentan parents they would have kept you clean the whole trip."

"Okay."

Eefa appears ambivalent about this.

"And fed you." Dish dish dish.

"Places that are clean usually do that." 

Eefa doesn't look enthused about this either.

Well, if she ever wants to talk about who had her before she can. Dish dish.

She does not seem to be interested in doing so at the moment.

Then Pelape is going to sit here doing the dishes till the head housekeeper wants her in the laundry room and then she's going to do that. Eefa can fold, at least the things that aren't too big for her to neatly fold.

Eefa has never folded laundry before and will need to be shown how.

Pelape starts to demonstrate but then the housekeeper directs her back to actually cleaning the laundry and demonstrates folding herself.

Eefa can learn from the housekeeper. It's more interesting than sorting utensils.

Purple work till dinner.

Eefa looks at dinner suspiciously.

It's some kind of meat and vegetables and a peanut stew. Pelape thinks it's pretty good.

"Not hungry?" she asks Eefa.

"Why are they feeding us twice?"

"I guess that's how often they eat around here. I'm used to three meals a day, personally, but two's what comes with the room."

"Why more than one." Eefa can basically survive off one meal the size they gave her this morning. Two is suspicious.

"It's more comfortable? I guess they're giving you a grownup portion size so maybe you don't need two meals especially if you're used to one, I'll eat yours if you don't want it."

"Can I eat yours?"

"Like you want to trade plates, or you changed your mind and actually you're really hungry?"

"Trade plates."

"Sure." Swap.

In that case Eefa will eat the food, putting what she doesn't want in her pockets.

"- Eefa, I did my best to clean your clothes but they're still clothes, that's not a good way to store snacks."

Eefa looks at Pelape but doesn't move to take the snacks out of her pockets.

"We can ask in the kitchens for snacks that can go in pockets, okay? But if you bring food like that into our room it's going to attract pests."

"I want it."

"You can eat it now, but -

- okay, I'm thinking of myself as taking care of you, and part of taking care of kids is making rules so they don't do things that'll harm them in ways that aren't obvious to kids, like by attracting pests. But if you don't want me taking care of you, then - bringing food into your own room you had to yourself could be between you and the Elysium staff, and I can get a separate room. Would you... rather I not try to take care of you?"

"Can your powers fight people?"

"I don't know."

"They can undo other locks?"

"Probably."

"Would like you to keep taking care of me."

"Okay. No pocket food like that. We can try to get pocket-y-er food from the kitchen when I do the dinner dishes." She touches Eefa's pocket and extracts the pocketed vegetables back onto the plate.

"Can I eat it now?"

"Yes."

In that case Eefa will eat as much as she can without vomiting. And need to walk sort of slowly for a bit to make sure of this.

Pelape eats her own meal. They can duck into the kitchen after to clean plates. Pelape asks about dry snackfood - she's seen plastic objects around, but no single-use ones - and gets a paper packet of peanuts and raisins. Eefa can put that in her pocket.

Eefa carefully inspects the packets for having been opened already.

It was never sealed to begin with, but it looks like it's the same amount of full as other packets of the same sort.

Hm. Have the peanuts been opened?

They're shelled but most of them are still in pairs.

She can save them for if she really needs something.

And when the dinner dishes are done they can go back to their room. Pelape doesn't feel like exploring the rest of the town she can see from the window till the people who were trying to sell Eefa have been and gone again. She combs her fingers through Eefa's hair. "Do you want me to tell you a story or anything?"

"A story is okay."

"Such enthusiasm." She has Michka Dances Through The City mostly memorized still from when it was Sofa's favorite, and she can try to narrate to compensate for the lack of the pictures; it's not like it scans or rhymes in the local language for that to make it clunky.

"Why's she dancing?"

"She likes to."

"Why?"

"I guess she wants to be a professional dancer one day. My little sister wants that."

"Because there are people who want her to dance?"

"Well, she certainly hopes so, if no one wants her to dance she can't make a living that way."

Oh, now it makes sense. Eefa nods.

Story thus related Pelape pulls out her pocket everything to see if she can take it apart and clean it and get it to boot again.

Eefa watches.

It doesn't work. She puts it back together and leaves it on the desk, sighing. Looks out the window.

"What's it do."

"Right now nothing, the maelstrom broke it. Used to be I'd use it to tell time, play music, take pictures, read articles, order food, check a map. - most of that wouldn't have worked here anyway, it needs the internet and I suspect they don't have one on this planet."

"Playing music sounds nice."

"It was. I'm not a great singer but I can sing a few things if you want."

Eefa looks at Pelape expectantly. 

"You could say 'yes please'."

"Yes please," she says, unfamiliar with the phrase.

Baaaaby. Pelape will sing to her.

Eefa is capable of smiling, it turns out.

Baaaaaaaaaby! She will dredge up all the songs she knows even if she has to mumble "something something" in place of lyrics; the songs are all in Anitami and it probably won't make a difference. Smiley baby.

Eefa, without realizing it, starts rocking to the beat of one of the songs.

Awwwwww~

She stops smiling and rocking when Pelape gets to a lullaby. 

"- don't like this one?"

"It's not nighttime." And even if it was Eefa doesn't want a song to make her sleep!

"...how'd you know it was a lullaby, all the songs I know are in Anitami and not the language we're speaking."

Eefa looks at Pelape suspiciously.

"It said to sleep?"

"...yes, but it said it in another language. I didn't expect you to understand, uh, any of the songs," thank goodness she doesn't know most of the lyrics to Springfriend Shimmy.

"Why not?"

"Because I didn't expect you to speak Anitami. I guess if the maelstrom let me speak the local language something may've given you Anitami but mostly I expect people to only understand languages they've heard a lot of in the past."

"Oh."

Eefa isn't like other people and now Pelape knows...

"Were you in the Maelstrom before like I was?"

She's definitely not answering that question.

Her call. Pelape goes back to looking out the window.

Eefa searches for a good place to hide the peanuts and raisins.

"...what are you doing?"

"Keeping my food safe."

"Desk drawer?" Pelape suggests, pulling it open.

"People know that there's one of those."

"...yes."

So Eefa will keep searching for a better spot.

"Who are you hiding it from?"

"Hungry people?"

"As long as I'm working here for the room, we get food every day. If I stop working for the room, we have to leave, so you wouldn't be able to get food out of a hiding place in the room."

Eefa is not sure whether Pelape is dumb or lying.

Maybe one of the floor boards is loose.

"The paper will probably keep bugs out, but I want you to store it somewhere rodents can't reach it. The desk drawer qualifies if we keep it closed. I can't think of another place in the room that does. Even under the floor."

"Rodents don't taste that bad."

"...I am willing to explain this more, but it's explaining, not negotiating. If you want me to take care of you, you will not store food in places where rodents can get it in our room."

Blink blink.

A glance around the room. 

"There?" she asks, pointing at a sconce with a light in it.

"Let me see if it gets hot, if it does it could cause a fire." She touches the sconce. "- huh, they have cool bulbs, I was not expecting that at the apparent tech level. Yeah, you can put the packet there."

And they can remove it later if they need more space. Now how can she get up there...

Pelape will put it up for her if she wants? Or pull over the chair.

Chair works.

Chair it is.

And put. She feels a sort of safer already, with something stashed away.

"Do you want to know more about the rodent thing or is it not important since you found a hiding place?"

Eefa shrugs.

Okay, if she's not interested they can cover it later.

The town outside is - interesting. She's spinning theories while she peoplewatches.

The area right outside of the hotel is certainly busy, almost market like, the merchants who visit the hotel acting as both buyers and sellers, mingling with the cityfolk. 

She might even recognize some of the merchants arriving now.

"The folks who had you before we escaped are coming. We should stay in our room, I think Saffron's probably serious about forbidding violence but there's no reason to try it."

There isn't enough room in the sconce for Eefa and under the bed is too obvious but she can stay out of sight of the window and go out it or the door if she needs to.

Pelape closes the curtain most of the way and only peeks through the corner to see what they're up to.

A few of the group split off and looking around at the various stalls but the leader who Pelape first talked to heads for the hotel.

She makes sure the room door is locked and that she knows where her stolen pistol is.

And then they can wait.

Around nightfall they can make a trip to the bathroom together in preparation for bedtime.

Someone from the caravan is already there and does not look happy about their presence. 

"Well, you two sure gave us the runaround."

Eefa steps back so Pelape is standing between her and the trader.

"...they got here first, let's come back in a few," Pelape says to Eefa, ushering her back out into the hall.

Sounds like a plan to Eefa.

Pelape waits for the amount of time it takes to comb out Eefa's hair and get it all clean again. It's a while, her hair is very thick.

Eefa can sit still for this and not complain since she doubts that would help anything.

For extra safety margin on the time she'll braid it too, though she doesn't have anything to tie the braids off with.

At least she's not cutting it.

She is not!

Okay, bathroom retry.

The bathroom still isn't exactly up to Amentan standards but it is empty this time.

She should talk to them about paying her to clean the bathroom since she's going to be doing it anyway.

And bedtime.

In the morning there are several familiar faces at breakfast.

Well, she and Eefa can sit away from them.

Eefa can eat so fast.

But not before one of her erstwhile captors comes sauntering up.

"We wasted a whole damn day looking for you, you thief."

"Not even bothering to defend yourself?" asks the man, now close enough Pelape and Eefa can smell the alcohol on his breath. 

Eefa is not igoing to stop eating but she is going to eat while holding her head up so she can see whether she needs to run.

"Saffron!" Pelape calls.

Saffron's not in the room, but one of the waiters says, "I'll go get her," and runs.

"Barry, you really shouldn't-"

"You shits are all too afraid to see what's ours than you don't get to share in the pay," And he makes to push Pelape out of the way and -

- suddenly a lot more people are standing up and glaring at Barry.

She takes the fall with a roll and has her hand on the pistol by the end of it, but doesn't draw.

Saffron comes in.

"Anybody care to tell me it's not what it looks like?" she asks the room.

"Uh, Barry was just leaving," suggests a brave friend of Barry's.

And what does Barry think about whether he was just leaving.

He's not so drunk that he's missing the number of people against him (nearly everyone) is greater than the number of people backing him up (zero).

He grunts and turns to leave.

Saffron sees him out of Elysium. The guards are not going to let him back in.

Eefa looks pretty scared by this turn of events.

Pelape gets up off the floor and sits back next to Eefa and hugs her.

Eefa doesn't really know what to do about this.

She doesn't have to do anything about it and if she continues not doing anything about it Pelape lets her go after a second and returns to her breakfast.