:You don't have to, I can just wash the ones I'm already wearing. Or borrow, if you'll allow me. I don't want to impose on you anymore than I already have.:

:It's fine, it's Walmart.: There's a feeling of cheapness and dubious quality that floats over in the Telepathy mindvoice.

Honestly, she would prefer to save for good quality clothes rather than get something lower quality and cheap, but it's not really her place to complain about the fact that her host is buying her clothes in the first place. It's really very generous of her.

It's weird how they have the exact same article of clothing in multiples and with different sizes. Maybe people really like wearing the same thing here? Different people wearing the same thing, or a person buying several so they can wear it every day?

She looks through some of the dresses and feels the fabric. Some of the fabrics feel unfamiliar to her. And they're all very colorful.

She finds a blue short sleeved maxi dress that she likes. Is there a place where she can put it on? Actually, she ought to find out how much it costs, first. That really should have been the first thing she looked out for.

:How much does this dress cost?:

She looks at the price tag. :It's twenty nine dollars and ninety nine cents. Basically thirty dollars.:

:Mm, and how much is that? Like...what can that get you at the market, how many days of work for a laborer is it...?:

:US minimum wage is seven dollars twenty five cents per hour.:

So this dress costs about four and a quarter hours of work. Ostensibly. Apparently.

It would have taken her more than double that to sew it. Granted, she's bad at sewing, but still.

Assuming she had wool already prepared, bought from the market, it would have taken her something like three dozen gross hours to spin the thread, then a gross hours to weave enough cloth to make the dress. Four yards, she thinks would have been enough. That's not counting buying the indigo and dyeing the fabric, as well as buying the buttons.

She thinks about her current situation. She just appeared here in this country. She has no family here, She has no friends here. She has no connections here. She has no documentation, no legal identity, no property. She is nothing. And here she is, having clothes bought for her.

Right, of course. At least she can take cold comfort in the fact that, if she is being dressed nicely, she won't be put to work on a farm or a mine.

Maybe she'll end up becoming a prostitute.

:Are you okay?:

:Is slavery legal here?:

:No, it hasn't been since 1863.:

:And what year is it now?:

:2025.:

:How would you define slavery? How is slavery defined?:

:Well, I don't have a dictionary to hand...I would say it's when you coerce a person to work for you?:

:How would you define a 'person'? How is a 'person' defined?:

:I'm...confused why you're asking me these questions? But, I would say a person is someone who can think and feel and has desires?:

:Would you consider me to be a person?:

:Yes.:

:So, it would be prohibited to enslave me?:

:I'm not...no one here is planning to enslave you! Or, well...:

:So putting people to work for little to no pay is still legal if you're a prisoner, here, and you're like, illegally here. Because you don't have a legal identity or legal trace. Though they'll just deport you...though I have no idea where they'll deport you to, if they do, because like, you're from a different world and all. But I'm not trying to enslave you and I'm definitely not planning on reporting you to the police.:

Right. Well, of course she's going to say she isn't, because now she can threaten to report her if she steps out of line and be taken to who knows where. To be put in a mine, probably. Well, if she has the ability to choose her servile vocation, she will happily choose domestic service over that. Even prostitution.

:I see, thank you.: