She calls her mother.

“Mum! Hi!”

“Lucy! Are you alright? I was told your backlash wasn’t dangerous but I don’t know how okay that leaves you—”

“I’m doing really amazingly better than expected because of my TA—her name is Cara—awakening at the same time and then we’re compatible. You can get guided during hellweek, it’s just, the backlash keeps getting piled on without any power use. But this arrangement is really efficient!”

“Good. That’s good. Not that—I mean, I’m sure you’d think it was worth it anyway, but—”

“Yeah. Although I currently have no idea what my power’s going to end up being. And I’m trying not to think about it too much, because I don’t want to be even more impatient for the end of the week than necessary.”

Lavinia laughs. “Of course not.”

“I’m really okay, mom, even when my backlash is relatively high it only does terrifyingly impaired cognition and not horrible suffering!”

“I…suppose that’s better.”

“I’m not sure if it is or not, in the long run, but it is making this week specifically less hellish.”

“I am glad of that part, anyway.”

“Yeah. I’m actually going to call Wilbur now, okay?”

“Sure. Thanks for checking in.”

“You’re welcome. Love you bye.”

She waits until there's a lull in the voices to return.

...Ahhh, even just getting closer to them feels nice. "It's really neat how I can sense you at a distance! What'd I miss?" 

“Haru reminded me that calling my family was an option.”

Snuggly Cara! Some tension visibly leaves her body as she comes into contact with Lucy. "Haru is smart like that! Did I miss my chance to say hi through you? ....do you mind if I ask you to say hi for me, I love doing this but I know some people find it very odd."

“You are too late to say hi to my mum on that particular call but you can say hi to my twin when I call him and I will text Mum about you.”

She squeezes Lucy happily. "Eeee yay! And ooooh, your brother is a twin? ...fraternal or trans?"

“Fraternal, or I would have included him when I—wait, no, you weren’t here when I commented on my albinism matching Mum. He has a normal skin tone and hair color and either he is cis or I categorically don’t have permission to out him.”

She giggles. "I would not want to know your brother's secret gender if he did not also want this! I just was trying to distinguish between 'identical twin who is transmasc' and 'not that'. And oooh, that sounds neat. Is it common, for albinism to be passed down like that?"

“I mean, it is genetic. Being albino is more likely if you have an albino parent, but still pretty unlikely unless you live somewhere with a bit of a boxed-in gene pool.”

Oh! Probably she should have known that it was genetic. Ah well. 

She nods. "Did you want to call your brother before we started reddening your hair? Or do you want me to do that while you're on the phone?"

“I’ll call him first, there’s no real hurry on the hair. Oh, but is it okay if I take a picture of you to send them? From the neck up,” she adds, mostly to Haru, “so it doesn’t matter exactly how much clothing we are or aren’t wearing.”

"Yeah, of course!" She giggles. "It does seem likely they would prefer not to be getting topless photos of me."

"Am I also in the photo shoot or do we assume if they want to know what I look like they can find me online?"

“You can be in the photoshoot if you want to but I have made both of them read your blog.”

-she does not say anything but her eyebrows do go so high, hearing that.

Hm? That’s a face to have made.

"The blog has more pictures of the kitty than of me but it at least means they know where to find the links."

Cara does not elaborate on her facial expression choices!

"I also have pictures posted publicly, if you want to link those, but also we should take one of the 3 of us! It'd be cute."

“Saying there are fewer pictures of you than of Cricket isn’t saying much! I recognized you when we met! …Can we do a picture of the three of us that doesn’t display more underwear than we want, without it being just three heads weirdly in the bottom of the frame.”

"I probably have the nicest phone camera. We could all get under a quilt together?"

“I…guess since we’re on a couch and not in bed that’s not worse…”

She sighs dramatically. "For you, Lucy, I would be willing to make the grave sacrifice of putting on clothes before we take a photo for your family."

She looks at Haru. "I do think a quilt is maybe not exactly the right vibe for this? Like - we could do that, but it'd be a nicer picture if we didn't, and it won't take very long."

"I can also put on a shirt."

“That works for me, then. But my shirt at least is coming back off before we do the hair dying, because otherwise, staining.”

"Yeah, I will not wearing be the dress longer than necessary! I love being able to notice when I need to use the bathroom too much for that."