"Ostriches kick," she says agreeably. "Eggs are very nice but there's more variety in meat, but of course not every meat tastes good in sausage."

"Yeah, duck sausage is less weird. Still not usual but not weird."

"Ostrich egg is convenient, though. The eggs are very big."

"That seems... less convenient."

"How would it be less convenient? There's more food in one package."

"Well, yeah, so if you can't eat that much at once the rest goes bad."

"Hard-boiled egg doesn't go bad very fast."

"I guess if you eat it every day and like them boiled it works."

"I keep it in the freezer if it's going to go bad otherwise."

"You can freeze eggs? I didn't think that would work."

"...It works for me, but I've been known to have more permissive tastes than some people," she allows. "I don't know how well it works in the general case."

"Well, this is all tasty," she says. Omf nomf breastfeeding is hungry work.

"Thanks! I don't cook much but I can throw things together."

"Me too pretty much."

Two o'clock comes around. Her appointment is, it turns out, a remote one; Peressa sits her in a very comfy chair in front of her computer-thing and opens a zoom-like video chatting app and puts up subtitles and routes them through her machine translation app. 

"This is pretty neat."

"Which thing?"

"The translation doing subtitles on the video call."

"Oh! Yeah, it's an accessibility feature. Some people turn it off because they've had too many teenage boys turning every other word into 'fart' or something."

"Pfft."

Okay who is this appointment with.

The window flickers on as the social worker logs on. 

"Hi! I have been told that you're apparently from an alternate universe and there's linguistic evidence to back it up. My superiors are still assessing the evidence, but at least for the moment, we'll assume it's true. How are you doing?"

"Surprisingly okay, I guess? I'm going to miss people but at least my baby is here."

"What are the circumstances under which you came to have a baby? Please understand, I don't say this out of any concern that you might be an unfit caretaker, but most people who have children as young as you have some kind of problem, and if you have one of those problems, I want to help you."

"I don't have the problem anymore, he's back in my world with everyone else I've ever met, but how long do you people wait?"

"Twenties or thirties, usually. In your universe, do people not get fitted with contraceptive implants as a matter of course?"