:Thank you for coming out! And for helping us get set up here: 

Melody smiles and shows Zare out. 

Off Zare goes.

Dree swings by about half an hour later to see if they need anything. She has brought them a loaner laptop to share and can set them up with a language learning program! It's got a lot of settings, and while it's not originally intended for people who speak alien languages, if you turn on enough settings intended for preliterate children and learners who only speak obscure dialects of half-dead languages you can make it kind of work for that.

Leareth is instantly captivated! He absorbs Dree's explanation with rapt attention and, once he's figured out how to use the mouse interface - the keyboard is less useful while he doesn't know the letters yet - he dives into exploring all of the various programs on the laptop, and makes a surprising amount of progress via pure trial and error. 

He is basically completely ignoring Dree. 

It's really cute when Leareth gets so interested in something; it doesn't happen that often, still.

Melody herself is way too sleep deprived to try to learn a new language right now. She's on her eighth or ninth cup of tea and she's still yawning - and fidgeting incessantly, it's harder to avoid doing that when she's tired. 

:We could maybe finish sorting out getting other clothes?: she offers. :Oh, and - um - I'm not actually sure this is something you could help with even in theory, but I am starting to worry that I'll get incredibly sleep deprived if Leareth keeps having trouble at night. I think it - mattered a lot, actually, that Quendi need much less sleep than humans, and that more than one person was around: 

"Your clothes are already on the way," says Dree, "they'll be delivered like the groceries were sometime tomorrow. What is it that Leareth needs when he has trouble at night?"

:Er, mainly someone to gently wake him when he's having a nightmare, and stay in the room until he's okay being alone, and - remind him where he is and what's going on and things, I could probably turn that into a script. And it would be really nice if there were literally anyone here he would accept hugs from, but he's prickly about being touched, and I'm not a very huggy sort of person which makes that not work: Sigh. :All of which seems pretty hard to get a stranger to do! He - probably needs less complicated support during the day, but I'm not sure I could handle being nocturnal: 

"- I mean, there are people who can be hired to do that, but they are expensive, especially if you need them overnight, yes. It might have to wait till you can set up a practice, or get a loan against your expectation of doing that."

Sigh. :Figured as much, and that's leaving aside that Leareth has to trust them, which seems tricky. Er, is there any chance your world has decent drugs that work as sleep aids without having awkward side effects or being addictive?: 

"Nothing that works perfectly on everyone but there are some things to try. I can ask a pharmacist for you." She grabs her phone to email a pharmacist.

:I would really appreciate that! Our world just doesn't really have good options, so it seems worth trying. In the meantime, I - will do my best to handle it like I handled having babies, though I'm really too old for that now: 

"Did you not have any coparents?"

:Hmm? Er, no, we weren't desperately poor or anything but we couldn't afford a wet nurse, and my parents weren't really around to help: Because her husband drank and gambled away half of her stipend from the House of Healing. :Some husbands are better with the very little ones, but mine was really only interested once they could talk: At which point he was a surprisingly sweet father to their children, but given how often he was drunk, she would have been loathe to trust him with changing nappies anyway. 

"That sounds rough, I'm sorry. - pharmacist is sending over some first-line options, they'll be here in the next four hours."

Melody ducks her head. :Thank you. And, that's amazing! I don't even have to go anywhere for it?:  

She had it better than most women in Valdemar, really; she never worried for her children's next meal, or their new winter clothing. The Quendi would have been horrified, of course, but their lives were different in so many ways. Relatedly, she never told any of them about it. 

"- having pharmacy delivery is arguably even more important than having grocery delivery, sometimes medications are extremely urgent! These aren't but the deliverypeople still exist even when no one's had their refrigerator break and ruin all their insulin."

:Their what? Er, never mind if you don't feel like getting into it right now: 

"Insulin is a hormone some people have trouble producing correctly and need to take exogenously instead."

Those are a lot of concepts that are foreign and new to Melody! She can't quite follow it but it sounds incredible. Shavri would be ecstatic and have so many questions. 

:Wow. Anyway, I think that's all? I don't want to keep you too late: 

"- this is my job, if you need me for something please ask sooner than later."

Nod. :I appreciate it. I'm sure more things will come up and I won't hesitate to Mindspeak you, but - you've been wonderful, so far. I can't believe how smooth everything has been: 

"I'm glad! I'll drop by tomorrow morning if I don't hear from you before then?"

:Works for me!: 

Leareth is still enthralled with the laptop. Melody makes another sandwich and puts it next to him, but other than that she figures she can leave him to it until the pharmacy deliveryperson gets here. Maybe she can take a NAP in the living room. 

She's not normally good at napping in the daytime, but it's been a really exhausting morning and Melody passes out within five minutes. 

The language program teaches him basic vocabulary (dog, cat, bird; man, woman, girl, boy; computer, paper, pen, pencil; nyoom, walk, ride, drive; see, hear, touch, taste...) and simple clause construction and productive affixes for Kayshu.

A number of the new words are for things he wouldn't have recognized a day ago! Most of them he's encountered since, but all of the new concepts are kind of buzzing around in his head. 

Leareth had really not expected that the random other inhabited world Vanyel had found would be substantially higher tech, or just how exciting this would be. (If he had been thinking through all of the ramifications of not having gods, it might have been obvious, but Leareth is not as good at thinking through all the ramifications of things in general as he was once.) 

He manages almost three hours straight of language practice before ending up exhausted enough that he's considering lying down on the dining room floor. Instead of doing this, he drags his blanket behind him to the living room and takes the other sofa. 

Melody half-opens her eyes, decides this is probably fine - the pharmacy deliverperson will probably knock, right? - and goes back to sleep.