It's a very different sort of place!

It's dark, or at least a medium yellow-tinged dimness, the half of the streetlamps that are still working sending out a hazy orangey light into the fog. She's on the sidewalk next to a street sign, an asphalt street splaying out nearby. Neon signs rear up above glass storefronts on both sides of the road.

There aren't many people around, in downtown Reno at 2 am on a Tuesday morning. But there's still some street traffic, and - unless she moves to hide in the meantime - someone will notice her within 10 minutes. 

Oh, cars! She doesn't usually see cars this close up! And she definitely hasn't seen ones with wheels before...

- no, she shouldn't get distracted, she should figure out where she is and what she should do about it. She's in... some sort of city? She's seen pictures of the cities on her planet, and this doesn't look like any of them; Echitov is mixed human and ozottil, and the ozot have their own aesthetic that's nothing like this. So, off-planet, then, probably. Should she expect to be able to get home? ...well, really, is there a reason to? She'll miss the other kids, but it's not like she was going to stay in the long run; she's left a little earlier than she was planning, but if things work out here there's no real reason to go back. She'll trust the Force about it.

She is going to need food and a bed and things, though. Which means finding someone in charge to ask about it. It's really too bad she hasn't figured out how to get the Force to help her talk yet, but she can probably manage without it. If they're patient with her, at least. She examines her prospects and picks a direction to start walking in, looking for a sufficiently official-looking building.

In that case, she'll make it as far as the (reasonably official-looking) fire station, the one next to the bridge over the river. 

There's a police car parked at the curb beside it. The young, bored, female police officer on night duty is sharing a cigarette and some gossip with the young, bored, male firefighter also on night duty. 

- both faces turn toward the teenag– no, not a teenager, younger than that - the child apparently walking toward them, alone and oddly-dressed, but walking with purpose. 

Heloise steps away from her definitely-not-boyfriend. "Hey. Are you all right?" 

This looks and feels like a pretty official-type person! "Incomprehensible?" she asks, trying to enunciate carefully but still only managing it with a bit of a lisp.

That's definitely not English! It's...probably not Spanish, either, Heloise is fairly sure she would recognize Spanish even though she doesn't exactly speak it, but - well, she did memorize how to say 'do you understand me?' in Spanish and she might as well try. 

She takes another step toward the child. "Me entiendes?" she says, as gently as she can manage. 

"Incomprehensibible. ...Incomprehensible. Incomprehensible?" Everybody knows Basic, right? Where is she?

Apparently somewhere far enough away that they don't speak Basic! The young uniformed woman is looking at her with expectant and hopeful blankness. 

...Heloise sighs, and falls back on mime, since this young girl clearly doesn't speak the language. She seems to be trying to understand, though.

Will enough emphatic gesturing get her to follow Heloise to the firestation back entrance, so she can bring the kid to the break room and sit her down and offer her a glass of water while she tries to figure out who to call? 

She visibly considers her options, once she's got the idea, but shrugs and nods and follows her in.

Great. Heloise will sit the mysterious kid down on the somewhat decrepit breakroom sofa, and offer her a plastic cup of water from the water cooler, and then...look up some numbers on her phone to call. 

....Oh, good, it turns out she does have the night support worker's direct phone number, this would take forever if she had to call the general help number for the state social services and then wait on hold. 

"- Hey. I - sorry, it's Heloise. Reno police department. I have a young girl here," pause, static, "- no, I'm sorry, I don't know her name. As far as I know she doesn't have ID on her." (Heloise is very much not in the mood to try to pat down a ten-year-old for hidden ID.) "I just need to find her a place to sleep for tonight– yes, and ideally for the next few days until we can find her family -" 

Longer pause. 

"- Great. Thank you." 

She looks over at the kid, trying to smile. "Good news!" She says it slowly and carefully, in case the girl speaks a bit of English but not well. "It sounds like there's a family who can take you for tonight, and the next few days." 

"Incomprehensible," she agrees levelly. "Incomprehensible?" she gestures at the door to the garage; it seems like she wants to go look at the trucks.

...Uh, sure? The foster parent who is apparently willing to take this child for tonight (and maybe the next several weeks) won't be here for at least fifteen minutes, and in the meantime Heloise's main focus is to avoid any dramatic arguments. 

She does, once she's on her feet, pause briefly and point at her own chest. "Heloise," she says, and then looks expectantly at the mysterious child. 

"Deskyl," she replies carefully, patting her own chest.

And then she goes to look at the trucks! She's hesitant to touch them at first, and will refrain if Heloise seems to want her to, but she wants to examine them closely all over. This will easily keep her occupied for fifteen minutes.

Heloise is not even slightly going to stop her! That's adorable. 

And then, more like eighteen minutes later - there was an accident on the usual bridge and no one was hurt but she had to check, and then awkwardly detour around the scene - Evelyn Steel pulls into the parking lot, and heads into the fire station to meet her new charge. 

It takes her a couple of minutes to track them down in the garage, at which point she approaches slowly, not making any sudden movements. The amount of information she got from the night duty worker was barely more than zero, but 'kid who doesn't speak English, wandering the streets of downtown Reno alone at 2 am' doesn't suggest someone totally un-traumatized, and scared kids are jumpy. 

"Hi," she says, bobbing her head and smiling but not too widely. She points at herself. "Evelyn. ...Deskyl, right?" 

She really doesn't look traumatized, though she's surprisingly alert for the time of day, and the casual confidence she carries herself with is a little odd in its own way. "Mn, Deskyl," she nods. "Incomprehensible incomprehensible?" she enunciates, not very successfully but with clear effort put in. Maybe this one will speak Basic.

Huh. A kid who's used to being on her own, Evelyn suspects. And not used to early bedtimes on school nights. The combination isn't that unusual by itself, there are plenty of (relatively)-benignly neglected kids with absentee parents who wouldn't actually stop them from wandering downtown at night, but that doesn't explain the not-speaking-English. 

She shakes her head, apologetic. "I'm sorry. No English at all?" Though the reaction so far is making her suspect that the kid doesn't even recognize English, which is even odder if she's been here for any length of time at all. 

She's trying not to be obvious about it and make the poor kid feel inspected under a microscope, but she's looking closely at her. You can tell a lot about a kid's background, and their parents, from how they dress and their haircut and how clean and generally well-groomed they look. 

"Mn," she offers, in the negative.

She doesn't object to being looked at, but watches closely in return. Her clothes aren't too odd, simple durable things being the practical choice to give to children everywhere, though the details are a little strange - the shirt has a standing collar and sleeves slightly longer than you'd expect to see, the pocket openings on her pants have a sharp bend rather than a curve to them, the seams on her shoes are in the wrong places, and there's a subtle impression that the fabric might be unfamiliar, too, though it's hard to be sure just by looking at it. Deskyl herself seems to be in good shape - well fed, with long hair recently-enough washed and combed and no particular sign of injury or illness. She could use a bath, maybe, but the dirtiness is more suggestive of an afternoon in the woods than any number of days wandering around a city. In fact, if Evelyn has a sharp enough nose, she might notice that Deskyl still smells of the farm, just a little.

Evelyn doesn't have quite that sharp of a nose, and is very much a city person - to her, a nice walk beside the river in town is "outdoorsy" enough for anyone. 

The young girl's appearance leaves her with more questions than answers, honestly. The clothing might be foreign, but surely this child didn't just get on a plane by herself and fly over from overseas? Maybe she flew in with her parents and they misplaced her, but in that case she's bizarrely calm about being lost in a foreign city. 

Evelyn has cared for children before who didn't have a lot of English, but never someone who didn't even know the words for 'yes' and 'no.' She'll have to call her supervising social worker in the morning and ask if they have any advice - or better yet, community resources - on language lessons, but for now the thing the poor girl needs most is to get to BED. At least it sounds like they won't have to worry about school for the next couple of days. 

She talks to her anyway, because it feels too weird and awkward not to, though she's also going to use some exaggerated gestures to coax Deskyl to follow her out to the parking lot. "You're going to be staying in my house for a few nights. We're a bit out in the sticks, I'm afraid, but it's a nice big place, and I don't have any other children with me right now, so you'll have your own bedroom with an en-suite. It's about a quarter-hour drive, assuming we don't run into another traffic accident. ...By the way, you're in Reno, Nevada." She's not sure if any one mentioned it so far, and if the kid did fly out here with family and get lost, she might recognize the name of their intended destination. 

Deskyl gives the truck a little pat before following, but does so amiably enough, and hums an acknowledgement to Evelyn's words rather than putting in the effort to speak again.

Then she can get in Evelyn's station wagon for the drive to her temporary 'home'! She's big enough not to need the booster seat from the very well-stocked trunk, though Evelyn still sits her in the back seat. She thinks kids often prefer it, when they're just getting to know her, it's less up-close-and-personal. 

It's a rather ancient Subaru, with a few scratches and dents on the exterior (none the result of an accident, Evelyn is a very careful driver, but she's had some rather angry children over the years.) The inside, however, is immaculate; she ends up dealing with enough spills and various bodily fluids that she's made a habit of having it professionally cleaned at the end of every placement, and there are seat covers. They have a flowery pattern, which usually leads to no end of ribbing from the under-ten boys who think it's hilariously "cringe" and "old lady."  

"The seatbelts are a bit confusing - here, let me show you." Rather than do Deskyl's seatbelt for her and risk invading her personal space, Evelyn flips on the inside light and demonstrates on the other back seat how to pull out the seatbelt through a slit in the seat covers, and plug the metal tongue into its socket. 

The way she's watching suggests that she's not familiar with this procedure, but she follows along well enough and doesn't seem bothered by the idea.

Then they can drive! 

They spend a few minutes traversing downtown, with tall glass-fronted buildings on either side of the street and a few cars and late-night partiers out and about. There isn't a lot of downtown Reno, though, and after they cross the river, they're soon in low-density residential suburbs. There are trees, and lawns. It's much cleaner, and all of the streetlamps actually work. 

Evelyn's house is a fairly new construction, about a decade old, identical in layout to the houses on either side but painted in a cheery sunflower-yellow. There's a large plastic play structure on the front lawn, toys for various ages scattered around it. 

She parks in the driveway (the garage was relegated to bonus storage space years ago) and ushers Deskyl to her front door, waving her hand to trigger the motion-sensor that flicks on the porch light. The front-hall interior has an elderly welcome mat, its nap almost worn away in the center. There's also a wooden bench (with a flip-up top and storage space inside, it's where she keeps the spare shoes and some of the sports equipment), and a coat tree and shoe-rack and a closet full of currently-unnecessary spare raincoats and cold weather gear, thrifted over the years and suitable to fit children of various sizes. A sample of the children-of-various-sizes appear in a row of photographs above the closet. 

Evelyn sits down to untie her shoes and replace them with slippers, then stands so she can open the bench and offer Deskyl a pair that look like they should more or less fit. 

"It's just you and me tonight," she says brightly. "I'm divorced, and my adult son Jeremy is at college in town now, though I'm sure he'll visit us tomorrow for a homecooked meal. Are you hungry?" She's trying to mime everything as well, but 'hungry?' is a lot easier to convey via gesture, by rubbing her belly and then pretending to nom on an invisible sandwich, than the concept of divorce. 

She is hungry! Or at least nods at the gesture. (It's a little early for dinner, according to her internal clock, but getting to be that time.) Aside from that she's more attentive to Evelyn than curious about the house; she does look around while the woman is changing her shoes but looks back as soon as she stands up again, and switches to the slippers when they're offered, sitting down herself to take off her slip-on sneaker-type shoes and then tucking them away beside Evelyn's.

Then they can head down the hall to the kitchen! It's newly remodeled, with a marble-topped island equipped with bar stools. There's a truly enormous fridge, special-ordered because their local Walmart didn't stock the model Evelyn had found in the catalogue and set her heart on. It has a built-in ice machine, a freezer the size of a small boat, and enough room to stock the heroic quantities of food you need to feed three picky eaters mid-growth-spurt while keeping the grocery shopping down to once a week. (There's also a chest freezer in the garage, kept stocked with both healthy home-cooked meals divided up into single-serving Tupperwares, and a wide selection of ready-meals for the kids who are suspicious of anything that doesn't come with a brightly-colored supermarket label proclaiming exactly what it is.) 

It's nearly 2:30 am, though, and Evelyn is doing her best not to visibly yawn but she'd rather keep this simple. Here's the toaster, and the pre-sliced bread in the freezer, and the fridge-door shelf with the array of jams and other condiments. Deskyl can choose between ice water from the dispenser, apple juice, and milk. 

(Evelyn will have a glass of water, incidentally demonstrating how the dispenser works, and valiantly resist the urge for a snack. She's on a diet again. It feels like she spends about half of her time on a diet, and the other half reversing any progress by stress-eating during the most intense foster placements.) 

Something about the offered food seems to confuse her, and she looks around as if for another person and makes a querying noise.

Evelyn blinks at her, unsure who or what she's looking for. She'll...just go flick on the living room light as well, and gesture to show that there's no one around. 

...Maybe Deskyl doesn't know how to use an American toaster? Are toasters different overseas? Evelyn hasn't been much of a traveler. She can smile at Deskyl and do the put-bread-in-toaster for her.