"I'm Deskyl. I not... many... words." She gives him a somewhat self-deprecating smile. "Evelyn good!"

"Awwww." Jeremy sits down, still smiling at her. "- And I heard you had no words when you came here. You're learning very fast! ....Mom, what's for dinner, I'm starving." 

Evelyn rolls her eyes, but in a fond way. "Jeremy, you're perfectly capable of finding leftovers in the fridge. Have you just been sitting here waiting?" 

"I'm nostalgic for the homecooked meals of my childhood, sue me. What are you making?" 

It's kind of distracting trying to guess how much of the random family banter Deskyl can follow based on the vocabulary Evelyn knows was on her worksheets. "...Mac & cheese. But I'll do the kind with ricotta and onions, just for you, it only takes a bit longer." 

Jeremy nods. "You continue to earn the 'Mom of the Year' mug, I won't take it back just yet." 

He turns back to Deskyl, speaking more slowly. "You like living here?" 

Nod! "Is... not same, Echitov, but not bad."

"I imagine it's not the same. ...Echitov? Is that a city?"

It sounds sort of vaguely Russian, maybe? He doesn't think Deskyl has a Russian accent but he's bad at accents, and Russia is definitely somewhere that has white people who don't speak English. 

"Dunno word. Evelyn?"

....Oh no this is abruptly a very weird conversation, isn't it. In hindsight this is so predictable. At least it's not as awkward to have weird conversations with her son, but - Evelyn honestly has very little idea what he's going to think of the whole thing. Not that it really matters. Jeremy has thought all sorts of things about his mother over the years, and it's not like it's going to threaten her fostering career if he thinks she's crazy over this. 

"Deskyl isn't able to explain very well yet," she says matter-of-factly, "but she did a little demo with two globes and lamps as suns, and I believe she thinks she's from a different planet than this one." 

.....Yeah, okay, Jeremy in fact does not have the slightest idea what to do with that. Especially given that Mom is saying it in the casual-but-serious kind of voice instead of the -casual-and-not-winking-but-sort-of-metaphorically-winking voice. Mom does try very hard to take kids seriously and show that she's listening and trying to understand them, and sometimes Jeremy feels like that makes her a little bit gullible, but this is on a WHOLE OTHER LEVEL. 

Um. Um??? UM????????

"...That's neat," he says, smiling at Deskyl again. 

You know what, she's not going to fight with him about it. What else can they talk about. "You..." she gestures vaguely at his backpack.

(Jeremy isn't definitely not believing Deskyl. He's just tired because he had a stupid 8 am class this morning, and hungry, and he was prepared for normal foster kid stuff but absolutely not prepared for...that...or for whatever Mom is currently trying to signal to him with her eyebrows.) 

"I go to college now!" he says brightly. "It's school - did Mom tell you about school? - for once you're my age and done with normal school, if you want to keep learning things for your career." He honestly has no idea if he's going too hard on talking like he would to a four-year-old and being horribly patronizing, or not doing it enough and using words Deskyl doesn't know yet. 

"School! I know word, I not know... not-Echitov thing. Things." (She's not following much, but it doesn't work so well to let that stop her, so she won't. She'll pick some of it up, at least.)

"Was there school in - on? - Echitov? What was it like?" 

"My place, big person live this," she gestures at the room in general, "kid live... other place, kid place, bed and food and school and play. Other thing, not kid not big person, in kid place, do food and..." she pulls out one of her worksheets to check. "teach, and other thing. I do small school, worksheets, sleep day."

Jeremy nods along, attentively. "Not kid not - the word is 'adult', or 'grownup', I think - hmm. Animals? Like - pets, dogs or cats? Or farm animals like cows or sheep?" Those are easy words, right, that you'd learn early on, kids' books love having animals and farms. 

"No, animal other other thing. Hm, word, this and this and this?" She points to the refrigerator and the stove and the toaster oven.

"Appliances?" No, that sounds too specific. "Machines? Machines means, like, those and also cars and computers." 

"Beh. -Yeah. Other thing, machine, not person, do person things."

"Ohhhh. Like a robot? Or an android, maybe, I'm not sure." ...That wasn't a word definition, was it. "Uh, it's gonna be a bit to dinner, so - I can find you a video of a robot and you can tell me if it's that?" 

(This is fine. Jeremy is too tired to think about whether Mom's foster kid might somehow be an alien who looks human, but he's capable of having a conversation.) 

"Dunno word, robot," she shrugs. "Video, yeah."

They can go watch some robot Youtube videos, then! ...The first few that come up are of giant rampaging robots, which seems like probably not the thing Deskyl is pointing at, so Jeremy refines the search a bit and gets metallic humanoid robots. 

Yep, those are robots! "Other robot do other thing, this robot do person thing," she adds. "Robot do... a'mal? thing, not shape person."

Frown. "Oh. - it's Ah-nih-mal. It sounds like there are robots that do - farming work? - and robots that do housework? Like...cleaning? Cooking?"