Putting the bread in the toaster does seem to de-confuse her, though not necessarily in a positive direction. She observes the situation. somewhat incredulously, rather than making any move to investigate the contents of the refrigerator.

Well, Evelyn isn't going to make any progress on figuring out what she's so weirded out about until she speaks at least a little bit of English! She would wonder if Deskyl just isn't used to being allowed to do things herself rather than waiting for an adult, but that really doesn't square with her independent manner.

Three minutes later, she presents Deskyl with two slices of perfectly-done toast on a plastic plate, and a butter knife for condiment-spreading; the child doesn't seem like the type so far to either accidentally drop or deliberately throw dishes, but Evelyn is still going to wait a little while before pulling out the ceramic dishware. 

This part at least doesn't seem to be weird for her. She takes the plate and sits at the table, and attempts to en-condiment her toast.

'Attempts' is the correct word; her fine motor skills are atrocious, and the unfamiliar flatware isn't helping. She is mostly getting the butter onto the bread, but only mostly, and the bread is taking some damage in the process. She's taking it slowly and methodically, though, and seems much less frustrated by the process than you'd expect from an eleven-year-old, especially a hungry eleven-year-old at 2:30am after a stressful day.

Huh. It's not the first time Evelyn has seen a child struggle with cutlery - she's cared for neglected kids who had never used it, as well as a developmentally disabled young boy - but this seems different. It's such a contrast, the obvious struggle with a basic physical task combined with Deskyl's calm, systematic manner. 

Evelyn doesn't step in to help; without a shared language, she can't negotiate it politely, and most eleven-year-olds are going to be touchy about a random strange grownup taking their plate away from them to butter their toast for them. She'll leave Deskyl to it, in case the poor girl is self-conscious (though she didn't seem to be, especially, she's so composed), and take the opportunity to go poke through the storage room upstairs and find spare pajamas of more or less the right size. She would prefer something neutral, since she has no idea of Deskyl's likes or dislikes, but she doesn't have infinite options. Disney princess-themed it will have to be. They can go shopping tomorrow so Deskyl can pick out some things to her liking. 

(She's musing to herself about the mysterious fine motor skills issue, and what she can do to at least mitigate it while they figure out what's going on. She's kind of worried. What if it's some kind of illness? Anyway, in the meantime she can maybe have a Google hunt for special-order flatware that's easier to grip, and she should swing by the Goodwill and look for a butter bell, so the butter can live outside the fridge and be softer and easier to spread...) 

It doesn't take long to put fresh sheets on the bed in what she mentally refers to as the Third Bedroom. It's the one with a neutral color scheme, whereas the other two are respectively decorated in pink and blue. She remembers thinking she was very clever at the time, reasoning that the foster care agency would either send her a boy or a girl and she'd be equipped in either case. She felt somewhat less clever two years later when she ended up with three brothers. The Third Bedroom is the one she usually reserves for older children; it has a window that opens fully, definitely not safe for a clever-fingered toddler, but it's also the largest room, big enough for a queen bed, a double-width dresser, and a desk for homework, and of course it's the room with the en-suite, a boon for teenagers who like their long showers. (The shampoo and conditioner and bodywash are all travel-sized, a concession Evelyn made after remarking that some teenagers will also go through absurd quantities of shampoo if they have a full size bottle.) 

Evelyn puts out a spare toothbrush and towels in the bathroom, and sets some paper and felt pens on the desk - not for now, of course, but in case Deskyl wakes up earlier than Evelyn and doesn't immediately come looking for her, which she might not, she seems so at ease in her independence and it's not like Evelyn can tell her that it's fine to wake her. 

She's back downstairs by the time Deskyl is finishing her toast, and sits down to wait for her, smiling. 

Deskyl is indeed finishing up her toast by the time Evelyn gets back; she managed to keep the mess mostly to the plate and even put a little jam on it. She looks up when she comes in, and makes an acknowledging noise before going back to eating, and when she's done she takes her plate and knife and puts them in the sink, and then considers the butter and jam and takes them to the refrigerator.

She doesn't actually seem tired, at this juncture, but does seem to be waiting for Evelyn to indicate what should happen next.

This kid is a ridiculous night owl, apparently. ...Oh, or jet-lagged, that would actually explain it even more plausibly. 

She smiles gratefully at Deskyl for putting the condiments back - what a polite and organized kid! - and then ushers her up the stairs to show her the bedroom. There are cheerful spring-green sheets and a darker green duvet cover, rather clashing with the Disney princess pajamas. 

Obviously Evelyn can't explain anything, but she can show Deskyl around. There's a bookshelf of YA fiction, which presumably Deskyl cannot read, and a box of Lego, and some stuffed animals in the top left drawer of the otherwise-empty dresser. Here's how to work the blinds, she'll close them now for the night. She'll demonstrate turning the bedside lamp on and off, and then doing the same with the overhead light, just in case light switches are different wherever Deskyl is from. (Electrical outlets definitely are, right? She read about that in a travel magazine.) 

Oh, and Deskyl should definitely brush her teeth. Evelyn will mime teeth-brushing and show her where the toothpaste is. 

It takes a moment for her to get the idea, when Evelyn mimes toothbrushing, and when it does she makes a face and a disappointed noise. She goes ahead and tries it, though - the motor skill problem manifests here, too, but she can rest the toothbrush on the edge of the sink and prop the toothpaste tube up over it and manage that way, and she has an easier time getting the toothbrush into her mouth - whereupon she makes a disgusted face, but soldiers on regardless, brushing quickly so she can wash the taste out afterward as soon as possible.

Oh dear. Deskyl doesn't seem horribly distressed about it for now, but Evelyn is just going to sneak out and replace the travel-size standard mint toothpaste with a couple of different (full size) tubes of children's toothpaste, Silly Strawberry and cookie dough. Which Evelyn personally thinks are disgusting, but - well, at the very least she doesn't think this solemn, polite girl will squirt the entire tube of toothpaste all over the mirror or anything. 

(And she should maybe think about picking up an electric toothbrush for Deskyl, who seemed kind of unimpressed by the regular toothbrush. She seems capable of using it, but an electric toothbrush it would still probably be easier on her fine motor skills.) 

When Deskyl is done, Evelyn will make a vague gesture around the room and a questioning face - does Deskyl seem to need anything else? 

Evelyn can probably pick up on the fact that Deskyl is somewhat discontent with the pajamas, though she's not nearly as demonstrative about it as she's been about other things - she's not trying to communicate it, whereas in contrast it seems like she has been intentionally communicating in the other cases so far. Other than that - she does seem lingeringly upset, just a little, and a bit overwhelmed, but she doesn't appear to have any specific complaints.

Well, and no wonder! It's got to be a pretty upsetting situation! 

Evelyn's instincts are telling her that this wouldn't be the best of times to push and ask a lot of questions even if they had a language in common, and definitely isn't the moment to offer a cuddle. This seems like a case where the best solution for an overwhelmed kid is leaving her alone and giving her some space. She will take a moment to pad out into the hallway, gesturing for Deskyl to follow her, and show Deskyl where her own bedroom is, in case anything comes up in the middle of the night.

And then she heads to bed herself. 

Okay.

So.

She's stranded on an uncontacted world? She doesn't want to be stranded on an uncontacted world!

She flops on the bed to have emotions about it for a while - it's not even just that it's an uncontacted world, it's that it's a low-tech one; she doesn't - didn't - mind the farm but she was really looking forward to getting to go out into the world and learn how all the cool stuff works and is made and everything. And now that's not going to happen. They have some tech, but it's just not the same, knowing that there's cooler stuff out there. And nevermind that she'll never get to be a Sith now! She was supposed to be lucky, as a Force-sensitive, and this is not it.

She cries herself out eventually, and she still isn't really tired when she does, nor does she really feel like being cooped up alone in a room. She goes to explore the house, moving as quietly as she can.

She can do that unimpeded! The upstairs has enough going on to keep her busy for a while. 

For one, there are EVEN MORE pictures. There are SO MANY. Dozens of different children, mostly candid photographs. Many of them are in a backyard, presumably this house's backyard, which apparently has a tire swing hanging from a sturdy rope looped around the branch of an enormous maple tree. There's also a shed, open in one picture, revealing a glimpse of quite a lot of larger toys in storage, bikes and soccer net and an inflatable paddling pool; some photos instead show the shed locked but some subset of the toys out and in use. There's a garden patch but in most of the pictures it looks rather worse for wear. 

Deskyl's room is at the back of the house. Evelyn's room, the other master bedroom with an en-suite, is at the front of the house overlooking the driveway and lawn, and her door is firmly shut. 

There are two more smaller rooms laid out side by side, currently unoccupied with the doors ajar, the beds stripped. They're both much smaller, and might once have been a single room that was subdivided. If Deskyl turns on the lights, she'll notice that one is painted a lovely azure blue and the other is pale pink. Each has room for a single bed against one wall (arranged so the beds are on opposite walls, after Evelyn learned the hard way that some kids would try to annoy their sibling or fellow foster child by kicking the shared wall), a bookshelf, and a toybox. The pink room also has a wardrobe, white with some flowers stamped on as a decoration; the blue room has a chest of drawers decorated with rocketship stickers, and glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling as well as a solar system mobile. The bookshelves have books, thinner and with more pictures than the books that came with Deskyl's assigned room, and also lots of stuffed animals and, for the pink room, some rather worse-for-wear Barbies sharing a plastic bucket. The blue room has more Lego and a remote-controlled toy car. The chest of drawers and the wardrobe are both empty. Both rooms have windows, but much smaller than Deskyl's and very high up. 

On the side closest to Deskyl's room is a hallway closet, narrow but deep. It contains an elderly vacuum cleaner, an ironing board, some spare waterproof mattress covers, and for some inexplicable reason a glittery adult-sized mermaid costume hanging from a hanger. 

On the side nearest Evelyn's room, there's another large bathroom, equipped with a huge jacuzzi bathtub - with a grab-bar, not that that's ever specifically been useful - and a shower curtain supported by a curved stainless-steel curtain rod bolted to the ceiling. The curtain is plastic, printed with a colorful map with all the continents and countries labeled (in English, of course.) 

She looks through the pictures; she doesn't recognize most of the toys, but there's enough examples of them in use for her to get the general idea. She's not entirely sure what to make of the fact that the pictures are of so many different kids; they obviously aren't still here, but if this is just a temporary stop, why take pictures at all? It's a little creepy, she thinks, and moves on.

The pink room is mostly uninteresting, though she pages through a couple of the picture books before leaving. The blue room, she backs out of as soon as she realizes what its decor is meant to be, taking a moment in the hall to let her heart rate go back down before approaching again to turn its light off and shut its door. The closet gets only a cursory look; she lingers longer in the bathroom, memorizing the details of the map on the curtain.

She doesn't want to go downstairs, when she's done with that; she wants to work some more on her Force language effect. She is, for better or for worse, here now, and she thinks she might be able to get it doing proper translation, not just assistance with a language she already knows. She's still at it - lying on the made bed, apparently staring idly at the ceiling - when the sun comes up.

Evelyn isn't about to bother her immediately at dawn.

For one thing, she had a late night too. Not that she sleeps in much, she's always been an early riser, but it's going to be a much better start to her day if she can have her morning coffee in peace and quiet. And, of course, if Deskyl is jet-lagged - she didn't even look slightly sleepy when Evelyn went to bed, and may not have gone to sleep right away - she's likely to sleep very late. Since they're not worrying about school today, that's fine. 

...By 10 am Evelyn is feeling slightly antsy. She doesn't want to rush Deskyl if the girl is having a nice lie-in, but she did have plans to take her out shopping today, and the Walmart starts getting busier by midday. 

She will go upstairs and very tentatively knock on Deskyl's door, hopefully not loudly enough to disturb her if she's in fact still asleep. 

Yep, cozy and asleep under the covers.

Evelyn will veeeeeeeery caaaarefully nudge the door open a crack (she keeps the hinges oiled for exactly this reason) to glance in and make sure this isn't the suspicious kind of silence where actually the entire room was somehow trashed while she slept. Not that she thinks this is likely with Deskyl but she’s learned the hard way that initial impressions will be misleading.

….Not on this particular occasion, though. Sleeping Deskyl is adorable, awwww.

Evelyn creeps quietly downstairs and settles in to catch up on some online trainings, still on alert for any sound from the bedroom upstairs.

Left to her own devices, Deskyl will sleep for another four hours.

By 2 pm, Evelyn has eaten lunch and completely caught up on online training - and gotten a call from Jeremy cancelling on dinner tonight - and is trying not to get too lost in the shopping-online-for-interior-decor rabbithole. She's also starting to worry that, perhaps, Deskyl may not have gone to sleep right away, and may instead have been getting up to some kind of very sneaky and silent mischief. 

She'll slip upstairs whenever she hears the door open and/or any movement in Deskyl's bedroom (immediately over the kitchen table, where she's currently working.) 

Deskyl doesn't make any particular effort to be quiet when she gets up, but uses the bathroom and pokes through the closet in search of clothes that might fit her rather than leaving the room immediately.

There's unfortunately less of a selection than Evelyn would have preferred to have ready, since she had extremely little warning about Deskyl and didn't actually know before leaving the house what size to prepare for her. There are a couple of pairs of stretchy jogging pants, since those have a forgiving fit, and some T-shirts with unfamiliar logos on them, and an unopened pack of underwear that are hopefully at all vaguely the right size. There's a dressing gown.

Deskyl's clothes from yesterday are also still there. (They weren't incredibly filthy or anything, and Evelyn is reluctant to wash kids' clothes without their cooperation in the process unless they're a genuine health hazard; it's a very personal thing, it can feel invasive, and sometimes the smell of home is an important source of comfort.) 

Evelyn will also be up the stairs within thirty seconds! She knocks on Deskyl's door, waits a bit, and nudges it ajar without actually looking through it. "Good morning!" (Not that Deskyl will presumably understand this at all.) 

She vocables back something that's presumably 'good morning' in her native language, contemplating the jogging pants and how easy they may or may not be to get on.

Evelyn is still feeling reluctant to invade Deskyl's personal space, when it still doesn't feel like she's established much of a connection or trust (the language barrier is such a challenge.) Anyway, the clothes should fit fine for now.

Instead, she cheerfully announces - though presumably Deskyl won't understand - that she'll be downstairs. "I'll put out a spread for breakfast," she adds brightly. "Or should I say lunch - you must be starving. Come on down whenever you're ready." 

"Mrrp?" She opens the door partway to see if that improves the communication situation any.

Evelyn smiles warmly at her, points down at the stairs, and mimes a walking motion with her fingers, then picking up an invisible bowl and eating from it. "Come down when you're dressed," point at the clothes, mime pulling pants on, "and we'll have something to eat." She's trying not to feel self-conscious and ridiculous about the exaggerated miming. 

(Communicating to Deskyl that they're going to get back in the car and head to Walmart for some clothes shopping is going to be another challenge. Fortunately, Evelyn has now had several peaceful hours at her old desktop computer to consider her options, and settled on printing out a map with the route highlighted and a couple of pictures that came up when she Google Image'd 'Walmart'.) 

"Beh," she nods, and goes back to what she was doing.

She makes her way downstairs in a reasonable amount of time, in leggings and Disney princess shirt, and heads for the kitchen.