Having noted Deskyl's difficulty with the cutlery the day before, and wanting to avoid delaying their day even further with a messy lunch, Evelyn sets out a range of finger foods. She makes some sandwiches - peanut butter and jelly, as well as cream cheese - and cuts then into triangles alongside a little pile of Babybel cheeses. She also includes a platter of carrot and cucumber sticks with some colorful grape tomatoes; many of the children she takes in shun vegetables, used to a diet of fast food, but she has a feeling Deskyl won't be one of them. 

She is not! Of the offered foods, she's most hesitant of the Babybel, actually, but takes one anyway, and a pb&j and a healthy portion of veggies, coming to an entirely reasonable amount of food for a child her size who, uh, hasn't, recently missed a meal.

Well, she's still eating better than a lot of kids on their first morning waking up in a foster home. ...Or afternoon, rather. Evelyn is going to keep an eye on it, of course, but she won't worry too much unless it starts to look like a trend. 

She reads her newspaper while Deskyl eats - no need to make the poor girl feel scrutinized and self-conscious, even if Evelyn is, in fact, watching her closely. She's so hard to read. What must she be thinking, having been sent to a strange woman's house in a strange city with no one able to explain why? 

Once Deskyl is finished eating, she brings over the printed pictures - she added one of the car, since she happened to have an actual photo of her car on her desktop photo app - and endeavors, through pointing at them and making various gestures and even stooping as far as to make 'vroom vroom' noises, to explain that they're going to get back in the car and drive to Walmart and buy Deskyl some of her own clothes. 

It turns out to be pretty hard to surreptitiously watch Deskyl; the first few times Evelyn so much as thinks about her too hard she looks up from her meal. She eventually shrugs and ignores her, though, to focus on her food.

She takes the explanation of their impending trip amiably enough, nodding along as she understands various parts. When Evelyn is done, she thinks for a moment, taps a blank spot on one of the sheets of paper, mimes writing something with her outstretched finger, and makes a questioning noise.

What a weirdly observant child. She doesn't give off the vibes of tense hypervigilance that you get with children from violent homes, but there's definitely - something - about her. Evelyn can't put her finger on it yet. 

Deskyl can have a pencil to write with, sure, and a few sheets of blank paper too. Evelyn watches curiously to see what she'll do next. 

Well, first she struggles with the pencil for a minute before she remembers how to hold it, and then she writes out three words in large, atrocious handwriting and an entirely unfamiliar alphabet, one to a line. That done, she points to the first one and declares it to be behna, nodding as she does so. The second one is eerh, and gets a headshake. The third is eloh, and is accompanied by a broad gesture at the room. She goes back to the first, taps her chest, "behna," and gestures to Evelyn.

Uh. Wow. Evelyn is embarrassed by the fact that she's apparently terrible at this. 

'Behna' is 'yes', she thinks, and maybe Deskyl is asking her for its translation in English, though she's not 100% sure of that. "Yes," she says, nodding emphatically, and writes the word down on the second sheet of paper, and "No," accompanied by a headshake.

She's...not entirely sure what the gesture-at-the-room word is. Probably not 'home'; Deskyl almost certainly doesn't feel at home here, not yet. (And hopefully won't have to, because Social Services will find her parents and sort all of this out.)

She shrugs, then gestures around the room. "Here?" 

She diligently writes these down next to their respective words, in the same unfamiliar glyphs, and then folds the paper up (sliding it of the edge of the table rather than trying to get a grip on the edge) and - doesn't have pockets. Well, she'll just hold onto it, then. And she'll rifle through the original papers for the picture of the Walmart, to tap on.

"Walmart," Evelyn enunciates clearly for her, and then "Car," for the picture of her car, and "road" while running her finger along the main avenue marked on the map. Then she holds up a hand. "And wait there one second, all right?" 

It's not a cold day outside, but it's cloudy, and the side advantage of giving Deskyl a light jacket is that she'll have something with pockets. Evelyn digs in her ottoman spare clothes storage and retrieves a zip--up sweatshirt with large deep pockets on each side. It's clearly meant to be a boy's sweatshirt, based on the football theme, but for now it's what she has in Deskyl's size. She brings it over, shows Deskyl the pockets, and then sets it on the table for her. 

...On reflection, you know what would be an excellent idea? Taking a photograph of Deskyl's writing. She's not sure exactly how to go about searching for alphabets on the Internet to identify it, but she can at least email the pictures to her supervising social worker, since Deskyl was brought in by the overnight duty team and hasn't been properly assigned a social worker of her own.

She gestures for Deskyl to wait again, and goes to track down her digital camera. She attempts to mime-request that Deskyl lay the paper flat on the kitchen table so she can photograph it clearly. 

By the time she gets back, Deskyl has the sweatshirt on and the paper tucked away as expected; it takes a few seconds for her to figure out what Evelyn is asking for, but she takes it back out when she does, after the first paper she gets out turns out to be the map printout.

Pictures! Well, on her camera at least. Evelyn is not the most technically savvy person in the world, and it feels like it inevitably takes her half an hour to get a batch of pictures successfully off the memory card. She'll save that for later, once it's not delaying their shopping trip even later and risking a collision with the after-school rush. 

It's still nearly 2:45 pm by the time she ushers Deskyl out to the car. With the sun up, Deskyl will be able to get a much better view of the neighborhood, if she wants. It's a nice enough suburb; some of the nearby houses and lawns are more decrepit than Evelyn's, but the house next door is actually much more nicely manicured.

An elderly woman is out front, watering her flowers; she waves cheerily to Evelyn. 

She looks around a little, but stays reasonably close on the way to the car.

Evelyn ushers Deskyl into the backseat (it's generally recommended that way for foster children, even though she would probably let her own child ride in the front at Deskyl's age and size) and they can head out!

It's a somewhat longer drive to Walmart. They pass through the downtown strip again, which is in some ways fancier with its neon signs and tall glass-fronted buildings, but also much dirtier. It's already crowded with afternoon foot traffic, including a cluster of young adults who have very obviously been day drinking; they're being very loud, but not actually causing property damage, and the police are clearly too busy with other things to send them home when they're not actually brandishing visible open alcohol bottles.

Evelyn keeps her attention mostly on the road, but watches in the rearview mirror for any reaction from Deskyl. It's common for neglected children to have had bad experiences with drunk adults. 

She seems more confused by them than anything else, though also a bit annoyed. She's also gawking quite a lot at the scenery in general.

It's clearly very unfamiliar and strange for her. Evelyn tries to catch her eye in the rearview mirror and share a sympathetic smile. 

They pass through the downtown area and out the other side, back to wide open streets, this time winding their way up into the hills. It's about another ten minutes before they pull in the very large parking lot of a very large big-box Walmart. (Everything is bigger in Nevada, Evelyn remembers her neighbor commenting after moving from San Francisco.) 

She parks - it's busy, with lots of to-and-fro of shopping carts between the store and the parked cars, but fortunately not so packed that she can't find a reasonably close parking spot with some looking around - and opens the back door for Deskyl. 

She's still gawking, now much less at the building and more at the people, and seems a bit nervous, sticking closer to Evelyn as they head in.

At least she seems unlikely to wander off! And they can hopefully avoid a battle over buying all the candy in the place. Which Evelyn never gives into, her philosophy of boundary-setting is that you need to start out how you intend to continue, but she's looked after a lot of kids who were bought treats to avert grocery store tantrums and have thus had the behavior thoroughly encouraged. 

It had better be an efficient trip, Evelyn decides, Deskyl looks pretty overwhelmed and they're not even inside yet. She'll resist the temptation to pause in the home decor or the toys section, it's not like they have any shortage of toys and knickknacks at home, and make a beeline straight for the clothing section, pointing out the cluster of racks that has items in her size. 

Does Deskyl seem inclined to pick out clothes herself, or does she need more encouragement? 

She's a little distracted by all the people, but settles in to the task reasonably quickly, favoring sturdy clothes, insofar as Walmart offers such a thing, with bright colors and simple patterns or no patterns at all, and pockets in the pants.

Walmart definitely has a maximum sturdiness level available, but she can at least pick clothes that aren't frilly or made of visibly delicate fabrics. Bright colors are easy to find, and she can find pants with pockets (though many in the girls' section have fake pockets.) 

Evelyn decides to skip the shoe section for today - Deskyl's current shoes are in acceptable condition, and it's not an emergency for her to only have one pair - but, since Deskyl seems to be coping reasonably, they can detour to an adjacent section. Does Deskyl want a satchel or handbag, so she doesn't have to fit everything she wants to carry around in her pockets? 

Sounds good! She'll actually take a little backpack-style one, if that's all right?

Of course! She can definitely have a little backpack. And then they'll take the shopping cart of clothes to the checkout line. 

There is, unfortunately, a huge checkout line. And Evelyn knows a lot of people in town; she's been living here since Jeremy was a baby. The older woman ahead of her in line, Iris, used to work at the same office back when she was in HR and not yet a foster carer. It's been a few months since they caught up properly, and Iris lights up when she sees her and starts chatting. 

Evelyn doesn't want to be rude, but she isn't exactly in the mood for chitchat; she's underslept and starting to feel it, and she wants to keep most of her attention on Deskyl. She introduces Deskyl, and then, as the line shuffles forward, she'll nod and smile and make listening noises while Iris complains about how her legs have been bothering her and she can't see the specialist doctor for another three months. 

Deskyl meanders up the side of Evelyn's cart as the women talk - she can't exactly ask about what she wants to do, and she doesn't want to startle them, especially not in an already-noisy crowd like this - and then waits until Iris is particularly distracted to not-quite-pat her leg.

Iris is very occupied in discussion - now gossiping about her downstairs neighbor's new boyfriend - and doesn't seem to immediately notice the pat, or its effects on her, but she does notice that Deskyl is hovering close to her. "Oh, hello, dear." She ruffles Deskyl's hair. 

(Evelyn winces - a lot of foster kids hate casual touch from strangers, which is honestly pretty understandable of them, Evelyn remembers being a non-foster kid and hating it - but she doesn't want to make a fuss of it here and now unless Deskyl actually seems bothered.)