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Mary is in her room, reading the Bible. The Bible is super interesting. The Bible is so much more interesting than the pervasive wrong feeling in her head. Her assignment for her sub's Bible study group this week is practicing gratitude, and she's currently endeavoring to do so without lying to herself. She is grateful that she can get away with being alone when she reads the Bible. She is grateful that the Scripture is distracting. She is grateful that she might be able to get away with sneaking out to the library in a few days and reading something she hasn't read like twenty million fucking times okay this is against the spirit of the exercise. The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control...
He smiles. He has a very kind smile!
"Good!" he says.
The front door opens. Mary walks back into the kitchen and sets down her bags.
"Does, um...should you...with the baby..." she says, gesturing at the bags
"She can't understand you, idiot," John says pleasantly.
He starts pulling things out of the bags and laying them on the table in front of her. Formula! Diapers!
"For baby," he says. (He considers asking her if any of these things look familiar or if aliens have different diapers or whatever, but figures she doesn't have the vocabulary and decides against it).
...she manages to identify some formula and a bottle even though they are all alien and tentatively sets about mixing up a bottle.
"Go set up the spare room for her," says John.
Mary hesitates. "We should really tell Pastor Dan."
"It's getting late, we shouldn't bother him now. We can sleep on it and decide what to do in the morning. Now do as you're told."
Mary leaves. John watches Peka feed her baby.
"Do you want food?" he asks her.
When Mary gets back he has her heat up some leftover pulled pork from dinner.
He gets her silverware, and demonstrates how to use it in case she doesn't know.
He continues eyeing her while she eats.
"Are you tired?" he asks, then mimes sleeping.
"Baby tired?" Points at baby, mimes sleeping.
He walks over to the spare room and gestures for her to follow, then opens the door to show her the crib inside. Then he mimes putting the baby in the crib.
"Yes or no?" he says.
He leads her back to the kitchen and attempts to teach her more words (and provides her with better note-taking materials). More vocabulary, plus conjunctions and basic questions and that she should call him "sir".
He is extremely patient with her when she forgets words!
(She only needs to know enough English to interact with him and Mary, anyway. She'd need more if he were planning to let her leave, but.)
He attempts to teach her adjectives. For example, he shows her pictures of sunsets and models and similar and says "beautiful." Then he uses it in some sentences--"Peka is beautiful, Peka has beautiful hair, Peka has beautiful eyes."
