Fere tries to punch the magic snake in its weirdly reflective face. It turns out this doesn’t work at all but solves the majority of her problems anyway.
Somewhere other than Sesat, a very skinny person appears. She has facial tattoos, what might once have passed for a short dress, and a spectacularly awful haircut.
"You might want to make one up for paperwork purposes."
"Oh, anything where they have you fill out forms. ID card type things, doctor's appointments."
"No problem. I'll meet you at the airport, shall I, since nobody else will be able to talk to you!"
"I'm very short, barely five feet* tall, and I'm dark, and I'll wear, let's see, the blue and yellow dashiki, it'll stand out in most crowds."
*yes, omniglots get units of measurement, or at least this one does
Fere's kind of inclined to think that's excessively self-deprecating, lots of people aren't any taller than that, but she guesses rich people usually are. "Five feet tall, dark, wearing blue and yellow. And if I ask if it's you no one else is going to say yes. I'm - I have tattoos on my face and I mostly don't have hair and I'm taller than you but not a lot."
"Wow, on your face? I'll spot you right away, wow."
"All right, see you soon!"
Jackson hangs up for her and pockets the phone and smiles at her in a vaguely encouraging way.
Her hosts are basically no help apart from watching TV and fixing meals and having incomprehensible English conversations around her.
Do they mind if she eats some of the meals? Haha just kidding she doesn't care if they mind. (She cares but she's a little too starving for it to impact her actions.)
Yep, they're putting some on a separate plate without having to be asked and everything.
The food is pretty tasty, too, if you like high calorie density and salt and sugar. Jackson is eating about four times as much as Brian even though Brian's nearly twice his size.
That seems like a sign that Jackson is the one with the real power here, not that she hadn't already noticed. Weird how fat he isn't but maybe he works hard. And Brian's not actually getting stinted, clearly. Jackson seems like a pretty cool master-pretending-to-be-a-servant.
Fere still doesn't really feel like she can have opinions about the food beyond that it's edible and not rotten. She does kind of try to look grateful and also lick her plate lest she miss a single crumb.
From the looks they give her that may not be polite in their culture. Jackson will tug her plate away from her and wash the dishes and Brian will offer her an ice cream bar.
...Huh. She's come to a point where she's not too desperate to have opinions about the quality of the food, and her opinion is that this ice cream bar is amazing and more of it needs to be in her mouth right nowwww okay maybe not so much of it at once. She takes little bites for the second half, grinning hugely.
It's surprising how cold it is but on reflection that shouldn't be surprising given the ice water.
...does she want a second ice cream bar, they have a huge Costco box of them in the freezer.
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