She is standing on the linoleum floor of a Midwest suburban house. Two men, one with long braided hair and one with a crew cut, are in the kitchen before her, the braided one washing the dishes and the other drying and putting away, and they don't notice her immediately because their backs are turned.

Aaaaaaa? Aaaaaaaaa! They must be the fair folk because she got here by magic and they're in a weird place!

She looks for a door and considers sprinting out of it, but... she doesn't know where she is, she can't pass for anything other than a slave...

"I'm sorry for being here, something sent me by magic," she says, looking down and raising her hands.

They both look over their shoulders and blink at her uncomprehendingly. The crew cut one says something in a language she doesn't recognize.

Welp. She's really far away. She doesn't answer since it obviously wouldn't help.

They try a few more sentences, between them, muttering to each other in asides.

She starts very slowly moving toward the door.

They don't stop her. Crew Cut is watching her quizzically while Braid pokes a mysterious rectangular device.

None of that makes any sense!

She checks what’s through the door. Just in case it’s worse than this.

Boxy hedges. A driveway with an SUV in it. A street with a Prius going from one end to the other and then signaling a left turn. Trees.

Probably not worse than anywhere else. She runs. She has no idea where she's going but maybe she can find a place to hide or a place that seems like it'd be hard to force her out of.

There is an alarmed, questioning shout from behind her.

She has the sick sensation of being sure she's made a mistake and also sure it's too late to fix it. Well, she's probably committed to dying on her feet, at this point, she doesn't think she can pass running away off as a good faith attempt to follow orders, and anyway it's not like she had any way to know what they'd do if she stayed.

Although it's really not obvious where else she can go. Mayyyyybe she can stop and convince them that waiting for them to object to her moving toward the door was sort of like waiting for permission?

After a few more seconds she stops and turns around and deliberately doesn't get into a fighting stance.

Braid has stuck his head out of the door and is looking at her with immense confusion.

He holds up his rectangle and looks at it while aiming it and his face at her, like he's looking through it at her, though it's completely opaque.

Fere has completely given up on expecting to understand how people interact with objects here. (It has yet to occur to her that this should affect her expectations about hiding places, fights, and social interactions.)

Confusion... doesn't seem as bad as anger?

He pokes the rectangle several times and then puts it back in his pocket and blinks at her. Crew Cut emerges from the house and puts an arm around Braid's shoulders and stares at her in also-confusion. They speak to each other in the language she doesn't know.

Then a nonvoice pops into her head. [Hello?]

Aaaaaaaaaa are they reading her mind? That would suck, most people would want to kill her slowly if they could read her mind.

Maybe she has to try to answer, though, in which case maybe she’s not screwed yet.

[I'm sorry! I think someone sent me here by magic! I didn't mean to!]

[Cool, they didn't seem to think that you were breaking into their house but it's good to be sure. Who'd be sending you places with magic?]

[I don't know. I'm sorry. Maybe it was whoever sent the magic snake but maybe it wasn't, I'm sorry, I don't know anything.] There is something intensely violating about having to try to make her thoughts sound adequately deferential but so far she's mostly succeeding.

[Magic snake? Now that's bizarre. - Jackson, that's the sub, he says you can go back in and sit down, he thinks you look pretty freaked out and he wants to get you a glass of water.]

...Well, when Jackson gets her a glass of water she'll know which one is the sub and maybe be able to guess how you can tell. She'll go in and sit down. (On the floor because the furniture is confusing and also she's not sure if they actually mean to let her use it.)

[Yes, ma'am.]

Jackson turns out to be the braided one. He looks surprised about the choice to sit on the floor but gives her the glass of water anyway. It's got ice in it.

[Where were you before you got magicked to his house?]

Fere does not know what these cold cubes are! She has seen small amounts of snow and frost but not this.

[Near some new construction? In Sesat?]

[Where's Sesat, I haven't heard of it.]

[Uh... east of Niazon - no, wait, west of Niazon. Or maybe north. Near, uh... the ocean? And Azan and Iral?]

She knows precisely where she was relative to Azan and is not going to say so.

[What ocean? Are those - cities, provinces - do they have other names in other languages, I'm cheating at not speaking your language with the telepathy thing -]

[Countries? The ocean, the one with... fish... and salt? I don’t speak any other languages, I'm sorry.]

She sips warily at the ice water.

It's cold.

[I don't know any countries under those names. Do you know which continent?]

[I didn’t know there were multiple continents, I'm sorry.]

[Okay. Well, I have no idea how I'd go about getting you home unless you're about to tell me that in spite of all that you can pinpoint Sesat on a map, but Jackson says he and Brian, his dom, can put you up for the night, at least.]

[...My lords are very generous.]

[Your who? Are these people I could look up to figure out where you were?]

[...I'm so sorry, I don’t know the proper titles for you, I'm sorry, I don’t mean any insult, I'm sorry.]

[Ma'am is all right - though my name's Isabella and in this culture that's the more normal thing to use - and your hosts over there are Jackson, who I know from school, and Brian. I guess you can call Brian 'sir' if you want but our language doesn't actually have a great term of address for male subs, that's one of the reasons we're sliding into names for everybody.]

[Oh. Am I also allowed to have a name?]

She realizes too late that it’s possible they couldn’t otherwise recognize her as a slave, would care, and will be able to guess from that question, but maybe at least one of those things isn’t true!

[...yes, everyone here is allowed to have a name. Should I stop assuming you want to go home?]

[...I wouldn’t ask you to trouble yourself to arrange it. It’s not like I'd know if I like this place better yet, I just got here, but it wouldn’t surprise me. And you can call me Fere.]

[Nice to meet you, Fere. Welcome to America.]

[Never heard of it.]

[Yeah, you don't seem to be from a place that is really hopping with cosmopolitanism. It's a big country, covers a big coast to coast swath of a continent.]

[Wow. Uh, and what would I do here if I stay?]

[No idea, I'm going to look into refugee programs and so on for you.]

[...You’re very generous? I can work on a farm if it’s the same here as it is in Sesat but I don’t think anything else is the same so far.]

[I don't know if it's the same but if there's no available refugee program it might be the best you can do, it's something people manage without documentation allowing them to live in the States. There should be something for you if you got here via magical accident, though, I'll check.]

[Thank you.]

She’s putting less effort into seeming deferential now. It seems like they’ve decided she’s on a level with Jackson, who seems to be a free person who works as a servant. And there’s only one servant and Brian also works. And they can ask Isabella for favors on no notice.

[You said it was a magic snake? And you have no idea who did it so you might have just been some kind of, uh, test subject?]

[Yeah. It had this weird face, you could see yourself in it like water. And then when it touched me I was here. I don't know where it came from, it just appeared out of nowhere.]

[Weird. I guess a mage could turn into a weird snake with a reflective face before teleporting people but I have no concept of what would motivate one to do so.]

[I wouldn't know, I never even saw magic before.]

[What do they do about magic kids in Sesat?]

[...I don’t know? I never heard of any magic kids there.]

[Huh. But you did, like, know magic existed.]

[I guess? People say the fair folk are magic but I never saw any of you until just now and this isn't really how stories about them go but obviously now I'm in a weird magic place with weird magic people so I guess the stories were sort of true enough?]

[...we're human beings, but you sound like your education has not been very forthcoming about some things.]

[I told you I don't know anything! Sorry. I'm sorry.]

[It's okay. - Jackson says you're sitting on the floor and wants to make sure you know you're allowed on the chairs but he also says you might just be self-conscious about not having bathed in a while and recommends the shower, are you used to indoor plumbing?]

[...What's indoor plumbing?]

[Knobs you twiddle to make water come out into a particular room of the house wherein you can then wash.]

[Oh, wow, cool! I never even heard of that before. Thanks?]

[Jackson's going to show you how it works and point at the soap and stuff. I can't see what you're seeing but if you have questions about things I can make educated guesses.]

[Thanks.]

Jackson shows Fere into the tiled bathroom, turns on the water, gets it to a reasonable warm temperature for her, points at a bar of soap, and ducks out.

Fere doesn’t know how to thank him but she smiles. (Obviously no one else is going to thank a servant for doing his job.) Some time later she wanders out very thoroughly clean and wrapped in a towel, having hand-washed what she was wearing before and left it to dry.

Her scars are actually largely covered up by the towel but it's slightly more possible to catch a little bit of a whip scar peeking out over the towel now. (And she has a couple of old cuts on one forearm that are pretty faded and one on her foot that's not visible when she's standing, if anyone is looking really closely.)

Jackson has in the meanwhile scared up a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt that will approximately fit her; they are draped over the back of a chair and he points them out when she emerges from his position of kneeling on the floor near Brian and being scritched with his head in Brian's lap.

Whoa, are those for her? That can’t be right, can it? Things make no sense here. Maybe it’s right.

[...Do you know if the clothes are for me?]

[- he says yeah and he can throw your stuff in the washing machine too if you want.]

[...I... washed it...? In the shower? What’s a washing machine?]

She takes the clothes back to the bathroom to change.

[It's a machine that washes clothes. I don't know if it'd be much of an improvement over using a bar of soap and washing by hand but it's what we usually do, it's less work and it can do large batches all at once.]

[...Cool!]

[Yup. But if yours are already hanging dry probably you don't need Jackson to do that right now.]

[Yeah. Thanks, though. So do you work for Brian too or what?]

She reappears in the clothes they lent her.

[I've never actually met Brian. Jackson and I know each other from school.]

Brian is petting Jackson almost like he is a dog. Pet pet pet.

That seems better than disfiguring and whipping him!

[Oh, okay. Well, thank you and you can tell Jackson thanks for me if you want. Maybe ask him how to not piss Brian off too bad?]

[...is Brian spooking you? I can probably get you a hotel room if he - is Jackson okay -]

[Jackson doesn't look hurt at all, it looks like Brian likes him! And he hasn't seemed angry at me either. I'm just really liking how nobody is getting beaten right now and want to keep it that way.]

[Do people do that in front of their houseguests where you're from??]

[...I mean it depends? Are you saying I can count on not being beaten because I'm a guest, or Jackson can count on not being beaten as long as someone is visiting, or...?]

[...I think I must be very confused about what kind of assumptions you're coming in with but you can count on not being beaten because you're not Brian's sub nor evidently about to ask to hook up with him and the two of them almost certainly confine themselves to the bedroom, without uninvolved witnesses like yourself, for whatever intimate activities they enjoy, not that which ones those might be are any of my business.]

[...I didn't ask about sex? I'm not surprised they're having sex, though, Brian seems to really like him. I meant... the thing where... you piss people off and so they beat you? And you don't enjoy it? Because if you enjoyed it they'd do something else? "Beat" isn't another way of saying "sex", it's the thing that ends with bruises!]

[...I do not expect either of them to beat you. If Brian beats Jackson, which, again, would be none of my business, it would almost certainly be because Jackson likes it and they both get off on it.]

[I sure haven’t heard of that! Maybe it’s a fair folk thing! But where I come from it is my fucking business if someone who helped me is in trouble!]

[Right, if Jackson looks unhappy, like he's not delighted with the whole arrangement, that would be cause for concern. But it is most probable that if you hear something along the lines of Brian hitting him they are both all in on doing that for fun.]

[...Okay. Weird fair folk thing. Got it.]

[We are human beings but it sounds like you're from a very foreign culture.]

[...I never heard of a human being that could talk in someone’s head before but I guess you’re right. Can I do that?]

[How old are you?]

[Uhhh... probably... like... eighteen? I think.]

[Then no, unless you might be off by several years.]

[I might be off by a year? Maybe two.]

[You'd have to be like twelve. Any older than that, if the last eclipse didn't get you it's too late.]

[...Okay. That sucks.]

[Magic's very rare, if you lived in a small enough town it could be nobody'd had any there for generations.]

[I... moved to the capital of Sesat and still didn’t see any magic? Maybe just nobody did it in front of me.]

Whatever. She’s going to flop on some soft-looking furniture and stare at the ceiling like she can intimidate it into explaining everything.

[How many people live there?]

The ceiling has lights recessed into it, and a ceiling fan.

[Uh, like... a lot of people, so many I don’t know all their names and I bet the ones whose names I know don’t know everyone else's names between them all, and it smells bad? And then there’s also slaves on top of that in case you want to count them too.] And if she’s super lucky Isabella will be really offended about that.

[I have absolutely no idea where on Earth there's a civilization that's like you describe, it sounds pretty outlandish. Slavery is incredibly illegal here. - except in informal recreational senses with no legal force.]

[WHO WOULD BE A SLAVE FOR FUN, IT FUCKING SUCKS!]

Whoops, that’s not how she planned to come clean about that, if she decided to at all.

[I don't understand the appeal myself! But you're in America now and nobody's even going to be able to figure out where they'd deport you to if they wanted to try, so I think you're free and you can stay that way!]

[...Good.]

[Oh, incidentally, since you crossed the border in a magic accident you are under no legal obligation to leave, though if you do you are not automatically entitled to come back unless you get formal residency in some way.]

[...That’s... good? Thanks? Is there a way I can pay you back for this?]

[Do you... have... any... things. Like, you don't need to pay me, consider it a pro bono service or whatever dispensed because it makes my day more interesting, but also I don't think you... can.]

[I have a tunic and I can work.] It is really arguable whether it ever really counted as a tunic but whatever.

[Okay, well, don't worry about paying me. I think usually people in the country who don't speak English get along somehow but usually by having other people around who speak whatever they do and we have no idea where you came from or how to find you a translator, so you might be a bit tripped up in finding a job.]

[...Okay. I can’t just work for someone who can do that thing you’re doing?]

[We're not that common and I'm not sure if you have any skills that would be in demand among the set. Maybe somebody who has a big house and wants a cleaner?]

[I can clean. I don't know how you find people like that, though?]

[Find telepaths? I know a bunch of eclipsed from networking in school but not all psions pick up telepathy, so yeah, could be tricky.]

[...So if that doesn't work, how do you pick out a good place to sleep outside and is it worth begging around here?]

[Some people beg. It's not a great occupation and not knowing the language will probably also hinder you there. I have never tried to sleep outside but I think the stereotype is that people wind up under bridges? I might be able to find a telepath who wants a maid though, don't count that out yet.]

[Yeah. Thanks. Oh, if you do end up with two options, I prefer one that won't fuck me over one that will.]

[I... would think that would go without saying?]

[...I dunno, I think some people manage to use it to get stuff? Jackson looks pretty well-fed.]

[Jackson is Brian's sub, not his employee! I'd actually expect that Jackson makes the overwhelming majority of their money since he's a psion!]

[...What’s a sub?]

[They're - romantic partners and Brian is the bossy one and Jackson is the obedient one.]

[Oh. ...Why is Jackson obedient if he makes most of their money?]

[He likes it that way so he sought out a dom partner.]

[Huh. Weird.] Probably that means she should worry about Brian's safety instead.

[Almost everyone is one of the two and it's a pretty even split, though it can get pushed around all kinds of ways by cultural factors so I don't know what you're used to.]

[...I'm used to rich people and badass people and the king bossing other people around and other people hating it.]

[Do they... have romances at all?]

[Yeah, totally. I used to know some couples that got married because they loved each other. Or they thought they did. When I was growing up the women obeyed their husbands? But not because they wanted to and I haven't been around people like that in years.]

[Okay, well, women are slightly more likely than men to be subs, so some cultures just round that off to women being subs and men being doms, but that's not how it works out when you let everybody pick and here everybody can pick.]

[...I pick dom. Wait. I pick people not being bossed around and beaten. But if I have to pick I pick dom.]

[You can pick dom but you can also pick 'nondynamic' if the whole thing seems distasteful, some people do.]

Expressive shrug which this telepathic connection is too low-bandwidth to contain.

[I like being bossy, I just think people should be allowed to have names if they never did anything but protect their families.]

[I don't think I have ever met anyone who would contradict you on that one. You can be a dom.]

[That's good.]

[I'll keep this channel available so you can let me know if you need anything but I'm actually in the hospital right now and will be doing stuff related to that for the next little while, anything you want to cover before I focus on that?]

[...Uh... what am I supposed to do? How do I talk to Jackson and Brian?]

[That would be among the things you might need, if there's something you want me to relay to them, since Jackson doesn't appear to have picked up telepathy. Probably you can just... hang out? It might be boring but I don't think they can exactly get you a book, you don't know any English. They could start teaching you some maybe.]

[I want to learn.]

[I'll let them know.]

A brief conference between her hosts later Jackson is pointing at things and naming them.

Fere tries to repeat the words Jackson says. She’s awful at it. Dental fricatives are new, and even beyond her actual accent she’s not stunningly quick at distinguishing even familiar sounds in new words. And she doesn’t take notes, just has to remember everything.

Well, then this will be a pretty repetitive lesson, which is fine with Jackson as he has no curriculum other than looking around the room and demonstrating how you low-key bite your tongue to go "th".

And eventually she knows some nouns. Some of them don't relate to concepts she has in the first place, but whatever, maybe someday she'll be able to use the words to ask what the fuck they are.

Seems like time for Jackson to - note the time and flee out the door to work, actually. Brian, who has been assembling sandwiches, gives him a bag containing three of those and a bottle of something and two plastic-wrapped rectangles and a kiss goodbye. Then he offers a plated sandwich to Fere and sits down with one of his own. It's a Fluffernutter.

Fere's opinions about food are that it is food and that's great. She eats the entire thing immediately and then kind of stares vaguely at the plate, not sure where she's supposed to put it.

Brian points at the plate and then at the sink.

Wow, really? It’s barely dirty but okay, she can wash it.

There's dish soap - it's one of the things Jackson named for her - but whether she knows what it's for is anybody's guess.

She would have guessed - they have soap available around here, and here's this liquid thingy that isn't obviously something else - but the soap in the bathroom was different so maybe soap is all in bars here. Well, it's not very dirty, plain water should be fine.

Brian sort of frowns at her but does not appear to want to make an issue of it.

Oh no he's frowning. She must be doing something wrong but how is she supposed to figure out what? She just gives him a questioning look.

He shrugs and gets up and puts his plate in the sink and takes hers and puts that in the sink too, then backs away. "Jackson," he says, pointing at the plates.

...Huh. That actually makes sense. She smiles tentatively at Brian.

Smile!

He goes back over to the couch and turns on the TV.

Weird! Cool! Kind of scary because everything is kind of scary because most things are dangerous! Fere stares.

It's a baseball game. There is commentary in English.

It makes absolutely no sense. Eventually she figures out it’s a game. That really doesn’t make it any less weird.

There are also commercials! For beer, for a credit card, for insurance, for McDonald's.

...What... are... those. It looks like one of them might be food? Food is good. Why is Brian looking at pictures of it, though? Now she really wants the mystery food and can’t have it.

She’s kind of visibly distressed about the McDonald's commercial.

"...uh, are you okay?" asks Brian, which she presumably can't understand.

Oh no! Brian is asking something! Why isn’t he asking Isabella? Maybe it's not important enough? What is Fere supposed to do? Oh no!

He gives her a quizzical look. The McDonald's ad ends and the baseball game resumes.

She just shrugs, baffled. If they're not going to succeed at communicating then she'll just... try to figure out the rules of the game.

They're demonstrating them as gamely as they can.

By the time the final inning is wrapping up Isabella pings her again. [I no longer have a broken leg! How are you doing?]

[...I don't have a broken leg either? Did you have one before?]

[Yeah, I fell down the stairs. Hospital was a little backed up today so it took me a while to see the mage even though I have the good insurance. Questions comments concerns?]

Even though Brian orders Jackson around, that's... fake, so Brian might actually be the less powerful person, and Jackson or Isabella might turn on him and stop letting him give orders at any moment. So Fere has to think through what she says about his behavior really carefully. Only she also has no idea what Isabella and Jackson want from Brian so she doesn't know what to say. Hm.

[All the stuff around this building is weird. I don't know what most of it is. Brian gave me something to eat and that was really good, though.]

[That makes sense. Any words you picked up you want a more thorough explanation of?]

[Yeah, what's a "TV"?]

[Device that picks up on and displays recorded forms of moving visual and audio media.]

[...So it... has pictures and sounds? Of - real things? Fake things? What’s it for?]

[Real things and fake things. News, education, but mostly entertainment.]

[How do you tell which is which?]

[You can point the TV at different sets of content and go for whichever kind you're in the mood for.]

[...Huh?]

[Whatever Brian's watching, he could have used the TV to watch a different thing, he gets to pick.]

So he is allowed to be sitting around watching it. [But how does he pick?]

[Do you mean, how does he learn what's available to choose from, or what actions does he take to direct the TV toward his choice.]

[Both, I mean, I meant the first one but now I also mean the second one since you asked.]

[There's published lists of schedules, or he might just go through all the possible channels to see if any of them look good. And he probably has a device with buttons on it to send a signal to the TV. I don't actually know that much about how TVs work inside though.]

[...Wow.]

[I don't actually know what about that might be most impressive to someone from your context.]

[The... buying a book or something, and reading it, just to watch other people play a game? I don't really get why everyone that lives around here doesn't just play with each other or watch each other and also that's a lot of reading.]

[...he doesn't have to read a whole book to find out where to watch people play a game, the games are going to be on the same handful of channels most of the time and most of the book wouldn't be about where to find games.]

[...Oh.] This still feels weird but Fere can't articulate why. Maybe just because everything is weird.

[Anything else sticking out?]

[...Everything? I don’t know, what do I need to know about to live here?]

[Uh, let's see. If you earn income you will need to pay taxes. There are public libraries where you will be able to access resources like books and computer access for free though you will need some English to get along well enough to use it. Don't assault people in general, exceptions being if they're consenting to it because you're hooking up or you've taken up boxing as a hobby or something.]

[Who has the right to take taxes from me?]

[Depends where you live but at least the federal government and probably also state ones. That's income tax, localities can impose sales tax and stuff.]

[Okay but when people show up going "I work for the government, give me your money" which ones do I tell to fuck off and scam somebody else?]

[Oh, uh, you're supposed to voluntarily submit your taxes to the relevant authorities yourself but if you fail at this in some way the people who come to see what's up are called the Internal Revenue Service.]

[...How do I find them and figure out how much they want?]

[Usually your employer would help; failing that you get some forms and fill them out; there are people who professionally assist with it.]

[Uh-huh.] She'll just have to learn to read so those people can't cheat her. Whatever. [Thanks.]

[You're welcome. - oh, hey, one of the people I emailed is going to get back to me in a few, she's not a telepath but she is an omniglot and she'd be up for hiring a maid.]

[I can do that! Thanks!]

[She lives in New York, not too far from me - I know her from work - so you'd need to come here.]

[Okay! I don't know where that is so I'll need directions and if it's really far you could tell me where I can get water on the way.]

[It is more than a thousand miles, you will need to ride an airplane.]

[...I don't have one of those.]

[Most people don't, there are big public ones and I can get you a seat, but since you don't speak the language or read I'm trying to find you a flight that will take place when I can be on hand to coach you through it.]

[Oh. Okay.]

[Yeah. I can have Jackson or Brian write down some notes for you to show people as necessary.]

[...Do all the people that control airplanes read?]

[Almost everyone who isn't a child in the United States can read. An airport will contain some people who won't read specifically English but the staffpeople in uniforms will all be able to.]

[...Okay. That's cool, I don't think almost everyone in Sesat can read.]

[I'm not surprised based on what else you've said about the place.]

[...I haven't noticed any ways being here is worse than being there yet.]

[Yeah. I mean, there are probably some disadvantages, or at least there would be from the perspective of someone who was used to it and wasn't enslaved, but - yeah.]

[I wasn't born a slave! It still sucked before that!] Less, but a lot.

[Yikes, okay. But yeah, the US has a pretty good standard of living. Not evenly distributed but still pretty good.

Found you a flight. Brian'll drive you to the airport tomorrow morning, early, and I'll be able to tell you how to navigate after he drops you off. A lot of people get motion sickness - nausea and generally feeling icky - on airplanes, and some in cars too, that's normal and has no lasting effects once you're disembarked. There'll be a lot of lines to stand in and a lot of waiting. The flight will be a few hours and if you aren't too nauseated to eat them it will come with snacks.]

Ugh, she hates nausea. [...Okay. Thank you.]

[You're welcome. Jackson's writing up notes for you now, they're all going to be different colors so I can say 'blue note' or 'pink note' as need be.]

[That's cool! How much does colored ink cost?]

[Not very much? I'm not sure how exactly to explain the buying power of a US dollar to you.]

[I don’t know, days of cleaning or pounds of dry lentils?]

[You will probably get something like fifteen bucks an hour being my colleague's maid - I'm not sure how many hours a day of work she'll have for you, probably somewhere between two and eight - and a pound of dry lentils is less than a dollar with how much varying regionally.]

...They’re offering her riches beyond her wildest dreams.

[What’s the catch?]

[Rent is astronomical - though I think as long as you keep this job she has a spare room for you - and you will be constantly tempted by more expensive goods and services than 'dried lentils'.]

[Oh.] Well, at least if she spends all her earnings on something cool like colored ink she'll have colored ink? As opposed to being just as broke and not having anything cool, right? [So if I think I might need to quit I should just spend everything all at once because I can't take it with me to live in the woods and I do get to quit, right?]

[Uh, you get to quit, and you can take your savings with you.]

[How do I keep them safe if I have to sleep in the woods?]

[Most people keep their extra money in a bank.]

[Is the rent at the bank astronomical?]

[No. You can actually get paid a little bit to keep money there. Though for complicated reasons this is not a great idea if you might have other useful things to do with your money.]

That makes no sense! It makes so little sense that Fere doesn’t even have questions.

[Right. Okay. Is cleaning different here or do I just need to recognize the soap?]

[Cleaning might be different. She currently has a cleaning service that comes twice a week, and can get them to show you how they do everything. Same deal with gardening if you're up for branching out into gardening.]

[That sounds fine.]

[Good. Do you want me to have her call you before you get on a plane to take the job, or anything, make sure you get along?]

[Okay. You could tell me what I have to do to get along with her too?]

[I don't actually know her that well, we're just work acquaintances. I'll have her call Jackson's phone and he can hand it to you. She'll speak your language but you'll need to talk first so she knows which language that is and can reply in it.]

[Okay.]

Some rigmarole later Jackson is handing her a phone! Then before she can take it demonstrating how to hold it next to one's face. Then offering it again.

...Okay. She can hold the phone as demonstrated.

"...Am I supposed to start talking in Sesati now?"

"Yes! Thank you," says a woman's voice on the other end. "Isabella said that you're a refugee from a magical accident looking for work with someone you'll be able to understand, yes?"

...Huh. Why is Fere being addressed so politely? That's weird. It might be a good sign, though.

"Yeah, I have no idea how I got here or how to get back and I don't speak anything but Sesati yet. And she said you wanted cleaning and maybe gardening."

Fere is kind of confusedly following this person's lead in marking both of them as each other's and Isabella's equals.

"Possibly also cooking, though I really think that's one you need a talent for, do you cook?"

"Um... yes but I don't know what any of the foods I've seen here so far are made of so maybe not?"

"Oh, I don't mind exotic cuisine, though I guess it might be hard if you can't read for you to shop for ingredients. Right now my sub cooks but she's been thinking of getting back into the workforce now that the kids are all in school. We'll have to see how it shakes out. Presently I have a cleaning service, they can show you the ropes there, and a gardener who comes by once a week but I have to water all my own houseplants, and it'd just be lovely to have a live-in helper there."

"I’m sure I can learn how to water houseplants. Um, so, what do you need to know about me?"

"Well, how much hand-holding are you going to need? Are you quick enough to pick up what the cleaners do watching them once when you won't be able to talk to them, are you going to be lonely and antsy without being able to talk with anyone except me. Are you good with kids or are you going to need to avoid them when they're home. If we get Chrissy a puppy for her birthday will you be up for helping with that."

Fere has to force herself to answer that and it comes out choked up and wistful. "...I'm. Fine. With dogs. And kids. And I don’t know how long I’ll take to learn how you like things done, I don’t know how different it'll be." And of course she’ll be lonely. She'll just have to pretend not to be if this person doesn't want her to be. And if she fails she's no worse off than if she gives up now, right?

"Well, we'll give it a good try, shall we. I'd wonder why Isabella didn't hire you but she lives in a shoebox..."

"Yeah. I mean, yeah, let's give it a try, I haven't seen Isabella's shoebox."

"I went there one time, it's lovely but it's tiny, she wouldn't know what to do with a maid. I have a nice big place in Greenwich Village and right now it feels like there's more hours of work than there are hours in the day sometimes but probably if you're really on top of it it'll be a pretty light job."

"I hope so. Is it big like Brian and Jackson's or what?"

"I... don't know who those people are."

"Oh. Huh. I thought since they have a big house and do magic and know your friend."

"I don't know everyone who knows Isabella. She told me you were flying in, they can't even live nearby."

"I... guess... not? I guess I thought doing magic was a... was like... like owning a lot of land or something, like everyone like that knows everyone else like that."

"Oh, no, I don't even know all the other precogs. I do know many of the other omniglots because there's some fun you can only have when everybody speaks thousands of languages but I don't know them all!"

"Huh. Cool."

"Anyway, it's lovely to meet you, Fere - did Isabella give you my name, I'm Tonia Wright, in my convention you'd call me Ms. Wright or ma'am though that's more formal than average so if someone refers to just 'Tonia' that's me."

"...Huh. Where’s the 'Wright' part come from?"

"That's my last name. Family name."

"Oh, cool. Nobody has those in Sesat."

"You might want to make one up for paperwork purposes."

"What are paperwork purposes?"

"Oh, anything where they have you fill out forms. ID card type things, doctor's appointments."

"...Okay," Fere says, not really getting it. "Uh, thanks."

"No problem. I'll meet you at the airport, shall I, since nobody else will be able to talk to you!"

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess you should."

"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."

Sigh. "Yep."

"All right, see you soon!"

"Okay." She offers the phone to Jackson. It does not occur to her to take other actions first.

Jackson hangs up for her and pockets the phone and smiles at her in a vaguely encouraging way.

Oh, good. She smiles back and also asks Isabella if Isabella knows if she did okay.

[She texted me to say she'd get you at the airport so I assume so!]

[Thanks!]

And she really has no idea what to do with the rest of the day.

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.

Good.

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.

Yes. She would be spectacularly grateful for another one. She eats her second ice cream bar reasonably slowly, enough so for it to drip a little.

Jackson wipes up the first drip and puts a saucer under it.

This weird thing where Jackson pretends to be a servant is really endearing. Admittedly he's doing very light work but nobody else is doing really hard work right now either. Since they don't share enough of a language for her to tell him he's the best rich guy she's ever met, and also he might feel bad about having it acknowledged that he's not just any servant, she sticks to just grinning sunnily.

He gives her a quick smile back and then goes back to his standard occupation, Fawning Over Brian.

That’s cute. She wants a rich fake servant.

After ice cream she lounges on the couch and pets it. She’s not not bored but she can stand to be bored for a while. It’s much better than the non-boring things that were happening before she came here, and probably better than whatever happens when she leaves for her new job.

There is plenty of TV and some intermittent English lessons and then she and her variously color coded index cards to show people are on the way to the airport in Brian's car!

Brian's car is awesome. Cars are so cool. Cars are the best. She wants a car to go with her rich servant.

Then it's a pity she's moving to New York City!

Isabella's directions get her more or less smoothly through security and the gate and onto the cramped seat in the unpleasant smelling airplane where she is served beverages and pretzels.

Beverages! Pretzels! And it smells better than the capital of Sesat, which is really all she can ask for from someplace this cramped.

It's - physically comfortable, amazingly so, but mentally very not. She has the sense that she's cargo, which a little too close to being property, and it's all closed and the windows are so small.

- And then it's much, much cooler than Brian's car, the coolest thing that has ever happened to her, and she stares and stares and stares out the window until she manages to get bored of looking down at clouds. (It turns out it looks a lot like looking up at them.)

Planes suck and she wants to jump out of one and count in her head until she hits the ground except she doesn't want to be dead after. And the doors are closed. And she doesn't know where she is. And she's cargo.

She's just staring vacantly straight ahead by the time the plane lands, but she manages to get up when everyone else does and follow the crowd, head down, heart beating like it's taken a personal dislike to her ribs, until she's somewhere a little roomier. She forgets to take the initiative to go look for Ms. Wright.

The crowd leads her to the baggage claim, where Ms. Wright spots her. "Fere! Is that you?"

"Yes, my... Ms. Wright." She waves.

Wave! "Thisaway - unless you checked a bag?"

"I don't have any bags."

"Then just thisaway. How was your flight?"

"Are they always like - do they always kind of treat you like they're tossing bags of lentils onto a wagon, except the bags will go seat themselves?"

"Oh, you can pay for a better customer service experience but it's hundreds of dollars."

"That sounds like a lot."

"Yeah, even pretty wealthy people often don't bother unless they can bill their companies or it's a special occasion or something. And Isabella got your ticket via a particular program that doesn't let you upgrade."

"...Huh. Okay."

"Hopefully you like taxis better!"

"Are they like cars?"

"They're exactly like cars. Except yellow."

"I like cars."

"Oh good." She hails a cab and speaks to the driver in, first English, then Persian, to get them going where they're going.

Cars are still nice. Fere can't really tell the difference between two languages she doesn't speak.

She gawks at the scenery.

The scenery is sparkly! And tall!

As plausible a way for a country of the fair folk to look as any, really. She kind of likes it.

"What am I even looking at?"

"- well, I can't see through your eyes, what are you looking at?"

"I don’t know! I don’t know what anything is except the cars and taxis and people and the sky. And the air."

"I certainly hope you can't see the air! There's, let's see, traffic lights, and buildings, and that's a tree, and those are trash bags..."

"What are the bags made of and where do traffic lights come from and why do the buildings look so weird here?"

"The bags're plastic, the traffic lights come from... factories I guess... and I don't hardly know what kinds of buildings you're used to!"

"Human ones! Made of, like, dirt, and not that tall! And what're plastic and factories?"

"Wow, nobody builds things out of dirt anymore - not in developed countries - plastic is, like, this," she taps the divider between them and the taxi driver. "Or this." She produces her driver's license. "Factories are buildings where they make things, like plastic, or shoes, or whatever."

"Oh. Cool. Thanks." Fere wants to learn how to make plastic but probably she'll have to stick with cleaning for a while. "Why did the developed countries stop building things out of dirt?"

"Well, it's not a very good material, is it - cheap, I guess, but not durable or good at keeping the weather out or building taller."

"...I guess so!" Those buildings sure are taller, so... yeah... yeah, that really tracks, doesn't it.

"Yeah, it's mostly like, bricks and wood for low-rise stuff, concrete, lots of that, and the tall stuff is steel."

"...Bricks are dirt... in Sesat."

"You know, I don't know the first thing about how bricks are made. I think they are at least complicated dirt somehow."

"Huh. Well... everything still looks weird, anyway."

"Well, welcome to New York!"

"Thanks!"

The taxi ride goes on for another while and eventually deposits them, less some of Ms. Wright's money.

The house is a grand brownstone rowhouse, four stories tall, with a little fenced-in garden either side of the front steps. Inside it's got a lot of marble and glass and gold and houseplants. Ms. Wright is greeted by a much taller woman who trots up to her and takes each of her hands in hers and drops to her knees and says some things in English.

Huh. Fake servant pretending Ms. Wright outranks her by more than Jackson was pretending Brian outranked him.

Fere can... wait for them to do that and then wave? That seems like a reaonable idea?

The fake servant waves at her, smiling, then returns to gazing happily up at Ms. Wright's chin.

"This is my sub Wendy," says Ms. Wright, petting Wendy's hair. "She's also Ms. Wright but she doesn't go by it the way I do, you may call her Wendy."

Okay, well, Fere didn't follow the reasoning there, but the important part is this person is Wendy. "Nice to meet you. Uh. Guess there's no point in saying that."

"Well, I can translate, but I'm not going to be doing it for every pleasantry indefinitely," says Ms. Wright. She bends down a little bit - Wendy is a lot taller, so the differential when Wendy's on her knees is small - and kisses her, then tugs on her hands so she resumes standing and motions to Fere. "I'll show you around the house."

Fere can follow for the house tour, sure.

There are a lot of rooms in the house. Tonia and Wendy share a suite on the top floor (bedroom, bathroom, giant closet, sitting nook), which opens out onto a balcony in the back with plants and a bench swing. The third floor has the guest rooms, including the one where Fere will be put, and another bathroom, and a library-cum-media-room with a projector screen that pulls down over some bookshelves and a slightly higher floor behind the first sofa for a second sofa behind it to allow a better view. The second floor has the kids' rooms and their bathroom and a playroom. The ground floor is the kitchen and dining room and living room; the living room has a piano in it.

Man. What an amazingly fancy place. ...What's a piano.

Musical instrument. Tonia plays a few chords, which summon Wendy rocketing down the stairs to slide onto the bench and play Für Elise. She has it memorized and is competent at it.

Whoa. Fere stands with her head tilted for a moment and then starts grinning.

Wendy beams back at her.

Oh, good, that seems like an encouraging response.

Wendy will carry on playing a bit, grinning when Tonia ruffles her hair. Then it is time for Tonia to teach Fere how to make a grilled cheese sandwich, because the kids will eat like six of them in a day sometimes and their parents like them too and so it's a pretty good introduction to cooking with local appliances.

Ooh. It's sort of theoretically a normal kind of thing, except the cheese is different and the bread is different and then it just gets weirder from there. It's not particularly hard to learn, either.

There. Now there exists a grilled cheese. Fere can have it, Ms. Wright has plans with friends in town. "I should be by after the cleaners get started but before they leave if watching isn't good enough."

Nod nod. Fere tries to eat it in a way that seems less feral and starved but doesn't really succeed.

"Wow, didn't those boys you landed on feed you?"

"They were very generous." She shrugs, embarrassed. "In Sesat they stopped caring if I ate enough a while ago."

"Well, don't make yourself sick, you can help yourself to anything without masking tape on it -" she gestures at the rolls of colorful masking tape hanging off a doodad on the fridge. "Last minute questions before I'm off?"

Shrug. "I can't think of any."

"All right. Back in a couple hours." She whisks herself away.

Fere takes stock of what there is that doesn’t have masking tape on it.

A carton of eggs, a tupperware full of mysterious stew, peanut butter and three flavors of jam, a remarkably diverse cheese drawer, and half a lasagna.

She takes a reasonable amount of cheese and waits for the cleaners.

In they come; Wendy points them to Fere and they gesture her along through their process, which involves picking up each room, sweeping, vacuuming, mopping, dusting, tidying child-related objects into a memorized organized state, scrubbing most of the surfaces in the bathroom and kitchen, wiping down the windows throughout the house, taking out the trash and replacing the bags, tossing the dead flowers, doing all of the dishes and putting them away, and replenishing various paper products.

Okay, she's not actually going to retain all of that the first time but she does follow a lot of it! She watches closely and quietly.

When the cleaners have moved from the ground floor up the stairs, Ms. Wright comes home with her friend, leaves the friend sitting with a cup of tea, and finds Fere to see if she has any questions.

She has some.

Mrs. Wright can get the cleaners to re-demonstrate things and clarify details for her till she knows how to clean the house.

Then she will know how to clean the house.

Eventually the kids come home and Fere gets introduced to them - the older boy is Noah and the younger girl is Stephanie. They wave at her and say hi.

She waves at them. She says hi. She's vaguely melancholy about it.

"- Stephanie wants to know if she's done something to bother you?" says Mrs. Wright.

"No. Sorry. Just remembered something."

Ms. Wright relays this to Stephanie, who brightens and runs off to play video games with her brother.