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It's been three days since she arrived, and Regan has gotten a little bit used to the Home. She stays out of it as long as she can, all the same, so she doesn't have to worry about trying to interact with her Hearing roommates. It isn't that she thinks they're bad people. It's just . . . a lot. Another reminder that she's not like them. That she's Other.

So, she wakes up early and heads out, and she stays out all day, until just before curfew, and heads back in. She does that every day, now, and maybe it's a little cowardly, but she's also giving herself time to get used to the city proper, using the map Greta showed her and marking things of interest on it as she goes.

She's marked the cat cafe down, and that really cool tinker's shop.

She's set to start school next Monday. It would have been sooner, but she requested an extra week. Part of it is because she's nervous. She'll have an interpreter, but it's been so long since she's been in school. What if she's behind her peers?

She doesn't want to think about it. Instead, Regan heads towards the park, wearing her new winter boots that Greta helped her buy. She swings by an Ahab's and grabs herself a hot cocoa with espresso in it, and ends up adding extra sugar to sweeten it back up. The park is a nice place, and she gets to see all sorts of different things and people here.

Even if she's just killing time until curfew.

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Blue nods, understanding that much even if she doesn't know exactly when or where Regan is from -- though she clearly has been told that people come from all sorts of different times. "Only a few days? I wanted to hide, so you're doing good," she smiles.

"Where are you from? I'm from Henrietta, Virginia," she spells out. "All trees and mountains. Much quieter and ... greener. Maybe that's why I always end up at the park."

I've only been here for a few days, Regan writes, And I've been sort of all over the place, looking at all the cool things. It's pretty different from where I'm from. A dinky town in the midwest haha.

She feels a little bashful as she turns the page to face her, and this time it's because she regrets clarifying where she's from. It's not like Beverly will suddenly hate her just because she's midwestern, right? It's not like she'll judge her for being from a small town instead of a city like Darrow.

Right?

It's an incredible story. For a moment, she wants to argue that it's a lie, or an exaggeration. But Jamie is too earnest, she thinks, too sweet.

Besides: she's not sure anyone could actually make that up about themselves.

That sounds terrible and complicated, she writes. It feels lame, the way that apologizing for anything of importance does. But I'm glad you're here and can start over. That's how I'm trying to look at it, too.

Regan smiles, and she signs it, rather than write it down. She also shows her 'You're welcome' to round out the little lesson.

It's so cool that you're interested in learning, she writes. I hope I don't end up overwhelming you!

"I'm from Iowa," she answers, "but I'm also from after the world sort of ends? No explosions or like in the movies. But something comes to the planet and ruins everything."

There. She's said it. Making it real like this is scary, because it's going to be so easy for Blue to decide that Regan is crazy and not worth her time, or else that whatever she's left behind at home will make its way here.

She really hopes that neither of those things is the case.

Iowa conjures cornfields, but what Regan says next is more important. Blue definitely misses a few signs there, but end of world is unmissable and her eyes widen; she nods, grimly. “Shit,” she says out loud, though she doesn’t know the sign for it, and switching back into sign, says “That’s terrible.”

Feeling like she needs to contextualize her lack of surprise, she hesitantly adds, “I actually...I know a lot of people living here who come from the end of the world?” She almost laughs. “My ex-girlfriend and one of my friends both had zombies. Different kinds of zombies! This place is crazy.”

Or maybe less crazy, considering.

“In Virginia we had magic. But no end of the world.”

I totally get that. I'm from a small town in Maine, nothing like this at all. Beverly grins, nose wrinkling a little as she holds her phone back over. She's been here long enough now that she's gotten pretty used to it, but she remembers how mind-blowing it had been at first, suddenly being in the middle of a big city, never mind one almost thirty years in the future. That's always a strange detail to drop into conversation, though, and she doesn't want to make this too weird too soon. If Regan has only been here for a few days, then she's probably had a lot to take in already, and Beverly doesn't know what she might have found out yet.

She's heard about magic since coming here. Not, like, in the abstract sense: Beau had believed in magic in his own way, of course. Regan probably had, too, when she'd been younger. But Greta had told her that, here, people come from places with real magic.

It's still kind of hard for her to believe. She hasn't seen much of it yet, so it's easy to pretend she'd never learned it at all. But now she's faced with it again, and she tilts her head, unable to hide the uncertainty — very nearly the fear, even — at the remark.

"Real magic?" she asks, a bit hesitantly.

That's a relief, and Regan feels her shoulders relax a little. It's so weird, here! And I've met people from different timeframes and even different worlds and they tell me that there's magic where they're from. It doesn't feel real sometimes. Like I'll just wake up and suddenly be back home and this is all a weird dream.

Okay, she'd gotten a little rambly there. It's a relief, though, that it sounds like Beverly is from a place sort of like hers. The culture shock of coming to a fairly large city is hard to explain to someone who's from a city, and now she and Beverly have something concrete in common.

For all that Beverly doesn't think she's ever really sat and conversed with anyone like this, it's not all that different from texting as she gets into it, easy to fall into a rhythm. Regan is easy to talk to, too; Beverly likes her instinctively, nodding along as she reads what Regan has written before typing out her own response.

Right? It's crazy. Like something out of a sci-fi movie or something. I thought I knew weird, and then I got here. She doesn't often like to talk about home a lot, or about the fact that she hopes she doesn't wake up to find this was all a weird dream, but she doesn't want to be disingenuous, either. Things got pretty crazy back there for a while, but it's nothing compared to what happens in Darrow on a regular basis.

I think I like it, though, Regan writes. It feels weird to say, like she's somehow betraying her family. But it's still the truth. She turns it to show Beverly, then makes a face and continues, Is that awful? I feel like a bad daughter for even thinking it. But it is kind of better here.

She still struggles with how much she wants to tell her, but at the very least, she can say that much.

Though Beverly understands full well that there are people in Darrow who miss home, who have good reasons to, it's almost a relief to read. She lets out a breath, shaking her head even before she types a response. Not awful at all. As weird as it might be here, it's way better than it was at home. She pauses a beat, thinking she'll leave it at that, but then adds on a whim, I'm glad it's not just me.

She holds the phone back out to Regan then, pleased if a little more self-conscious than the situation probably calls for. She's not great at making friends, mostly because she's never had any of them. While she still may not be inclined to talk about some of the reasons why she's happier here and what she left behind at home, though, she does feel a little more at ease for knowing that she's not the only one who thinks it's better here.

It's a huge relief to read, and Regan can't stop the smile that spreads, or the way her shoulders sag.

"Thank God," she says, but leaves it at that since she's still holding her notebook and pencil. Same here, honestly, she adds to the page. Hey, how weird does it get here? Everyone I talk to keeps kind of hinting that it can be messed up, but then they don't say how. It can't be worse than home, right?

Regan's eyes go wide and a little -- sensibly, honestly -- trepidatious, and Blue nods, her "Yes" certain but not overenthusiastic.

"Good and bad. I had a friend there who could dream things into life. Make dream things real," she adds, because she's not sure how to explain what Ronan does. "But there were scary things, too."

"And my family are all psychic." She spells it out. "Except me. I don't know if that's magic, though. That's more like...seeing more."

Regan isn't even sure how to take this information. Psychic? Can Blue understand Regan's thoughts? No, she said she wasn't. Regan tips her head a little.

"You're the only one in your family that isn't psychic?" she asks. That sort of sucks. Kind of like being the only one in the family that can't hear.

Beverly wrinkles her nose as she starts to type. Uh, pretty weird... from ridiculous to creepy. On New Year's, there were gingerbread cookies that attacked people? And not to creep you out, but I'm pretty sure the Home is haunted. Her expression is lighthearted but apologetic as she holds the phone over. It feels kind of shitty saying so, but there's no sense in downplaying it, and it's probably better that Regan finds out sooner rather than later anyway. She wouldn't want to be in the dark about that sort of thing, and she doubts anyone else would.

"Yeah," Blue says with a wry smile. "Fun, right? I..." She hesitates for a moment, because it's hard to explain her ability and she's always a little hesitant about revealing it. It's such an easy thing to see as useful, and Blue doesn't like being seen as an advantage, not a person. But Regan is a teenager, and doesn't -- as far as Blue can tell - have any powers that are likely to use hers. "I do have my own powers. But mostly what I do is make other people's powers stronger. I got dragged into the room when my mom was trying to see something a lot."

She does have other abilities, she knows, from what she's been told particularly by Gansey coming from her own future. But she doesn't know how to use them, here, and she's not sure what all they entail or if she even wants to risk finding out. Maybe something she should find out, someday.

That has Regan's eyebrows shooting up. She isn't sure how to take it at first, so she writes Literal gingerbread cookies? as if Beverly might mean people dressed up like them or something else. That's... pretty bizarre, honestly, and Regan's seen bizarre.

The idea that the Home might be haunted almost skates over her awareness, but she catches it at the last minute and frowns. She hasn't noticed anything, yet. Hopefully it stays that way.

Literal gingerbread cookies, Beverly types, nodding as she does in preemptive confirmation. It was SO weird. I mean, weird even for this place. Weird by her standards, too, and as hazy as some of those memories might be, she knows she has an unusual standard in that regard. Darrow's got its fair share of bizarre shit and then some, but a lot of people come from places where that wasn't the case already, at least from what she can tell, or if it was, it wasn't like this.

Not wanting to sound too ominous, though, she adds quickly, But most of the time, it's pretty normal? Like things are quiet for a while, and then they get crazy really quickly, and then they just get quiet again.

That's all a weird way to refer to a place, but at least Regan feels a little better prepared now. It seemed too good to be true that the quiet would last forever, anyway. It hadn't at home, either, and here... well, it's weirdly comforting that it's not different in that respect.

Is there usually any warning for that? she writes in her notebook. She draws a little emoji nervous face, with closed eyes and a squiggly mouth, beside her question.

Not really, Beverly types, including a little grimacing emoji after the words. But apparently there's usually something on New Year's. NOT usually weird attacking cookies, though. She's heard enough rumors that it's not always easy to separate fact from fiction. She doesn't want to go giving the wrong idea, but she doesn't want to let Regan go unwarned, either.

But even with all that, I like it here.

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