(This is going to be the first 'establishing' post for my new Changeling: the Lost<strong>Small Group</strong>RP here on E! :D It's me, VioletPanda, and haren,-- there's some chance that haren might not end up playing, we'll see how that goes once we get started, and if so I'll ask the mods to move this to the solos forum. For now, though, let's get started.)<br/><br/><hr/><br/>(Panda's character, Glow, already had a short prelude where she escaped from Arcadia with the help of a young Winter-Court Firetouched named Emily Coal. This involved her having to rip out her crystal eyes, having an Autumn Courtier named "Augustus" (and Ogre Chirugeon), making her some replacement eyes from Quartz. They work.. well enough. Since then, Emily-- destined for Spring,-- has spent the last 2 weeks Fostered to the Winter Court until she can officially join the Freehold...)<br/><br/>The Winter Court had been kind to their new Fosterling over the past two weeks, though their ways could be strange to understand. They hid themselves aggressively from the Gentry, mimicking human lives as precisely as they could even if it led to Emily doing things like 'heading out for 8 hours, just to waste some time in the city so it wasn't obvious that she didn't have a job.' They'd talk to each other over the phone in code, which Emily's houseguest didn't know (and thus couldn't interpret or easily puzzle out), but which sounded like they were getting ordinary day-to-day phone calls from friends or family members. Whenever she was out,<em>anywhere</em>, Emily always made an especial effort to be sure that she blended in as much as possible or at the very least that she<em>didn't stand out</em>.<br/><br/>It was obvious that the Firetouched had just moved into her apartment a few weeks ago, despite the fact that Emily had told the younger Changeling that she'd been living free in the city of the past 7 years. Glow had even blundered upon some boxes that still hadn't been unpacked in the closet of the guest room, where she was staying for the time being, having been introduced to the neighbors as 'a friend going through some tough times.' Emily just, as she'd explained to her fosterling, vacates her apartment every so often and grabs a new one... her latest move had<em>also</em>come with a new identity. Neighbors currently knew her as "Emily Martin," while she was apparently born "Emily Lugo." (Coal was just the name she went by with the Court, and when among other Changeling, a not-infrequent thing.)<br/><br/>Most of their time had been spent with Emily filling Glow in about 2016, filling in the gaps that the fosterling was still missing from the last 5-years and covering any other holes that they found. Everything from making sure she'd seen the new Star Wars movie, filling her in on some pop culture she should probably know, and so forth. The Court had even pitched in to get Glow a new Cellphone, and Emily had personally taken her new Fosterling on a shopping trip to fill out her non-existent wardrobe with some new clothes. "It's important," Emily had explained, "that you have enough clothes that you're not always wearing the same thing every day, or even too often in a row. You don't want people to think you just showed up out of nowhere a few days ago."<br/><br/><strong>Everything</strong>with the Winter Court was like that: very deliberate, very considered, nothing left to chance or ignored.<br/><br/>"Any little mistake can lead to them finding you again," Emily had explained. "You have to be careful about everything you do, if you're going to join the Winter Court, that's our defense... it's the<em>best</em>defense.."<br/><br/>Whenever she tried to get anyone to help her get back in touch with her family, though, they seemed to always put it off. 'Not yet,' 'You're not ready,' 'Soon, Glow, please trust us. Don't rush this.' They were obviously worried about something, and given the way they acted about everything, they probably had a very deliberate well-considered reason why they kept putting her off-- but, well,-- Emily could tell that her friend was beginning to get the impression that the other Courts weren't quite as uptight about all this stuff as her Winter Court friends. That, despite that, the Changelings who were members of those Courts didn't end up all getting carted away back to Arcadia en masse. It was a fact which Emily mostly shrugged off, saying that it was more complicated than that but that the other Courts had their own strategies too,-- that every Changeling had to pick the court that fit<em>them</em>best, in the end, but that they couldn't be afraid to take on some of the best practices of the other Courts as well.<br/><br/>"There's a reason a well-balanced Freehold has all four Courts in power, Glow, and even if you don't stay with us in the end,-- we have a lot to teach you  if you let us..."<br/><br/><strong>This</strong>morning, though, when her fosterling found her standing in the kitchen in one of her boyfriends old ratty T-shirt's and a pair of panties, frying up some eggs and most likely burning these sausages... Well, Emily had a feeling that Glow wasn't going to take any more putting off. Not this time. Emily knew she was either going to have to tell the young changeling why going to see her family wasn't a good idea just yet, or just<em>help her</em>, and she wasn't likely to take "today isn't a good day" as an excuse anymore. Even if it was technically true. 'Fuck...'<br/><br/>"Hey glowbug," Emily said, smiling. "Have a seat, I'll have breakfast in a bit. Anything bothering you?"