Sure, good luck!

It's a lovely day on Anesidora. Sixty degrees out. The sound of traffic is distant and muted. People are hanging out in the little park at the edge of Intake- Listening to music, having a picnic, talking on their phones, jogging with earbuds in, playing around with some sort of colorful spiky ball, one guy is doing push-ups with a boulder on his back. 

Grocery store, left 60m. Purses and wallets, ahead 100m.

She adjusts her reader to celsius degrees. Fifteen's not so bad in her fleece. 

Onwards to the bags shop - it's probably better to get something to store things first so she doesn't lose her resettlement card. 

The bag store is 'Big & Little' and it has a big cardboard cutout of some cowboy looking superhero. It seems to focus on rugged items- They're not completely unstylish, but the backpacks, messenger bags, purses, rolling suitcases, utility belts, and so on here are all fairly utilitarian. Some thick plastic and rubber cases on the heavier items advertising things like 'rated for 15 meter falls'.

Utilitarian's fine with her. She can always get fancier stuff once she has a real income stream. 

She'll pick out a simple brown purse of heavyish cloth and a basic wallet to go inside it. How much will that come to?

If she doesn't pick one of the ones with techy or magical security features, that'll be 10.7 argold!

Not unreasonable. Small chance of her resettlement card being filched but it's probably useless to anyone but her if the system is at all competent. 

She'll buy them both, move her card to the new wallet in the new purse, which gets slung across her body like a messenger bag, and get going to the grocery store. She wants to see what the food stamps cover.

Amaris texts her:

Tour over. I will come say hello soon.

The grocery store is part of a chain she's seen several of so far. The selection is fairly unfamiliar, it seems to have a little of everything from a bunch of different nationalities. Sliced wheat bread next to sacks of rice next to tortillas. Curry powder next to hummus next to kimchi. It is un-cashiered aside from an automated NesiCard payment station. The System highlights free items in her vision- Most things that count as a raw ingredient, about half the fresh produce, milk, bottled water, breakfast cereals, tofu and beanburgers, and some of the least fancy kinds of pre-packaged foods. What little real meat is in here is relatively expensive and none of it's covered by food stamps, but the substitute meats look fairly tasty.

Ah. Guess she'll have to get used to substitute animal products. Very fortunately she has a Skill for cooking so she ought to be able to make something decent without excessive effort. 

She only has space to carry a few bags of stuff right now and her fridge is shared; she'll pick up bread, milk... egg substitute mix (free) rather than eggs (expensive), she sees what the System is doing but sure she'll accept the nudge... 

She doesn't really have the best cooking skills innately, but trying out her new ability is super tempting. What's a nice basic recipe...

She always enjoyed burrito night. And while she doesn't have meat, beans are a more than acceptable substitute. She will get tortillas and a can of beans. And a tomato and an onion, hopefully the dorm kitchen has something as basic as a chef's knife. Salsa and curry powder are worth it even though they're not free. 

You know, what is she going to put in her bread other than egg substitute mix? And milk doesn't super go with burritos. She could spring for pop but now she feels vaguely guilty about it.

She doesn't feel comfortable grabbing peanut butter in a shared-living situation where she's not sure of everyone's allergies, but honestly her list of "foods she usually eats she could make" is getting real small right now. She's used to real meat and cheese and eggs. She supposes that's a vice of her old culture though.

It is really kind of uncomfortable to be distantly moralized at by a neutral arbiter of What Is Healthy. 

Okay. Bread, egg substitute mix, she can make french toast or egg sandwiches for breakfast, the burrito fixings should cover supper, and the salsa stuff. That's it, that's all for now, she will cope. 

Honestly, Hazel, live a fucking little. A two-liter of cola is not going to break the bank. You get one little nudge and you act like you've never seen ground beef before. 

I mean, I've always felt kind of vaguely guilty about factory farming, animals are just tasty. If we can make dishes we actually like and that'll get us by without needing to resort to meat, and it'll save us money, then I'm at least willing to try. It's not like we ate all that healthily before.

Suit yourself, but these bean burritos of yours had better be really good.

Yes, cherry. 

She goes and pays for her groceries, then fires off a message to Amaris. 

I'm just on my way back from picking up some basic groceries, so I should be there around the same time as you. 

Back to intake. She'd say "home again, home again," but it's not really home.

Girls, where did that skillet go? I think we set it down back at intake and just left it in the kitchen. That's not smart!

She has been so distracted by shopping that she completely lost track of it. 

Where is it, does she remember...?

Why, it's right here in her hand, of course! 

She startles and drops it with a clatter. 

Really useful, power. Very convenient. Great you didn't tell her about that. 

She picks it up, dusts it off, and stows it in her purse for now. It's small enough to just barely fit.

Don't forget your groceries, Hazel.

Right yes okay she will get those and go. Back to Intake. 

She really really hopes nobody just saw her making a fool of herself.

The clatter gets her a few sudden looks, actually! But nobody seems to think twice about it. Honestly, some people carry around much weirder things than an iron skillet. Like that guy, with some sort of glass aquarium.

The park-goers are still there. The entrance of the Meister building contains a young man glaring at the world, and another who seems to be trying to cheer the first up.

Juniper's office is open again! She stands up as she passes. "Hello, Bluebell! I have Amaris in here with me!"

"Cool! It'll be nice to put a face to the name." She steps over, still holding her groceries.

Amaris is short, has a mix of asian and Caucasian features, deep black hair in an undercut, and is wearing mostly black, including some sort of fishnet arm-warmers, black jeans, a skull-emblem T-shirt, red eye shadow, and a silver pentagram on a necklace. At her feet is a small ceramic pot containing some sort of succulent.

"Hey! Welcome and all. Wow, that's a nice look. Very fancy. I approve."

"Thanks, it's my best outfit. Wanted to look good for intake, help with the nerves a little. The earrings were my mother's."

Hazel ducks her head. "My family didn't send on my luggage yet though, so I'm a little stuck with it for the moment."

Her gaze flicks down to the pentagram at Amaris's neck. "I like your style too, very goth. I wish I could pull that off." 

"Goth is the noblest of all pursuits, obviously. We might be able to manage it... You've got kind of an old nobility thing going on, but you'd be more gothic lolita where I'm more punk goth. It's not quite the same. I was just talking about my prospects. Fewer Avowed want to become engineers than big heroes, but still a bunch. So we're theorycrafting what kind of engineering skill sets get summoned a lot. Except apparently there's some programs in Indonesia and India where they're going to start using Avowed for heavy construction- Big earthmoving, big bridges, but like, I'm just a C. It'd be more neighborhood landscaping than mountain carving. And it's uncertain enough I don't want to bet on making that my career, so... Not exactly going to pick skills for that unless they're also useful for my first plan."

She stands and hefts her plant. "But yeah, I don't want to make you stand there holding groceries, sorry."

Hazel smiles. "Totally fine, i'm going to go drop these off. Amaris, do you have a spare tupperware I can use to hold pre-diced tomato? Super cool if you don't want to share, I just want something to occupy me and I might as well do food prep."