your songs remind me of swimming

As far as awakening in unexpected places goes, finding oneself unaccountably underwater is probably among the most disorienting. Like anyone else, Evie inhales a little out of shock before reflex kicks in and forces her to hold her breath. She's in a glass box of some sort, and though the water is clear her view of what's outside is distorted by the curvature of the glass — a tube, then, rather than a box? Evie balls up a fist and bangs on the glass as hard as she can, which is considerably so, but it doesn't so much as crack.

It's only then that she actually starts to panic a little bit. She's always been remarkably cool-headed, but it's starting to become clear that either she's going to have to find some way of escaping or she's going to drown. Evie can hold her breath — her father made sure she and Jacob were both taught how to swim — but only for a couple of minutes at best. She knows she's going to die sooner or later, just like everyone else; in fact, she has made her peace with the fact that that might be sooner, rather than later, given her work. Yet to die in this way seems cruel, awful — inhuman, in the sense that the water certainly doesn't care if it kills her, because it can't.

Though she knows it's likely futile, she hammers on the glass again — and then there's movement beyond, in her peripheral, a figure she can't clearly see. Moments later, the water drains out of the tube and the glass opens up. Evie stumbles a little, but doesn't collapse, grabbing onto the edge of the tube with one hand as she leans forward to cough water out of her lungs. Her hair is hanging in her face, she's dressed in a strange dark blue shirt and matching trousers, and there's a weight on her back she didn't really feel when she was floating — a pack of some sort, perhaps, but she can't afford to look at it just yet.

"What in God's name—" is the only thing she can say right now, the words half-gasped as she tries to catch her breath.

but somehow i forgot

Later, after she's inventoried the contents of her pack, changed her clothes, and done her hair up properly, Evie makes her way to the common room of the inn. Still confused and a little disoriented, she nonetheless has sense to know that inns, pubs, taverns, and the like are where you go if you want information, a drink, or — in this case, as she's just realizing she's actually famished — food.

"Pardon me," she says to the nearest person, "but could you tell me where I could get something to eat?" A brief pause, then, "I haven't any money, but if there's any work that needs done—"

She and Jacob did odd jobs for pay for a while, after all. Even if some of those jobs veered into the somewhat questionable or — all right, downright illegal. The point is she's far from being too proud to do work in exchange for something she needs — though, come to think of it, she hasn't seen anyone exchanging money here, and that's strange.