A week into her stay at the orphanage found Stranger sitting on the floor and surrounded (covered) in children. Botti, the young monster that had spotter her that first day sat in her lap, playing with her sharp claws as he and the other kids tried to teach her how to talk.
Right now Dale, an older human boy was pointing across the room at one of the dining tables, pushed against the wall during the day to be out of the way.
"Come on, you can do it. You know the word!" A monster girl named Sybil cheered. Her tiny hooves clacking excitedly against the floor.
"Yeah you know it Stranger!" Dale encouraged, echoed by some of the others.
"Buh…?" Stranger started hesitantly, looking to them for reassurance. Botti squeezed her hand and smiled up at her, his own black eyes shining up at her black and red. "Buh-b..ench?"
At the finished word the children cheered. And only got louder when she added "table" to the bench. She knew the word for chair, but the children all agreed that it was important to know that the long chair was called a bench.
Anamira sat in another chair on the other side of the fire, happy that none of the children were running out in the snow and she could sit down. Her hands worked quickly with her needles, and she counted her rows dutifully as she knit a new vest that would fit one of the children, probably.
As she knit she watched her children gather around Stranger. They seemed enthralled by the large monster, cooing over her bony hands and glowing eye sockets. They had been in disbelief when she and Merl had first explained Stranger to them, they just hadn't been able to understand how someone so old couldn't speak. Well, the younger ones at least. Her eldest three, Dale, Marius, and Zuri, had just been happy to stir the younger ones up.
She had given them a stern talking to and extra chores for that.
And then, of course, when Merl had emerged from the kitchen three days after Stranger arrived, beaming bright as a summer sun and telling them that Stranger was getting better? Well she could only watch as her children damn near devoured the poor woman.
The children had taken it upon themselves to teach Stranger how to talk. They tried, the dear things, pointing out at objects and calling the names. Having her repeat simple sentences like 'how are you?' and 'I'm hungry'. But Anamira could see that Stranger was struggling to learn, and not for a lack of trying. The poor thing just couldn't seem to make words and their meanings stick together.
"Broom?" Said monster said, and Anamira noted the motion her lower hands made with the word.
"No, Stranger! Not 'broom', 'Door'! That's the door!" The children laughed not unkindly at the mixed words, and Stranger chuckled embarrassedly.
It was good then, she thought, that Merl and Stranger sat down for an hour or so each night after the children where in bed upstairs to help the skeleton learn her words. It helped some, but even watching them for a few moments Anamira could tell Stranger was just the sort to find learning hard. Harder still when no one could explain it to her.
And still, Anamira would sometimes catch the skeleton sitting alone someplace and forcing words from her mouth that ended always in that hissing breaking sound that seemed to take her name.
Two weeks since Stranger came and the monster had barely learnt much more, but she was more active around the orphanage. In the mornings she would help Merl with breakfast and cleaning, then she would occupy the younger children while Anamira took the older ones outside to do their chores. Some days, when Merl had time to sit with the younger ones Stranger would follow Anamira outside into the snow.
Some days she went with Zuri to fetch water for the barrel in the kitchen, and when they returned Zuri would rave on about how Stranger could lift the heavy water from the well with just a few pulls! On other days she went with Anamira to tend to the matters of their property. They would check the chickens for eggs and sweep the nights snow from the roof to stop it from crushing the coop. Then with Strangers help they made quick work of chipping through the iced soil of the garden bed to keep it ready for the coming spring. Stranger was clumsy, and oddly unused to nearly anything Anamira or Merl or any of the children did, but she was strong and witty in her own wordless way and Anamira like that.
One thing Anamira noted was that no matter how much Marius and Dale begged, Stranger always warily denied going to help farmer Hutcher with his cows and fields. Anamira would huff at the tall monsters shuffling denial, and let Stranger trail after her instead.
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It has been three weeks since Frisk's ruined Reset and it found her begrudgingly settling into a routine at the orphanage. Not that she was ungrateful to Merl and Anamira! The two had been nothing but kind to her since the moment she arrived and Frisk rather liked the children, especially little Botti. The orphanage had become a safe place, and she could forget herself sometimes in the routine.
It's just…
Frisk was still a little upset about, well, everything.
It was an old sort of upset, the kind that was there, but felt stale and pointless. And yet it smoked away in the back of her mind, rearing its head while she stumbled to tie her Basics (what an odd name for clothes), or when the children laughed when she couldn't remember the right word, or when she picked rocks out of her toes. She hadn't quite yelled at anyone, but she accidentally snapped her teeth angrily while she was with Merl more than once, and had hissed softly at Dale just yesterday.
Frisk sat outside the front of the orphanage. She had been coming out here this last week, just to look out into the night, towards Mt Ebbot. It was kind of pointless, since there was nothing there, but Frisk would sit and think about her family, and if they were okay.
She thought long and hard about her last Reset. Dredged up every memory she could of it. There wasn't much. How she became a monster is still lost to her, and what exactly happened is anyone's guess, but she knew that she had killed the Demon. It couldn't follow her through the timeline like it once had, and that comforted her more than she thought it would. With that, at least, she knew that whatever time she was in was safe from it.
And speaking of when, Frisk was getting the raising (disappointingly certain) suspicion that she was more 'before' than 'after'. She had wanted to believe that what she had done had made a difference, a difference that she would be able to find somewhere in this time. But the time she knew had been so much… further than this one. Electricity and cars and machines. This time was candles and hearths and straw beds. She would have come to the conclusion sooner, but like a lot of things, Frisk would happily admit she was a little scared to accept it.
But she was slowly realising she didn't have much of a choice.
As of right now Frisk had no way to return to her own time, even with the magic that sometimes bubbled through her nowadays (she should really look into that) it won't ever be the Determination her human body had been able to wield so effortlessly. She won't ever be able to Reset or Save again.
At least she thinks so.
Oh, she still had her Determination, Frisk could feel it fill her chest with every properly remembered word, but it wasn't as strong nor as sharp as it used to be. Truthfully Frisk was a little surprised to feel her determination at all in her monster body, monster couldn't really handle the stuff. Bar a spars few of course, like Undyne. Another oddity to think on later.
Frisk focused again on the largest mountain, and as she watched snow fat clouds tumble down its front she fell into her most frequent pastime.
"[ D]"
The blank word always never slipped out. And it was getting harder and harder to force her mouth to shape the awkward thing. Much to her sadness.
"Fff…f F|̶̿ ̶̿ ̶̿ ̶̿ | ..."
There was new words there, waiting. For weeks now Frisk has held them in her throat and stubbornly refused to allow them out. Now though, she wondered what would happen if she just let them out.
Maybe, she wondered breezily, it would be a new name.
Grinding her teeth Frisk stopped fighting with her name and focused on the clouds rolling closer. She couldn't really tell, but she thinks there may be a storm.
To pass the time, she wonders what it would be like if she had been a proper eleven year old, that hadn't lived years in the Save/Reset loop.