It was... weird. This place, these people, the strange noises that they made. And everything was even stranger when she wasn't wearing her language charm. They all used so many words, so often. Flicker wasn't used to this... cacophony. She was used to silence, gestures, grunts, and the inherent way that her kin just... understood one another, like it was nothing. Like they were all connected in this grand, intricate forest, and the forest was the world, and they were one.
The people here... Everyone was their own forest, it felt like. Nobody seemed connected to one another, not in the way Flicker knew, and so they made innumerable noises to try and bridge that gap.
It had become... a little bit easier, once she went through her counselling and basic remedial course, allowed to stay in an isolated place for people who weren't quite ready to see the world just yet. The staff at the Academy were helpful in ways Flicker could hardly fathom, and she owed them a lot. But there were no lessons in the world that could make everything make sense. Not this quickly. Not a damn thing.
When Flicker first entered her new "dorm room," the door shut heavily, and she found herself in some of the quietest air she'd felt in days. Some of the safest, too, because at least half of this space was _hers,_ and her door had a lock, and those things combined meant that she was safe. She could customize this space — comfort — and lock herself inside — safety. Though it would certainly be a change from her nomadic lifestyle, and though she had no idea how to fill up a single shelf, let alone several... Flicker was, well, she was hopeful. Because she'd always been so curious about modern life, never sharing the same disdane for it as her kin, even though it made her nervous. It... It had cost her a lot, to get this opportunity. More than she'd have been willing to pay, had someone actually offered it to her point blank in this way. But she was hopeful, an optimist, guarded and careful though she might have been.
It hadn't taken flicker long to "unpack," seeing as she hardly had more than a little suitcase worth of items and most had been given to her within the last few weeks. Her clothes in a drawer, her sketchbook on her desk, a list she couldn't read of textbooks she couldn't read. Stars, it was hard enough trying to find her dorm when she was only newly familiar with numbers in this script, but having a "sticky-note" helped immensely.
After that, she just... sat around in the common area with the TV off, looking at things and trying to make sense of the textiles in the carpets and furniture. She flickered the lights a few times, tried out the "sink" for a drink... and then to run water on her hands... and then to drink from the faucet... and then when she turned into an otter and just sat underneath it. Finding the big sink in the "bathroom" was yet another incredible find, whatever it was actually called (she'd forgotten). She'd wandered there, tracking tiny wet footprints, only to spend at least a half hour in the tub of cold water once she'd made it work. It... sort of... overfilled a bit, sloshed around and gotten the floor wet, which she'd cleaned up poorly with that uh, "toilet paper" stuff as they'd called it. After, uh... After playing in the puddles. Haha. It's fine, her space, right?
Flicker was using a "towel" to blot her hair dry on the couch, having been told that getting furniture wet was bad (after she'd done it repeatedly during remedial counselling), when this girl walked in. It startled her at first, and her instinct flared quietly. She sensed something volatile and strange, but not terribly threatening, radiating from this person, but it was familiar in a way. Something reminiscent of her own abilities. Then, the girl spoke, and said something Flicker did not know.
"What is... vodka? And wine cooler?" she asked, her head tilting. The strange terms were spoken with her accent, since there were no selkie equivalents — at least, not to her knowledge — so she pronounced them fully, without the use of her charm. "Oh, and I'm Flicker. Thank you, it's good to meet you." Her large eyes trailed the floor, noticing all the half-dried water prints from her former little otter paws. She didn't mind, probably, at least she didn't in the forest. Would Xera? Guess only time could tell.