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Demelza rather feels as if her head is spinning.

Earlier in the day, she and Ross had attended the doctor's office at the suggestion of Mindy, who had been so kind as to show Demelza the pregnancy tests back when she had been sick on the street on her very first day of work. She had been told that seeing a doctor would be necessary, that they would want to take a picture of the baby so as to know for certain when it would be due and that they would want to check on the health of the baby, too, but it's all so strange to Demelza that the appointment had been a bit overwhelming. Ross had done his best to help, of course, as he always will, but now that he's kissed her and gone back to work, Demelza finds she doesn't want to go home quite yet.

She has so many questions and she knows of one person who's had a child before. Perhaps his world is not quite like Darrow either, but she suspects it's more like Darrow than her own.

She uses her portable telephone to call Abby and ask if she'll stay with Julia a little while longer, then changes the direction of her course toward Candlewood Apartments. It's only once she's nearly there that she realizes Galen may not be at home, but now that she's come this far, she figures she might as well try. If he isn't, then she'll go home to her daughter and put her questions to bed, at least for now.

As she stands in front of his building and presses the buzzer for his flat, she places her free hand against her stomach. She's so slight that the roundness has become noticeable to her already, though Ross insists she's as small as ever. It's there, however, that first indication she's with child and although Demelza hates the way her body changes with pregnancy, she can't help but smile just a little. Soon enough this child will make him or herself known in much more obvious ways, but for now it's still quiet. Still just for her.

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Demelza has done enough reading on the biology of procreation that she knows what Galen means when he says finishes and she nods thoughtfully, even though she still doesn't quite understand.

"So he wears it on his..." Trailing off, she flushes faintly, because whether she knows the biology or not, it's still awfully intimate and while she trusts Galen more than many folks, while she had intended on asking him all along, it's difficult for her to stumble along.

Instead of trying to figure out what to say, she decides to just continue. "And it blocks his... his semen?" she all but whispers. "It sounds terribly uncomfortable."

"Yeah, that's — that's how it works," Galen says with a short nod, barely able to hold back a laugh for how unbelievably frakking awkward this is. It's all good for Demelza to know, and probably better that she hear it from a friend than a stranger or some professional who might not get what things were like where she's from, but this definitely isn't a conversation he ever thought they would be having. Even so, he almost wishes he had one with him, so he could show her what it looks like instead of trying to put it into words. "It's not uncomfortable, though. It's very thin, very light, doesn't make much difference at all, as far as the... having sex is concerned."

"Hmm," she hums softly, because she doesn't understand how that can possibly be true. But Galen must have more experience with it than she does and so she supposes she must take his word for it, at least until she has Ross try one out.

At least that won't be necessary for some time.

"The doctor said there was pills, too," she adds a moment later, wrinkling her nose. "I know it's all safe or they wouldn't suggest such things, but it just seems... well, it's so much, isn't it? So much information and all so different from what I've known."

"Yeah, I imagine it's a lot to try to take in," Galen says, because as difficult as it is for him to imagine, that's true. A transition like this is difficult enough in the first place, and something like that seems like it would only add to it. In that regard, at least, he guesses he's been lucky. For all that Darrow is a far cry from the Colonies, and even more so from living onboard a battlestar and searching for a place to call home, at least there's enough that's familiar that he hasn't had a hard time getting used to the details of life here. Being here just happens to be a different story. "They are safe, though, yeah. I've never known anyone who had problems with them."

"There are times when I feel as if I've learned so much here and at Nampara both," she admits. "Times when I look at the girl I was before I met Ross and think that I must be a hundred times smarter than I ever would have been without his support." And without Jud and Prudie in their way, too. Maybe they hadn't taught her to read, but they'd taught her so much of their way of life, taught her about Ross and Nampara, taught her all kinds of things.

"I couldn't read or write at all when I first started workin' for him and if I'd worked for someone else..." She trails off and shrugs. "Well, he never minded when I used his mining books to learn, but I know that's not how all men might've been. And I read so much here, I always have books from the library, so sometimes I feel so much smarter than I would have ever imagined and other times..." She laughs. "Other times I see how little I've truly learned."

He'd be unlikely to say so, at least in so many words, but books and writing and anything like that aside, he thinks Demelza is one of the smartest people he knows. She's got a good head on her shoulders, and a lot more sense than he's seen in people with far more education, and those are the things that really count. The fact that she's made such an effort to learn more says a lot, too. He's barely managed to find his footing here, lucky that at least this isn't a setting too unfamiliar. She seems to be learning all she can, a massive undertaking.

"I think there's always a lot more to learn," he says, shrugging, about as close to philosophical as he's likely to get. "No matter how much anyone already knows. Doesn't mean you haven't already learned a lot, too."

"This world is just so big," she says thoughtfully. "Tis even bigger than I could have ever thought because... well, there is so many of us and all our worlds are different and so with each new world, things grow larger still." It's not just her world anymore, not just the knowledge of the time and place where she's come from and Darrow, but the worlds of everyone else who has come here, too. There's much she can learn from Galen she knows she wouldn't be able to learn from anyone else. Much she can learn from Baz that she can't be taught by another.

"My letters still aren't perfect," she admits. "But I'm much better at reading than I was even before I came here. There are so many books in Darrow and no one seems to think it strange I need to ask how to say certain words. The people who work at the library are very kind with it."

"As they should be," Galen says, brow arching slightly. That sort of thing, he thinks, should be part of their job description, but it's too easy to imagine that not being the case, for people to be dismissive rather than understanding. Demelza can't help where she comes from or what she knows as a result, or what she still has to learn, but that doesn't mean everyone would see it that way, and these days, he's not too inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt. He knows far too much about what they're capable of for that. "Especially in a place like this. Everyone who shows up here is at some kind of a disadvantage, when there are all those worlds to learn about."

"And you, too," she says. "You've been that kind to me, Galen, and you've always answered my questions as best 'ee can." She hopes he understands what that means to her, why it's important and why she treasures that aspect of their friendship as much as any other. He may be her closest friend in all of Darrow and she's terribly grateful to have met him, especially on that first day. She's known so many kind and helpful people that sometimes Demelza truly doesn't understand all the negative things people say of Darrow.

Of course, she's seen animals attacking for no reason, so she supposes she understands parts of it.

"And Ross likes 'ee, too," she says, suddenly smiling. "Sometimes Ross don't admit it, but I know he do."

"Well, I'm not usually much for admitting it myself, so I can understand that," Galen says, smiling a little at the thought. Mostly, he thinks, it's habit, the way things were on warships. Showing it would be one thing — he'd have done anything for his crew, and he suspects they all knew that — but giving voice to it would have been another, and largely unnecessary. Here, the number of people he even gives a damn about is incredibly small, but other than Kara and Lee, there's no one so much as Demelza. He doesn't know Ross as well as he knows her, but he likes him, too, respects him, even. "But anything I've answered, I've been glad to."

And that is why Galen has come to be one of her most trusted friends. He's not once made her feel silly or stupid for asking such questions, has only ever seemed as if he's happy to help her and that means so much to her, especially as someone who often feels as if her questions are endless.

It's just that she wants to be able to teach Julia and their new baby everything she can.

"I like very much that school is required here for all children," she says. "I know those with money can still choose a different sort of school, but I've spoken with many people and they don't often seem to believe private schools are any better than the others."

"Yeah, and it doesn't seem like they are," Galen says, shaking his head. There are always going to be people who think it makes a huge difference and who won't hesitate to say so, but especially in a place like this, with such boundaries and limitations, there's really no way for it to. There is, for the most part, an even playing field here, or at least more of one. Whatever faults this place has, at least he can say that in its favor. "It's good. That they want all the kids to be educated, to have a chance."

"Yes. It's not like that at all where I'm from," she says. "The genteel folk get educated, of course, but most of my folk can't read or write. Tis why I'm still learning now, I ent never been taught officially. Some of the rich folks made it real clear they thought I shouldn't. Said I was putting on airs and forgetting my place."

She makes a face, then laughs. "I'm that glad this place ent like that. I'm glad it's expected that Julia will read and write. It makes me happy."

"Gods, that's hard to imagine," Galen says, shaking his head slightly. "Even for as frakked up as everything was for us, at least it wasn't quite like that." It's comforting, too, to know that, with Nicky still back there. Maybe he wasn't really the kid's father after all, and maybe that was for the best, but at least he'll be brought up as well as anyone could in the fleet. That may not be saying a whole lot, but it's something. "I'm glad, too. That's how it should be."

"Everyone deserves that," she says and she hadn't developed much of an opinion on the rights of individuals before Darrow, but she has many thoughts about it now. Ross had likely more thoughts about it than she ever had, he's a strong, smart man like that, he'd known long before Demelza that there had been inequalities in the world and that they could be fixed. Her husband will always be better at it than she is, but she thinks in Darrow she's made an attempt to at least try.

There's one place for her to start and that's with their daughter, their family, their friends. She'll never let someone be made to feel as if they're less.

"Abso-frakking-lutely," Galen agrees without hesitation. There shouldn't even be any question about that, and the fact that there are people who'd disagree is something that, while maybe not as surprising as it should be, is difficult to fathom. At least here, if there's anyone who thinks otherwise, it doesn't seem to make any kind of a difference. He may not be Darrow's biggest fan — far from it — but it does have some things going for it. "That might actually be one of the best things I can say for this place, too."

"Tis," Demelza agrees without hesitation. "At home, I knew my daughter would be given the better things in life simply because Ross had money and status, but had I not married him, it wouldn't have been the same at all. I like that Darrow is different. Even without status, she can have what she deserves and even more. Women are treated that different here."

And sometimes she still has difficulty adjusting to this new way of thinking, but overall she quite likes it.

"Yeah, I'd imagine a lot of people here wouldn't be too happy if that weren't the case," Galen says, exhaling slowly. Even if there'd been more of a discrepancy in Darrow in the way women are treated as opposed to men, there are a lot of people here who came from elsewhere who wouldn't have taken well to adjusting to that, the ones he knows included. Back home, there was no real difference at all. He never would've stopped to think that that made them lucky. "I can't imagine things being any other way."

"Twas always that way for us," she says thoughtfully. "There was a place for women and a place for men. Even those of us who weren't wealthy had the same. No women went down into the mines and if we wanted to work in that field, we were only ever bal maidens. Or we work in kitchens or takin' care of the children. Nothin' at all like what the men do."

That was the future she'd seen for herself. Until Ross, of course.

"I had as many women working with me as I did men," Galen says, shaking his head at the thought of it. It really is difficult to consider, and it makes them lucky, he supposes, that that's not the way things are here. With as frakking weird as Darrow is, with as many different places as people come from, it could just have easily been a world more like hers than like his. Maybe it wouldn't have affected him firsthand so much, but he still would've balked at it. "It must be a lot to take in. Having all these options now."

"Yes, I suppose," she says. "But at the same time, I quite like it. There are times yet when I must... change how I think so that I might understand how certain jobs are open to women now instead of just men, but I like t'do it."

She welcomes the challenge. Learning how to reframe her expectations of the world has been a pleasurable one in Darrow, not quite as it had been in Cornwall. At the time she'd had to find new ways to think about the rich folks and the poor ones, but this is something else. This is better.

"I been thinkin' perhaps I might take the GED," she says. "After the baby is born, of course."

"Yeah, that might be a good idea," Galen says, one shoulder lifting in a slight shrug. He's only learned what that is here himself, though there was something similar back in the Colonies, and it seems to him like a good jumping off point, a way of learning a little of everything. For his part, he can't see himself doing anything but working with machinery, but there's a lot someone could do here, and doing something like taking the GED would make it all that much more accessible. "That'll give you plenty of time to study up, too."

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