Soler comes back from Fourth Street after - hours, actually, having done his Calming Touch for the ragged orphanage staff till he ran out of it, performed one impromptu wedding, taught three people to change diapers, distributed the Goodberries to kids who were too hungry to look lively and appealing, delivered a hurried lecture on how to teach a small child to do a chore if they don't already know how, talked the impromptu-married couple into taking a set of three siblings instead of splitting them up, promised four people some silver to spend on food for their kids, and then gotten roped into doing his turn-into-a-giant-for-a-few-seconds trick to get a wayward moppet off the roof. But he is back that afternoon.

"Hello?" 

Liushna is hoping there isn't some Temple Etiquette she is missing because her people don't have temples.

"Hello. What brings you here?"

"On the night of the riots I got killed rescuing some kids and after I was raised I looked into it and was told they were brought here? I want to make sure they're okay." 

"This isn't the orphanage; if nobody claimed them that's where they went. I've just guilted a fair few people into adopting, though, so perhaps they're okay after all."

"Oh...I've heard some troubling things about the orphanages. I was thinking about using my delegate stipend to buy, like, a lot of bread, or maybe rent a cart and go shoot something large and edible, before I checked on any orphanages." 

"They'll take it. I suppose you couldn't really look after any yourself if they hadn't got wings. Though I hear there's an orphanage across the bridge that has a tiefling with wings. Doubt she can fly."

“I could look after a baby without wings—our babies don’t hatch with flight feathers—it’s just after they grew up and still couldn’t fly that there would be problems, yes. If there’s a winged baby at an orphanage I should absolutely go there.”

"I've never heard of a tiefling flying when they grew up either, but there's lots I've not heard of, your call. The intersection is Fifty-first and Phlegethon."

“I should at least try. Is that also the orphanage the kids from the night of the riot would have been brought to, or is that a different one?”

"That's the nearest one on Fourth Street; I'm sending most people who can take a kid to Fourth Street and they'll take a few off the other orphanages as they open up space."

“Okay, thank you so much. —Oh, and I was going to ask, I assume that if there were some magic affordable on a delegate’s stipend to give people wings or otherwise the ability to fly you’d have mentioned, but I’ve been surprised by so many things since coming here that I figured I ought to check.”

"Wizards can do it but I certainly don't think it's laundry circle."

“I’ll ask the Nethys guys, then, thanks.”

"Mm-hm, anything else?"

“Probably at some point, but not urgently. Thank you.”

It takes her a little while to find Fifty-First and Phlegethon, because street signs are generally designed to be read from ground level, but she locates it eventually.

The orphanage at Fifty-First and Phlegethon has a fenced yard of trampled weeds, which currently contains a twelve-year-old girl pacing with a crying baby, a couple of boys having a shoving match in a circle of enthused peers, two little girls shredding the surviving weeds they can reach from their corner of the fence, a toddler poking the mud, a six-year-old torturing a kitten they found somewhere to death, a girl braiding another one's hair, a boy picking at a splintered shingle on the side of the building, and assorted tiny ones in the one to three years range watching the fight or the kitten situation or the sky or the road or instead just screaming. The noise rising from inside the building is nearly as bad as what's outside.

Oh no.

The first thing she does is drop out of the sky too suddenly for the child presently torturing a kitten to prevent her from plucking the poor creature out of his hands.

”Were you planning on eating this?”

The children scream enough about her landing among them that it's unlikely any of them heard her sentence clearly. The shoving boys, distracted, pick up clods of mud in unison and throw them at her, yelling in a chorus with all the others. The kitten's gonna expire in her hand now if she doesn't stop it.

Cure Light Wounds.

She doesn’t have the cleaning-spell, but it’s not too expensive to pay a wizard for; she ignores the mud. If the children look any likelier to listen once they’ve got it out of their systems she can repeat herself.

Nope, she's got a little child-mob on her hands now, in addition to a kitten that is now very emphatic about its desire to Not Be Touched At All Ever No Thanks. Mud! Yelling!

The door to the yard from the building slams open. "What the shit has you all screaming like - oh Lord I mean Lady -" The orphanage worker is a fiftysomething woman, thin and short and stringy-haired and covered in oatmeal handprints, wearing a baby on her back and carrying a toddler on her hip.

Liushna gently shoos the kitten beyond the fence and turns to the orphanage worker and bows. 

"I'm sorry for the uproar. I was told there was a child with wings, here, and..." she spreads her hands apologetically. "I think it would go badly if I were to adopt one of the normal sort." 

"- come around to the door and you can have it!" exclaims the woman, slapping away a hand tugging on her dress. She stamps back into the building. Two children follow her in and three sneak out past her.

Liushna follows her. 

The child with wings has a shirt on, over his wings, but they're visible as lumps under it. The woman retrieves him from a room full of more kids including two more tieflings and a some-fraction-elf, all of them fighting over the "toys" (a fabric scrap, a couple of sticks, a crate missing one side with the exposed nails pounded down that some of them are hiding under, a rope of wooden beads). When he's been pulled from this seething mass the worker stands him up on the dining table, brushes him off a bit, and says, "Look, she's got wings, just like you, huh?" and offers him up. "We call him Roderic but obviously you can change it. Couldn't tell you how old he is, cambions are funny like that, but he'll grow eventually."

"--Okay," Liushna says, and takes him. She wants to immediately flee, but actually the horrifying conditions here make this part more important. She shifts Roderic into one arm, digs through her bag, and grabs the purse with all the coin she's withdrawn from her account at the Temple of Abadar. "Here," she says, thrusting the money towards the orphanage worker. 

"- thank you very much ma'am may all the gods of Heaven bless you," recites the woman, counting it immediately.

"And you," Liushna says, fleeing immediately. There are a handful of gold in mostly silvers in the purse. 

Roderic is remarkably stoic about this whole thing so far, pouting but not crying.

Liushna takes into the air as soon as she's outside. 

"WAU," yelps Roderic.

"It's alright," Liushna murmurs, running a soothing hand down his back. 

The wings twitch when she touches them. They're very small for his size.

That’s concerning but she can’t bring him back there.

She finds a nice tall building to land on and sets him down to get a better look at him.

He keeps hold of a fistful of her clothes, looking down from the height. He's got curly hair and big dark eyes and sliiightly pointy ears and sliiiightly pointy teeth (eight of them so far) and no shoes on.

Liushna scoots the both of them away from the edge.

”Can you understand me?” she asks, slow and clear, in Chelish.

Slow tentative nod.

She smiles and pats his hair. “My name is Liushna. I’m your new Mama.”

He blinks at her, solemnly digesting this assertion.

“That means I’m going to take care of you now. Is it alright if I look at your wings?”

She spreads her own a little bit, to emphasize that she is also a wing-having person.

He shrinks a little bit but the lumps shift.

Gently, carefully, she removes the shirt.

He has wings! They are black and battish, each not much bigger than his (normally proportioned compared to the rest of him) hands even when he stretches them out in response to the shirt's removal.

…Yeah those won’t be able to lift him if they stay proportional to his body like that.

On the other hand, they don’t look atrophied or anything; aside from their size, they look entirely healthy.

And she knows more about membrane wings than she would if she didn’t have a bat familiar, but still not much compared to feathers.

She’s going to need to look into things while she’s here in Westcrown, see what she can pick up about encouraging growth and entirely magical means of flight.

”Beautiful,” she says, because they are despite their delicate smallness, and because he probably needs to hear it.

"Nuh-uh."

She boops him lightly on the nose. “Yuh-huh.”

He crosses his eyes watching her finger approach his nose and looks nonplussed about it.

She giggles and pats his head again. He’s so cute!

He reaches for his shirt.

He can have that shirt for now but she’s going to have to make him some that don’t trap his wings, she’s not sure the fabric is liable to stunt their growth on its own but it’s certainly not going to anti-stunt their growth.

Okay. Probably Westcrown has somewhere she can buy a child toys, and fabric to make clothes, and…she’s going to have to go to the bank first, she absolutely endorses giving the orphanage all her coin but the consequence is she doesn’t have any.

Although, first:

”Do you like the name you have now?”

Shrug.

A human name would be—a complication, in an Itarii tribe.

“…What do you think of Rojix,” she suggests. It’s not a name she’s heard of anyone having specifically, but it doesn’t sound like not a name, or not Itarii.

"Rojix," he repeats, unaccompanied by an opinion.

She beams and kisses him on the top of the head. 

He doesn't really know what to do with that but doesn't complain about it and keeps hold of her shirt.

EVENTUALLY he will become accustomed to affection. 

Meanwhile she will hold him tight and take off for the bank. 

"WUP!" he squeaks.

"I won't drop you," she promises. 

Clingclingcling.

He'll have time to learn to trust her. She lands in front of the bank and goes inside to acquire money. 

Does she put Rojix down and oblige him to walk during this operation?

Nope! She'll let him down if he indicates a desire to walk but she isn't going to oblige him so to do in the immediate future. 

He stays clung.

The banks of Abadar all talk to each other every day; this isn't the main one but it doesn't matter. Unless seeing Jaume at work behind the counter matters.

Nope! All of her eye-rolling will stay on the inside, and he doesn't really merit anything more than an eye roll while he's not actively attempting to obstruct abolition. She would like to withdraw some Stipend for child-related expenses please, she gave all the money she already had to an orphanage. 

He doesn't need to know what she did with her previous money unless she has theft insurance and is claiming it was stolen, but pointing that out would be equally a waste of time. "How much?"

She names a reasonable sum. The exposition was more for the kiddo's sake, honestly. 

He finds her file, cross-checks it against the copy to be sure it has not been tampered with, and collects the coins out of the operational cash drawer with the keys around his neck and notes the deduction in both files.

Cool cool thanks dude! She waves goodbye as she leaves just exactly as if he weren't a contemptible slaver. 

He replaces her amended files exactly as if she weren't a murderous monster!

Okay! Toys first, it's going to take some time for her to make appropriate clothes even once she has the fabric. 

...Presumably toys for children is something you can buy, but like...where. Hm. Maybe someone else who just adopted a child will be at the temple of Erastil and will know. 

The temple of Erastil is crowded and has more children at it than usual!

Is there anyone who looks parent-y and not immediately busy. 

This one is evidently one of the ones who brought her existing children to the orphanage and got them a new sibling, since her elder daughters look strikingly like her and the little boy doesn't particularly. They are waiting for something but not busy while they wait.

Liushna will approach her cautiously, then. She doesn't RESPECT the fact that people keep being afraid of her, but she is aware of it, and she doesn't want someone to stab her because they think she's a threat to their children. And, like, obviously you would stab someone who was a threat to your children. 

"Sower got to you too, huh?" says the woman, adjusting one of the girls' collars.

Not exactly but close enough. "Yeah--I'm only in town for the convention, I was wondering if you knew where I could buy things for little children, here." 

"Oh, I don't think they need shoes in the summer time and you might be home by fall, who knows."

"Oh, fair enough, but--I don't have any other children, and he doesn't have any toys--I'd make them myself, obviously, but I traveled light coming here and I don't have the things I would use to make them."

"He's a boy? Get him a stick that he can swing like a sword or a wand."

"...I guess that's fair. When I was small I always managed to bully my brother into playing with my dolls with me, so I didn't think of it like that." She's pretty sure children need More Than One Toy but she also totally sees this woman's point, Liushna is, well, freaking out a bit about being a first-time mother on no notice. 

"I guess you could make him a straw doll, word is the Shelynites've been roped into an impromptu dollmaking class over at their place. But I'd go with a good stick for a boy."

"That makes sense. --Thank you for humoring me, I always sort of expected I'd have more warning before my first child." 

That gets a laugh.

Liushna smiles and waves at her and goes off to the temple of Shelyn because she really does think a child should have more toys than just a stick.

The Shelynites apparently have a totally unrelated dollmaking tradition and it's generally a winter holiday thing but the out-of-towners know how even though this influx of spontaneous parenting is occurring in summer. They are all learning how to make dolls out of straw and string and scrap fabric.

Liushna knows how to make dolls out of string and scrap fabric! She just didn't really have string and scrap fabric. Also the dolls she knows how to make have wings. ...She can make the wings smaller for Roderic/Rojix, she still hopes she can encourage his to grow big and strong but she doesn't want his belief in his own worth to hinge entirely on that working and for now his wings are itty bitty. 

The Shelynites are supplying the string and scrap fabric for the occasion if she'll sit and hang out with everybody else who's making one!

She absolutely will! She doesn't especially expect anyone else to want to do wings but if anyone does want to do a doll of, like, an angel or something, she can show them how. Also does Rojix want to try, she doesn't expect him to especially get anywhere but it's good for kids to try to make things. 

One of them does want an angel doll now that she mentions it!

Rojix will take a piece of straw very solemnly and start picking at it with his nails.

Liushna does not entirely understand what he's doing but she doesn't think he trusts her enough yet for her to ask. She will keep an eye on him while explaining how to do wings using a couple of knots in the string, and--she doesn't usually use straw but maybe if you do it like that--

The angel doll is pretty wonky but the kid is not in a position to be picky.

It's very good for a first try! It's so nice to be making something with her hands; it's not something that tends to come up at the convention. The convention is an uphill slog of tolerating unpleasant people in the hopes that you will maybe have accomplished something at the end of it; this is cheerful chatter with pleasant people all of whom are definitely going to have a doll at the end of it. Soothing. 

Once he has disintegrated his bit of straw to his satisfaction Rojix nods off in her lap.

Awwwww. She will stroke him gently enough not to wake him, intermittently when she doesn't need both hands. 

He startles the first few times her hand touches him but doesn't wake up all the way.

Poor little one. Her heart twangs every time he demonstrates being unused to affection. She wonders how long he was in that awful place. 

When she's finished two dolls, she lingers a while longer to help other people--she wants to make sure the church is well-repayed for letting her use their materials, and that means being as helpful as possible. Also if anyone involved in acquiring the scrap cloth knows where she can get non-scrap cloth, she wants to make him at least one shirt that frees his wings and also a kind of Itarii quasi-sling that will allow her to tie him to her back 

The Songbird leading the class went to the fabric shop at thus and such a place.

Thanks, that’s really helpful!

After she’s done at the temple, she’ll—actually when was the last time this child ate anything. He has teeth, so hopefully it won’t be a problem that she doesn’t have milk. She will locate a convenient street vendor.

She can find one who only blatantly overcharges her a little bit for a stuffed bun.

Well she will circle back around to that guy if the baby wakes up before she finds one that doesn’t blatantly overcharge her at all.

Rojix politely doesn't wake up while she vets vendors. She can get a paper cone full of roasted peanuts for the price painted on the side of the cart.

Humans do such interesting food. Liushna carefully stashes it somewhere it won’t get on anything else and takes off for the fabric shop. She’s never had a child of her own before but she has enough experience with other people’s to know that you feed the baby when the baby wakes up, you don’t sacrifice precious the-baby-is-asleep time.

Zzzzzzz.

He’s so cuuuuute. And he’s hers. She’s only had this little one for a short time but if anything happened to him she couldn’t fix she would probably do some self-destructive problem-causing.

Fabric shop!

The fabric shop has fabric in it,up on racks on the walls in its various bolts, with small samples available to handle and mixed scraps sold by the pound. The proprietor double-takes at her but decides not to make a fuss.

She will buy a pound of mixed scraps and also a couple of yards of something sturdy and unscratchy enough to make clothes for a toddler out of.

Like this chambray? Will she take any buttons and thread and needle to go with?

…She will absolutely take a needle and thread, what buttons does he have and are they better than she could make herself with a whittling knife and a piece of antler.

They have assorted mostly wooden buttons of varying quality and corresponding prices. The cheap ones are six to a copper.

Okay she will take some cheap wooden buttons, as long as they’re not so cheap that they’re liable to give splinters.

They have had a going-over with a bit of sandpaper.