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"How was school, honey?"
She tries to make the kids' favorite meals on their first day of school, but when she asked Iomedae's favorite meal the girl first stared at her blankly and then after some extended clarifications proposed that they could roast a pig, and she can't actually roast a pig, so dinner is pork chops, and potatoes, and salad from the farmer's market. Iomedae is not a picky eater.
(The girl is in fact clinically obese. The doctor suggested they talk with her about cutting back on junk food, but the social worker said that was a bad idea, with a kid new to care - don't restrict her food access at all, just get her more exercise. So Jenny signed her up for swim lessons at the YMCA and for track and field at school. Iomedae balked at the swimming lessons on the grounds that swimsuits were immodest, and they do actually make hijabi wetsuit things but apparently not in her size. Hopefully track and field she'll actually enjoy.)
"Hey! Iomedae's here, and I think she was planning to volunteer, but she also wants to check out the rest of the event! What hours do you need her most?"
"Hi! I don't think we'd properly met yet? I'm Raoulin, it's lovely to meet you, I'd heard Iomedae is coming to volunteer. We actually have tons of volunteers so, Iomedae, why don't you take a look at the schedule and let me know any classes you'd want to go to and we'll work around those?"
He fishes out a folded A4 schedule from his pocket and offers it to Iomedae.
...she just said that in English though. She very much just said that in English. She's reportedly been having conversations in English for quite a while, though Lucy said her vocabulary is surprisingly bad...
"Iomedae didn't get the chance to go to school until a couple weeks ago," says Jenny. "She's working really hard to catch up! So Iomedae, it says -" and she'll read her the whole schedule.
She will listen attentively and is obviously not looking at the sheet even though Jenny is pointing to words as she says them. "I want do swords and archery, ma'am."
"You should try out one of the crafts, too, those look fun! Look, they have one that's about spinning wool, maybe we can check that one out together?"
Oh.
She can't read.
Well that makes sense of why she never got the note, though now Raoulin is absolutely baffled as to why she was carting a bag full of school textbooks around in the first place, or why she was in school for that matter. Probably some sort of legal requirement but...
...it's also horrifying as soon as he thinks about it, because if she really did escape some sort of abusive cult and lacks even the ability to Google things or read the newspaper or understand a map... no wonder she's struggling with culturally assimilating, she's helpless.
He blinks away the emotional reaction that he shouldn't be having noticeably, and speaks quietly and gently.
"You can't do swords here because you need to be authorised, which has to wait until your birthday. But you can absolutely do archery. And that's the only thing you need parental supervision for - you can go to classes on your own, so it's fine if you want to go to heraldry or calligraphy while your mom does spinning. Volunteer whenever works for you - just make sure you're back here at the end of the day after court, because we'll let you pick through the stuff that doesn't get bought... all those words make sense?"
She caught very few of those words. "I understand no swords sir."
Trying to give Iomedae long explanations of things is very well meaning but it doesn't actually work because she gets confused a sentence in. Jenny keeps smiling. "It sounds like we can go to archery, and then walk around and see what else you want to try, and then come back here at 1 to volunteer."
...she doesn't understand why she can't have swords, does she? She just thinks she's being excluded because she's weird or because she talked about religion too much or she isn't good enough. His heart breaks a little bit.
He will try to sit down with her later and explain to her - no, better, he'll tell Lucy to sit down and talk to her about how frustrated Lucy was when she was fifteen and desperately wanted to be hitting adults with sticks. None of his own kids were anywhere near that desperate to fight.
But Jenny is hovering, and he still wants to figure out a way to help this kid, which means not antagonising Jenny.
"...that sounds fine. We want you to enjoy yourself, okay, Iomedae? We all want you to have a really good day. So just ask, if you need help."
There is a part of him that very much wants to be his ordinary self, who would do something like... wink, and conspiratorially stage-whisper that he is able to help with many things, such as providing chocolate from his secret stash behind the counter.
There is a part of him, mostly the dad part, which just wants to hug her and ask who he has to stab to make everything okay.
And there is one very small part of him that still has to track the possibility that she's possessed or inhuman or under the effect of some kind of strange magic. And has to track whether they're going to need to edit Jenny's memory when all is sad and done. He really can't put a foot wrong here.
Damn it, Nicole would be better at this than him. Where's his squire when he needs her?
He sighs. He has no idea what to say. Maybe... "You see this?" and he picks up the dangling end of his white belt and shows Iomedae the colour. "Anyone you see in a white belt, we're all knights. You can ask any of us for help because we all made a promise to help anyone who needs it. Okay?"
"I am a foster child, sir." Just in case he missed that; it might make him less likely to want to help her or he might see it as a situation that someone would want help with.
"Well, I can't say I know anything about how hard that has to be. I've never been a foster child. I probably can't help with most of it, but I want this to be a safe place for you, and I want you to let us know if there's anything we can do to make your day better, kay?"
"You know that's not because of anything you did wrong, right, Iomedae? You have to wait until you're sixteen, but that won't be forever. If you spend some time watching the tournament today, I bet you'll learn a lot from watching great fighters and you'll be even more ready for when you can enter."
She does not know what sixteen is or how to 'wait' and thereby bring it about, but Jenny is right that she is being rude. "Yes, sir."
Raoulin has a few secondhand knives in nice leather sheaths available for sale. He kind of wants to give her a knife. ...He is absolutely not going to give her a knife, that is a bad idea which just feels like a good idea because it was always a good idea to give knives to people like Lucy and Nicole.
"Go have fun at the archery range. We'll be here all day." Once Nicole shows up he can update her about the whole Iomedae-cannot-read situation.