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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.)
Nicole sits back in her chair, her back perfectly straight, and gives the table an icy look. "She's the most honourable person I know, and you are all better people than to react like that."
Raoulin sighs softly. "She does give people the creeps, Nicky - it's not her fault at all, nobody's saying it's her fault, but..."
"Sumnyr's power hurting you usually says worse things about you than about her. It's no different from standing around in my aura."
"You know what, it probably does say bad things about me. But so long as I'm not doing bad things, I think I get to have my privacy. Shield of the weak, obedient to my liege, reverent, honest, foremost in battle, the oath says, and there's nothing in there about letting anyone poke around inside my squeaky clean brain."
Raoulin hates to contradict his squire twice in quick succession when she's really saying things he's glad someone brought up. He pinches the bridge of his nose for a long few seconds.
"I agree with you that we call Sumnyr and at least ask before we resort to memory magic, but..."
Raoulin shakes his head apologetically. "I don't think she's going to agree as long as Iomedae being.... possessed, fey, demon, angel, half-demon, half-angel, mind-edited by any of the above, any of those possibilities are on the table... Y'all remember the last time she tried an angel?"
"Yeah. - it was bad. She, ah, had a reaction that would be bad for her to have in front of Jenny and Robert."
"...to be fair, in the hypothetical where Iomedae's mind is burning her, that's also probably the world where we actually have to go nuclear and memory edit people anyway, right? We cannot leave a demon in the foster care system and we also don't want the foster care system looking for someone to blame for a missing kid... but no, if she's only a small part non-human we don't want to go nuclear but there's still ways for her to mess with Sumnyr."
"Nope, I've changed my mind. I love your first plan. Let's do your first plan. I'm on board with the bake sale. I love bake sales. I make truly excellent blueberry muffins."
Iomedae is forbidden to speak at practice about religion. She is - still not really clear on what religion is. Discussion of the gods, definitely. Discussion of the afterlives, apparently, or of any kind of outsiders. She suspects it's somehow even more general than that? Discussion of paladins and priests? Discussion of Good and Evil, of honor and anarchy? Discussion of ...all obligations and commitments? This is a baffling thing for an order to prohibit the discussion of, but - Robert is right, that she was treating the rule with less seriousness because of how it strikes her as a stupid rule, and that isn't acceptable. You cannot treat rules carelessly because you don't like them; she can refuse to join the order, if its rules seem foolish to her, but she cannot go to the order for training and ignore its rules.
She will just have to not talk about anything that matters. This is a painful constraint, but she is a slave, and should not expect anyone to care which constraints are painful to her, and should not expect that her objections carry any weight with them.
She asks Robert to help her apologize for disobeying the rules in a way that is not bringing up religion, since ordinarily when apologizing one would make reference to commitments, moral motivations, or the state of the world in some way.
"That's good of you, kiddo. I think if you just say 'sorry for bringing up God, I won't do that anymore', they'll be fine with that."
"Bringing up God, is not thing I apologize for. Or - is not just God, right? Also holy warriors, honor, obedience, Heaven, Hell, good, evil, this world, next world?"
"If I say, sorry for bringing up God, they understand that I saying all of those?"
"I say that."
Iomedae feels desperately lonely, but that is her problem, not anyone else's. She spends more time in her room praying; God does not forbid her from speaking to him about important things.
At practice on Tuesday she will show up early, slightly sick to her stomach, to apologize and then swordfight. "I am sorry for bringing up religion at practice, I won't do that again," she says, in much better than her usual English.
....right, he should've predicted that there would've been some followup after Robert made her leave last practice. Of course. This isn't a response to their note, or most likely to anything they did at all. The English in that sentence sounded coached.
Damn. He isn't sure whether to be encouraged that this means she isn't breaking the secrecy of magic, or annoyed that this means it'll be much harder to gather information about what exactly is going on.
"That's okay. We understand you're adjusting to a different culture, and it's okay to have trouble at first," Reynhard says because he has to say something. "And having a religious persona is fine, so long as you're not talking about God saving you from hits, or people going to hell, and the like. We're just glad to see you again."
...'having a religious [something] is fine, so long as you're not talking about God saving you from hits, or people going to hell'.
Iomedae has absolutely no idea what this would mean is permitted, though she correctly guessed two not-permitted things, so ....probably she should not change her current policy to just not talk about anything that is important.
"I want to learn swords, sir," she says, and then unless anyone objects she will spend the entire practice doing that with alarming intensity.
Absolutely nobody is going to object to her studying the blade. Do her foster parents want to allow her to fight anyone she likes, or is she restricted to Lucy and Nicole?