"What would the note even say?" 

The Baroness looks directly at Nicole. "Nicole, you're my ambassador to strange otherworldly creatures I don't fucking know how to interact with." 

Nicole holds up a hand to ask for silence while she thinks very carefully about it for several long moments.

It's a painfully long pause. 

Baron Rees emerges from the kitchen with risotto for everyone, and on observing the general atmosphere, decides to deposit plates very quietly and not say anything. 

"I think.... we have procedures for how to handle mundane people in possession of artefacts they should not have, and we have procedures for how to handle potential recruits, and procedures for how to handle demons who are assimilating into society by pretending to be humans - though we haven't had to use those in a long time and God forbid we need them today. We're struggling because those all say very different things about what to do with her. I think we can't tell her about everything we are and everything we do, because if she's a potential recruit then she needs to go through the same vetting as other potential recruits, artefact or no artefact. But we do need to make sure she knows not to use magic, but without tipping her off that it exists if she doesn't already know. And without tipping her off that we're onto her, if she's a demon infiltrator. So no invisible notes being handed to her in mid air, and nothing that mentions the SCA, nothing signed 'from the SCA' - especially because I can't imagine her foster parents let her come back if they think we're slipping her secret notes."

"So I think an invisible note should come from, as far as we can figure out what this like like, someone like her. It's deceptive and it sucks that it's deceptive, but something like: be careful, it's dangerous in America to reveal that you're from Taldor, you have to keep it secret that you're a holy warrior."

"....I really really hate that though. I really want a better plan than that."

"It.... wouldn't be saying anything that isn't technically true. Under basically all of our hypotheses, bad things might happen to her if she tells everyone she's from some kind of magical alternative universe."

"It's an okay last resort but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth," Raoulin agrees. 

"Okay, the project is to make a better plan than that," says Elynor.

The risotto goes cold on the table.

They do not make a better plan than that.

At some point after arriving home from school the next day, Iomedae will find a note in her school bag, placed deliberately somewhere that it will be obvious that it was not there before. Raoulin does not want Iomedae thinking it appeared the previous day or making any connection between the note and the practice. 

It's printed very carefully in big letters, because Reynhard pointed out that Iomedae's English isn't good. They're pretty sure they're using simple enough language that even if she doesn't get all the words, she can Google the rest of them. They used Comic Sans because Reynhard remembered that being an easy font for kids to read and nobody had a good argument against it. Raoulin kind of feels like the all-caps makes it look like a ransom note but he was outvoted. 

It says:

THIS IS WRITTEN BY A FRIEND. DO NOT BE SCARED. 

I CANNOT TELL YOU WHO I AM YET, BUT I WANT TO HELP YOU. 

BE VERY CAREFUL!

IF YOU SAY YOU ARE FROM TALDOR, YOU MIGHT BE IN DANGER. IN AMERICA, YOU SHOULD NOT TELL PEOPLE YOU ARE FROM A PLACE UNLESS YOU CAN FIND IT ON A MAP.

IN AMERICA, A HOLY WARRIOR MIGHT BE IN DANGER. YOU SHOULD KEEP IT SECRET.

IF YOU ARE CAREFUL I CAN TELL YOU MORE, BUT ONLY IF YOU ARE CAREFUL.

YOU ARE DOING GREAT. 

It is really rather easy to overestimate Iomedae's fluency with the English language. She is charming and expressive and communicative, she uses the words she does know to say quite complicated things, she uses back the words that people just used with her, she guesses from cognates with Spanish, and she introduced herself to all her classes by saying 'I am Iomedae, foster child of Robert and Jenny, and it is the will of God I study here with all of you.' You would never mistake her for a native speaker but you might mistake her for someone who has been learning for years.

Her teachers have not actually realized that she understands less than a tenth of what is said to her, much less that she doesn't know the alphabet.

But she doesn't know the alphabet. 


School is fairly unpleasant. She sits in a desk while people explain things she doesn't understand in a language she barely speaks. She prays, and recites scripture in her head forwards and backwards, and copies the diagrams off the board. There is a quiz in science class, which means they hand out a sheet of paper, which she carefully keeps uncreased on her desk until it's time to hand it in. 


When she finds a note in her backpack while showing Jenny her homework, she gives it to Jenny.

"....honey, where did you get this?"

Iomedae peers at it curiously. It does not look like her history homework or her math homework or her science homework or her English homework or her Spanish homework or her PE homework. "I don't know where I get this."

"Did someone give it to you at school today?"

"I do not know. School is - so many school." By the end of it all of her is aching and not in a good way.

"If anyone gives you a note like this, you can show it to a teacher. That's not a nice thing to do."

"What it say?"

"It says that - never mind. I think whoever wrote it was trying to get you to act differently at school, but that's none of their business and they should not have asked it of you."

"For sure they should not have asked it of me by a note."

"Are the other kids mean to you at school?"

"They ...say things a person say of a foster child." 

" - what do you mean by that?"

Iomedae has not spent much of her life contemplating slavery. Scripture says that slavery is among the many things civilization will outgrow eventually though apparently not yet at America's technology level. It says that mistreating slaves is evil. No one has mistreated Iomedae. They point at her, they whisper about her, they laugh at her, they are quick to anger when she does not understand their commands, they sometimes touch her unexpectedly; but none of this is mistreatment. It is a bad habit, to be easily injured by the conduct of others; she aspires to be indifferent to it where it does not threaten her or endanger the innocent. 

"I do not know to say, ma'am."

"No one should be bringing up you being in foster care. That is none of their business. If they're bullying you we can complain to the administration."