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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.)
"That's not allowed, yeah. Abuse means... mistreat you in a way that's super duper not allowed? We can report them for that. Though - I don't know if we should have any contact with the authorities until we figure out how deep this conspiracy goes and whether the government knows and stuff. Raoulin could be lying about cops to lull us into a false sense of security."
"Yes, I think dangerous go to the cops. Last time I goed to the cops, they made me a foster child. I wish I no had goed to them."
Okay, so... not trafficking? The cops would've placed her in foster care. Unless she just thinks she went to the cops when she actually went to an armed gang of some kind. Either way Haley isn't letting Iomedae go back into that situation.
"Yeah, they would've done that if they couldn't find your parents I guess? And your parents must be on your world. You should've just told them you were eighteen but it's not your fault, you didn't know that."
"Is different if you are eighteen? No can lie, I a holy warrior, but I will be eighteen in three years."
"Well yeah, obviously, you're an adult at eighteen. I don't think they can keep you in the system past eighteen unless you do something bad enough to go to jail. It's not hard to fake your age - I have a fake ID for buying alcohol with - it won't fool real cops probably because it was cheap but it fools bouncers at bars."
Haley's fake ID was the most illegal thing she'd ever done, before today. It had seemed like a big rebellion - like sure she couldn't be one of the oh so perfect kids rapidly gaining recognition and awards and career success, but she could be a daredevil adventurer who drank and flirted in gay bars - and now it seems like such small fry.
"Did you think - yeah, of course, you're not a child any more when you're eighteen. Child means not eighteen. After eighteen you're an adult."
"I don't think I understand what a foster adult even would be? I guess... I think there's a system for looking after adults who are really super disabled? But you'd leave the system when you're eighteen."
"Maybe not called foster adult, but person who works and is no paid and the cops chase if they leave?"
"...so in America you can only be maked to work for no pay if you are no eighteen? But before you are eight, you are too small to be worth feeding - maybe this is no so in America because food is so not money?"
"You can't make anyone work for no pay! Slavery is illegal! Like the most illegal thing, we had a whole war over it, it's abolished, or at least everyone thinks it's abolished, the Thirteenth Amendment only bans slavery except as a punishment and so the government does it in jails and it's super racist and wrong."
"You.... thought being a foster child meant being a slave? God, no, it's - when a child doesn't have parents who can look after them - okay no let's start from the beginning, do you, like, know what a child is? Mom and dad?"
"Yeah. I don't speak a lot of Spanish but that's Spanish for child, I think. So child, or kid, kiddo, minor, underage, teen, youth, those are all people who aren't eighteen yet. But you don't know mom or dad?"
"I think I know those. I have a mom and dad, have ten childs, some now grown up and not childs. Or dead and not childs."
Oh God, Iomedae came from one of those medieval worlds - "You have ten children? At fifteen? Oh God I am so sorry. I'm so so sorry."
"What? No! I am gived to God! My mom dad have ten childs. If I understand mom, dad, and childs right."
"Right, okay, yes. Your mom and dad have you, and you are their child, and they are your parents? And those other ten kids are your brothers and sisters?"
Haley is so so impatient to hear urgently about how the magic conspiracy works, but Iomedae is still a very vulnerable kid who deserves to know what the hell she's even running from. It's not easy but... she has an important American sidekick job to do. "Which of those words doesn't make sense?"
"Parents is mom and dad? Brothers is boys, sisters is girls?"
"You good asking! Okay. I have mom and dad. They good mom and dad, they raise holy childs. When I fifteen, Aroden make me a holy warrior. A holy warrior is grown, no obey mother father, gived to Aroden. My family pay to give me armor. Then I go from home, to find a holy order, to learn how to good at holy warrior. - I not good at holy warrior. Today very not good."