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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.)
"Do you understand how do that? I no can see anything but Evil, and not all magic things safe to hold."
Haley slowly opens the driver side door and almost falls out onto the ground. "Uh, wallet first. Then I want a Monster Energy. Probably two Monster Energy. Then we try messing around with that."
She opens the back door of the car and starts rifling through the various objects, searching for anything she could use to pay for gas.
Iomedae had several hundred dollars on her when she was taken into foster care. Jenny put it in a safe and said she'd talk to the social worker about it. It is a downpayment on what she owes Robert and Jenny for feeding her so she isn't exactly upset about it but it would be convenient to have now. She helps Haley look.
Katherine and Reynhard's wallets are both together; it turns out that the bag of snacks also contains the rest of the mundane things that they threw together when packing for the day, including what looks like some house keys, a bottle of ADHD medications, a notebook and some scented wet-wipes. There's just cards in Katherine's, but a hundred and five dollars of cash in Reynhard's.
Haley does not find the wallets, because she's busy being absolutely thrilled by the existence of sekanjabin. "Oh Iomedae, you have to try this stuff, it's great -"
"I not do that." Iomedae has found the money and taken it out. "We owe Katherine twenty dollar."
"For what?" Haley asks, puzzled. "Uh, how much is there in there? Can you pass me like... forty bucks for gas and twenty for drinks?"
"We're stealing it from evil people," Haley explains very, very patiently. "You said you checked and Katherine was evil, and the knights mostly murder people and are evil, so probably Reynhard is also evil. We can't give it back because we aren't going back. Also I don't think we should get hung up on sixty dollars when we stole a probably twenty thousand dollar car and probably a thousand more dollars of the stuff inside it, not counting magic items. That dent you put in the roof costs more than twenty dollars."
"Then we should count for all that, to give back if they not do any thing so people should steal from them. Twenty thousand, a thousand, how much Haley car worth?"
"That's not how anything works - you can't just trade my car for their car, they can't use my car. They aren't insured for it, and they don't have the title registered to them. And you can't put a price on things like the IDs I left in my car, or my personal stuff that I handmade, or the hassle of replacing all the cards in a wallet. Or half this stuff in the back of their car that we can't value because we'd never be able to fence it except to SCAdians. And there's physically no way for us to even give anything back even if they weren't evil! It's - look, can you please sometimes just trust that I know about how to do stuff in America and pass me sixty bucks?"
"That all make the number bigger, no a reason not to count! We can - we can leave things here at gas station, tell them where to find them." She gives Haley sixty dollars.
"No we can't. It's a remote gas station and it's night, they'll definitely absolutely get stolen before Katherine and Reynhard even hear about it, let alone get here to pick things up. You just - don't get how things work here, I'm sorry. Even if the cops find the vehicle I don't know if they'll even give it back, I bet they sometimes claim it's evidence or civil forfeiture or something and just keep it. They might keep my car too."
Haley heads towards the store. It's one of the ones where you have to prepay for gas. "Coming?" she asks, gesturing. She kind of hopes Iomedae doesn't come, so she can think about what to buy without Iomedae having opinions about theft.
"Give me phone and call Raoulin again? I no tell him where we are. Just ask if the things you sayed are true, and if he have ideas."
Haley absolutely hates this idea but on the bright side it sounds like being left in peace to buy Monster Energy with stolen money, put some gas in the car, and actually have five minutes to actually think about all the things she needs to be thinking about. Like how to form a plan, since Iomedae clearly doesn't have one. And where they're going. And where they're even sleeping tonight.
She really really needs her mouth to be less dry and her head to be less buzzing and maybe even to process some of the giant emotions she's feeling bubbling, suppressed, under the surface.
"I - fine, sure, whatever, if it makes you feel better. Just don't tell him where we are or where we're going, and don't offer or promise him anything that you're then going to complain if we don't give him?"
Haley pulls out her phone, finds her most recent call, dials Raoulin again, hands it over and marches off into the store before he picks up.
He picks up as soon as he can slow his horse down enough to do so safely.
He has no idea what the proper greeting is for this situation. Anything along the lines of, 'Hello, this is Raoulin speaking, how may I help you today?' strikes him as deeply ridiculous.
"Are you safe?" he asks.
"I no injured and you are the ones chasing me. Haley also no injured."
"Actually once you drove off we've mostly not been chasing you. Because high speed car chases are really easy to get hurt in, or hurt other people in, so we're mostly looking at... other ways of getting you back. If that convinces you to slow down at all."
Raoulin is after them on an invisible horse, but he decided not to let Nicole go after them in her car no badly how blatantly she wants an excuse to actually use her top speed, so he feels like this is truthful enough.
"If it true it would, but not know if you say true things, that is kind of lots of the bad things now. Haley think we no can trust you, and Haley know you more than I know you."
"That's pretty fair. Haley found out the secret of magic in just about the worst way today, I think, so she's very upset with me. Is she there with you?"
"I no want answer that. I wanted ask you, the magic in the car. It dangerous? You use it to kill people? If you use it no for evil things I want give it back to you, but no sure how to know what is true."
"That's Katherine and Reynhard's stuff in that car, so to be honest I don't know what all of it is. I've never known either of them to do anything I thought was evil using magic, but it might be dangerous. I... can't pretend that I think there's any chance you're actually going to successfully steal it, so I'm not too worried about you giving it back, but I do appreciate the thought."
That is in one sense very unreassuring and in another sense kind of reassuring. Iomedae isn't sure which wins out. "You no want us now try figure out give back to you things we did not mean to steal?"