Okay.

She attempts to explain to her two-year-old that they are going to stay here for a long time, maybe as long as a year, because it will have enough food for her and for him and his sister, and that he is not to talk to anyone besides the people who live in this room, and if he needs anything he must ask her and not anyone else.

And then she feeds his sister, and tells him a story, and tucks them into bed.

He comes back a while later, looking stressed and tired.

Hug?

Hug.

"I'm sorry we're so much trouble."

Shrug. "My father's delighted about you."

"I suppose that's something."

"Yeah. Probably even a good thing."

Nod.

He lies down and doesn't say anything else but doesn't fall asleep either.

She kind of wants to snuggle him and kind of feels sick at the thought.

She does it anyway, if not as enthusiastically as usual.

She sleeps.

"My father wants you again," he says the next morning. "For language lessons."

Nodnod. "I can do that. Could you maybe watch my son for me while I do? Hate to leave him in just the one room all day."

"Yeah. Do I do anything in particular? I can show him places I guess?"

"I think he'd like that. He's really the easiest toddler I've ever met. He likes being held. And of course he needs to eat at some point."

"I can feed him and hold him and show him things as a favor to you."

"Thank you. I'll talk to your father."

He has forty six random pages of the Bible - they're the ones that some monks happened to be copying on the occasions he has snuck into their monastery. Can she tell him more about this.

What a person. She can tell him about this, yes.

He is fascinated by miracles and wants to know if she'll do one for him right now. He is fascinated by how the Bible was compiled. He is fascinated by the Scandinavian religion too and wants to read its holy texts, which buildings should he be sneaking into. He wants to know if she has ever personally tried human sacrificing anyone and measuring the increase in her combat capabilities. He wants to know why not. 

She cannot do miracles on command, that pretty much happens when God wants it to. She can describe Scandinavian temples but unfortunately most of the Scandinavian religious stories are transmitted orally, he may have to be content with the myths that she personally knows. She has not human sacrificed anyone because that would be evil, killing people in pagan rituals is bad, actually, and even if it wasn't she doesn't have any prisoners to sacrifice, and even if she did she doesn't know how to fight and is not sure how she would measure how much better she had gotten at it.

He would like the myths she personally knows and also an explanation of the human concept of evil.

She can tell him lots of them but it will probably take a while so maybe they can start on that another day.

Evil is... things that are bad? That's not going to help. Um. She could tell him that evil things are those that are contrary to God's will, which is the most accurate thing, but it makes it sound like evil is a Christian concept and not a human one, and she's pretty sure all humans have a concept of evil.

She tells him, instead, of Pandora (with a disclaimer that the Pandora story is probably not literally true, it seems like an obvious corruption of the garden of Eden story, but perhaps it will be more illustrative, and it was certainly a thing that some people believed, once).

She tells him of the world as it must have been before the box was opened, beautiful and untarnished and with nobody meaning any harm to each other, each of their needs met and none of them sick or broken or dying or enslaved or in pain or afraid. She tells him of Pandora, and how she opened the box, not knowing what was inside or what it meant for something to be bad. She tells him of the things that flew out of the box, diseases and suffering and death and famine, and the things that curled up in the hearts of men, cruelty and false pride and greed and jealousy and despair, and how these things left the world as it is today.

The contents of the box are evil.

"Famines and jealousy do not seem like a natural category - can you say it like that, natural category?"

"Yes, you can. In the equivalent Christian story a woman gains knowledge of good and evil by eating a fruit she was commanded not to eat, and in doing so curses the world to have things like diseases and famines and death. I think - a lot of people think that the evils in the world are connected to the evil things that come from people. Usually when they don't specify they're talking about the latter, though."