"Right - lots of fairies want kids, if you go for angels and demons too you'd get even more but I only know fairies."

Alia blinks. "...Demons? I - assume that's not, er, Abyssal demons -" 

"Is there a ding in the language equivalency? Like the one who was doing the talking for my summonses, those guys." Where are the kiddos he wants to see the kiddos bounce bounce.

"- Right, yes, that came up with Cam and he said we should call him an 'apsel'."

"Okay, suits me. Where are the kids?"

"...Oh. All right. This way." And Alia leads them to a room down at the end of the hall. 

There are children waiting to meet their possible future family!

There are eleven of them, all female. The youngest is 15 months old; the oldest is five and a half. They're all freshly scrubbed with their hair combed and neatly braided, and dressed in the nicest castoffs that the orphanage could find. They're on their very best behaviour, sitting on the mixed-and-matched arrangement of chairs and stools provided for them, looking hopefully toward the door. 

The youngest girl, a tiny redhead, was already kind of overwhelmed by all the frantic travel and meeting new people. She starts to cry. Her older sister, four-and-a-half with pigtails and freckles and burn-scars across her neck, squeezes and shushes her. 

Ildan meeeeelts. "Hi there kiddos," he murmurs. "My name's Ildan."

Nine pairs of eyes blink at him.

(The youngest girl is still hiding her face against her sister's dress, and one of the others, a shockingly scrawny brunette with bright hazel eyes, is apparently daydreaming and staring vaguely out the window.) 

Nobody says anything for a little while. 

The pigtailed-and-freckled older sister squares her shoulders and smiles hopefully up. "Hi Ildan! I'm Molly and this is Avri! We're sisters! Do you have a sister?" 

"I don't have a sister! I wasn't born, so I don't have any family at all yet."

A puzzled furrow appears between Molly's brows. "How were you not born? Everyone's born. ....Does that mean you never had a mommy? Or a daddy?" 

"I never had either one. I was already a grownup when I started existing. Most people are like that where I come from, so there are almost no children there."

Molly frowns about this for a little while. She looks around hopefully at the other children, but none of their faces have any helpful answers for her.

"...Are you sad about that?" she asks finally. "Because - when you said that your face looked the way my mommy's face did when she learned my daddy died." 

"Well," he says, "I think I was okay not having parents or brothers or sisters, but I also don't have any kids, and that's why I'm here."

Molly brightens. "Because you want to be our -" pause. "- daddy? ...Is there a mommy too?"

The possible-new-mommy-or-daddy has WINGS and somehow this makes it very confusing to figure out what the word to call him(/her?) should be???

"It's just me, so I don't come with a corresponding mommy, sorry. I might find one later but I haven't yet and don't want to wait."

"Oh." 

Molly really really wants to ask if he wants to be her-and-Avri's daddy, but that would be RUDE because her friends also want to find a mommy or daddy. So she hugs Avri and tries to wait without any fidgeting. 

"So - I think more people like me are going to come through and want to adopt kids, I'm just first, so whoever I go home with should be someone who didn't specifically want a mommy."

Molly considers this. And politely waits to see if anyone else is going to speak up. 

- after ten seconds she has exhausted all of her patience. 

"I wouldn't mind. And Avri will be sooooo good and I can take care of her so it's not so much work for you -" 

"Oh, I don't mind if it's lots of work. It would be good if you could watch her for short times sometimes when I have to do my job, since I have a job now, but do you want to know something neat? I don't have to sleep, so even if you're both tons of work all the time you're awake, I will have plenty of breaks."

"Oh wow! Does that mean you don't ever get to have dreams? Sometimes dreams are nice." 

"Oh, I can sleep," he assures her. "It just doesn't bother me much if I don't."

"You can take these two, then?" Alia asks in a low voice. 

Molly is BEAMING at Ildan. Avri is still hiding her face. 

"Just one more question," says Ildan, smiling a little. "Do you two want to fly?"

Molly blinks. "I don't know. It might be too scary for Avri? She doesn't like being up high." 

"Hmm," he says. "Okay, we can start slow on that one then." He nods at Alia.