Iomedae will take the actions Alfirin was just taking but she doesn't really understand what she's trying to prove to herself. You can balance blocks on a stick with the fulcrum in various places, she's convinced of that much. "I don't see but maybe it is a scientist thing? Is it?"

"I think it might be more obvious if we were using it to lift something that's actually heavy? I don't want to break the yardstick, but...hmm...one second, there's probably stuff in the cupboard." 

She's back more like thirty seconds later with a box of canned tuna. "Here. If we put this on the floor with the yardstick under it, like in the picture with the mammoth, you can try tilting it up off the ground by grabbing the yardstick right beside the box, and also by grabbing it way over here at the end, and see if you can tell which way is easier and feels less heavy?"

"I don't think it's a scientist thing. It is like a thing that selling-people have, and if you move the blocks to the middle they...are smaller? One block ten marks away is like ten blocks one mark away."

" - like it is easier to carry a thing close to your chest than out as far as your arm can reach?"

"Yes! Like that."

"Lighter. Is the word for smaller but for how heavy something is and not, like, how wide it is."

(Is it like that? It feels like it should be, but with a lever the point is it's easier to lift the thing if you've got a longer lever, not a shorter one, and now Evelyn is confusing herself... Though if Alfirin thinks so she's probably right, she's clearly very smart.) 

"Like how it is easier for people to do work of God in world even though God is smarter, because we are - closer?"

"I don't know if like that."

It seems like it might be metaphorically like that, but Evelyn is worried that if she tries to say that, then Iomedae will manage not to get the part where it's a metaphor - does she even have that vocabulary? - and they'll end up having a weird conversation about it. 

"I'm not sure either. Maybe you can ask the minister at church on Sunday?" 

Also: lunch! They should do that!  

"It is not - notrespectful - ask him questions, if he not know holy warriors?"

"I think there are some questions he won't be able to answer for you, if they're specifically about holy warriors? And I think our church doesn't necessarily teach all the same things as your church back home did, so he might find some of your questions confusing. But it's not disrespectful to ask, I think? That sort of question would be fine, asking him about the Bible would be fine. I think he could do a way better job of answering your questions about the Bible than I could." 

"It is his job yes. I will ask him if this is allowed."

"It's definitely allowed! I think it's probably a good idea. And we can ask him if there's, like, a youth group or something that you could go to on another day of the week?" 

Evelyn heads to the kitchen. "Okay, hmm, any thoughts on lunch? We can just do sandwiches or we can cook something." 

"What do you want?"

"I'm not fussed! Something with veggies in it would be nice - I could go for a pasta salad, we've got olives and sundried tomatoes and cucumber and those all go well - but that's longer to wait and more prep, and I admit I'm not that much in the mood for cooking." 

"I not know that food yet."

"Well, if you want to help supervise the pasta cooking, you can try it and see if you like it! It's not spicy or anything." She glances at Iomedae. "Cooking meals from scratch is usually cheaper, I guess, but I'm not sure how this one comes out, the nice olives and the sundried tomatoes aren't cheap. I guess if we figure out you like them, we can dry our own tomatoes?" 

"Tomatoes are not hard to dry. Olives I do not think will grow here. I - I do not care only for saving all the money, my family was rich, we had - foods of far away at times. I see that America problems not like 'there is no food for poor', is about papers and illegal. I care more if the money I earn, if I can know what it will be next month."

Nod. "I haven't dried my own tomatoes before but it sounds like a fun project! Olives don't grow here, no, though the recipe probably actually works fine with the less fancy kind. I don't buy the fancy kind often, just, they're so good." Smile. "Let's make pasta salad! It'll have leftovers, too, for snacks later." 

She assigns Alfirin to watching the pasta on the stove and scooping a piece to check it once the timer goes, and Iomedae to slicing cucumbers while she assembles the other ingredients and the dressing. 

Iomedae will watch the other steps so tomorrow she can do it all herself. She is very quick with chopping vegetables. She did it for several years while fighting with her father about whether she could do weapons practice with the boys. It takes her about ten seconds to get through the cucumbers but for those ten seconds she's a bit scary.

Wow. It's a very good thing that Lily isn't here to see that, but - well, Iomedae knows that, and Lily isn't here, so Evelyn isn't actually worried or objecting to it.

In that case Iomedae can chop up sundried tomatoes into little bits too! ...And then bologna because they really should have a protein in this for the active growing girls, and they're out of ham but they always have bologna for Lily's school sandwiches. The dressing is sour cream and dill and lime juice blended until it's a creamy liquid. And the recipe goes well with various kinds of extras - it just means it makes more, meaning more leftovers for hungry teenagers - so Evelyn will open a can of corn too, and give Iomedae the quarter remaining of a red cabbage to dice into small pieces with her mildly terrifying but very impressive veggie-cutting skills. 

(If Iomedae chops the end of her finger off then Evelyn is going to have some regrets, and some questions to answer. But she doesn't think Iomedae is going to.) 

The timer for the penne pasta goes off after ten minutes. 

Iomedae cut herself during cooking a couple of times when she was eleven, and got healing. The being told she was stupid and irresponsible hurt lots more than the knife injuries. These days, she is careful.

It turns out that cooking something of the Large Salad variety feels like much less of a production when Evelyn can just hand ingredients to Iomedae and have them chopped or diced ten to thirty seconds later. She'd never particularly had the thought that she dislikes chopping veggies - when she's home alone prepping meals in advance, it can be sort of meditative - but it apparently did feel like it was adding friction here. She makes sure to thank Iomedae warmly. 

And then they have lunch! And probably several future meals, Evelyn may have gone a little overboard on adding bonus ingredients and now the salad fills most of her largest mixing bowl. 

She carries it to the table. "I hope you guys like it, because there's lots!" If they don't then she has a serious food excess, but that's not actually a problem, she can pretty much always find a neighbor happy for a gift of leftovers. "...I should put some in a tupperware and bring it to Miss Enderbridge. She's one of the neighbors and she has trouble getting out these days." 

Iomedae will as usual eat as much as she is served and more if she's told to take seconds. 

She is thinking about if there's any way to test if Evelyn was sincere about the things she said yesterday. There has to be. People who are lying about thinking you should invade Hell will treat you differently from people who aren't.

"You sayed, you would spend fifty and fifty dollars a month on things for childs. Will you give Alfirin and I fifty and fifty dollars, and then we can decide if to spend on things?"

(Evelyn doesn't usually tell kids outright to take seconds, but she is tracking implicitly that Iomedae in particular probably needs seconds and might not feel she has permission. She's letting everyone serve themselves from the bowl, and she'll smile at the girls and serve herself seconds - she made sure to take a small enough first helping that this isn't going to be a terrible idea for her waistline.) 

...Hmm. On the one hand, she spent several months' of her Discretionary Iomedae Budget on a bike - but on the other hand, Iomedae hadn't even asked for that, and it's not like she wouldn't have been happy to drop another fifty dollars this month on krav maga. And Iomedae is going to get a lot of use out of that bike, and a lot of freedom she wouldn't otherwise have; the last thing Evelyn wants to do is make her regret owning it. 

"I think that's fair. I'll give you both a hundred dollars for this month. Fifty dollars for activities and fifty dollars for things, but of course it's up to you how to split that, I don't usually do it exactly anyway, and you don't have to spend it at all if you'd rather save it. ...I do want you to come talk to me if you decide you want to buy something, because sometimes there are ways to get it for cheaper that you won't be able to find yourselves - like, there's a website on the Internet for this neighborhood, where people post about things they don't want anymore and are selling for way cheaper than you could buy them at the store. And we'll have to go to the bank, I don't think I have two hundred dollars in cash right now."