"Yeah. I - get frustrated too, sometimes. I...think I try not to expect most people to be like you, it ends up - just being a way to feel disappointed in everyone and I don't like feeling that way." And she would say something about the parable of the glass house and stones - is that from the Bible? she can't actually remember, no wait, it's the horrible one about not throwing the first stone when someone is being stoned to death, she is not going to reference that. "But - I'm really glad that you're you." 

“It doesn’t matter how we feel about us selves, only if we win. But it’s good I’m me since I trying to win.”

"Mmm-hmm."

Aaaaaaand that is probably a good spot to change the topic. Evelyn...well, 'likes' isn't quite the word, she appreciates talking to Iomedae and hearing her opinions, but it's not exactly comfortable. 

"Right. What order do you want to do things in? We could do English practice first and then Costco, so you can try to pick up a few more words? And I found some videos that explain - going to big stores, and things - and show you pictures of it along with the words." 

“Sure!” 

Evelyn did not even slap her. Evelyn is really an exceedingly reasonable person. She will take a couple of deep breaths and remind herself that lecturing people does not actually usually work.

Evelyn has never slapped a child in her life and– okay, that's false, in third grade she slapped fellow third grader Kenneth Williamsby for repeatedly pulling her ponytail from the desk behind her and then saying her dress was puke-colored, and then got detention. Probably at some point when she was little she slapped her little sister for annoying her, but she definitely hasn't slapped anyone, children included, since she was nine years old. Evelyn would still be horrified by Iomedae's appallingly low expectations of parenting figures' behavior, if she knew about them, which she does not because she cannot read Iomedae's mind. 

(She wasn't even annoyed! Nothing Iomedae said was really...untrue...and she could have been a lot ruder about saying it. Evelyn's guilt about not donating more to African charities is her own problem.)  

...Videos seem easier to start with than worksheets, which require introducing the English alphabet unless she decides to just use them as a reference for herself and teach Iomedae the spoken vocabulary. She'll set up Iomedae in the study, at the chair in front of the computer, and pull up "Bill Goes Shopping." She asks Iomedae not to touch the screen or keyboard since it might accidentally close the browser, but she's spectacularly not worried about Iomedae engaging in inappropriate Internet usage, and it's not even mostly because Iomedae can't read. 

Are they watching VIDEOS???? Lily LOVES videos and wants to scramble up on Iomedae's lap and watch with her. 

The video shows a man who says "My name is Bill! Let's go shopping!" in very exaggerated carefully-intonated English, with extra emphasis on the key new vocabulary, often accompanied by a freeze-frame and an animated image. "We're going to the grocery store!" An animation of a cartoon grocery basket with cartoon fruit and bread in it bounces, superimposed on the image of 'Bill's' spotless kitchen. Presumably kitchen-appliance vocabulary is covered in a different video. "To go to the store, we need to walk outside and get in the car!" 

- okay, possibly this video is mostly too easy, Iomedae knows those words. Also Evelyn is drowning in agonizing secondhand embarrassment but that's fine. Lily is enthralled, though, and probably it eventually covers harder words or just words that Iomedae doesn't happen to have run into before? 

(The video will later include words for: traffic lights and pedestrian crossings, braking, various road signs, a high school, a park, a lawn, a sprinkler, a semi truck, a shopping cart, an automatic sliding door -)

Iomedae patiently repeats all the new words to herself under her breath though she does look kind of bored. 

(It doesn't seem like a terrible concept, but she likes talking to people more than learning from illusionboxes; understanding people feels like it matters.)

The grocery store is a medium-sized Safeway, not nearly as big as the local Walmart or Costco, but there is still kind of a shocking amount and variety of food. Rows and rows and rows of it, bins stacked with produce and glass-doored fridges full of bottles of milk and blocks of cheese and cartons of eggs, and then six aisles of shelves. Bill has a list, and walks around with his shopping cart. He names lots of foods even when he's not putting them in the cart (when he does this, the food in question lights up and flashes), meanwhile narrating out loud what he intends to make with them (animations of various dishes appear) and sneaking in some cooking terms like 'saute' and 'roast'. Bill is going to make cookies for the school fair and lasagna for his mother, and seems to reminisce about various other dishes he isn't making this particular time. He also spends a while in the toiletries aisle getting shampoo (for washing hair, there's an animation!) and mouthwash and toilet paper and a kitchen sponge and matches for his candles at home. In the pharmacy section he gets bandaids for his first aid kit at home and ibuprofen for his mother's headaches. 

Lily continues to be captivated by the "s'ly'mn" in the "gro'sor" is trying to restrain herself and not interrupt but she can't help but pointing out some of her favorite things! (She continues to be way harder to understand than Bill, especially when it's not actually a word Iomedae knows, like 'marshmallows' pronounced 'm'm'loz'.) 

Iomedae is still operating from a worldview where Lily will only interact routinely in her life with between 10 and 40 people, all of whom will learn the funny way she talks, and it won't limit her much except that she could never be a priest or wizard even if she were smart enough. And almost no one is a priest or wizard anyway. So she doesn't think much of it.

"The market is indoor! What good idea for market be indoor, if you have big enough building!"

"We have pretty big buildings!" 

- and since they're at the computer anyway, and the video is done and Iomedae didn't seem incredibly enthused by it for language-learning, why don't they go look at random video clips? 

Here's a fast-forward style video of a skyscraper being built. (Evelyn does explain that it actually takes months or years, this is sped up for dramatic effect.) Here's a harbor full of container ships and containers being loaded and unloaded with a crane. Here's a moderately sped-up aerial view video of New York City with cars racing down highways, lights coming on as the sun sets in fast-forward. 

(She really wants to see Iomedae's face when she sees a video of a space shuttle launch, and the International Space Station, and an astronaut on the moon, but she's only going to get to see that expression once and she wants to save it for when Iomedae definitely has the vocabulary to understand what's happening.) 

Oh, those are better than the pictures she's seen of paradise. 

"...so good," she says, because she really doesn't have the vocabulary to express it properly. "So rich and strong and clever. The person make this great obeyer of God."

...That is not really how people emphasize God usually but it's an adorable way of talking about God and Evelyn doesn't exactly have complaints. She keeps this observation to herself. 

(She should take Iomedae to a planetarium tomorrow. Lily would love it too, it's open on Sundays, and it's not the same as seeing the real stars but driving far enough outside the city to get a good view of the real stars at night is pretty logistically complicated given that Lily goes to bed at 7:30 pm. Maybe they can do a little family camping trip at some point, once Evelyn is more confident that Lily will cope.) 

Oooh she should show Iomedae a video tour walkthrough of a proper cathedral. The computer screen is an inferior substitute for the real thing and the speakers do not really do justice to the hymn recording but -

"This is a church. It's called the Notre-Dame Cathedral, it's in Paris in France, which is a country on another continent. They started building it more than 800 years ago, but it took almost 200 years to build. ...The world had less technology then, most of the technology is the last two hundred years. But they still built it so it would stand for this long." 

"A great church! When small I mad that church of God spend money on churches but some say God have good reason. I will ask Him when bigger."

Smile. "I would have thought God listens to your prayers no matter how big or small you are." 

"He listen no matter, but if you are big and holy and have enough money, you can go to great priest in big city and they can get answer."

"Huh. I haven't heard of that but maybe some priests do." Evelyn keeps her expression pleasant and tone light but that sounds like SUCH a scam.

(...More like the kind of scam she's heard about in poorer countries than in the US, but for all she knows there's a whole parallel world of sketchy evangelical ministers in the US who do that. It really doesn't seem like something a Catholic priest would claim, but she already didn't think Iomedae's original sect was Catholic. Maybe she should google whether the Mormons have something like that. She doesn't particularly feel like asking Diel.) 

Anyway, it's now nearly 11:00, and they were all up early. Lunch and then head out to Costco? And maybe a museum trip after, Lily loves the local science museum - and needs to burn off energy - and it'll be good language exposure for Iomedae. 

For lunch as for breakfast Iomedae will be helpful if permitted, eat everything offered to her even if it's really quite a lot of food, and talk with Lily about places in the city Lily likes to go, working apparently from the assumption Lily goes to most of them herself on foot.

This is a particularly terrible assumption in Evelyn's current neighborhood, where just about the only place accessible on foot is a small children's park nearby. Lily likes to go places with Evelyn in the car. She's not allowed to go anywhere by herself, or run off when she goes shopping with Evelyn (this rule is very salient right now because Lily did not arrive with the sense that she needed to not play hide-and-seek in grocery stores and open random desserts to eat them in the aisle) and when they go to the swimming pool she has to wear armbands and stay where Evelyn can reach her. 

Lily likes the children's play center that has a BALL PIT where you SWIM in BALLS, and she likes McDonalds but Mummy says its's "n'elty" and so it's only for treats, and she likes going in the car when it goes through the car wash, and she likes the cinema, which is like a TV but SO BIG BIGGER THAN A HOUSE and also Mummy buys her popcorn.

She doesn't like the climbing gym because it was TOO HARD and she fell down, and she doesn't like the ice skating rink because the ice hurt her, and she doesn't like the children's theatre because they made her and Mummy go home when she shouted. She really really really doesn't like the dentist who she says had 'bad hands', and claims she is NEVER GOING AGAIN. 

Evelyn can fill in more detailed explanations of what all those places are.

(Most kids don't really like the dentist and you still need to take them. Lily hated the dentist a lot more than that. She is about 80% sure that the dentist caused Lily to have some kind of horrifying trauma flashback and is in fact not intending to revisit the matter for at least a year.) 

Lily is not allowed to go anywhere by herself? Not as a punishment for disobedience but just as a general rule? There must be a lot of wild beasts around here. Iomedae didn't hear any last night but the kind you don't hear are the more dangerous. 

She asks if she can carry a knife, please.

Lily looks pretty freaked out by this request! She curls up and is very quiet. 

(Knives are BAD and one of the reasons that Mummy's house is a good house is that Lily never sees any of the knives because they are PUT AWAY.) 

...It takes Evelyn a minute to unwind the connection there. (Though she definitely assumes Iomedae is worried about more rapists, not wild beasts, because why would there be wild beasts in a Reno suburb.)

"- It's not a dangerous neighborhood for a girl your age, once you know your way around," she says. "The cars are dangerous for little kids, because they might not see someone Lily's height, and the streets are confusing so Lily could easily get lost. It's a Social Services rule for children her age, that I shouldn't let Lily go places outside the house alone, or leave her in the house and go out. It's okay for you to go for walks by yourself if you want to, although you need to learn how to read a map and street signs - all the houses look similar so it's really easy to get turned around - and also there just aren't very many places you can go on foot. One of the reasons this house cost me less money is that you really need a car to go shopping or do any activities." 

- oh, the thing where Lily should be thought of more like a four-year-old strikes again. She nods. "I understand. How many miles on foot to market and school?"