If Evelyn had the slightest idea how to spell that it might be a helpful lead, she could see if it's a name associated with a particular ethnicity. It doesn't sound Biblical. "Right. I guess that's better than her being told vaccines are the work of the devil or whatever. Is she average height and weight for a fifteen-year-old? I should check I have some spare clothes and pajamas in her size, we won't be able to go shopping until tomorrow and it sounds like she won't have much with her." 

"She is built like a truck. If you have fifteen year old boys' clothes they might fit. The things she's wearing currently look not just hand-sewn but hand-spun."

"Wow." That's got to narrow it down a bit, even once you're filtering for extremely religious communities, how many of them spin their own thread and weave their own cloth to make clothes? That's, like, medieval re-enactor level dedication. (There's no way this kid is from a medieval re-enactor community, though, that's a completely different kind of demographic...) She doesn't know what to make of it. "I'll figure something out. It only has to tide her over until tomorrow. Let me know when you're on your way?" 

"I will. Thank you, Evelyn. Appreciate everything you do."

And she goes back in to Iomedae. "Good news! I found a home that can take you for some time. I'll take you over there now, if that's all right with you?"

"I do not know if the -" gestures at police station - "will need me to speak to a court about the man."

" - well, honey, they said they weren't going to charge you with anything, because you were just defending yourself, and I don't know if they'll charge him but probably not for a while what with how he's in the hospital right now."

"Oh. I'll pay for them to fix him. I don't want him to be - in the hospital a long time. I have some money in my shirt."

"- oh, sweetheart, that's very kind of you, but they will get him good treatment, you don't need to pay for it. They said he's going to be fine."

"- if he doesn't get sick and die! Without getting fixed people get sick and die! The law can kill him but I did not mean to!"

" - no, no, he's not going to get sick and die, he's in the hospital, he'll be fine! There's nothing you need to do. ....what do you mean, the law can kill him? No one's going to kill anybody. The police will - look into whether he needs to be in prison because he is a danger to other people, and they might need you to speak, but - not for a while. And he will be safe in the meantime."

"I think he is a danger to other people. Some girls would sleep in my tent because him."

"Right, that sounds like the kind of thing the police would need to know. But not tonight. Tonight you need - a bath, and a place to sleep, and a place to be safe, and that will help everyone, okay? Have you been in a car before?"

"Yes, we drive between jobs."

It was kind of a stupid question. Something about the handspun clothing and the sword made it feel like it made sense but it obviously didn't. "Great, then, let's go."

And she calls Evelyn to tell Evelyn they'll be there in thirty minutes.

Iomedae sits patiently in the car with her hands folded and her eyes closed, presumably praying again. 

Diel does not try to make conversation. The girl has had an exhausting and traumatizing day and she'll need to be alert for the introduction to Evelyn shortly. Anyway, the prayer seems to be genuinely good for her; she gets visibly more relaxed and self-assured as she goes. 

And before too long they are pulling up in front of Evelyn's home. 

Evelyn would have liked to have Lily in bed before this, but it would have been a rush, and also would have had much better prospects if she could have had the call in private instead of having to watch Lily in the bath, because Lily is now bursting with excitement that a "big girl" is coming to stay with them. 

She hears the car in the driveway and heads for the doorway before Lily, who sprints out ahead of her in her Disney Princess pajamas, manages to unlock and open the door and run out into the street. 

...Right, no belongings to unload, and there's honestly not much point in the social worker staying for a private conversation, usually she has kids who've had previous foster placements and have an actual file but that's clearly not the case here. She stands on her doorstep and waves instead. "Come on in! I'm Evelyn and this is Lily."  

"Hi! Iomedae."

The house is a mansion. Why are they putting her in a mansion. Maybe this is some kind of arrangement where they place teenage girls without family as governesses for people with mansions? She wishes they'd take her more seriously about being a paladin but as long as she gets to keep her earnings it'll probably be fine. 

Iomedae will probably notice that the houses on either side of this one, and actually more or less the whole neighborhood, are all similarly mansion-sized. This one has siding painted a sunny yellow, an older car already in the driveway, and colorful plastic children's toys scattered all over the otherwise slightly unkempt lawn.

Evelyn herself is a woman probably in her fifties, slightly overweight, with slightly frizzy blonde hair that is only visibly greying up close. She's wearing old jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, and slippers. 

The girl whose shoulders she's holding looks six or seven, with even blonder hair in pigtails, and her entire body is vibrating with excitement. She stares at Iomedae in amazement, before looking up proudly at Evelyn and declaring "a SO big!" and "m'b'sis?" She's hyped up enough that her speech is even less understandable than usual. 

"Hi Lily! If you eat good you will be big like me when you are a grownup like me!"

See, she figured Iomedae would be good with younger kids. The problem might be making sure she isn't too good with them. Fundie cults often have some severe parentification issues. "Nice to meet you Evelyn, Lily. I just met Iomedae earlier today myself, but I'll be your point of contact if you need anything, and I'll check in in a few days to see how things are going, okay?"

Awwwwww. "Yeah, that sounds fine to me." The girl's English is better than she expected. "Iomedae, please come in and take your shoes off. We're going to put Lily to bed - she's up late, she was so excited to meet you, and I'm sure she would be delighted if you helped - and then you can have a drink and a snack, and I need to talk to you and explain some things about living in my house and what the rules are here." 

(It's been deeply drilled into Evelyn that, whenever possible, you don't criticize a child's birth family to their face. Evelyn might be judging Iomedae's parents for their five fucking dead children, but - it was Iomedae's reality, her sense of normal, and it might well be that from her perspective, her parents were loving and meant well. The fact that she left does seem to make that interpretation less likely, but - well, even severely abused children often have a lot of loyalty toward their natural parents. That bond runs deep. 

Anyway, she needs a way to present things like 'this is America in the 21st century and you have ten years of education to catch up on' that doesn't sound like 'your parents are barbarians', and she's going to see how it goes over, but her current thought is to present everything that will be new to Iomedae as, more or less, part of the rules for living in Evelyn's house. Teasing apart which pieces are about the law in the US generally, which pieces are specifically her fostering agency's policies, and which pieces are Evelyn's personal opinions and parenting practices, sounded too complicated to approach for a kid who, it sounds like, had literally never interacted with any aspect of the government or legal system until today.) 

Lily is bouncing up and down in her fluffy slippers. "Pu'me bed?" 

She takes her leather boots off and puts them into the empty rope sack she is carrying. "Of course I will put you to bed! I have never been in such a fancy house, you will have to show me some things. But next sun I know them!"

Wow. That would be a lovely compliment if it felt less like it was the result of Iomedae having grown up with a literally-Third-World-conditions level of poverty and deprivation. 

"- You're allowed to put your shoes on the rack beside ours," she says quickly, in case Iomedae is confused about that. Though she won't push; kids who grew up poor, even if they weren't abused per se, sometimes arrive in care very protective of their few possessions, and if Iomedae wants to sleep with her boots under her pillow or something, Evelyn won't stop her.

"I'm glad you like the house!" she adds. "We've lived here since my grown-up son was a tiny baby. I'm divorced," has Iomedae encountered the concept of divorce? aren't a lot of religious cults very strongly anti-divorce? hopefully she doesn't conclude Evelyn is a fallen woman or whatever, but Evelyn couldn't exactly have lied about having been married, for one thing she tries to avoid lying and also at some point she has to explain the existence of Jeremy, who's in first-year college still visits frequently to take advantage of his mother's cooking and laundry machine. "Er, separated from my husband. So it's just going to be you and me and Lily."