She will watch Lily while Evelyn goes upstairs to shower and dress. "That sound good, ma'am."

The caffeine hitting her bloodstream and a long hot shower helps a lot with Evelyn's alertness, if not necessarily her mood. She's on edge, and combined with the lack of sleep, it's definitely risking making her irritable, which none of the children deserve. At least she has a lot of practice at hiding it. 

With Iomedae's help - and Lily on her best behavior, though her excitement level at having TWO 'big sisters' in the house partly cancels that out - the school-day morning routine goes more smoothly than usual. Evelyn manages to dissuade Lily from going to wake Alfirin by repeatedly saying that she's probably tired from having a 'big day' yesterday, but she does hope Alfirin will be awake before Lily's school bus at 8:05, or they might have a bit of a time getting her out the door. 

Alfirin wakes when the sun rises and makes her way downstairs. "Good morning!"

"Good morning! Have some pancakes!"

Pancakes! With syrup and jam to go with them! And there's juice and milk in the fridge, if Alfirin prefers that to water. 

Evelyn repeats the question about visiting the food bank, and adds that they'll want to do some shopping so that Alfirin can have clothes of her own. 

"Thank you." Alfirin eats pancakes and...Fruit juice? For breakfast? Because America is very rich.

"What is 'visiting the food bank'?"

"It's a place run by a church, where they have free food - people who can afford to donate it - and people who are too poor to buy food can go there and eat or get food to take home and cook. Iomedae wants to volunteer there, to help poorer people. - Iomedae, maybe you can explain it more in Taldane." 

It all feels very silly now. "Evelyn claimed to me when I arrived here that America makes it so no one goes hungry. She meant no one with papers, but I misunderstood because I spoke the language so poorly, and I objected that the workers obviously go hungry. And she said there are churches that just give out food to the poor, and they can use help handing the food out to the poor, and I wanted to - figure out why the workers weren't getting it, and get it to them if it was really supposed to be the rule that anyone could have it. Only now I know why they weren't getting it."

"I see. It makes sense that you would do that and also it seems - not very important, now that we know."

"I will visiting the food bank and shopping with you!"

"Hopefully it'll be a good way to learn more English, too!" Evelyn says brightly.

She has an uneasy feeling about what exactly Iomedae just said to Alfirin, and in general she's not a fan of the fact that these kids who are CLEARLY keeping some weighty secrets can have private conversations right in front of her about it and agree on their story - it's going to make it much harder to catch onto the little notes of something-not-adding-up that she needs to piece this together - but she's hardly going to tell them not to, and it is still very useful that Iomedae can translate. 

"I was thinking we should start learning some English reading and writing too," she adds. "Maybe later this afternoon? You both need to be in school eventually, but it's probably going to take a few weeks to sort out, and I bet we can make a lot of progress at home. You're both clearly bright and diligent." 

"Yes, ma'am, I want to learn English reading and writing."

"I want to learn English reading and writing! I like talk lots ways."

Evelyn beams at both of them. "I'm so glad you're both excited to learn. Actually, we'll have almost an hour between Lily's school bus and when the food bank opens, so we can make a start on it. It's supposed to be good to spread it out, give your brain some chance to rest and let it soak in." 

And once Lily is dressed and shod and bundled off to school with her bag and packed lunch, she'll Google for alphabet worksheets and print them out. 

"If we have time that is not chores or learning English can you also teach me to read and speak Taldane better?"

They're using paper to trace letters? And then, what, throwing the paper away?

America is a fundamentally ridiculous place.

("Yes, of course," she says to Alfirin. "It's nice to speak my native tongue and it's useful having a language they don't.")

"Thank you. I think 'mother' does not like it that we have a language she does not."

At home, Iomedae was very obedient. If you gave her a rule. And it was sufficiently specific. She was not very good at what the priest said was the higher virtue of obedience, doing what your parents wanted whether or not they'd specifically ordered it. She understands being that kind of obedient to Aroden, because He's Aroden, but she was never in fact particularly good at offering it to anyone else. She starts to open her mouth to say 'if Evelyn wants us to stop, she can tell us to stop', and realizes as she opens it that while this is a habit one might fall into as the beloved daughter of landowning parents receptive to arguments like that Aroden was Lawful despite not being very obedient, it is a stupid habit for a slave. 

"We should probably be careful, then," she says instead, "before she is inspired to order us to stop it." And in English, "what the words for this?", holding up her pen.

"It's a pen! We also have pencils, those you can erase." Evelyn will show her. "Here - why don't I go through the alphabet and tell you what sound each letter makes, and you can write it in the alphabet you already know, so you have a reference for later?" 

"That work for me."

They can do that! And then have some time to spell simple words - Evelyn can write out the spelling used for both of their names on the Social Services form, though it was of course wildly guessing, and how to spell 'Evelyn' and 'Jeremy' and 'Lily', and then some other common household words - 'bed', 'house', 'car', 'stove', 'fridge', 'food', 'water'. She is ALREADY finding herself inspired to apologize for the state of English spelling. 

English spelling does not make a ton of sense but Alfirin doesn't read enough languages to know if it makes less sense than usual, maybe spelling is just hard.

Taldane is in fact more intuitive about spelling - or, at least, Iomedae learned Taldane from a tutor who just spelled things the way they sounded and was usually not that far off from spellings in holy books, and who did not seem to think that words had an official standard spelling unless they were the name of the Emperor or something. She doesn't complain, though.

Diel sends Evelyn an email around nine.

Both Iomedae and Alfirin should be taken in to the doctor's office and dentist's office for checkups, since they have never in their lives gotten those, and should get started on getting caught up on vaccinations. That should happen ASAP, what's Evelyn's availability today or tomorrow look like? She's filed all the paperwork for both of them to temporarily have the state's health insurance for fostered youth. Iomedae should also in theory get a therapist (and Alfirin too if Evelyn thinks it'd be beneficial) though they are not actually going to need a specialist in helping kids testify in court cases because she spoke with the sheriff's office this morning and they're dropping charges. It's not, actually, that they don't believe Iomedae, it's that a trial will delay the accused getting deported, and it'll be much easier for everyone for him to be subject to an expedited deportation right now instead of staying around in the country for months while they work out a deal or go to trial. Though of course it's relevant that a sexual assault did not actually occur (that's defined in Nevada as requiring penetration, and an attempt is a much less serious crime) and that there's no physical evidence and Iomedae has limited English and Spanish proficiency and said some weird things during her police interview. Diel thinks this can probably be pitched to Iomedae as a good outcome: the accused will be made to leave the country and never come back, so she is safe from him, and she won't have to go through testifying to a court. Evelyn should be on the lookout, though, as kids often have strong emotions about any progress on the court case against their abusers. 

She also told Alfirin she'd try to track down her family. She's almost sure they're not in the US, and international family reunification is kind of a nightmare, but she'll do her best. She looked up the place names Alfirin gave and got nothing. She consulted another cult expert who also had nothing. If Evelyn gets a chance she could ask her how she got here, what nearby cities were called, etcetera, though also Diel will come by tomorrow to see how the girls are settling in and can ask then. 

Evelyn is delighted to hear that the health insurance is already sorted - that can drag on sometimes - and fully agrees they should have checkups; she's free this afternoon and evening and anytime tomorrow, ideally while Lily is in school, and she's happy to call the office for the usual doctor she takes kids to and book appointments if Diel is busy, it sounds like she must have a lot of her plate. 

Evelyn will try to sensitively explain the plans for Martin to Iomedae; she expects Iomedae will want to know if he's going to face charges or be kept away from vulnerable women in any way in his home country, and might also ask if he'll have food and medical care there, she worries about people's wellbeing even when those people tried to hurt her. She...is not really sure she expects a therapist to be helpful yet (she's in fact pretty certain it won't help at all and will just put Iomedae on the defensive, but doesn't say that); it's probably still worth trying but she's not going to push for an appointment this week or anything and there are often long wait times for therapists that take the state insurance. She'll also try to ask Alfirin about her family, though she's not sure how much success to expect, Alfirin...does not seem to especially trust adults yet. 

(Iomedae seems to have stopped being willing to trust adults, at least American ones with power over her life, and this is honestly one of the more upsetting experiences Evelyn has had in fostering. She doesn't mention it in the email. It's not like she has anything more than a vibe to go on, and it doesn't feel like there's anything productive to be said or done about it, right now.) 

Once she's read and replied to the email - which takes a few minutes, so it's 9:20 by the time she's done - they can head over to the food bank? Iomedae seems much less enthusiastic about it now, which Evelyn doesn't love, but she said she was going to do this and she's damn well not going to drop it now.