"You BIGrum," Lily tells her brightly. "Cuz BIG girl." She breaks loose of Evelyn's restraining hands on her shoulders and tears down the entry hall and up the stairs. 

"Slow feet!" Evelyn calls after her, though the stairs are carpeted. "Iomedae, I think Lily wants to show you around a bit before she calms down enough for bed, so we can go look at your room now." 

Iomedae does not place her shoes on the rack besides theirs. It would be a disaster if her boots were damaged or stolen. They're good boots. 

She will follow them up the stairs to the room Lily indicates. Presumably it will be next to Lily's so she can get her in the night before she wakes anyone else, though really Lily is old enough this shouldn't be a common problem.

(Ha, guessed right. ...Also her clothes and boots might be the only reminder she has of home.) 

The upstairs is laid out sort of like a capital I with serifs. Evelyn's master bedroom suite is at the front of the house, overlooking the driveway. The main upstairs bathroom and the two smaller bedrooms - previously one big room, but Evelyn had the space divided in a renovation nearly a decade ago so that she could take two foster placements or a sibling placement and give the kids their own rooms - are arranged along the hallway. Lily points at hers with a brief "mine!" but is WAY more excited about showing off Iomedae's room. 

Iomedae's room, which Lily is now opening with a dramatic gesture and a "ta-DA!", is at the back of the house and almost as big, though part of the space was (at Jeremy's request, back when this was his bedroom) sectioned off in the last major round of renovations to include a small en-suite bathroom with its own shower stall. There's a queen bed made up with sheets and a duvet in neutral tones, a dresser, a set of shelves, and a desk for schoolwork. The window is large and has heavy curtains and looks out on the backyard. 

Lily is pointing out features of the room as though they were each her own personal invention. "Winda! BIGirl bed. B'shelf. BI'desk! ...BIGirl baffroom! W'showr!" 

" - there is water that comes out of the walls, here! That is so good! Amazing! I will have so much time to play with you because I will not have to go and fetch it!"

Lily looks just about as proud and smug about this as she would if she had personally invented plumbing. "Cuh'see BATH! IsSO big!" 

Uh. Wow. ...Maybe it shouldn't be so shocking that some communities in America don't have indoor plumbing - Evelyn has rented vacation cabins that didn't, and presumably the Amish don't although Evelyn isn't actually sure what they do for water - but Iomedae's response certainly says something about her expectations of being in foster care. Has anyone...explained...to her what this means. Maybe not, it's all been so rushed. She can just hear Jeremy's voice in her head making jokes about child labor. 

...Expecting it to be her job to take care of Lily makes sense, right, if she has five dead siblings she probably also had a lot of living siblings, and aren't girls in fundamentalist religious groups often expected to take on significant responsibility and care for their siblings from a young age?

"Iomedae," she says gently, "even if we did have to go outside to get water, it wouldn't be your job, at least not all the time. And you can play with Lily if you want but you don't have to. While you're here, I'm going to be looking after Lily and you. Anyway, Lily goes to school during the day, and hopefully soon you will too. ...Do you know what going to school means?" Fundamentalist cult and then learning English from migrant workers miiiight not have ended up covering that. 

'I don't know school."

Lily would LIKE to tell Iomedae all about school, although Iomedae is a big girl and is going to go to big girl school and not Lily's school. But school is complicated and the words are getting tangled up in her head again. She gets out "school issa...bigrum...w'teesher," and then starts crying. 

That's still a big improvement over Lily's usual tantrums, which involve shrieking and often breaking things. She's clearly trying to be on her best behavior in front of Iomedae. 

"Lily, love, come here." Evelyn crouches and holds out her arms. "- She has trouble with saying words sometimes," she explains to Iomedae. "And she's a bit overtired, it's past eight." Lily can be scooped up and snuggled and carried, still sniffling, to her bedroom. 

Iomedae will follow, so that she can learn Lily's bedtime routine. She may not be accustomed to bedtime routines in a rich person house with indoor plumbing but she does the best bedtime prayers, everyone says so.

Lily is also pretty new to bedtime routines, actually, having come into foster care six weeks ago from a home where she was at the very least badly neglected and probably worse than that. She is fortunately now past the stage where every single aspect of bedtime meant a fight and a tantrum, and she's bathed and pajama'd and has had her teeth brushed already. All that's left is for her to instruct Iomedae on tucking her in and tucking her teddies in and tucking her dolls in princess dresses into their tiny doll bed beside her bed, and then picking which books she wants read to her (she always picks three, for her dolls first and then her teddies and then herself.) 

...Can Iomedae even read English. Almost certainly not well. "Lily, I think Iomedae might not be able to read to you until she's been to big girl school a bit. Maybe you can ask her to tell you a story if she knows any by heart?" 

Iomedae will tuck her in and tuck her teddies in and tuck her dolls in and - yeah, she can't read English yet. "I can tell you a story, or I can sing you a song of God, I know lots and lots of those. Not in English, though."

"'Meday do s'ory," Lily agrees, yawning. "THEN song. S'ory for babies," this is how she refers to her dolls, "n'song f'me." 

She will, with her limited English vocabulary, try. "Once was a girl. Lived with sisters and brothers in a big house, so big. Wanted to save people. so she became a holy warrior of God. She left her home with a sword. A terrible evil was. She wanted to fight it. But she was too small. She could only fight small evils, but every one she fight, she stronger. One day, so strong, no evils will fight her! They will all run away! She will go into Hell and the devils will run from her! I am this girl, you are this girl. Everyone is this girl. Everyone can do this, only need to be strong and never stop."

How is that simultaneously so adorable - and, honestly, inspiring, this kid could be an incredible public speaker someday - and so deeply concerning. 

Lily seems to find the story intriguing and also slightly confusing. Lily has not, in fact, been particularly introduced to the concept of Hell. "Wassa devil?" she says sleepily. 

Evelyn shakes her head warningly at Iomedae. "Lily, love, it's sleepy time now. How about you have your song and then it's time for night-night lights out?" 

Lily sets her jaw, then ruins the effect by yawning. "Two s'ory. F'm'teddies. The'ssong." 

"I suppose that's fair, if Iomedae doesn't mind and she knows other stories. Otherwise I can read your teddies a book and then you can have the song." And Evelyn will smile pleasantly and hide the sinking feeling about the contents of any other stories Iomedae knows. What if they're about Hell. Lily is seven. 

...that was actually kind of a weird message for a fundie cult story? Isn't the whole point that God is just and sinners deserve Hell? Though if it's Iomedae's way of making sense of her religious upbringing, then that says some very good things about Iomedae. 

- sure, Iomedae can follow instructions with respect to telling the small child about devils. It's very reasonable to have household rules against telling small children about devils, if you think they're more likely to make a deal with one half-informed.

"Once a rich man think, I a good man. He go to the streets and say to all, I a good man! He ask a priest, I a good man? The priest afraid. The priest know not safe to say, no, you a bad man. The rich man will kill him. The priest say, in your land who is hungry? The man say, only those who do not work. The priest say, in your land who is afraid. The man say, only those who disobey! The priest say, if another grow richer than you, you happy or you sad! The man say, none shall ever grow richer than I! The priest say, then your land is not Heaven. For in Heaven no one is hungry and no one is afraid, and many will grow. The rich man angry. The rich man say, who are you, to say my land not Heaven! You dare! The priest say, I dare, because your land is not as good as Heaven and so all you can do to me is send me there. And the rich man kill him but the priest won."

THAT IS NOT AN APPROPRIATE STORY FOR A SEVEN YEAR OLD Lily will follow Evelyn's cues on how to respond to it and is way more likely to get upset if Evelyn looks upset, and so Evelyn is very carefully looking neutral and like she maybe wasn't listening.

(Aaaaaaaaaaaah!!??) 

Lily is definitely making a face about that story but - maybe following Evelyn's cues, or maybe just because she's too sleepy - she doesn't seem deeply distressed. 

"Wassa bad man," she manages. "S'he ha'kids? Shd'ave hs'kids n'foster care li'me. Bad man."