"Aroden wants us to surpass Him because He was mortal too, He had the bits of His spirit that yearned to surpass the gods and He was an archmage so they couldn't crush Him for it and He built the Starstone so we could follow Him to godhood...

....I think paladins probably do make bad slaves and a sensible empire would just not enslave paladins, but no one has yet accused America of being a sensible empire."

Evelyn's usual pediatrician has appointments for the next day; she schedules one at 10 am for Iomedae and at 10:30 for Alfirin, which should fit fine into their morning and not interfere with making it to the food bank for 2:30. 

She should go down and let the girls know. And she...feels like she owes Iomedae an apology...she is not at all sure what it feels like she owes Iomedae an apology for, because 'shutting down the car conversation in a less than graceful way because she didn't want to crash' is what's coming to mind but it's only a fraction of it. She doesn't know how to have conversations with Iomedae in a way that make things better rather than worse, and she sort of wants to apologize for that but, you know, the whole problem is that probably she won't manage to communicate what it's an apology for, and Iomedaer will just end up stressed and interpreting it as some completely different thing. 

...She takes a deep breath, and goes downstairs. 

"Iomedae, Alfirin, I wanted to let you know that we're going to go see my doctor tomorrow after Lily goes to school. It's just to make sure that you're healthy, it's standard for all children who just came into foster care. - Iomedae, did you know all of those words? You can ask me if you're still confused, and then translate for Alfirin?" 

"I don't know 'doctor' or 'healthy'."

It's really easy to lose track of how limited Iomedae's English vocabulary is, when she - Evelyn isn't even sure quite what it is. 

"A doctor is - like the people who work at the hospital and help people who are sick or hurt get better, but this doctor doesn't only see people who are sick, he sees children in his office to make sure that they're not sick. 'Healthy' just means - not sick or hurt, and that you're eating well and growing enough and things like that." 

"Evelyn says tomorrow she will take us for an evaluation by a healer of some kind, this being an ordinary step when people are enslaved, to check that we are healthy enough to work."

...Evelyn is not certain that Iomedae's translation of it didn't also contain, like, five other misunderstandings. She's...honestly very tired of everything feeling like that, but it's not like it's Iomedae's fault that Evelyn hasn't been great at actually following up on all her vague nagging senses that she's missing something. Ugh. 

- in fact, she reminds herself emphatically, none of this is Iomedae's fault. Iomedae is a fish out of water, scared and confused and trying to be herself in a world that suddenly leaves her so little space for it. The details of it may be - unusually fraught to handle - but the core thing is, well, what Evelyn has spent the last twenty years addressing. 

"Iomedae," she says gently. "I - want to talk to you for a moment. Can you come to the living room?" It's not that it's particularly private from Alfirin - and Alfirin probably won't be able to follow it anyway, her English is notably worse than Iomedae's - but Evelyn feels exhausted and frazzled and right now she needs to be only looking at one of their faces. 

“Yes, ma’am.” She will follow. 

Evelyn takes a deep breath. 

"I wanted to say sorry for sort of cutting you off in the car. I wasn't upset with you, I just needed to focus on driving. I'm - always going to be here if you want to talk." 

She looks away, because she's worried that intense eye contact is going to make Iomedae self-conscious, and it - doesn't actually feel wrong, in this moment, to let it show a little that she's embarrassed and off-balance. 

"...I don't think you want to talk, right now," she says quietly. "Not about what's really going on in your head. That's - understandable - and I'm not going to push. I don't think it's helping. But - I'm worried that I missed something, or didn't understand something, and it hurt you and now you quite reasonably don't want to trust me. That's okay. I'm never going to be angry with a foster child for not trusting me, you don't owe that to me, I– I'm responsible for you, and I take that very seriously, and I worry that I'm failing you right now, but I'm not your mother and you don't owe me your trust. So I'm - not going to keep trying to dig about your feelings, right now." 

She closes her eyes, briefly. This is so awkward. "But - it's not because I don't care. I do care, a lot. I want you to be happy and healthy and achieve all the things that matter to you, I just - don't, know how to help with that, right now. I'm sorry." 

"I see and - think good of - how hard you try, to do right with your foster childs. I am grateful. I know this much worse if I have ordinary person have me. I was thinking before you are as patient disobedience as my real parents when I was a child, and my parents very very patient disobedience.

It will never be good for me to have to pretend to be a child. It will never be good for me to be not allowed to work for pay and say how my money spend. It will never be good for me to be a foster child. It is the most bad thing ever happen to me, and I wish much I was still a person.

But it would be much more bad, if you were not honorable, and I very grateful you are."

On the one hand, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah????!!!!

On the other hand, it is probably not a good use of either of their time and emotional energy for Evelyn to nitpick Iomedae's word choice when she's working across a substantial language barrier. Of course she feels like ending up in foster care is the worst thing that's ever happened to her. That's not even, like, a particularly unusual way for kids to feel, even when (and this thought is quiet, in the back of her mind, but it's there) - even when being in foster care is actually an enormous improvement on their previous life prospects. (Evelyn is...less sure of it than she would like, that this is true for Iomedae.) It's understandable, that she doesn't feel as though they're treating her like a person. In fact, Emily may have used that exact wording. 

On the other other hand, she doesn't want to just - let that go by her without saying anything. That also feels like failing Iomedae, and the fact that approximately everything she says ends up feeling like failing Iomedae is not, actually, an excuse to always go with the thing that's easiest. 

"You are a person, love," she says quietly. "Nobody can take that away from you, even if it feels like we're not treating you like your own person. I'm sorry. ...I think I'm not going to - get it - and it'll just end up frustrating for both of us, if I keep trying to get you to talk to me. I think Emily will understand better." 

"Ma'am - I no allowed earn money or choose spend it. You choose if I eat and where I go and what I do. You let me choose if you want to, and I say before you are honorable, but you say, Iomedae now we go to doctor to see if you healthy, because I belong you and you get to choose that. 

If I leave this place you call the law and they bring me back or kill me if I fight.

I am not a person. That is not how the law is for a person. I am a foster child. This is no your - you no the one decided this. But I was not born a foster child. I know what be a person is like. Five days ago I a person, and now I am not."

Arghhhhhhhh. It's so painful to want to argue, because it's such a tangle of points which are completely reasonable and - elements where she honestly has no idea whether Iomedae is still fundamentally misunderstanding how the US works or if she's exaggerating for rhetorical effect because she's upset. 

"I think the thing you want, right now, is to already be an adult," she says quietly. "- I mean, I know that you think you are already an adult, because you're a - holy warrior - but the US doesn't have a law for holy warriors being seen as adults before they're eighteen. Jeremy had a lot of the same complaints you have, when he was fifteen, it's - I know it's different where you grew up, but it's not just foster children who have to wait until they're eighteen to be independent. ...And the police wouldn't ever kill you - or even stab you - because that's, uh, still illegal." 

"You think people let la migra take their children because they want Heaven so bad? Maybe some of them, but - my parents would give up Heaven keep their children from be stolen. Most parents would. They let la migra take their children because if they fight, la migra kill them."

The worst part is that she's - not entirely wrong? Evelyn is pretty sure she's mostly wrong - it's not supposed to happen, and if the police kill someone who's 'resisting arrest' then there's an investigation - but she's also pretty sure that people do die, that way, and being an illegal immigrant isn't exactly a great position to be in, and - much less likely to end in someone being prosecuted than if it were, say, Jeremy. 

Evelyn is so tired and really doesn't want to get into a language-barrier-disrupted debate with Iomedae on the matter of police corruption. Ugh. 

(She's also...kind of confused about why fighting to protect your kids from the police would be giving up Heaven. Isn't that the sort of thing the Bible would think is good? She even less feels like getting into a debate about it, though.) 

- also she can't just say 'I don't want to have this conversation', because she told Iomedae she would always be there if Iomedae wanted to talk, and running away as soon as it gets upsetting is a great way to convey to kids that this isn't, in fact, true. 

"La migra isn't supposed to kill anyone," she says, wearily. "I'm - not going to say it never happens - and I'm not going to say the police would always even get in trouble, if it does. I know I'm - lucky, in a lot of ways, and haven't seen all the ways that America can be bad. But I've had a lot of kids here, including kids who ran away kind of a lot, and I've never personally known anyone get killed by the police." 

"Most people, if the law come, will not fight. So they will not be killed. But if they did fight, they would be killed. They all know this. If there were law that would not kill people who disobey, it quickly die and there new law that will kill people who disobey. I not plan to leave, and if I do leave, and the law find me, I not fight. But if I leave, and fight, I die. All the people who obey you, who pick the food that make you rich woman, this is true of. They know that if they disobey they die."

There's definitely some sort of logic to that, and Evelyn is also pretty sure that there's - something wrong and missing from the analysis - and she is not a criminal justice expert who feels qualified to have a debate about it. Honestly, Emily is probably way more qualified than she is. 

"...Maybe. I do think it's a bad idea to try to fight the police, and most people don't. And I hope you don't run away, but - for the same reason I wouldn't have wanted Jeremy to run away, because I care about you and want you to be safe and be able to go to school and learn to read English and accomplish all the things that are important to you." 

"I am a holy warrior and obey the law. If I was not a holy warrior, I would still obey because I do not want to die. 

If I had a fifteen, and she say, it more important to me to do God work than to be safe, I hope I would be as good as my father, and say, then do God work with all I have to give you for it. I think I not call the law to sword her back to me."

...Yeah. Oof. 

(Evelyn is...genuinely not sure how she would feel about alerting Social Services if Iomedae runs away. She thinks she would feel...pretty bad about it, actually. She still can't, just, what, go send Iomedae biking off into the sunset with her blessing? This is not in fact something she can do, even if she were convinced it was how to do right by Iomedae, and - from Iomedae's perspective, the exact reasons why aren't the important part.) 

"I'm sorry," she says, because she can't think of anything less inane. "I - that's most of what I wanted to say. That I'm sorry it feels like the worst thing that could happen to you, and I wish I could do better or at least - understand better. But I don't think I'm going to get there by arguing with you." 

 "It is not the worst thing that could happen to me," she says helpfully. "Tar Baphon could happen to me. Hell could happen to me. It is just the worst thing has happen to me."

This does NOT MAKE EVELYN FEEL BETTER but it’s - not about her feelings, right now, is it. 

“I’m glad you talked to me about what you think and how it’s upsetting for you,” she says. “I’ll - try very hard never to be frustrated or angry if you argue with me, and I’m not perfect but - I’ve never hit a child, even when I was very angry. I - want to be a safe person for you to talk to, that’s the most important thing.”

Sigh. “Is there anything else you want to tell me right now? Or should we go have some lunch.”

"I do not think I had anything else I wanted to say, ma'am."

Then Evelyn will go set out some bread and sandwich ingredients on the counter, and some cut veggies and dip, she doesn't have the energy for a higher-effort lunch than that right now.

(She feels like she wants to write log notes. She has no actual interest in attempting to repeat any of what Iomedae said to Diel, when she's pretty sure that she already failed to totally understand what Iomedae was trying to tell her, and Diel will just add some third worse misinterpretation and then Iomedae will have that on her file forever. Ugh. Evelyn is starting to realize that maybe writing log notes is a lot of how she...thinks, or processes...and she's not actually sure what to do without that. She wants to TALK TO SOMEONE and there's no one incredibly appropriate for it except maybe Diel, who she's still irritated with.

...Well, there's not actually any reason she can't...type things into a Word document and save it. Or better yet, go write in a private diary in her room, so she can give Iomedae and Alfirin some privacy of their own to process. She might have some concerns about exactly what misunderstandings are being mutually reinforced in their private conversations, but it's not going to make anything better to try to prevent them from having private conversations. They're teenagers; they need space.) 

"I think we should work on English practice this afternoon," she says to Iomedae and Alfirin. "I also have some stuff to do upstairs, though, so how about I print off more worksheets and you can practice writing letters out while I do that?" 

"Yes, ma'am."

And in Taldane, "she says this afternoon we should practice English more, and she will give us more papers to do."

"Okay. It's good to practice English more."

"Yes. I think she is trying to give us work that is good for us."