"I confused. 'Citizen' is - not foster child, can work get pay, can go places if want - what is not foster child, can work get pay, not is citizen?"

(Evelyn can tell that Iomedae is dubious, and is mostly expecting this to be a matter of nothing she says being incredibly credible to Iomedae right now, and - well, if Iomedae is from an abjectly poor developing country, probably the justice system insofar as it exists at all is incredibly corrupt. And Evelyn can't claim the US system is perfect, it's obviously not - she's seen it be imperfect close up, though it's certainly a lot more complicated than 'foster children aren't believed and adult parents are' - and, well, probably when you're fifteen and scared, the exact extent of how imperfect a system might be isn't an easy thing to wrap your head around.) 

She smiles at Alfirin, who she wants to reassure and reward for speaking in English to her rather than just asking Iomedae in Taldane. "It's - a complicated thing about how the laws work, it might be easier to explain once you know more English. I...think maybe the big difference is that citizens can get money from the government, if they're too old to work or get too sick, and that's harder for people who have papers to live and work in America but aren't citizens? And there is a way to become a citizen eventually, if you live here with papers. But I don't know very much about this." 

"Ohhh!!! Citizens get the - oh, this make sense to me now but I no have the English -"

Switching to Taldane - "in Oppara they have a grain dole. They give all the people there grain. It's so they won't riot. The city has great ancient walls and will never fall, so an Emperor need only fear riots, so he taxes everyone everywhere and gives people in Oppara grain, even if they do no labor. A 'citizen' is a person eligible for the grain dole."

- oh right, also, Evelyn is terrible at explaining governments and should have to redo grade ten civics class or something. "The other difference is that citizens can vote! That means, uh, every four years at the end of the President's - years of being President - everyone who's a citizen goes and gets a piece of paper, which is called a ballot, and they pick which person they want to be the next President. And they can also vote for Congresspeople and the mayor - leader - of the city, and things." 

"Okay, that they do not do in Oppara. It seems like it would cause a lot of wars."

Thaaaaat is a dubious expression and Evelyn doesn't actually know whether Iomedae misunderstood or whether a (mostly) functional democracy just sounds that implausible if you were born in a small village in a poor country. 

...Aaaand back to the list of quick notes she made. 

"Right! We should definitely look at a map, in a moment - there's one on the shower curtain but it's not very good. I'll go get the globe in a second. ...Iomedae, I think I'm not actually sure what you're looking for, when you said what a child owes a parent and an adult owes a greater man?" It's probably something painfully religious, isn't it. "I - personally don't think it's useful to say children owe their parents anything, though some parents would say their chidlren owe them gratitude - being thankful that their parents take care of them - or listening to them and behaving well. And I guess you could say we owe the President...taxes? And not breaking the law? But I wouldn't usually pick the same word to talk about both of those, they're different." 

"...What when the president want be the president more?"

"...If the President wants to keep being President at the end of four years, he - it can be a woman too but it's always been a man before, that's one way we aren't perfect - can try to convince people to elect him again? But there's a law that a person can't be President for more than two terms, which is eight years." 

"But if the president no want follow law, then the president is the one with the swords."

"And the polymaths."

"Maybe not the church? Maybe the church say no is obedient of the president stay president, and the priests fight the polymaths and swords."

Evelyn starts to open her mouth and then is interrupted by teenage uniformed theorizing and barely manages not to burst out laughing. ("The polymaths"???) She...isn't actually sure what they mean, but that seems like something to address...later...once they have better vocabulary. 

"- Not really? I - think that's a problem in other countries, more, but -" oof this is hard to explain, both for language barrier reasons and because grade ten civics was, in fact, a really long time ago.

"America has laws from when the country was founded, hundreds of years ago, about - how much power the President has, and how much power other people have, so that the President can't just decide to change the laws and win because he has all of the - it's usually guns, not swords, I can show you pictures of what that means in a moment. But the army - the people who knows how to fight and have weapons - don't only obey the President. ...I don't actually know all of how it works, I learned more in school but it's not something I have to think about every day. I - don't know if it's never happened in the history of America, that a President tried to do that, but they never succeeded and it definitely hasn't happened in a long time." 

"The - army - is a holy order, serve whoever win the 'vote'?"

"That is good!! God like that a lot I think!"

That's...not even that unreasonable a gloss on it, probably, from the background Iomedae has? Evelyn is pretty sure the army isn't, like, explicitly Christian, but they maybe still swear on a Bible? She isn't sure. There's definitely - something not that dissimilar from serving a religion, in serving a country. Sort of. Maybe. 

"That's - probably close enough," she says carefully. "I think it's not exactly the - thing you're thinking of - but you should learn more English and read actual books about it later, to understand more." 

"Maybe I want to join army. At home I no want that because holy warriors in army not in holy order fall, and also I a woman, but a holy army maybe I should serve."

Wow. Evelyn can't actually decide if that would be a disaster or a surprisingly suitable career path. ...Probably neither, Iomedae can't actually join the army as an undocumented fifteen-year-old foster child, and by the time she's an adult she'll know a lot more and be able to make an informed decision. 

"One of my former foster children joined the army!" she says cheerfully. "It can be a good career. Something to think about for when you're eighteen, I think, but - maybe you could talk to him on Skype? That's a video on the computer - it's sort of like the television, you can see a picture, but it's also like a phone call because you can talk to someone far away." 

"I would like talk to former foster child who joined the army! Which army fights America fighting right now?"

Guess what Evelyn does NOT FEEL LIKE GETTING INTO and has very little excuse not to try to explain anyway! 

"There's a war in Afghanistan and a war in Iraq. They're both places that are very far away. They started because - it's very complicated, but basically, the President thought that their governments were bad and might be building weapons that could kill huge numbers of people, and - there's some messy stuff with their religion and how they see their god's teachings that I don't think I can explain very well. ...It's complicated. Once you learn to read English, there's a lot you could read about it." 

That means 'we invaded because we are an empire and felt like it'. Iomedae was not born yesterday. "America no help fight Tar-Baphon?"

....Tar-Baphon is...plausibly just Satan, right. But maybe not, Evelyn really needs to get more in the habit of remembering that every conversation with Iomedae is half made up of cultural and language-barrier miscommunications. Evelyn probably should, at some point, press the point about how approximately nobody in the modern world thinks that Hell is a place you can march an army on, but - not right now. She's tired. 

"I don't think so. I had never heard of Tar-Baphon before you mentioned the name. Unless Tar-Baphon is a word in your language for Al-Qaeda," why did she mention that now she has to explain Al-Qaeda oh no, "- which is a sort of religious army order but - a pretty bad one, it's involved in the war in Afghanistan." 

"Tar-Baphon fight God and lose but come back after long time. He raise the dead as his foster children."

He...what...okay that makes MORE SENSE if it's Satan...ish...but also WHAT. Evelyn has SEVERAL CONCERNS and one of them is what on earth Iomedae thinks 'foster children' means. Though that's not exactly a new concern, is it. 

"I don't think America knows about that being a thing that's happening," her mouth says for her, in a very mild tone. 

Iomedae will not object that this makes no sense. She had been considering the possibility that Taldor was very far away, or that it was secret, and at this point it more or less has to be one of those. "Where I from people think it big problem," she says neutrally.

"We can try to Google it later." Evelyn is not entirely hiding the fact that she's dubious this will, like, work. 

...she'll go get the globe and show them different countries. Canada is north - and also a rich country but not as rich as America, and very cold - and Mexico is south and where a lot of the undocumented migrant workers come from, because it's poorer. And here are lots and lots of other countries, with names written very small in English text. 

(Evelyn is very much not an expert on world geography. There are countries in South America that she totally thought were in, like, South Asia or something.)