"Delighted to meet you. Please come on in! The girls are in the kitchen." 

Emily nudges her girlfriend. "It's a shoes-off house. - you've got a full house and it's all girls again?" she says to Evelyn. "Hope you got a tomboy who likes space and football. Or did you actually get around to redecorating the rooms?" She shares an eye-roll with Claudette. "Evelyn made a pink room and a blue room so she'd always be prepared for either a girl or a boy, and then she's constantly had all boys or all girls at once."  

"Don't plenty of girls like space? Space is very cool." 

Awww they're cute together. "As it happens, the older girls love space. They just learned about the Moon landing." And immediately had a surreal conversation about using lunar modules to invade Hell. Evelyn doesn't try to explain that; it's probably going to come up organically soon enough. 

She leads the girls over to the kitchen. "This is Iomedae and Alfirin and Lily. Girls, this is Emily who used to live with me, and her girlfriend Claudette. Can I get you two anything? Juice, tea?" 

Emily is already making herself at home. She waves at the new foster kids and then goes to make herself a coffee. The nice thing about being an adult is that now it would be rude for Evelyn to comment on how coffee will keep her up. 

"I do not see why she does not have girls share the girl room and boys share the boy room, then she could have as many girl and as many boy as she want. This house so few child."

"You'd think so, right! It's probably a rule, CPS has a ton of opinions on what constitutes acceptable parenting and it's only sort of related to, like, what kids actually want." 

Funny, how it used to bother her when Emily lived here and said things like that, but right now it's if anything refreshing. "It's a fostering agency rule, not a state-wide rule - I know other agencies that do try to pack kids in more, especially for teenagers. With my agency, siblings are allowed to share sometimes, but I'm actually only approved to have three children." Smile at Iomedae. "Most kids who stay here are a lot more work to look after than you and Alfirin, I really would struggle if I had five or six." 

"It make sense kids more work to look after than adults the state make pretend to be kids."

Snicker. "I see someone has some complaints about the system." Emily brings her coffee over to the table and grins at Iomedae. "Sucks, doesn't it. Claudette got to move out when she was sixteen. She's from Canada, though." 

"I think the difference is not Canada and is just that my parents didn't make a fuss," Claudette says, hopping up to sit on the counter rather than joining them at the table. 

"I think people's actual parents usually make less of a fuss than the state pretending to be their parents," Emily says dryly. 

Evelyn definitely has some sort of opinion about this, but this is neither the time nor the place to insert her opinions. She just smiles pleasantly. 

"My parents know I am grown! They would be happy if I visit but they know it not the will of God they order me stay.

...I know that three years is a short time to God and that I should be grateful America ever let me go free. And that obedience is a simple virtue if the laws good and a hard virtue if the laws bad but still a virtue."

"Canada is country? Canada like America or like Mexico?"

"Thaaaaaat sounds like taking the virtue of gratitude way the fuck too far," Emily says, with feeling. "Obeying unjust laws isn't a virtue, it's the reason things never change." 

"Language," Evelyn says mildly, and - leaves the rest of that alone. "- Yes, Canada is a country. It's north of America." 

"If you not obey laws unless they are good laws, then you will die. I guess in America you will only be put in a box. I do not want to die or be put in a box. And holy warriors must obey the laws or no President would allow holy warriors to do the work of God."

"Civil disobedience is the only way the unjust laws will ever get changed," Emily says. "Though fair enough if you'd rather the government not pay too much attention to you. - no offense, but I really doubt the President is in favor of holy warriors, that's like half the reason we went to war with Afghanistan." 

"What is 'civil disobedience' and how it change law?"

Evelyn hides a wince. This conversation is...probably a good idea, still, and it's shaping up to be fascinating...but it's also rapidly veering away from appropriate-for-Lily territory. 

"Lily, love, why don't we let the big girls have some time to hang out by themselves?" she suggests. "We can go to the park and play. Emily, we'll be back in an hour or two for dinner, is that okay?" 

Lily sort of feels like she's being gotten out of the way, and doesn't like it, but the park is a very tempting bribe. She nods, and hugs Iomedae tightly before putting her hand in Evelyn's and accompanying her to the front door. 

Wow, Evelyn is giving her a lot of leeway here. Emily is surprised, and slightly confused, and abruptly has several questions. Though she should answer Alfirin's first. ...In simpler words than she would normally use, Evelyn also hadn't mentioned that the two girls were still learning English. 

"Civil disobedience just means, like, publically refusing to follow a law because it's unfair. Usually in a way that isn't violent and doesn't hurt anyone - that's the best way to do it - but gets publicity, as in, it's covered in the news and lots of people hear about it and see how unfair the law is and get angry. And if enough people are angry, the government usually changes the law. So, like, black people - people with darker skin - used to be slaves a really long time ago, right? And people who thought slavery was wrong would help them escape to Canada, where they would be free, even though helping slaves escape was against the law then. And a lot of people argued that the US should stop having slavery too, and eventually that law was changed. ...And then even more recently, like, fifty years ago, black people were still treated really badly and not allowed to do lots of things, like, they weren't allowed to sit in the good seats on buses and had to sit at the back far away from the white people. There was a black woman called Rosa Parks who refused to sit in the back where she was supposed to, and got arrested, and that made a lot of people really mad, so they boycotted the bus company and refused to ride the buses, and took the state to court, and eventually the court decided that segregation was against the Constitution of the US and they changed the law, and now black people can sit wherever they like and go to restaurants and stuff, and it's against the law for a bus driver or store owner to treat them differently because of the color of their skin." 

"So you - break the law, and die of it or get put in box of it, but that cause everyone angry and President change law? ... is okay with God to do that. God do that Himself.

...the President no like holy warriors? America go war Afghanistan because there holy warriors there and they want kill them?"

"I mean, it's sort of complicated, but - yeah, I think the whole concept is sort of tainted now from, like, Islamic jihad stuff. Sorry, 'jihad' is a word that means, like, a holy war. Most Muslims are perfectly lovely, but there's this, like, extremist sect that thinks Western - American - culture is corrupt and evil, I guess, and they do terrorism - they hijacked a plane and crashed it into some towers in one of the biggest cities in America. I don't really know what it was meant to accomplish, it's - civil disobedience is one thing, but killing huge numbers of people to make a point...isn't that. Anyway, if someone says they're a holy warrior, it kind of makes me think of...that. And probably the President feels the same way."