She smiles politely. "The sentiment is very admirable."

He winces.

"Another thing I wanted to discuss with you is how income from projects of ours can be put to the best humanitarian use. The orphanages seemed in pretty desperate need -"

"I tried directly funding one. There was a suspicious increase in the orphan population. I'm not sure if you'd find that an undesirable result or not if you could accommodate the increased need."

"Depends if those are - kids fleeing slightly worse situations - or parents giving up wanted children because they'll have a better shot-"

"Some of both; and child wantedness is - not a strict dichotomy."

"If people would want their children given enough resources to raise them we'd rather that than really nice orphanages."

"Are you assuming agreement by both parents?"

"I am a fair bit out of my depths here and will defer to your judgment there."

"More handouts directly to parents would decrease the child surrender rate, anyway. And possibly increase the adoption rate, and the birth rate."

"In my world every person of any age gets a handout with enough to support them, every month. It works well for Elves but lots of things work for Elves that wouldn't for humans."

"There would be side effects. I suspect they would not be worse than what you're trying to address but would be more wholeheartedly in favor of a small experimental trial first."

"I think you are running your country very well and have no desire to get in the way. We can fund a trial; do you want to set it up?"

"I would be delighted."

Details can be worked out! Does Cam happen to have thoughts on the fastest way of installing the infrastructure for a help line?

Satellite's easy and won't be subject to vandalism or need maintenance soon.

Great. Helpline and he'll go check up on all the demons individually.

The demons have not gotten to actually be around literal children before. The ones with kids who can talk are doing a little better, although some of them seem to be taking their words for it on appropriate human nutrition - shouldn't be a disaster anytime soon - and one demon says that her baby will not let her stop flying, he cries if she stops flying, she would love to come down and chat but she has to fly him around.

Okay. They are all told how to reach the helpline and that they can write to ask for advice or support or a babysitter and he also doesn't know much about human nutrition so that gets a pass.

The one who is flying calls the helpline to ask what humans do when their babies want to be flown around. She is told that sometimes walking does the trick. Walking does not do the trick for her baby so she goes back to flying around. At least she won't get very tired.

He makes a note to get the demons for the rest of the world exposure to children before handing them their very own.

Anything else on fire?

Yes, one of the dots is literally on fire. The security fairy puts it out.

How did that even happen.

Arson!

Why is there even a word for that.

...'cause it's a thing?