"Like, meditate so you don't have to eat? I think that's not a real thing." 

"It is! I think I not holy enough for it though."

Grin. "No kidding. That's got to be, like, advanced yogi shi– ...sorry, Mom. Uh. Very holy person powers. I guess it's not really the same thing, yogis are supposed to be people who meditate a lot but I think they're usually Buddhist so they wouldn't worship your God." 

"Holy followers other gods also can do it," she agrees cheerfully. "And maybe holy people no god. I don't know much about it. My uncle was a great holy warrior but still eat like anyone."

...Wow, Evelyn had been bracing herself for that to go horribly - aren't fundamentalist Christians particularly intense about the whole 'you shall have no other Gods above me' thing? - and now she's surprised and relieved and...confused, honestly, not yet seeing how it fits. 

She sets the finished, steaming ratatouille down on the trivet at the center of the table. "Did you grow up knowing anyone who followed other gods?" she asks, which might be rude but it's a thread to tug on, and Iomedae has actually seemed fine with Jeremy's more blunt questions. 

"Different gods good at different things. God most important of the gods and my favorite and the one who pick me as holy warrior and who I serve, because God was human, God care about human things, God have plan to fix everything. But where I grow up, pray Erastil for crops and Pharasma for babies and Desna for travels and Abadar for riches and Gorum for strong. And some people pray Shelyn for love, or Jaidi for husband, or Cayden for braveness, but I not do that because I not want love or husband and my father say I have too much braveness already, not need any more."

She eyes the ratatouille. "There a mealtime prayer to Erastil but in my house we say one to God."

That is NOT HOW MORMONS WORK and honestly sounds weird and implausible for any Christian sect. 

“How does the prayer go in English?” she says. “I’m sure it’s lovely.”

Lily interrupts. “Who C’ddn? Ma’me bwave?”

"I no have all the words but -

Thank God brought knowing of what men could be out of lost lands to us! Great the people tame the plant and animal so they make food! Great the car makers and the farm workers and the Costco! On all table may there be food! May we be thankful, we grow strong, may we give our children better world with better plant and better animal! By our work may we build Heaven in the world! Amen."

Lily very seriously tries to repeat this, getting about half the words and half of those comprehensible. 

Evelyn feels extremely weird about repeating Iomedae's prayer on multiple levels, so she just ducks her head in a respectful way and then, once Iomedae is done, serves up ratatouille. 

(She's trying to think. Maybe Iomedae just means saints, the Catholics have piles and piles of them and the topics attached do sound like the sort of thing you'd expect for saints - but if Iomedae has been hanging out with Catholics, she would surely know the word, and wouldn't just be blending it into capital-G God and all the other gods who aren't God-god. ...Probably a lot of the confusion continues to be language barrier related?

Echoes of memory from long-ago college world religion are coming back, weren't there a lot of poorer countries - maybe even Mexico, definitely someplace in Latin America - where the locals were proselytized to by missionaries and "converted to Christianity" in a sense that very much meant shoving Jesus into their existing, mostly-polytheistic traditions? Evelyn continues to be deeply unqualified for this kind of speculation, but surely something in that direction is a better explanation for...everything about Iomedae...than "she's not believably Mormon so she must be lying"?) 

Jeremy will also bow his head respectfully without repeating the prayer, and beam at his plate of ratatouille. "This smells incredible. - Iomedae, what does it mean that God took some sort of knowledge out of lost lands? I don't think I know that Bible story but it sounds really cool." 

"Long ago Azlant was great place, rich like this country, cheap clothes like this country. But they go to war with - I don't know the name - and a great rock fall out of the sky on them and they destroyed and the sun not rise ten ten ten years and everybody starve, except God help them. - this when God a human, ten ten ten ten years ago."

"Cool!"

....That's just Atlantis. Who taught this kid a weird fake Bible story where Jesus went to Atlantis. Was born in Atlantis? Actually, you know what, there is absolutely someone out there on the Internet who has a 'Jesus was born in Atlantis' headcanon and a conspiracy page website about it. It's still really really bizarre that this non-English-speaking kid who turned up in hand-spun clothes, who had apparently never seen plumbing let alone the Internet, was raised unironically believing that. 

Evelyn is mostly staring at Iomedae and trying to figure out the math. If she means ten to the power of four, 10,000 years is way too long, but it would be even more ridiculous if she meant forty years. Maybe she's just - gesturing at big numbers, and means 'a really long time' and 'an even longer time' but that...doesn't feel like how Iomedae talks. 

"Iomedae," she says in a light friendly tone, "when you learned about God from your family, how long did they say God had been human?"

"A really long time! God was a great hero, so great he not grow old and die like most people. - he did die, on the cross and probably some other times, but not of being old."

Well then. That's - a pretty baffling set of claims that she is almost certain the Catholics would say was heretical ("and probably some other times"????) and - does sort of sound like the sort of thing you would get if a pagan group was "converted" and smushed Jesus together with one of their existing folk-mythology demigods or something. 

Lily, having never been to church, has actually never heard that story! "God die'ow?" 

"The law wanted to kill God! And He could easily have stopped them, but - because of some powerful god things he had set up in advance - if they killed Him He could take the burden of their evils onto Him, and when they die His suffering will count against their evils and they will go to Heaven even if their evils would otherwise meant they did not! I do not know how He did it or if we can do it too! I hope so!"

Evelyn did not actually have time to catch Iomedae's eye and try to remind her via eyebrow waggles that Lily is a small child who does not need to hear about torture, but...that wasn't too bad, Lily mostly looks mildly puzzled rather than upset. 

"or if we can do it too"????????????????

- you know, of bizarre heresies to come up with, that absolutely sounds like one that originated with Iomedae. 

Lily looks like she is in the middle of cogitating some VERY IMPORTANT thought that involves saying lots of words, which she is effortfully lining up. 

"How'uman d'na God? N'we dodat?" 

LILY

Evelyn will just be right here eating ratatouille with an extremely normal smile, how about that. 

"We can do that! God wants us to do that, so we can help Him fix everything!"

...Yeah she's got nothing.