At first she was too relieved to no longer be staring death by homicidal professor in the face to wonder where Odette had taken them. Then she pulled herself off the ground and noticed that Odette wasn't there.
Then she noticed that she had no flipping clue where she was.
"Wasn't sure if there was anything else you wanted to say before the facade of privacy was stripped away," she says, and goes to open the door.
"Hey. No news from our messengers, I'm sorry. Are you ready to join us for dinner?"
Dinner is elaborate and features eight courses and much interrogating Illia about magic and her home community.
She's very happy to tell them anything useful about magic, and she gets a bit wistful as she describes Genosha. She has nothing but praise for the Great Mage who rules it, and at one point gets into a very excited description of the enchantment holding the city up.
Another fact about her home community is that the utensiles are completely different and a great deal simpler.
He laughs. "A habit from Valinor, when we didn't have more important things to spend time on."
"Thanks!" Should she bring up the thing where apparently some of them are in favor of letting humans die nah it's not like she's going to let them stop her and it isn't really any of their business oh wait they can read her thoughts oops maybe she should see if she can do something about that.
If he reads that thought he does not react to it. "I'm also interested in hearing more about your god."
Okay then. "Aten? Um, okay. Is there anything in particular you want to know, or should I just start describing Scripture as best I can remember."
"I've never had to explain my religion before, I don't really know the best way to do it."
She starts with the Book of Genesis, where he's only known as "God" and "The Lord"--the Garden of Eden, the Fall of Man, a handful of generations down to the world cloaked in wickedness, Noah, and his flood, a note about his sons' supposedly being the ancestors of the people of Eurasia--"Most modern religious scholars are pretty sure most of this stuff didn't literally happen and is just a metaphor for the underlying concepts, but who knows"--a handful of generations down to Abraham, his travels, his sons Esau and Jacob, Jacob's trickery and subsequent flight to his fathers' relatives, his marriage to Rachel and Leah, his return to the lands his father traveled and his reconciliation with Esau, Joseph's pride and his brothers' rage, Joseph's being sold to Egypt and his favor with God leading him to become the right hand man of the Pharaoh, his sending for the rest of his family after they had displayed regret to his face unknowing it was him, and the beginning of the Hebrews in Egypt.
Everyone looks transfixed.
"That is very much what I'd expect a deity of Men to be like," Fingon says after a while. "Or maybe even specifically what Eru would be like if he were trying very hard to work with Men as his instruments. Thank you. What do you mean that modern religious scholars aren't sure if the stories are true? Can't you ask him, or at least some of the people who've talked with him?"
"No one's gotten a response out of him in more than two thousand years, and the oldest person in my world is slightly less than one thousand years old."
"That sounds bad for the transmission of accurate knowledge," he says mildly.
"There used to be more that were older, but they died five hundred years ago--I don't know exactly what happened, no one who wasn't already a Great Mage at the time does, they're not telling--and anyway they weren't Shemeshites."
"Fair enough. I asked mainly because I was curious if Eru was the creator of your world. It doesn't sound like it. He would have told you about the Valar."
"Mm, if these Valar are subordinate to Eru--we have angels, those could be the same thing under a different name."
"Not very well--they're supposed to serve Aten, but only a handful are mentioned by name in Scripture."
He shrugs. "I'll ask Findaráto for his take on the theology, next time I see him. Which won't be for a while - he rules a peaceful southern kingdom that seems not in particular need of your abilities."
"Yeah. Um, I should mention--Shemeshism isn't the only religion in my world. It's fairly popular, but not everyone agrees. And there isn't any proof either way. If you can talk to your gods, that's--definitely a difference between our worlds."
"We grew up with them. They taught us most of the things we know. My parents' generation moreso than mine, but still, I had dinner with them whenever we were in the area."
"Wow. Even in legends we were never...that...close...wait, they live on this plane of existence?"
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