"The Osirians like to keep tabs on their dead inasmuch as they can. Random scries, routine tourism to Aktun. Do you have comparable reason to believe some people are in fact being okay in Xovaikain?"

"I can’t scry but people talk to velstracs sometimes? And it stands to reason, right? If I keep getting better at dealing with pain, I’ll probably be ready in another few decades. Lots of humans live that long. And I might cope with pain better than average but not that much better. And it would have been really stupid of our ancestors to make a deal that would make them and all their children and grandchildren and so on wish they’d never been born - and, like, velstracs clearly don’t all kill themselves. But I only have that secondhand."

"...I have never met a velstrac. What are they like?"

"They're... beautiful, and smart, and terrifying, and covered in chains, and they remake themselves with all the coolest parts they can scavenge - but they're still them, just - not human anymore, they don't come back to be with their spouses or take care of their parents but I don't think angels or demons or whatever do that, either. They are outsiders, they're not exactly our people anymore. But someone from my home town who went to Pangolais and wrote a letter back mentioned meeting someone else from my home town who'd died a while before that. She - the dead person, the velstrac - was working as a torturer, unnerving people on purpose, that kind of thing, and didn't have time to catch up - or couldn't really have a... friendly kind of conversation? I don't think you can be friends with outsiders, anyway? But she did say hi and let him know it was her. I don't really know how outsiders are besides dangerous and not people you can make friends with and definitely not human anymore. I - saw a velstrac once, but all I know about her was that she was explaining something complicated about the nature of Evil to a foreigner."

"I've heard in Lastwall they'll do things like update people's graves with what kind of angel they are but I think it takes long enough that you wouldn't get a story like that, huh, I wonder if velstracs are just quicker and why... I acknowledge that it would have been stupid of your ancestors to do that, do you think that's a reason to think that instead it was some other non-stupid thing?"

"Well... yeah? Do you know a lot of people who've made deals that make them and all their children wish they'd never been born?"

"I don't know a lot of people who've had the opportunity to get quite that wide-ranging about it, but I know people with tendencies that would tend to pickle them that way if they had the chance."

He's always heard that the Nidalese are stronger than other people and kind of a breed apart. He doesn't mention this because it seems really unlikely to be convincing and he actually has no good reason to think it's true.

"I guess I can't prove that the people who've stayed in power since Earthfall instead of drowning in their bathtubs like Chelish kings aren't idiots."

"...you know they aren't just, out of nowhere, drowning in their bathtubs, right, those are assassinations."

"Yep. And by people who... won so completely that they didn't need to admit to there having been a fight at all?"

"Asmodeus happens not to care if there's infighting among the Thrunes he's backing and Zon-Kuthon went with an approach that involves a lot of individual continuity, I'm not sure that's down to anybody's skill as a negotiator."

And maybe that reflects how much stupider you have to be to deal with Asmodeus.

"I guess."

"Doing things that are awful for one's children isn't even rare, certainly commoner than knowing self-sabotage."

That does give him pause.

"...Yeah. That happens."

"And people - humans compared to elves and probably everybody compared to, like, gods - are bad at thinking about really big numbers, really long periods of time..."

"If you say so."

"I do, but if you haven't seen it I guess it wouldn't be convincing - how old are you -"

"Depending on whether you count by new years or birthdays and whether you zero-index it I might be nineteen."

"Nineteen-ish, okay. So, yeah, keep an eye out for that as you get a broader perspective on the passage of time, I guess."

"Okay."

She finishes her soup and returns the dish to the restaurant she got it from.

Right. Soup. He eats his a bit faster instead of halfway ignoring it.

When she's back from that, he has another question. "Does the Dreamer have churches around here or - are there things people do to serve her, you know, publicly?"

"She's got churches. They're not... very consistently staffed... but there's at least one a few blocks inland from the east end of the docks."

"Thanks. What do I... do, do I bring her an offering? Is money a good offering?"

"Money's money because everybody likes it and I don't know anything more specific about her proclivities."