There's a guy over there getting some street food. He looks familiar from the convention, he's the one who constantly looks like he'd rather be dead, but he doesn't look it right now.

She wanders over to him. "You look familiar - you're also a religious delegate from the convention?" 

"Yes, I'm a cleric of Gozreh. You're a - Desnan or something?"

"Yes, that's right." She smiles at him. 

"How have you been finding the convention? Have you managed to join any committees?" 

"I'm chairing Trade and Travel but mostly because if I'm chairing I can make everyone sit outside where I can breathe. - already tried Air Bubble, it doesn't help."

"Oh, that sounds like something I know anything about! I haven't managed to join any committees yet, I wasn't oriented enough the first two days, but everything moved so fast and now it seems like joining committees is a whole production and all the nobles are fighting about who gets to be on which one.

And outside sounds nice, I don't think I have much of a problem with inside except with how there's too many people, but I think he fusses a little less outside." 

She gestures at the baby. 

"I've never been able to stand it. Except on boats. I ran away to sea young."

"I haven't been on the sea before - seems like you'd want to know everyone on the boat really well before you got on, because it's so hard to leave in the middle of the ocean!" 

"...I... don't think anybody does that. I mean, not on a ship, on a fishing boat sure."

"I think I wouldn't like not being able to get far away from people I don't want to be near or the part where the boat is going on a course and I can't change it.

But other than that being on the sea seems like it could be really nice. Probably if you climb up on top of the... big stick in the middle with the sails, it's a lot like being on top of a mountain where you can see really far in all directions!" 

"The mast. Yes, it's great up there, you can get a whole faceful of wind and see so much of the sea at once."

"That sounds really nice, and I'm sure so are the stars from there - though there's lots of places with great stars on land also, it's one of the reasons I like mountains more than forests. 

Have you been to very many other countries? I've only been to Andoran and Isger, myself." 

"I've been in lots of ports. I don't usually go too far inland, practically all the tourist attractions are buildings so they'd be kind of lost on me."

"Are there things like internal passports but for boats? Is your committee working on a proposal about internal passports?" 

"There's port stuff, and, yeah, internal passports came up."

"Is the committee more for or more against? And you yourself?" 

"Committee's divided. On the one hand apparently it's meant to cut down on land pirates but on the other they're inconvenient for people who aren't land pirates, you know?"

"Bandits? How do the passports help against bandits? It's not like you can't get across the internal borders just about anywhere if you're willing to go far enough off the road and most of the kinds of bandits I've ever seen are fine off the road." 

"I believe the idea is they'll eventually turn up somewhere to spend the loot and not have a token to be where they're at. You know, I wouldn't mind if you joined the committee, they have to vote you on but if you butter up a couple people before we meet next that shouldn't be hard."

"But that's not hard to get around if the bandits are recruiting on both sides of the border, and my thought was that they're usually working across one border, maybe two, not the same group everywhere in the whole country at once. 

- And that'd be real nice, it's the committee I have the most experience for. Except maybe Good Churches? That's the other one I remember exists that seems like I could say things at. And then there's a couple where I think I don't like what they're gonna get up to but also they'd probably not have me. 

Who should I be trying to butter up to?" 

Jofre can list off who showed up to his committee. "The Condesa's easy to spot, she's the bald noble-lady with the thundercloud. It's tame, she let me touch it."

Oh no, a noble. 

She'll do it if she can find her. 

"Thank you, you've been very helpful! I hope to see you at the committee whenever it next meets. Is there anything else you'd like to ask me about?" 

"What's Desna like, off boats? - I think it's only Gozreh who's a goddess if you're on a boat and a god if you're not but I reckon Desna might be different off of boats and I only know Her from on them."

"Well, I don't know what she's like on boats, so it might be the same in both. She's the goddess of dreams and stars and luck and travel and butterflies - that's her symbol." She gestures at her own.  

Desnia pauses for a moment. She likes Jofre. He's straightforward and not twisty and if he's evil it's not in any of the way that she's used to and it seems like he understands that people can make choices. 

She hasn't been good at putting this into words before but she feels surprisingly comfortable trying here. 

"She's the goddess of - the moment where you're climbing up a tree or a rocky scramble and you're not totally sure if you can make it to the next branch or figure out the next hold but there isn't any way up that you can be totally certain of and so you - believe in yourself and Her and reach out for the next grip where you need to be right because if you're not you've already let go of your previous hold. Of making the call and then taking the gamble and believing in it and succeeding in it." 

She shrugs.

"Or at least that's some of the times I feel closest to her, besides when I'm praying for spells. And dreaming but dreams are even harder to talk about. What's Gozreh like for you? What're the differences between what He - She's like on boats and what He's like off of them?" 

"On boats you've got - the sky, and the sea. And those both have stuff in them, flying things, swimming things, but most of what's going on in the world from a boat's perspective is the waves and the wind, and how they push and pull. You can't sit still in a boat. So She's the sea and sky and the boundary between them, big and moving, full of creatures but all the creatures are pretty few and far between except when they're going in a flock, or a school, or a crew.

"Off boats there's... hills and trees and rocks and valleys and caves... there's also the sky but the sky's not acting on you much, when you're not on a boat. It feels farther away. I think Gozreh'd feel boatier in a desert where you've got mostly just sand below, but I've never been to a desert to check how He was there. There's all this texture, on land, and it holds still. That's why I can be belowdecks in a boat and can't stand to be in a building, I think, the building's sitting on the land and the land might be Gozreh but it's not paying a whole lot of attention to Him, you know? A boat pays attention, She moves so it does too."