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."

"Oh, that's real pretty the way you said that, that makes me want to spend time being in a boat more than before - 

- Are you the same way about caves as you are about buildings, or is that different?"  

"I haven't tried caves much. I think they'd probably be all right, down in the earth? Not sure."

"I think Desna's more about - change and seeing new places - so buildings are fine for me for a while, it's just that I don't like it if I'm in any one place for too long, especially if I'm doing the same thing over and over again. 

Is there a place that you go to to be closer to Gozreh when you're in Westcrown? Even outside, sometimes I want more sky and all this is making me want to climb onto a rooftop, if you know one that wouldn't be too tricky a climb with my little one in a sling." 

"I don't know how good you are at climbing! I was sleeping on a roof, for a while, but then they started making it pour buckets all night and that's too much even for me to sleep through, so I started renting a berth on some random sloop. We could climb the convention hall if you're up for it, it's got enough decorations to be grabbable."

"I'm more used to trees and rock scambles and things like that, but I reckon I can make it up. 

- how many problems do you think they'll give us if they catch us climbing it, I'm not used to cities at all and never had much call to climb the buildings in smaller places." 

"Well, I'm pretty sure it's not illegal because right now most things aren't and we'd've noticed if the convention had made it illegal. I guess that doesn't mean nobody'd yell."

"I'm not worried about yelling all, so that sounds like it's alright then." 

She starts adjusting her sling and wrapping her baby up snuggly. He coos at her. She boops his nose.

"How old's the baby?" he asks, starting to haul himself up the wall.

"Ten months or thereabouts." She follows nimbly. 

"'s got a cute nose." Climb climb climb.

She's not quite as good of a climber as him, at least when slightly unbalanced by the baby, but she doesn't have any particularly close calls. He'll just need to wait on her a bit or else he'll get a ways ahead. 

"Would you like to hold him when we're at the top?" 

"Isn't there some trick to holding a baby? I haven't got it."

"Oh, it's not hard at all, especially at his age. When they're littler you need to watch the neck and they're more delicate, but he's big enough that there's not much too it. Just don't drop him.

- He might start fussing at you but if he does don't worry about it, he's been less fussy than usual just now, I think I he likes the climb too."

"Oh, if he's past the tricky age why not." He reaches the top and offers a hand down.

She grabs the hand and hauls herself up to the rooftop. Unwraps the baby and passes him over. 

Now Jofre has a baby; he's holding him under the armpits, letting his legs dangle. "Heavier than he looks, isn't he! What'd'ya call him?"

"Oh, scoop him a little more like this, he'll like that better - I guess there's maybe there's a little trick to it, I grew up with little brothers and I guess I forgot learning it. Did you have any brothers or sisters?" 

"He doesn't have his real name yet, my family waited on those until they're a little older so I've just been calling him nicknames. Isn't that right, little spark? I've been thinking about Ignasi as his real name, lately." 

Scoop. Noseboop. "I had a baby brother around when I ran away from home but I haven't looked my folks up to see if he's still around. Not sure I remember how I'd find the place if I wanted to."

She looks a bit baffled at the last. "Were you really little when you ran away?" 

"I was ten. I tried a couple times before that but they caught me."

"Oh, that's not so little that I would've forgotten my way home, I think. But I'm good at directions like that. I didn't leave until I was a bit older though." 

She also boops her baby. 

"Ten is about how old my littlest brother was, when he asked to come with me when I came back to visit. Wish I'd taken him." 

"Couldn't take school, or some other reason?"

"Watched my first execution, I guess? My family helped people get out to Andoran sometimes, we were near the border and up in the hills, so it was easy to send me along. And when I made it to Andoran I - realized I wanted to help more people out and I was useful on the trip, so I kept doing that for a while. People and messages.

- My family was still there the first time I made it back, but not the second." 

She reaches for her baby back.

Talking about this is making her want to hold her baby close.  

Baby is handed over. "I meant why your brother wanted to go."

"I think he mostly wanted to do what I was doing because it sounded exciting to him. He was tolerating school fine, though of course it wasn't nice or anything like that." 

"I have almost no memory of the actual content of school. I assume they tried to teach me things. I just remember suffocating and occasionally bleeding."

"The suffocating was just from you being inside or did they do something special where you were from? Bleeding sounds about usual, especially if you didn't learn so well. 

- We learned to read and count and lots of things which were lies but it was useful to know which lies they wanted you to repeat." 

"Just from being inside. I can write my name and pick out my ship even if all I have to look at is the name on the side, I'm all right about numbers if they're money and mean something about my work, that's about it."

"I can make my way through most things eventually, but I'm not very fast at it. Probably would get better with more consistent practice, I was fine enough at school and do some reading and writing sometimes since then. Just not that much. 

- Does that mean you were missing out on the pamphlets? They were fun while they lasted, even if I was too slow at reading to get through many." 

"I didn't read them. Heard a couple read but nothing that seemed tremendously worthwhile."

"I liked them. Just seemed - nice - that, people thought of things and wrote them down and shared them around. Something about doing things just because you can." 

"I was running around putting out fires, that night, so I can't say I'll personally miss them much."

" - that night was bad.I was running around putting out fires and channeling and trying to convince people that I was a cleric of Desna and that whomever they wanted to fight wasn't actually a demon. Assuming it was just the one night, I left the morning after since the convention was off for a bit. 

- Sometimes people decide to do things that are a real bad idea and I don't want them to do those things but also I don't want stop people from doing things just because I don't think it's a good idea? And different things are good ideas for different people.

There were a lot of pamphlets and just the one from someone trying to start trouble on purpose was a problem." 

"It was just the one night, the rain put paid to any and all outdoor nonsense after that."

Her baby is indicating wanting to be put down, and this is a sufficiently bad idea that she is not going to indulge him in this. 

"He wants to crawl around, and this rooftop isn't a safe place for that. So I'm going to go back down, let him explore somewhere he can't fall off of.

- And maybe look for someone to look after him tomorrow. I've been bringing him to the convention, but he's not usually quite as cooperative as he's been tonight." 

"I saw a couple other delegates with kids, maybe you could all split the cost?"

She secures the baby again and starts carefully working her way down. 

"That's a good idea, and they might also know someone who they trust already to look out for them. Not sure how to go around finding someone myself." 

He climbs down too. He has no special attachment to being up so long as he is out. "I couldn't begin to guess."

The climb down is tricker than the climb up, in part because her baby starts wailing in earnest partway down and this is distracting. 

She doesn't fall or lose her grip at any point, but there are couple moments where she needs to pause and plan her next moves downwards. 

"Do you want me to get under you in case you slip?"

"That would speed me up a fair bit - I'm not likely to slip either way, but I'm trying to be a bit more careful than usual because of the baby." 

He scoots around. He's very good at getting around in vertical space.

She picks up the pace. Not quite enough to have made it all the way to the ground before a guard on the ground notices them and approaches, yelling. 

"It's not illegal to climb a building!" Jofre hollers back.

It turns out that being exposed on the side of a building while someone is yelling at her and approaching angrily is deeply motivating to pick up the pace. 

A little further - and then she jumps down the remaining height, landing gracefully and stabilizing her baby on the landing, ready to bolt. 

"You're not allowed to be on it, though!" the guard shouts back.  

"We're delegates! The building's for us!" He's on the ground now too. "Anyway, we're done, what's it to you?"

"You're supposed to be in it, not on it," the guard grumbles. But now that they're off the building and have identified themselves as delegates, he's stopped his advance. 

The baby has only gotten more unhappy with the sudden drop and the commotion. 

Desnia assesses the situation as probably not immanently escalating, and focuses on soothing the baby. 

Jofre maintains eye contact with the guard in case Desnia wants to run off and leave him to deal with any residual hostility.

The situation is not imminently escalating and she has another cleric by her side who seems to be sticking around and being helpful.

Desnia puts Jofre between herself and the guard, but doesn't take off running yet, only continues backing away from the situation.

"Shall we be off, then?" Desnia asks. She's not actually sure if he wants to continue hanging out after they've gotten off the building, but she does wants to help with any trouble that she contributed too, especially since this trouble seems very unlikely to pose a threat to the baby. This is more obvious to her now that she's on the ground. 

The guard is glaring suspiciously but continuing to not approach. 

"Yeah, let's walk." He backs away, at first, before turning once they've got enough distance from the guy.

Once they’re far away enough that it’s clear that situation is resolved, she grins at him. 

“I haven’t climbed anything just for the sake of it in a while - I hadn’t realized how much I missed it. 

She’s also bouncing the baby gently as she walks, and he is mostly soothed. 

"That guard didn't have to be such a killjoy, having fun's not heretical any more."

“Yelling isn’t illegal either and we were on our way down anyway… I was probably more skittish than I needed to be about it.”

"Enh, you don't forget to be spooked overnight."

She shrugs. 

“All’s well that ends well.”

"Is that a saying somewhere? I like that."

“My parents used to say it to me. Don’t know where they got it.”

"Well, it was nice to meet you. Say hi to Desna for me and tell her I want to get back to sailing around as soon as I can."

“Was nice to meet you to! And I’ll tell Her.” 

She smiles at him very genuinely. 

And off he strolls.

Desnia is still smiling as he walks away and she finally puts her baby down to have some crawling time while she sits on the ground with him, occasionally stopping him from putting something in his mouth that seems like it would be a particularly bad idea.

That was refreshing. Jofre is so Good. Or maybe just good? He also seemed like he might be Chaotic, but if she understood things correctly, he couldn’t be Chaotic Good. 

Maybe next time she sees him she’ll ask him why Gozreh wasn’t Chaotic, the description that Jofre had given felt Chaotic to her. It was such a good description and the way he related to his God...ess reminded her of how she had related to Desna when she had been traveling through the wilderness, before the war. 

Her smile fades a little as she skirts around the thought that she’s an unbelievably pathetic cleric of Desna because she keeps feeling overwhelmed by the number of options she has for actions. 

Things were so much simpler before the war. She knew how she was supposed to pretend at most people and mostly only had to try actually talking to people she actually trusted. The thing that seemed most good and the thing that was chaotic and the thing she felt most suited for were all roughly the same thing. She… 

Instead of getting stuck ruminating, she manages to divert her thoughts and begins to pray, while keeping half her attention on the baby. She has mostly only been doing that during her dawn prayers for spells, hasn’t she. After a little while, she feels more settled, and her baby wants her to pick him up again. 

While part of her wishes she’d fished for opportunities to keep talking to Jofre - did he say he stayed on a boat now? she’d never been on a boat on the sea, it’d be nice to experience even if it was just docked at the harbor - she reminds herself that there were several more things she wanted to do tonight. She wants to find someone to look after the baby tomorrow, maybe by finding another delegate around with a kid; find the Contessa? (Condessa?) - find the bald noble Jofre mentioned and see whether she can get her approval for the committee or maybe someone else from it but she’s not sure she would be able recognize any of the other people; and maybe just find other delegates and get more impressions of the convention so far.

She can see if Jofre is interested in spending more time together some other evening. 

She gets back up: can she find anyone else to talk to?

If she walks in the direction of the park, there's one of the Shelynites, sitting under a tree with her young assistant and a new bodyguard who is doing her best to skulk in the tree's shadows.

Desnia thinks she recognizes the woman from the religious delegates section. And she has a kid! Though a substantially older one than her own. 

She approaches. 

Laia hides a yawn behind her fan, but not very well, so that the approaching person will know she's all tuckered out from doing politics but not being rude about it. "Hello."

Desnia doesn't read anything into the yawn. She's often yawning, herself. 

As she gets closer, she grows more confident in her recognition. She also realizes that the woman gave one of the many floor speeches today. She didn't remember the details but it was something about not outlawing plays. She's never been to a play before and isn't sure if she would like one. But she was familiar with the concept and they didn't seem bad and she didn't want them to ban things that weren't bad and it had been a good speech, at least as much as she could fuzzily recall. 

"Hello - I'm in the religious delegates section with you at the convention. Of Shelyn, right? I liked your speech earlier."

"Thank you! I believe it convinced the relevant committee that the bill's just got to have a carveout for theater. I'm Songbird Solandra."

"I'm Voyager Desnia. And I'm glad to hear it was convincing! Did you talk to the committee after the main session? - Or did I miss them adding the carveout? Today was such a long day on the floor, I might not have followed all the arguments completely." 

"They came and got me from this very park where I'm hiding from all the people at church who will pounce on me for spiritual counseling, to consult on their committee. It was such a long day, wasn't it?"

Desnia had been tracking presence and movements of the woman skulking, but had taken a minute to guess at her being probably a bodyguard. Right, she had meant to think about whether she wanted one, and then she had forgotten to think about that. Maybe she'll remember this time. 

"It was - are you hiding just from people who want spiritual counseling or from all people?" 

"I do have Eloi here, and Nera, so if you want to sit with us - well, Nera won't sit on duty, but still - and chat you may."

She sits and puts her baby on the grass. 

"How old's Eloi? This little one is getting close to a year." 

"I'm eleven."

"And how are you finding being eleven? And the city - are you both used to cities?" 

"We're from Ostenso! Eloi asked to come along to see more of the country and he's made himself very useful."

"Being eleven's fine?"

"Ostenso was the largest city at all nearby from where I grew up, but I've never been all the way to the city proper. Is it much like Westcrown? 

- and what've you been useful doing?" 

She'd misjudged Eloi's age, he'd looked a bit younger to her. At eleven he didn't need anyone looking after him and could be trusted with some looking after if he'd had practice. 

"I run errands and stuff, like I went and got Nera so Laia could keep paying attention to speeches and stuff."

"That's helpful of you. This one is a bit too small to be helpful yet, and if anything is rather the opposite. I've been trying to keep him quiet enough during speeches, has he been distracting you both?" 

"I don't know that I've found him specifically distracting; there are quite often adults chattering no less loudly."

"That's good to hear! Though he's certainly been distracting to me - makes the long days even longer, to have a little one wanting things. I've been thinking about finding someone to look after him, but I haven't been sure how to hire for that in a big city like this one."

"I don't know either. The orphanages are dreadful, it makes me glad I have no memory of being in one."

Hrm, this isn’t being very useful. She’d ask if Laia is on any committees but she seemed to not want to talk about convention business. Or spiritual counseling, so maybe she doesn’t want to talk about religion either? But she’s not even sure what else to even try to talk about. Jofre was so much easier to talk to. 

Well, she’ll push her luck with more convention business and if she’s not getting anywhere she’ll get on her way. 

“That’s what I’ve heard also, about the orphanages - do you know if any committees are working on something to help with that? I’m not sure what committee it’d be.”

"There's a committee on the family but I don't know if they touch it, since orphanages are somewhat the lack of a family."

She nods at that. 

She's a little annoyed, but it's not like she hasn't had the kind of days where she's not giving people conversation handles and they can either interrogate her or leave her along. The Songbird probably wants to be left alone or at least sit in silence. 

Should she just leave? But the park is nice and the baby is exploring happily. She'll at least wait until he crawls back towards her or starts crying. Or if she spots another delegate - she's not sure how many more she'll be able to find just wandering around at random. 

She puzzles over the bodyguard question.

She doesn't really want a bodyguard for herself, she'd be anxious with someone following her around even if they're there to keep her safe. That's not quite right, she'd maybe like it if it was someone who felt safe like Jofre following her around.  Maybe if she talked to them first and see how well she got along?

Could she get a bodyguard and then have the bodyguard take the baby out of the convention hall if he started wailing, so she wasn't missing some speeches? Maybe she can ask whomever is in charge of arranging bodyguards if she can get childcare that way. The archmages probably checked if they're trustworthy better than she could. 

Why is doing things so hard. Her brain feels fuzzy. Today has been too many things. Probably she can find people in Trade and Travel to talk to in the morning or during breaks, though she'll keep trying tonight. Soon. Whenever she summons the motivation to get up again. 

She doesn't say anything for a few minutes. 

Laia fans herself, sighing and watching the trees toss in the wind.

"If you don't need me for anything I might go back to the temple and see if Gabriel'll let me help with the mural."

"Go ahead, dear."

Off he goes.

She's curious. Is it terribly rude? It doesn't matter, she can be rude if she chooses to be. And she's curious and Laia is a Songbird and won't do anything terribly evil even if she does horribly offend her.

"Is he yours?" 

"Oh! No. I don't have any. He tells anyone who asks 'she's not my mother, she's my director - I wrote and directed a children's play with a bunch of children in it, and he was one of them, and when I needed to go to the convention he wanted to join me."

"Do you mostly direct plays, or mostly act in them, or both? I've never seen a play before - I guess I can't now, until the convention straightens the censorship laws out?" 

"I mostly act in them, I've only relatively recently branched out into writing and directing. I'm not sure the Queen's actually made the bill into a decree yet but it's certainly not the ideal time to buy tickets." Sigh.

“Oh, was it only the slavery one that took effect right away? Either way, I hope something bringing plays back passes soon - you’ll have my vote.” 

"I'm not totally sure how the slavery one was meant to work, honestly. The Decree might have been premature, maybe we'll find out tomorrow that a dozen people've been arrested for it... Thank you!"

The slavery one maybe hadn’t gone into effect right away? She thought they’d announced it. 

She’d gone out of the room the moment the count was announced, the little one’d been crying in the lead up to the vote but she couldn’t miss that one so she’d waited until she knew it passed. 

And then there’d been a Decree about it so it seemed pretty clearly resolved? 

“Oh. That’s disappointing to hear about slavery, I must have misunderstood things. Why do you think it might have been premature?” 

She gets up, her baby is a bit away and is maybe starting to cry. He’s gotten some dirt in his eye? 

"It's also possible I misunderstood things? There are so many things, to misunderstand, in there, and there's not a rehearsal... I think that fellow who ran out to do the decree was just very excited about it."

She retrieves the baby, brushes the dirt off of him as best she can. 

“Yeah, there’s been rather a lot to follow, hasn’t there been. I hope I get better at it, though today was better than last week for me. I’m going to head off, go see about finding someone to look after my little one tomorrow. I’m also looking for some members of Trade and Travel, if you know where any might be about?” 

She describes the Condesa, but can’t remember any useful details about anyone else on the committee. 

"I haven't seen her since the end of the floor session, sorry."

Maybe she should have asked Laia about what committees she’s on, if she’s on any. But it hadn’t really fit in the conversation flow, and she probably shouldn’t try to to join a bunch of committees today just because she has more energy, she’ll probably be tireder again tomorrow. 

“I hope you have a restful remainder of your evening, Songbird. Good gods go with you.” 

"And also with you!"