"Oh of course you can, and to understand what I'm just saying too, I wouldn't want you to be confused about what all the words mean. Any requests for topics?"

:- I like the ones that describe places: Leareth says, after some thought. :Or - if there are any that describe your god and what She wants?: 

Leareth definitely wants to understand that better - Shelyn is Vanyel's god as well, now - but for whatever reason, in his current state listening to songs feels much more approachable than asking a near-stranger explicit questions about it. 

"Sure there are!"

There is a song about foxhole converts and deathbed redemptions and wicked people who wake up one morning and don't want to be wicked any more, all meeting in Blossomheart. There's a song about a beautifully architected tower full of windows and every window is stained glass showing Shelyn and her servants releasing captive souls from her glaive or growing flowers or officiating adoptions or whatever. There's one about rosebushes (grown in any Shelynite temple that can possibly support one) as a metaphor for life containing things you can't get in the afterlife (babies, the opportunity to serve the needy as a peer instead of as an angel, any specific place or thing that belongs to the mortal world) even though it has thorns that you will be free of in Nirvana.

Some of it is confusing but Leareth mostly doesn't try to get a handle on any of the specific confusions. It's not, actually, a good time for assessing and making sense of all the information he can now access about Golarion. 

It's - not definitive. Even in Velgarth, the servants of the gods are humans, who have human beliefs and attitudes, and sometimes write very nice-sounding songs that are almost certainly not an accurate representation of their god's true values. But - Leareth does think it means more in Golarion than it would in Velgarth. And that Aziza is - probably not someone who would murder him even on direct orders from her goddess, and the fact that she (and Vanyel) are the two examples he's seen of people that Shelyn would empower does...probably??...mean something??

:- Why do you like Shelyn in particular?: he manages to ask, after several songs. :There are others Who are...Good...or at least not terrible, to choose from, no?: 

:Oh, sure, Sarenrae is more popular in Osirion than Shelyn is, and Erastil's not a city god so I didn't grow up with Him but He's Good too. But I like that Shelyn is - gentle, and - patient? If somebody's preaching on the street corner about how the Evil afterlives are an emergency now, and everybody who ever had an abortion might catch the plague and die unrepentant and that's an emergency now, and there's demons at the Worldwound and divs at the House of Oblivion and devils in Cheliax - all of those less these days, the archmages did good work - and that's an emergency too, and - they're not wrong but I can't live like that all the time and most of them can't either, and furthermore anybody who had an abortion walking past that street preacher is not going to be able to catch her breath and think about what she wants to do with herself while he's yelling, now, is she. Iomedae has to order Her people to have fun once a month. You can't just put it all off till you're dead and then probably not get around to it then either because there's work for angels too. There's more to exist for than that:

…Well, it’s certainly not Leareth’s worldview. But - she isn’t wrong, that most people can’t live like that at all, or that it’s a huge cost and burden for those why try anyway.

:It seems likely that She could be very good for Vanyel: he says, after mulling it over and concluding that this statement is not just made-up words and is at least somewhat about reality, if one considers the reality to include his feelings on the matter. :I - would be grateful to Her, I think, if it brings him happiness.: 

:I don't think She's likely wrong about him!:

That's hard to parse though it is probably not Songbird Aziza's fault and is just because Leareth is very impaired at thinking. 

:Wrong about - what - about him?: 

:About being a Songbird being good for him! - I don't think it's just Her who considers that sort of thing strongly, I think Abadar cares about it too because for Him it's like hiring somebody and paying them fairly, but I could see Sarenrae or Iomedae or maybe even Erastil choosing somebody whose life would be worse for it, if they thought it'd be the best way to get something good for more people:

Nod. 

:...The reasoning that would produce - choosing someone whose individual life would be worse if they could do enough good for others - makes sense to me. But I think that Vanyel has been subject to far too much of that already, by gods with much less sympathetic goals.: This doesn't take a huge amount of effortful thought to say, it's something he had already thought through. :I...will be glad, for him, if being chosen by Shelyn is indeed - not just more of the same. ...What do clerics of Shelyn normally do, since it sounds like it is not fighting?: 

:It's not! If you meet a Shelynite who's got more than two circles half the time they'll have gotten it by normal adventuring, we do throw some of those, but the other half they're going to have some story about something like spending ten years as the court healer and entertainer in some wicked lord's court trying to minister to the prisoners in the dungeon and convince the lord to be less evil and having to check everything they ate for poison. If you go to a temple of Shelyn it's going to also be an art museum, or a theater house, or a symphony hall, or something like that. Mine is a museum. It's got workshops and studios so we can make things, and we've got exhibits we made together and that other artisans from all over the Inner Sea made, and a shop for the stuff that isn't really an exhibit. I dye fabric, I made everything I'm wearing, and I do a little stained glass but I'm not good at it yet, my father made my bird for me:

:The bird is Shelyn's symbol? It is very beautiful. I think your father did a good job.: Leareth says this only about three seconds of checking, because he doesn't think even in this state he could be wildly making up words unrelated to his own aesthetic responses. 

The rest is - he's noting details, he can assemble them into a picture, he's - pretty sure there's some further mental motion that would be involved in assessing how much weight to put on that picture being - accurate and complete and representative - but when he reaches for it his mind moves sluggishly and blankly and also it's - close to the feeling that was alarming, in a way that makes him flinch away, even though Leareth is really quite sure that normally his flinch responses don't interfere with following a line of thought. 

Not the right time to assess. Later. 

There is a thing he wants to say, though it takes a long time to pull the pieces into the light enough to verbalize it. Leareth still isn't sure if it's entirely coherent as a thought, let alone conveyed clearly by the words he can find, but Vanyel thought that it wasn't dangerous to try to say some things anyway even in this state. 

:...If I am unsure that does not mean that you ought to be: he sends. :That Shelyn will be good for Vanyel and he will be happier, I mean. I think that - taking your premises for granted - I am nearly certain of it. I - my uncertainty is on a different level and it is not something you need worry about, since I assume you have done your own assessment of why to trust your god.: 

She pats her little glass bird. :Mm-hm! But if you had a different perspective on it I'd still want to know:

:...I think my perspective is flawed because I have very negative priors on - the extent to which gods are ever capable of understanding particular things that mortals value: Leareth sends, wryly. :Rather than steering half by accident for Their followers to believe that They do because Foresight shows the path that gives Them the most resources. I expect my priors are - not calibrated - for another world, it would be surprising if they were, but - I would wish to have more information to reassess, and - right now if I try to actually think about whether Shelyn is aligned with mortal values then I am just very scared for no reason.: 

:Well, there's no Foresight on Golarion any more, and as far as I know that didn't expose any gods as frauds, but maybe you'd rather no gods, or only the ones who were mortals once:

:...No Foresight does change things.: Leareth had known that, even! He's just - not very good at putting things together in context right now. :I - am not sure - I think that given my values, there are possible sets of gods that I would consider better than no gods at all? But - not all sets -: 

He has to stop there, because it turns out this topic is stressful, and on top of the baseline stressfulness of all of the everything it's...a lot...of stressfulness, and Leareth really thinks that this would normally be fine but apparently most of the mental moves that he would normally reach for to stay calm and focused through the stress are. Not there right now. 

:Oh, if we're talking about sets, it's more complicated for sure:

Focus focus focus focus FOCUS.

:If Shelyn is as you describe Her and I am not - confused about some other fundamental aspect of the situation - then I - think - having just Her would...probably...be better than no gods - it seems like that is not the situation on Golarion - maybe 'exactly one god' is not a stable equilibrium -: 

There is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON to be having a panic attack about this conversation and yet the best Leareth seems to be able to do about it is 'ignore it and pretend it's not happening' and he does not think he's doing a very good job of that either. 

:Well, sometimes there's a new god, yes, or an old one dies - not all that often, but sometimes. Also She might be lonely, though perhaps She doesn't need any of Her friends to be other gods. ...do you want a hug?:

It's a sufficiently startling question that Leareth just sort of - stops. 

:...Does that normally help?: he asks, after a long beat. Probably if he wasn't impaired he could figure out a specific answer to her question based on his current feelings and general self-knowledge, but right now the vast majority of his mind is pointless screaming panic and he can't really find the space to introspect on it at all. 

:I don't know if it normally helps for you. It normally helps for a lot of people:

Leareth flails for a moment, trying remember if it normally helps for him.

He...can't...remember ever testing the effect of hugs when he's panicking and upset? Possibly just because this never happens, so it never came up, but it seems like maybe he just has no way of knowing one way or another? It - feels stressful as a concept - but that's true of almost everything right now and Leareth isn't sure he should be relying on that feeling to be informative at all. 

:I am not sure if it would help but you can hug me and see if it does help?: he manages to squeeze out. 

She makes a quelling gesture at her brother, first, then comes forward to hug Leareth.

It turns out that his prediction was not baseless!! Being hugged is very stressful!!!!

It's...at least a completely different and unrelated flavor of stressful from the being able to drag himself out of a panic loop about the concept of gods. Which means that it's a quite effective distraction!

And - it's not purely unpleasant-stressful. Admittedly that was also true of the conversation, which had other traits like being interesting and potentially useful, but the not-stressful component here is...simple. Focusing on it doesn't overwhelm his very limited capacity to think, and - focusing on it does make the stressfulness a little less loud, somehow. 

Leareth is pretty tense but he doesn't pull away from the hug. 

She lets him go after an experimental couple seconds do not unstiffen him.