This man has been looking at sign-up sheets for a solid fifteen minutes and occasionally glancing nervously in Laia's direction.

She comes up beside him. "Hard to decide, hm?"

"You could put it that way."

"Do you want to come talk it over in my office with me?"

"Sure."

She's got it all done up prettily - she brought a fair few clothes, as she's always been in the habit of keeping costume pieces, and hangs up some of them for lack of tapestries, plus Gabriel has painted the floor, teal and white, and the desk's got a vase full of peacock feathers and there's a glass suncatcher in the window. The chairs don't match, but one's got a throw quilt over it so it's less obvious. There's a cute little tea set. Maybe the Erastilians don't want money but you can't be a Shelynite temple, can't feel like one, without beautiful things, and money can buy beautiful things. "Please, have a seat! Water?"

He sits down. ...Doesn't touch the water.

His prerogative! She'll fill one teacup with a little flourish of her hand and an unnecessarily tuneful magic word and sip. "You look like you've got more on your mind than 'painting versus embroidery'."

Nod. "Shelyn's — redemption, yeah?"

"That's right. Everyone can come back from everything they've done, whenever they're ready."

"Well, that's sort of the difficulty, now, isn't it."

"Well, that's what we're here for, to help people be ready."

"There's a lot of things I don't really know how I'd just — give up."

Nod nod nod. "You built yourself a life out of what you had. It might take some time and thought to come up with a new one, and a way to let go of anything you need to leave behind."

"Kinda seems like I'd be leaving behind all the things that make life worth living."

"A Good life should also be a joyful one. But of course you don't want just any joys, some stranger's joys that don't speak to you at all. You have your own reliances and replacing them could be terribly hard."

"Don't see how I'd do it at all, really. Seemed a lot easier when I thought it was just, you know, don't kill people, don't worship Asmodeus, don't break the law."

"It's a start. Not far enough, you think?"

"Not to hear the paladins tell it, at any rate."

"Not everybody can be a paladin. Not even everybody in Heaven Itself can be a paladin. What do you think you should be?"

"'m not trying to be a paladin. I cut hair, you can cut hair just as well no matter who your god is."

"You sure can! So what's some paladin said that's gotten you bothered?"

"Lots of things, really. Not supposed to watch people fight to death in the arenas. Not supposed to go catch stray squirrels and compete with the other guys at the barber shop to see who can kill theirs the slowest. Not supposed to go sleep around, maybe unless you're fucking old ladies who won't get pregnant off it, I'm not sure I understood his argument right. Not supposed to go beat up beggar-types when you're stressed and you just want to let off steam, not even if you just leave them with some bruises.

And it used to be that when I wanted to do something hard I'd pray to Sabnach for endurance and willpower, and we're not supposed to do that now either. If it were just that I couldn't pray to him I could make do."

Nodding. "That's a lot of different ways to deal with stress that are all suddenly off limits at once. Which sounds more helpful, picking somebody new to ask for help when you're feeling short of willpower or picking some new things to do when you're bored and antsy?"

"New things to do, I guess, except nothing I've been able to find is half as good."