"It's nothing." 

(it's not nothing) it's nothing. 

"I can read your mind."

"I'd noticed." 

"So what is it that you're so concerned about?"

"...I don't know," he says honestly. 

"To be quite frank you're not the prophet I would have chosen," Tholassi says, "and I suspect that's quite deliberate, but I'm an honorable god and if you return me to my usual state I will keep you as my prophet with the perks that implies. You can"-- he searches through Sataro's head for a good bribe-- "have a nice indoor job with no heavy lifting? forbid the Inquisition from carrying out its current activities? have sex with Kirasu? have sex with Kirasu and Ashka both?"

"— um!" 

Obviously he is going to return Tholassi to his usual state, because Tholassi is his God, not because — not because of that — 

"That's not even hard," Tholassi says, "they're both hopelessly in love with you. The Prophet Rathenu liked a girl and I had to mind-control her to get her to the altar."

— and that is a totally separate issue that he will deal with at a totally separate time, it's still disgusting that he would even want —

"Oh, don't worry about it, I just forbade it because it makes humans feel better to hear a lot of sermons against a sin almost none of them actually want to commit."

He is not going to scream. 

He is not going to throw anything. He is not going to turn and punch a wall, he is not going to do anything stupid and rash that he'd have to explain to anyone who saw. 

He is not. 

"Uh," Tholassi says. "--This is really more distressed than most humans are when a god grants the most secret desires of their heart."

This seems like a perfectly sane amount of distressed to be when everything you have ever strived for turns out to have been pointless. 

"I don't think it's pointless!" Tholassi says. "I'm not dead."

Please just be quiet. 

Tholassi can follow instructions from people who are responsible for him not being dead!

That's good. 

Following instructions, following instructions-- Sataro didn't say anything about not keeping an eye on his brain to see how he's doing so Tholassi does that--

He's doing his level best to be blank. 

Underneath that is disgust, turned inward — barely bridled self-loathing, same as ever — a profound sense of loss — 

(and underneath that, unacknowledged, the desire to curl up in the snow and stay there — the same instinctive recoil when he thinks about food —) 

Tholassi is going to continue not talking, and also idly wishing that whomever-it-was had left him with Kirasu. Kirasu, Tholassi feels, would not be having these problems. Even Dhavilot was someone he could work with.

Okay. He's — not okay. But he's stable, he's pretty sure if Tholassi keeps talking that won't make things worse. 

"You don't have to be a prophet," Tholassi says. "You can take me to Tarev and help me figure out how to fix it and then I can make Kirasu the prophet."

"That would probably be better for everyone," he agrees. 

"...although he's going to ask to date you and then you're going to have the same problem. Again."

"I will figure that out when it happens." His voice sounds sort of distant, he notes absently.