The path finally climbs out from the trees and zigzags up the pale rocky slopes of the mountain until she is almost at the snow line, and comes to a windswept ledge with a single white altar in the centre. It is the plainest altar she's ever seen. There is no decoration, no offerings scattered around it, and no real sign that this is a holy place at all beyond the altar being quite distinctly altar-shaped. And a pure, perfect, clean white. 

And the view, she supposes. The view is quite astounding. The wooded slopes of the mountain spread out before her, all resplendent in autumn gold, and beyond them she can see the tiny village huts clinging to the cliffs, and beyond that the sea shines silver all the way to the horizon. Above it all the sky seems so open, as though it is somehow more huge when you are closer to it, and the deep gorgeous blue is unbroken by clouds. The humans are so tiny and so fragile from this distance, and yet that village is more important and valuable and wonderful than anything else in the view and... it really is quite a glorious way to see the world.

She retrieves a single candle from her pocket, and flint and steel, and takes four attempts to light the candle because her fingers are stiff from the cold. She places it very carefully on the altar. And then she goes to the edge of the rocky ledge and sits down looking at the tiny village clinging so precariously to the cliffs by the sea, because that is the sight in this place that most inspires her to think about Goodness. 

She's bruised and battered everywhere. After the first hour of studiously thinking about how much she loves everyone and wants everyone to be happy, she ends up lying flat on her back and staring into the sky. It is really so very remarkably lovely, as a shade of blue. There is something poetic and wonderful about not knowing how far up it goes, and not knowing whether she will ever be strong enough to touch it, but it being so very vibrant and bright and unhidden. Like it's always calling, always telling her how beautiful it is up there. She likes pale pink dawns and deep orange sunsets and stormy greys-lit-by-silver almost as much as she likes the deep blue. 

Who are you? 

The voice doesn't sound like anything at all. It sounds like reading text on a page, but it also doesn't look like anything at all; it looks like sound. Maybe it smells a little of honey but she's... probably imagining that because she's hungry. 

"Lucia."

Your name isn't what I asked. 

"I'm.... a paladin? I need help." 

What do you want? 

Usually Lucia says she wants help finding something to bind herself to, so that she can get stronger as a paladin. She can't get any stronger until she has something, whether it's an order she can join or a god she can serve or just a well-written book that she actually feels she can live by, but she has to swear a magic oath and that feels pretty serious and so far nothing has been good enough and also several orders have directly turned her down.

But it probably isn't a good idea to lie while interviewing prospective gods. So she says the thing she most badly needs help with. 

"I have to overthrow the king." 

Is he evil? 

"I... I guess I don't strictly know whether he meets the magical definition or anything about.... I haven't met him, but it doesn't matter, the standard to be king shouldn't be just not being evil. His soldiers came into my village and said they were conscripting people for a war, and I told them they couldn't take everyone because we needed some people to defend us because the bandits have been such a big issue lately, and they laughed at me and took everyone and - I tried to fight but they just had two guys twice my size sit on me and laugh at me. And I didn't even get my paladin powers then, that was only later when I fought the bandits. And there's going to be a war." 

It sounds like you've figured out what you need to do, so, go overthrow the king. 

"I'm going to try but I'm not very strong at all yet. I need a something, an order or a god or an oath or - well, I came up here looking for a god and I haven't even asked your name, sorry. The villagers didn't know what it was, or what kind of sacrifices you might like." 

I don't have a name. The only sacrifice I ask for is giving up acts of evil. 

"I try not to do any acts of evil?" 

Since you came up here you've stepped on several bugs, gotten candle wax on my altar, wasted half a candle, failed to ask my name, thought about lying in terms of whether it's a good idea rather than whether it's wrong, made excuses about not having overthrown the king yet, and failed to ask any of the important questions. Just as an example.

But you're learning and you're trying and that's the best sacrifice you can get me. It is harder than burning a dead pig. 

This is the first time in a long time that anyone has told Lucia she isn't Good enough. 

Plenty of people tell her she isn't good enough. She isn't training hard enough with her sword - she knows that because she still loses fights she needs to win. She isn't smart enough or well read enough to be allowed to argue with the law. She isn't rich enough for buying armour or skilled enough to make it. 

But when it comes to Good she's so used to people telling her she's got too much of it. They warn her that she's trying too hard and she'll only tire herself out or waste her time. They tell her that she makes other people feel bad because it hurts people to see anyone actually doing the things they merely feel they ought to do. They tell her she's going to get herself killed by fighting everything evil without reservation. 

This feels like finally having someone who is on her side.

"...I am glad." 

Answer my questions and, if you still want to be one of my paladins, you can be one.

I turn almost nobody away. But almost nobody stays. 

"I only want to be your paladin if you will help me be the best I can. Um, no offence. I know you're a god and all. I've been told I don't have a filter but I figured I'm in your holy place and you can probably hear my thoughts anyway and - wait can you?" 

Yes, here. 

Okay. What are the questions then? 

If you want to be a paladin, then: What ought a paladin to do? 

Uh. I'm not sure yet because I'm not a very good paladin yet but - train hard with weapon and shield, and save people, and smite evil? And be just and brave and loyal and truthful and kind? And try their best every day? 

That's totally wrong. Paladins ought to do good. 

But those are.... kinds and ways of doing good, right? They're not the only kinds and ways of doing good but - paladins are really good at smiting evil and surviving difficult fights and bringing light to the darkest places, and we're not very good at, I don't know, teaching scholarship or building cathedrals or investigating crimes. 

You ought to be good at those things, because they're good things to do and you might need to do them. You should work on that. 

I don't know how to be good at everything but - sure, if it's possible obviously I want to and - I guess, practising the virtues of faith and hope, I should believe I can? 

Go down to the village and try to do the most good you can for them. Come back to me in two days and tell me what you are missing about what paladins ought to be.

When she returns the second time Lucy doesn't bring a candle. Instead she brings a jug of water from the clearest spring on the mountainside and a clean dishrag bought from the village's tiny inn. She very carefully cleans all the candle wax from the altar and wipes away anything else that looks like dirt or dust until the white stone is spotless. Then she sits crosslegged in front of it and thinks about honour and goodness and duty and love. 

The people of the village mostly don't have problems I can solve by smiting them. 

I healed twenty people because I can heal ten per day and a lot of people have... constant little injuries from life that build up, over time. Cooking-fire burns, and old bad legs from a time a plough fell on them, and calloused fingers with fishing-hook injuries, and knee scrapes, and training bruises. There is an old man who is sick and I will heal him too, tomorrow, but I would have to give up the healing of five other people to do it today.

They have a lot of - small ways I can do good. I helped repair an old woman's roof because it would have been dangerous for her to climb up and fix it herself. I blessed the fishers to help them catch more. I taught some children a bit of swordfighting so they can defend themselves. But none of those things feel like they help as much as smiting monsters would. And they didn't.... have any monsters I could smite in the two days I was there.

They tell me they are scared of sea monsters and scared of bandits and scared of the king asking more in tax than they can pay, but I do not think I can singlehandedly clear the sea of sea serpents without more power. The bandits... they could fix that problem if I helped them all work together but they're scared to fix it. And maybe that's the other thing a paladin ought to do, we ought to inspire people to believe things are possible so we can lead them. I think they didn't believe it until they saw I was part aasimar and I.... wish that wasn't relevant, honestly. 

So there are problems too small to be worth your time, and problems too big for you to tackle, and no problems at all that are exactly the right size? That sounds like making excuses. 

I think I could get the village to win, against the local robber gangs, if I armed them and trained them and led them and... inspired them.

But - I have to be really good for it to work. People really don't like the idea that someone is better than them and they don't like outsiders coming in and reorganising their lives, but they do want to believe in the ideal of.... a hero coming to save them. And that's why it helps that I'm an aasimar paladin, it somehow makes it... not their fault that they haven't solved everything themselves yet. But my birth shouldn't matter and if I'm going to go around telling people a hero is saving them then I have to actually live up to that.

Is that what I was missing? That a paladin also inspires people and makes them believe in something? 

You held Bless, Compelled Duel, Purify Food and Drink, and Detect Poison and Disease. Why not prepare Cure Wounds and heal twenty-four? 

I do think spending my Bless the way I did was a mistake. It wasn't actually very useful to the fishers, I think it just made them feel good. But - checking all the wells and food stores for poison and disease seemed more useful than healing four more people. And I always keep Compelled Duel because it means if someone attacks an innocent person I can force them to fight me instead. 

One of the things a paladin does is admit when they've made mistakes, and commit to doing better, because they understand that they must do better. 

Very few people can actually do that. They hold on to things they want to believe about themselves. 

I want to believe that I'm cut out to be a paladin. But I don't think that's... incompatible with thinking I have to do better.

If very few people can be paladins, but paladins ought to exist at all, then the people who can be paladins ought to be paladins. 

Do you think that makes you special? Better than other people? 

Kind of yes actually? But not in a way that means I get to be mean or cruel to them! But - they should also be - 

That is another one of the sins you can leave on the altar. 

I do not know how to do that! I don't know how to square - doing things that everyone ought to do but not everyone does - and also having more duty than other people and special obligations that other people don't have at all - and also trying to be the ideal of a perfect hero - but also not thinking I'm at all special - 

But you'll try? 

But that sounds like the sort of thing I could try. I will think very hard and see more of the world and maybe learn enough philosophy for that. 

Do you know why I gave up having a name? 

It's because what sounds beautiful to one person may sound ugly to another, and what gives the right impression in one language might give the wrong impression in another.

There is no perfect name. And I am a god of perfection. 

Oh. 

And a paladin ought to just do whatever is right. 

If you swear to strive for perfection, then I will give you enough power that you can fight these bandits. And then you will come back to me and tell me what a paladin is. Perhaps then you will overthrow the king.

Lucia descends the mountain as a paladin strong enough to be immune to disease. 

She is not an Oath of Devotion paladin or an Oath of Conquest paladin or an Oath of Redemption paladin or an Oath of the Crown paladin because all of those commit to some parts of Goodness but not other parts.

She is an Oath Paladin.

She hasn't sworn to be perfect, but she's sworn to try. 

Lucia comes back to the mountain and sits for a while sharpening her sword, because there is no reason for her hands to be idle while she tries to think about philosophy. She doesn't use her hands for that. 

I think defeating the bandits made me stronger. A lot stronger. And I could go looking for more enemies that are the right sort of challenge level for me, so I can become stronger, but it feels... suspect.

The king asks for tax money so he can become stronger. He says that once he is strong enough he will pacify the borders and pay druids to bless the fields and bring peace and prosperity to the land, but I think that is deeply suspicious because he could be doing more of those things now, and he.... has a self-serving reason to want to be stronger and hold on to power. I think he is lying and he just wants to be stronger. Or he isn't lying all the way, maybe he really will use some of the money to build roads, but he is lying enough that it doesn't matter.

I don't want to be that way. So I think I should fix the world now.

But I'm also not sure overthrowing the king is.... something I should do until I know who should replace him. It shouldn't be me. And I don't want to just make a giant civil war where thousands die. 

There is supposed to be a lich further in the mountains. Maybe I want to fight him. 

Can you fight him? 

No. I want to anyway. 

What ought a paladin do? 

...You know, sometimes there are people who are literally impossible to stop, so nobody tries. They're too powerful and they have too many allies and they've built up too many defences, so they just get to kill and torture and steal with impunity because everyone is too afraid to fight back. And there are some people who will try to fight back anyway, because we can't not, because we can't live with ourselves if we don't.

Sometimes there are people who aren't worth saving, because they're afflicted with some horrible disease that would be far too expensive to find the cure to, or they're being oppressed in some far-distant land and the mountains are impassable, or they are jailed and tortured in the dungeons of some incredibly dangerous enemy who nobody has ever escaped from, or they're just too far gone into their own evil to be redeemed. And there are some people who will try to save them anyway, because against all possible evidence and with absolutely no reason, they believe that everyone can be saved - because they can't abide a world where everyone isn't. 

Sometimes there are situations with absolutely no hope, where you have to choose between succumbing to some horror and doing something awful in order to defeat it, and there are so many different enemies on all sides and so many threats and everything is so expensive and difficult that it is impossible to imagine victory without doing something horribly morally wrong. And there are some people who will die trying, die looking for that way out where nobody at all has to die, because throughout history there have been thousands and thousands of evil people who did evil things while proclaiming that they only did it because they really had to - and they didn't have to, they just needed an excuse. And someone ought to test the question of whether they could have avoided doing evil if they'd just put a little effort in, and sometimes nobody will test that question unless there's people who make a habit of testing it every time regardless of how heroic they have to be.

Sometimes there are paths of light that are too straight and narrow for any human being to possibly walk, and some people try anyway because we would rather take one single step towards perfection than a thousand in any other direction. Because - the world should know what it looks like, when someone is trying to be really truly good. Even if we only succeed in one single tiny fragment of purity, so that there is some room somewhere in some castle where for a day or a week it was a space entirely free of evil.... a place should exist somewhere outside of Heaven that is entirely free of evil, so that people know what that looks like, so they have some example to strive for and some proof that it is worth it.

The people who die trying to do these impossible things are called paladins.

And if paladins proclaim their - our - existence throughout the world loudly enough, then not one single person will ever die without hope, not one single person ever has to go to their doom knowing they have not a single friend in the world, not one single land will ever believe that their ruler cannot possibly be overthrown. Because there is always a chance. A paladin will try. Perhaps the paladin will die. Perhaps there will be a blaze of holy inspiring light and they will do the thing that others refuse to do.

Sometimes paladins die. And other times we are right.

And people like to call us foolish when we die, and call us heroic when we don't die, but I think what they should say is that - whether it is true or false that it is possible to do what we are attempting to do and live, they are glad somebody is asking the question.

That is very beautiful and I picked you because you think truly beautiful and good things and I am glad you are trying, but you are still wrong. 

Paladins ought to defeat every evil, save everyone, solve every problem, and walk the straight and narrow path without tiring.

Questions should not exist that you do not know the answer to. You can give your life to answer a question, if it would be a greater sin to leave it unanswered, but it is also a sin to not know the answer in the first place.

I should just.... already know the truth that I can't beat that lich and try not to lie to myself about it? 

I didn't say that. 

Because if I'm very very good and very very lucky I can beat a lich? 

If you were perfect you could. 

I don't know what to do about the situation where I don't know, because I'm not perfect, but saying I'm not perfect is just making excuses for the sin of not defeating the lich yet, but I don't know how to become perfect and.... I don't know how to respond to that. 

I really don't know how to respond to that. 

But paladins ought to do good. 

You're learning. 

So instead of sitting on a mountaintop and whining I'm going to go and do good, right now.

Lucia ascends the mountaintop effortlessly, in shining chainmail, a bright silver blade at her side. When she reaches the summit she tosses her helmet at the foot of the altar angrily. "You are not fucking fair." 

Oh? 

"I read all the holy stuff the other villagers wrote down from you and it's - gorgeous. The poetry. You gave them actual guidance. You loved them! You sent so many people to help them-"

Lucy knows she doesn't have to talk out loud but she's angry and shouting helps. 

Are you sad that I don't give you verses about how beautiful goodness is? You know how beautiful goodness is. 

"After every single death I have witnessed I have wanted someone to hold my damned hand! I - yes I wanted that. I wanted to know the hymns!" 

I have limited resources, you know. Limited ability to be in the world, when I'm elsewhere. 

I am chasing down demons on the fifth moon of a planet you've never even heard of. I am trying to ease the suffering of a woman dying of the plague in Calimport. I am negotiating with Mystra to try and convince her not to allow the creation of a powerful magic object that would trap people in time-dilated torture chambers. I am practically rewriting the stars to try and change the fate of another of my paladins. I am providing a voice of conscience to a young wizard in Cormanthor. 

I can talk to you far more easily here than anywhere else. And even here I'm sending you just enough of my intelligence to barely hold down a conversation. I'm borrowing your own moral compass for a fair bit of the work here. 

I did tell you that you weren't special. Sorry. I do love you. 

"You're.... reflecting my own moral compass back at me?" 

There is a holy spark in you which pushes you towards the good. You naturally feel it. You burn with the need to heal the sick, tear down the strength of evil, protect the innocent, love your fellow people, cultivate the beautiful and seek out the good in everything.

The only thing you have ever needed from me is a little push. And raw magic. I have given you raw magic and you have done very, very well with it. 

Though not perfectly. 

"If you were perfect you would manage all those other things you're doing and come down here and have a goddamn conversation with me!" 

Yes. I would. 

"If you were remotely perfect you would tell me how to overthrow the king!" 

Yes. 

"How can you be an imperfect god of perfection?" 

The god of death isn't dead, you know. 

"The standard you hold me to is literally impossible for a human to meet and it's not fair! I fight and I fight and I fight and I hurt everywhere from so many scars and you never say thank you! Nobody else would be stupid enough to be your paladin."

Okay. Please hold me to a standard that is literally impossible for a god to meet, then. And I will try to meet it for you.

And I will fail and I will fail again and then I will keep trying to meet it for you. 

And neither of us will thank the other because that is not our relationship. I did not empower you for your sake, and you did not do good with those powers for mine. We are both of us mere servants of the same quiet, precious, pure inner flame. 

People who don't follow gods of perfection aren't held to this standard, you know. 

You're held to it because you swore you wanted to be held to it. In many ways the oaths other paladins swear are much more restrictive. Yours doesn't require anything except that you never stop trying. It's just that you have to never stop trying, not even once.

"So I don't ever get a break."

Because you told me that that's what you want. To pursue the good and never falter. To walk the straight and narrow path - the perfectly straight path that a sunbeam takes - for even just one step.

I..... do want that. 

I want it very badly. 

You want to save everyone. Those aren't mere words to you, you mean it. Every single person in front of you. To let even one evil pass you by, without you speaking up against it, would crush the delicate rare thing you've been safeguarding inside your heart this whole time.

You have a vision of heaven. 

I gave you burning holy light to build that world with. 

I want that very badly and I want to not need anything from you and I want to have the answers immediately and I want to be unfaltering and untiring and never take a break from trying because why would I even want a break from fighting and hope and good works and all the things I love most but.... I don't know if I can get everything I want.

I don't know if I can do that. 

If I tell you that you can, you'll believe me. 

Yes. I will. 

Okay. You can. 

You're just reflecting my beliefs and my moral compass and the things I need to hear back at me, aren't you. You are barely even here. 

Would you like me to be here? 

No. Not if you're doing those other things. 

I won't ask you to be here, if it would be wrong for you to say no to me, and also wrong for you to be less elsewhere. And then you don't have to say no.

Please keep giving me magic though. Sorry about the yelling. I think I mostly needed to get it out of my system.

...please if I'm ever dying though, I want a poem then. 

Go overthrow all evil kings everywhere. I believe in you. I've always believed in you. 

Yeah. I believe in me, too.

Want to know your score? 

How are you talking to me mid combat, this isn't the mountaintop, how - don't distract me for a second. I have to focus on the sword. 

Oh, right, yes, I'm doing this in the wrong order. You're going to want to drop flat in three, two, one - 

Thank you! Great save! Why the hell can you suddenly do that! You never talk to me outside the mountain and dreams and weird confusing omens! 

There's a tradition. It's part of my domain. Oh, the dragon is bleeding out and dying of its wounds, don't bother climbing down into that canyon. 

Could you always tell me stuff like this? 

I'm just going to tell you before I run out of divine intervention juice. 

....you're borrowing my voice, still, aren't you, to speak to me. I don't think gods use phrases like divine intervention juice but it's something I'd say. 

Right, yes, you're very clever. Anyway, you're at 5%. I'm going to tell you this is really incredibly impressive before I do literally anything else because otherwise you'll freak.

I'm the god of perfection. So I have a ledger. Every single person has a score of how much good they could achieve in the world if they made literally every choice correctly and spent literally every moment optimally since they were born, given their resources and constraints and abilities. If they were as perfect as they could be, pretty much. 5% is crazy, it's an unimaginably high score, I always like to tell my paladins when they hit it. Most humans are at a tiny fraction of a per cent! 

THE HELL DO YOU MEAN I'M ONLY AT FIVE PER CENT 

Lucy, normally I use a very large amount of you when I'm communicating with you. This is an unusual amount of me.

Please take this as an astonishingly vanishing rare achievement that is incomprehensibly good. 

And then keep doing better, obviously, because you want 100%, and you can always decide to 100% the rest of your life even if you didn't so far. But really, honestly, please be very proud.

Anyway I have to go check the boundaries of Creation for flaws and cracks and imperfections. Love you very much. Bye. 

NO COME BACK. FIVE PER CENT? FIVE? FIVE ISN'T REMOTELY OKAY

How am I even supposed to call for you to come back. You don't have a name. 

Fuck you. Five per cent is supposed to be good? After everything you've ever said to me? All that stuff about perfection? Believing in me? Fuck you. Fuck you.

Tomorrow I will make it six. Fuck you. 

I didn't mean that. Not after thinking about it for five minutes. 

Not after going down into the canyon and looking at the dead dragon and thinking how easily that fire breath would've killed me if I hadn't dropped flat right then. Not after retrieving all the glorious magical items from the dragon's hoard. This is enough to outfit me and twenty retainers. We can kill a lich, with all this.

Not after remembering you are my ally and my friend and my god, not because you love me but because you love what I love.You understand that everyone must be saved now. You understand that there are no acceptable excuses, that it is not enough for everyone to be saved tomorrow, or for almost everyone to be saved, or everyone to be mildly better off. Even when everyone else around me is telling me it's okay to be cowardly or lazy or cruel and only save most people, most of the time, most of the way. You don't shy away from looking into the dark.

I realise you maybe can't hear this so I'll say it again when I'm at the altar. Consider it a prayer, I guess. I didn't mean it when I said fuck you repeatedly.

I'm going to try and swear less, honestly. Going to work on that and also on getting that six per cent.

I mostly only swear at you because I know you will still not betray me no matter how much I do it, because you love the things I love, but it's not an excuse to treat you that way. It's a bad habit for me to get in, to treat anyone unkindly, even if they are my god.

Please don't ever say anything like that to me again though. 

Lucia is too angry to go back to the castle and told them that she has solved their dragon problem for them. She instead goes to the poorest part of the city and casts Create Food and Water twice, because that is the maximum amount she can cast that, and then sets up in a square and makes it publicly known that she is handing out Lay On Hands to anyone who needs one until she runs out.

She does this when she's angry because it is something she cannot really fuck up. And she gets to reconnect with people. Sometimes when she's spent too long in dark deep dungeons smiting necromancers and slaying dragons, she just needs to see a kid smile and look at her like she's the hero they want to be when they grow up, she needs to hear mothers say thank you, she needs to ask ordinary people about whether the harvest is going well and what the news is and whether they'd like to hear a song... and she needs to scout out what the next biggest danger is for her to smite.

When she's halfway through her pool (commoners are really very cheap to heal with only a point or two), a town guard comes up to her and informs her that she cannot do this sort of thing without the consent of the local Baron.

Lucia informs the guard that she is Lucia Brightblade, she just slayed the dragon that has been causing the baron so much trouble, and she does whatever she wants.

The guard has several questions which are not interesting. After they get through the boring and unimportant questions he apparently wants to know why, if she is capable of slaying dragons, she is wasting her time handing out bread rolls to slum dwellers. 

That's a question she needs to be able to answer adequately for her own sake even if she doesn't actually feel the need to explain herself to this city guard, so she thinks about it very carefully. 

"When you tell me that I cannot feed and heal the poor because I did not ask the Baron's permission, do you feel a sense of burning rage at the existence of injustice? Like this is an intolerable situation and you must at once find a way to fix it so that the poor may be fed and healed?" 

The guard does not. 

"I do. I feel it quite strongly. - And when you walk past the hungry and sick on the street do you feel a fierce sense of longing for a better world, an urge to help them that comes from deep in your soul, or a need to fix the world because your heart cries out in empathy?"

The guard admits that he does not particularly feel that way, and that in fact he thinks beggars on the streets are unsightly and ought to be cleaned out of civilized places.

"I do. And I suppose I also see, in a calculated sort of sense, the reasons why preparing for slaying the next dragon might be a better use of my time. Many people can feed the poor, and fewer can slay dragons; feeding the poor only helps a few people today, whereas slaying the dragon will cease its reign of terror over many thousands and keep people safe from it for however many more centuries it might have lived."

So, the guard wants to know, why listen to that inner voice that says to waste her time on sick children?

"If I ignore the voice enough, I worry I will kill it - it is a delicate thing - and then I will become like you."

The guard is offended.

"And then I will think it is an ordinary and sensible sort of thing to do, to tell people that they cannot feed the poor because the Baron said so, rather than an unconscionable horror. Rather than a thing that makes me conclude I must overthrow any Baron who dares think himself higher than the moral law within me and the stars of heaven above me. And if too many people become like that, it will be possible for such Barons to reign, without immediately being torn down."

(The guard looks like he thinks he is sort of supposed to arrest Lucia for that but he does not particularly think he's going to win a fight with a paladin who can cast Create Food and Water twice so he'll go for reinforcements whenever he gets out of this really annoying conversation.)