"That's good. 

"He bought a book of poems. Good ones. But - before any of this happened, so it doesn't mean anything for this."

"Oh. I - is it good that he's trying? Or is it worse?"

"I don't really know. Depends on - stuff."

Nod.

Sigh.

"Do you read any?"

"Oh, I don't know how."

"Wanna learn? You can say no. S'just. I don't have a lot of stuff to do. I only know how in Taldane, but - "

"Uh, sure. I hadn't thought about it much but - yeah, why not?"

"Okay."

And she can try to teach her to read by using the poetry book and some paper to draw all of the letters and some supplementary words on.

And eventually Zakiya will remind her that she meant to meet with the other cleric today.

Right, that. Sigh. Better be responsible. 

She can send for the other cleric.

The other cleric is a gnome. She has bright pink hair, a symbol of Shelyn hanging around her neck, and an expression that suggests that she is rather delighted to be here. 

"Hey! Fimluethis Raevrelnog, at your service. What seems to be the problem?"

" - um, well, kind of a lot of things.

"...you look - younger. Than I was expecting."

"I'm a hundred and twenty years old. I just take care to surround myself with fascinating problems. Interested to hear what yours is."

" - wow. Okay.

"Um... about four months ago the entire Osirian royal family was killed, except for my husband, who was on another plane at the time. Three months ago, I married him, unaware that any of this had happened, because - we were stuck on another plane together, and I loved him, and he loved me, and I knew about the royalty thing but he had expressed that he thought we should never return to Osirion, to keep the palace from being able to hold us and any children we might have. We didn't have an Osirian wedding, meaning that I never promised to obey him, I promised to - love him and offer him all that is mine and protect that which is dear to him. And to take no other husbands until one of us dies, of course, that was important to him. Anyway - everything was great except that we'd found out that I couldn't - have penetrative sex, without experiencing a lot more pain than I think you're supposed to, bad enough that Hagan would always be the one to stop, he didn't want to hurt me. We did other stuff, really nice stuff, just not - that. And - I think we were happy? I don't know. I was happy.

"A week ago, we found a way back to this plane, and Abadar immediately hit my husband with a cursed helmet that reversed his alignment. Made him lawful evil. This allowed him to be a cleric of Abadar, and therefore made him a valid candidate for Pharaoh, but it also, uh, made him evil. Since then, our relationship has been pretty awful; he still claims that he loves me, but in order to stop being Pharaoh - which he still hates, just, he's lawful enough now that he recognizes the need to do it anyway - he needs an heir. And he wants me to be the one to give him one. Which means we need to figure out how to have sex. 

"When I sent for you, I thought my problems were - more related to love than I think they are now. Two nights ago he hit me with a bunch of healing spells - cure spells have never touched it, but we thought maybe regenerate and heal and restoration would do something. They didn't. Euphoric tranquility stopped the pain while it was being cast, but it came back after, and I started crying again. He stopped and then - told me to get out. Told me that if I stubbed my toe I would wake the whole town with my crying. He'd been planning to spend all day with me, if the healing worked, but instead I haven't gotten to see him at all.

"I don't know what's going to happen, it's really up to him. But I think - that I should probably stop trying to fix our relationship, while he's like this. That I can't trust him at all, and should just be focusing on - protecting myself. If I can.

"So, uh, sorry to call you all the way out here."

"Wow, don't be, that's the best one I've heard this year. Your life is pretty completely awful."

"Thank... you?"

"You're welcome. Can you tell me what you were looking for when you sent for me?"

"Uh - when I sent for you I guess I mostly wanted advice on how to communicate with my husband better. How to mend whatever relationship we still had. And now I feel like - we probably don't have much of one at all. But I won't really know for sure what I'm doing until I'm allowed to talk to my husband again."

"He's forbidden you from talking to him?"

"Not specifically. I just only get to see him when I'm sent for, and he hasn't sent for me. Hasn't seen anyone, last I heard. So - I can imagine ways that he could fix this but I'm not very optimistic about him wanting to."

"So now you don't think you need a cleric of the goddess of love helping you out with what you're doing."

"Not... really."

"Do you love him?"

"I - want him to be okay. I want to see him not go to hell. I don't - want to give him resources with which to hurt me."