Belmarniss shows up early the next morning for her consultancy meeting, munching a pastry from her breakfast spread. "Hey - I was told to meet with a Luay?"
"Okay. I'm not thinking of anything else. I can ask Mahdi if he'll do the rooms as a favor."
He asks. Mahdi'll do some easy spells on the room, and wishes her a happy reunion.
And on Toilday they can go back to the temple.
Belmarniss has clothes, and snacks cunningly intended to gauge whether her mom is going to go nuts over (in this case) nuts. "I wasn't actually expecting you to come along but it's nice of you."
"I can wait outside. Just - if anything comes up, or if you need to convince them you've acquired a respectable number of slaves in their absence..."
"Well, I make no promises about how I'd need to represent you to mine."
The man at the temple escorts them to a large fairly boring reception room up some flights of stairs.
She fidgets with the outfits, making sure they are neatly folded and that she has correctly sorted them into the one for Rynaeri and the one for Chal.
The cleric of Nethys arrives a minute later. "I need the bones," she says, "well, those or a lot more money. Huh, there's a lot of you."
"...my friend can wait outside if you want?" she says confusedly, producing a bone fragment and a lock of silvery hair. "This one first," she adds of the hair.
"That wouldn't even halve it!" She takes the hair, takes a diamond, sits down and starts - sketching, on a sketchpad. It is visible to Detect Magic that she's casting something but it is not noticeable otherwise. "I'm not complaining, the more people you can see the more you can see about people. You're clumsy every time! It's so oddly specific. If you want this boy this is the only place where you can have him, though, I think."
"I'm talking to you, about you, one of the most time-honored of human activities. Gossip is much older than prostitution. You hate being confused! The alternative, dearest, is being omnipotent, and I think you'd like it."
And then there's a drow woman.
"Mom -"
Rynaeri squints. Doesn't seem to remember how to move, for a moment.
Belmarniss picks up the clothes, approaches. "Mom, it's Niss, I got you, you're alive."
Rynaeri's arm twitches.
"I'm gonna put this dress on you, okay, and in a bit the cleric'll get Dad too."
"Sovi?" croaks Rynaeri.
"Sovi was fine when I checked last and once you and Dad are ready me and my friends'll go get her and bring her to you."
"She's all right," she confirms, and stands up, and continues to talk as she leaves. "The other one, too, you would have liked him..."
"Would that make sense if I were feeling normal?" wonders Rynaeri.
"No, I'm afraid it would not. She seems a little peculiar and I'm not sure what she means. Let's get you dressed, okay?"
Rynaeri gets into the dress, and prefers to postpone the shoes and the veil arrangement intended to protect her from the sun until they're about to leave because the dress is already kind of a lot. "Who's that?"
"His name's Hagan, he's my adventuring companion and came along for moral support."
"Nice to meet you." He should write down the things Nefreti said, that's what you're supposed to do when a powerful person says cryptic things to you. Shame about how they'll be even more jumbled, if he's the one to write them. He tries anyway, since Belmarniss looks - occupied.
Belmarniss looks sort of puzzled at him but doesn't ask. "How are you feeling, in what way not normal -"
"I have... hands," observes Rynaeri.
"Yeah."
"- I don't know if you looked -"
"I looked."
Rynaeri shudders.
"I think they actually know the going rate on one dead baby and it's not astronomical, you can probably just buy it off if I send you remittances and you stay alive a while," Belmarniss says. "Plus a little extra to cover it if they're wrong or there's stuff I don't know about."
"- so?"
"- I think the thing about Pharasma being racist isn't true although I admit I can't prove it. She's a colossal bitch but not a racist one specifically and I think if you buy it off you can go look at weird psychedelic colors in the Maelstrom at worst and probably enjoy another few centuries with your hands before turning into some kind of protean or something, which, uh, is probably better."
Rynaeri sort of half-laughs. "Sounds nice." She comes a little closer to laughing, then starts crying on Belmarniss's shoulder. Belmarniss kind of rubs her back, and after enough awkward silence starts murmuring a little song.
When he has done his best to transcribe the note he just kind of sits there awkwardly.
Rynaeri eventually progresses to sitting on an actual chair and letting Belmarniss catch her up on her life story since her death. "I wasn't sure if it was Auntie or Grandmother -"
"It was my aunt."
"Well, there you go then, but it didn't make a lot of practical difference anyway. I had the idea Grandma wanted somebody to remember you by and preferred me but you know how I am about Sovi so I figured she'd better not have her pick. I went upstairs, started adventuring. Went to Osirion after a few entry level runs to get insurance, they have insurance where they raise you if you get melted out there. We're in Osirion now. Sothis, the capital. I don't know where you'll want to live but for the first few days I've just gotten you a room at my inn. Dad might be in worse shape than you, but I can help you out, I have nothing on for the foreseeable future besides this and then once you're stable in a place less expensive than an inn getting you Sovi. I don't have Teleport yet but I've got another adventuring companion who does."
Rynaeri nods. "This is a lot. He's - it's been longer - is he still -"
"Last I checked. Growing little horns but he's still within date for the caster."
"Last you checked -"
"Few months back. I don't know the attrition rate."
"I don't know either. Couldn't see very well."
They fall silent for a while.
"After you get Sovi -"
"Starstone."
"Of course."
"I mean, with some other stuff in between probably, but it'll be incidental to get money - I borrowed a little, for the resurrections - and level up, it's not like I specifically have a to-do list. Might put in some time at the Worldwound or something like that but that's just an example, I don't have more intermediate goals besides wrapping up anything plausibly only doable mortal and then poking the rock. But I'll make sure my insurance is paid up, if it kills me I'll pop back up a few blocks from here and figure it out from there."
"Borrowed from who?" asks Rynaeri after another silence.
"Hagan over there. He isn't going to come mug me for it, I'll just sell spells in my spare time for a while and pay him back. And if I didn't he still probably wouldn't mug me, I think he's probably more the leave wild animals in your bed type."