This isn't where Raafi went to sleep. He'd set his bedroll up on a comfy patch of moss under a tree, and now - he still has the bedroll, at least, and his pack, but the tree and moss are nowhere to be seen, replaced by a strange metal room with still, stuffy air and an implausibly clear night sky out the window.
"Hello?" he calls, getting to his feet.
"Crucians. They're usually totally desert-dwelling, but the oases have been drying up too." He shades his eyes to scan the far bank and point out the rest of the tribe, half a dozen more dirt-brown crablike humanoids with digitigrade legs gathered at the water's edge, cooking a large fish over a fire. "Only some of them are aquatic, but it's enough for them to take care of themselves without impacting our fishermen, and we'd rather have someone keeping an eye on things underwater."
"Fish stock if nothing else, but we have a few kinds of magical wildlife that we wouldn't want to see die out or overgrow. This is the warehouse," he points.
Which continues to be awe-inspiring, if not as comment-worthy the second time. "We have about an hour before dinner, if there's anything else you wanted to do today."
"Are there any more places like this I should fill up? A suitably discreet way to ask about watering the river?"
"This wing model is rated for forty-five but I probably can't do that well first time out with 'em."
"That should be plenty. Raafi, can you fly us?"
"Sure." And he casts and they rise into the air, heading off at a speed much closer to ten miles per hour than forty.
"You're welcome to join us for dinner but I'm afraid it'll be underwhelming," the prince says on the way back, after Cam is done with the warehouse. "And unfortunately I don't think we should trust the whole household with your secret, or at least not yet."
"Food I didn't pick out and make myself'll be nostalgic, I'm not picky."
"All right. And I should present you to His Majesty before the meal, if you don't mind."
"None in particular beyond the name - it's His Majesty King Nawfal al-Kaprela al-Kamar, or His Majesty the King or just His Majesty - the rest of us don't mind just being called prince or princess so-and-so, aside from Her Highness Princess Kifaaya al-Kaprela al-Kamar, and also the crown prince, but he's off at school. But for His Majesty my brother it's disrespectful to the throne to leave off the honorifics."
"Mmhmm. And then once you're a cleric it gets a little more complicated but not much, necessarily, has Raafi explained about that?"
"I've noticed people call him 'Traveler'? I don't have a plan for an equivalent term for my little one-person situation."
"Oh, it's not just that. Right now we straightforwardly outrank you, more or less - more less than more, considering you as a powerful wizard in your own right, but in theory you're not any sort of noble even if I wouldn't want to pick a fight with you about it. But once you're a cleric of any standing you're outside that whole system altogether, you're not just speaking for yourself and even kings are subject to the whims of the world."
"This applies even though I'm doing a concept and there's nobody backing me up particularly?"
"I suppose you might find that it applies less, some places, but I'd expect you to have important things to say about abundance the same way Raafi has important things to say about travel - with less depth of experience behind it, maybe, but the extra breadth makes up for it; with no god of abundance to listen to if a cleric like you doesn't tell us we simply don't know."
"That seems to presuppose a general consensus on the importance of the concept of abundance I wasn't expecting!"
"The magic's proof of that, once you have it. Not that there's any doubt that abundance is the right sort of thing."
"All right, maybe it's impossible to become a cleric of blueberry muffins, but surely it's also possible to become a cleric of a thing that is important and bad? Not that abundance really screams 'bad' but the general principle of clerical status..."
"Oh, of course, just being a cleric won't make people do what you say any more than just being a noble will; if a diplomat came and demanded we cede half the country we'd tell them to go to hell, but it wouldn't be ridiculous, it'd be something we'd have to take seriously."
"First tier cleric spells don't seem like that big a deal in terms of the assumed underlying threat model the way a diplomat can be assumed to come with a military."
"That's usually beside the point, especially in the case of good clerics - we do know he's good, right, I've been assuming."
"Mmhmm."
"It did seem obvious. Anyway, if you come to us the week after you get your first spell and say that we're making a mistake in our crop rotation the fact that you might mildly inconvenience the guards has nothing to do with why we'd want to listen to you about it."
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