"The visiting deities spilled the beans on the afterlife."

"Oh, good. Not that this'll be a bad place to live with some sprucing up but the more people with the fancy magic the better."

"I think it'll slow traffic in here, people will want to be daeva. Do you think that's gonna be okay?"

"I'd worry about not getting enough people who know how to use the new technology but if we'll be able to come and go it shouldn't be a problem."

"That does look to be on the horizon and during the transition time you'll still get lots of folks who come here to be with family. Also the religious fringe, who won't be happy with any of their options and might settle for 'default'."

"-well, I probably won't be staying once they don't need me, anyway."

"Gonna leave the indestructible truck for somebody before you skip out?"

"We'll see. I'd miss her, but - lot of places you can't go in a truck, it turns out."

"Yup. Well, thanks for the kickstarting my benevolent grand tour."

"Thank you."

(Pelor has disappeared at some point in all of this.)

"Which way is the ocean?"

He points him. "Feel free to come find me, too, when you want to take a break."

"Noted. Uh, Magic Raafi, you good? You need anything before I fly away?"

"I'm all right, Pelor gave me what I need to get between the realms before he left. I could use food for the rest of the day, I suppose."

"You picky?"

"Not at all."

"And do your magic powers handle allergies if you have one by surprise?"

"-the- I won't, it's already covered. Nothing poisonous, I don't have that prepared either."

"I just would feel bad if I gave you peanuts and you've never domesticated them and have a reaction. Here you go." A stacked trio of bentos. "Eat the top one first, it's the most short term perishable."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome!" And away he flaps.

"So you're staying for a while?"

  "At least overnight, yes, I can only prepare new spells in the morning."

"All right. Well, come on up, there's room for two if you don't mind getting cozy in the bed. And you'll have to tell me all about everything - your god, and whatever's got you looking like you just heard there was a landslide on your favorite highway, and whatever else."

  "-yeah, that's a good way to put it." He sighs.

"Come here, actually."

Hug. Kind of a lot of hug, actually, and eventually they get going.

"So, Fharlanghn is -" the one says, eventually, his head resting on the other's shoulder and his arm draped across his lap as he drives. "I guess - I don't know how much we have in common, do you speak to your father?"

  "Not since I was a boy, no."

"Mine almost killed me, once."

  "Wow."

"And being Fharlanghn's cleric is - everything he hated about me, Fharlanghn likes. Just about, I mean, but. He hated that I wouldn't stay."

  "That's rough. I had problems with mine but not that one."

"Lucky."

  "Yeah."

  "Fharlanghn?"

"Yeah. So he's important - I don't know if you've had someone who really cared about you no matter what, I haven't much. But Fharlanghn - almost does, I guess. I've had to make compromises. But never anything - never anything I couldn't stand, you know?"

  "I've had that - I should introduce you to Kat, sometime. But not much, yeah, I get it."

"I have a Kat. If it's the same one. She's a cleric too, of Lastai, she's, um-"

   "Yeah." He reaches over to ruffle the other's hair. "That's Kat. Very um."

"Good that there's more of her, the world needs all the Kat it can get. Anyway, Fharlanghn. He's - he gets what's most important but he's not a good god, and that's a problem sometimes. Not - not often, but it happens."

  "Like how?"

"Like - he doesn't mind us doing things for people but that's not what traveling is for, to him. And I can't just - like - being a cleric of Fharlanghn means it's the highest priority, if that stops being true I stop being a cleric."

  "So you're stuck, when you want to step outside that line."

"Yeah."

  "We don't do so well with stuck. What does your Kat say about it?"

"Well, she knows how clerics are."

  "I bet she doesn't put up with being stuck."

"Well, no, but her goddess is different."

  "I guess she'd have to be. But Fharlanghn?"

"Most of the time he's fine. He doesn't - he doesn't make demands on purpose, things just sometimes happen."

  "All right. I'm not going to try to talk you into leaving, you know, I just want to understand."

"Okay. Well. One of his rules - not just for us, in general - is that you can't hold people somewhere without giving them a choice about it. No prisons, unless the prisoners have a choice of a different punishment. It's usually exile in our world. But they had a daeva prison here, and that doesn't work for them."

  "Yikes."

"Yeah. And he's there right now, letting them go. Because I told him about it, because that's an obligation I have. And it's a huge mess and people might get hurt. Will get hurt. Probably. I don't know."

  "Yikes." He wiggles his arm free to give him a squeeze, and the other one snuggles into it. "I'm not sure I can give you any advice about that. It's pretty heavy."

"I'm not sure I need any. I don't like it but he doesn't need me to. I don't think I'd choose differently if I had the choice to. But I don't like that about myself, very much."

  "Yeah, of course you don't. Can you, I don't know, talk to him about it?"

"I guess? He's very busy. Especially right now."

  "I think it'd be worth it. I know my Kat wouldn't put up with me having a relationship with someone I couldn't talk to."

"I guess. Gods are different, though."

  "I guess they would be. I don't know anything about it."

"Yeah. I don't know, I'll think about it."

  "Good."

Meanwhile, elsewhere -

Fharlanghn is only taking five or ten minutes to interview each daeva, but with eighty of them to talk to, that still takes a while. He magics them lunch, and when it gets to be dinnertime he makes that too and takes a break to bring some to the receptionist.

With the floor patched and the need for the prison to be constantly accelerating as far as possible from the Solar system obviated, the security fairy has let herself in and brought the human food already; they're sitting together while she tries to coax him into taking bites, nice and slow, so he doesn't puke.