"Well, not in this world," he chuckles. "In mine, certainly."

"There you go. I'm certainly more period than a Band-Aid. Hold still." He cures the sword mishap. "Hi. Probably you aren't here to join the SCA."

"No, I'm here to talk to you - I can come back later if this isn't a good time, but it might be a week or two."

"It's a fine time till someone else knifes themself. What's it about?"

"I wanted to see how you were doing with the magic, and answer any questions you might have about it."

"Are there strings attached? People have been looking at me funny in church."

"There aren't; that's a major difference between favored souls and clerics."

"I'll tell the bishop that, thanks."

He nods. "If it would help for me to explain it to him I can find some time to do it. I don't have a very good understanding of your churches here, though, I'm not sure what he'd want to know. And I can only favor people who could have been my clerics, if that's an issue."

"Could have been?"

"Yes, if you'd chosen to try for a clerichood with me and done things properly it would have worked, you have the right sort of personality for it. All the kinds of divine spellcasting depend on that."

"Hmph. What's confusing you about churches?"

"It's mostly not any specific thing, it's that they're so different in so many ways. Though the jealousy is definitely confusing; churches in our world are much more cooperative with each other, and even our clerics don't exclusively worship their gods."

"Mine's a little more, uh, polytheistic than some, but Heavenly Father's ours, even if there's more other places. I'm not sure what's going on with your planet, seems more complicated that way."

"I'm sure it is, in some ways."

"It's not right for us to worship things that aren't God. Even if it's not obvious why it'll always come out wrong somehow. That doesn't mean I can't take your magical healing and heal people with it. I can sure do that, and I am. But I'm not going to worship you because you aren't my God."

"And I'm not asking you to. But it's not clear to me why your god asks that of you - can you give me an example of how it might go wrong? That's not a matter of worshiping something harmful?"

"That's for God to know and me to find out, I suppose."

"I rather hope you don't find out. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"...why are you hoping I don't learn something?"

"It seems like the most likely way for that to happen is whatever it is coming to pass. I certainly don't want that."

"Oh, no, everybody gets to learn and grow indefinitely in the fulness of time, you don't have to try every bad idea to find out one day what would have happened."

"Ah," he grins. "I wish you luck in your encounter, then."

"...my encounter?"

"My potential clerics aren't the sort of people who could watch something like that happen and not try to do something about it."