"Poverty is caused by idleness and lack of virtue, so the solution is to put the idle hands to work and teach them about how to be good people. And if you are disobedient they can confine you in a cell or give you a diet of only bread and water or beat you. And they're crowded and dirty and-- I don't know maybe they're the right thing for some people but you're idle because you just got here and I would really rather you, uh, continue to be idle. With me."

"Yeah, that's--I should get a job at some point if I can't get back home, I'm almost an adult, but I'd really rather stay with you for now if we can manage it."

"My bed is huge," Kaleva says. "If you wanted to just. Sleep in it. At least for a while."

"That would be really nice of you, if it's not too much bother. I've, um, never shared a bed before, I hope I'm not awful at it." By which he means he wakes up with nightmares multiple times a week and they're never loud enough to wake his parents but he has no idea if he can hide them from Kaleva.

SUCCESS.

"I haven't shared one either but I don't think it can be that complicated."

Tiny nervous smile. "Okay then. And, um, I take it I should avoid your parents?" He's no stranger to sneaking around avoiding people's parents, he has to do it every week for DnD, but doing it in another universe and while staying somewhere overnight feels like it will be a lot harder.

"My dad. My mom's dead. And-- my dad doesn't like paying attention to me either so it'll probably be a lot easier than you're expecting. As long as you don't bring yourself to his attention he'll just assume you're another servant."

"Okay."

"I'm sorry about your mom. I really hope she's alright."

"I mean, she's... in the Underworld?"

Kaleva seems to consider this a weird response to someone's mom being dead.

Bruce is still not sure if the Underworld is as Kaleva thinks it is. He really hopes so. "How did people find out about the Underworld? Is it possible to communicate with it at all?" Nobody can communicate with Heaven and Hell but the people in both aren't very communicative; maybe it's possible with people trying on both ends.

"We asked the gods about it. Some people can see what it's like or visit, like fairies and part-fairies and gods and demigods and anyone they want to bring along. So we don't know everyone goes there-- there hasn't been a census and there are kind of a lot of people and before twenty years ago they were all floating in the River Styx-- but we do know more-or-less what it's like."

That's a lot of people who probably aren't all coordinating on the same lie; even demons back home can't all agree on the same lie and the beings here seem even more varied. "Okay, that makes--wait, part-fairies and demigods? Do those words mean what they sound like they mean?"

"Does it sound like 'a god or a fairy fell in love with a human and they had babies together'?"

"Yup. Does that still happen? Back home angels or demons and humans used to be able to have children, but not since the Flood."

"Not very often, but sometimes, and of course the child of a partfairy or a demigod is also a partfairy or a demigod. --What's the flood?"

Bruce's voice takes on the tone of someone reciting something. "Ten generations after the first humans, God saw that humans had become wicked. So He sent a great flood to destroy all the humans and animals on earth except for one righteous man and his wife and his sons and his sons' wives and two of each kind of animal, and when the floodwaters receeded they repopulated the earth."

"Please tell me you are aware that genocide is wrong."

"Well obviously it's wrong when humans do it! I'm not going to kill anyone!"

"If it's wrong when humans do it why the heck would it not be wrong for gods."

"Because God created us and that means He can do what he wants with us."

"I've probably uplifted some of the rats in the forest by now and it would still be wrong for me to murder them."

"Yeah, because you can't judge their souls and determine whether they're deserving of death. I assume."

"None of them are deserving of death! Because they're people and people don't deserve death!"

"I agree with you but I'm still worried you might go to Hell if I don't convince you otherwise! I'm sorry I'm such a shitty liar!" Ah fuck fuck that was supposed to stay in his head.

Kaleva is suddenly full of WEIRD and CONFUSING and ODDLY NICE feelings. The feelings are about how Bruce's face moves in a really interesting way and his eyes are this really pretty shade of brown and holding Bruce was always really nice but now it is nice and also kind of electric? Especially when Kaleva touches Bruce's naked skin. And they are going to share a bed and this is the most fascinating thought that Kaleva has ever had.

After a probably unreasonable amount of time he realizes that he was probably supposed to say something. 

""Sokay."