He casts the spell. Parmida and Saba, his wife and his adopted child, are both there. 

Also through the wall three of their neighbors are home; he can tell even without paying any particular attention that the neighbors are all human, that they're all of approximately average intelligence, that they're all awake right now -

He can tell that his wife is significantly smarter than average, and that his son is not quite as much but still well ahead of the neighbors, and -

Parmida is thinking that probably most people wouldn't want their husband reading their thoughts but most husbands are much worse than him, really, and it seems like he wants it the way she wants a nice house with servants, except moreso. And it's not as if he had to ask. And he always does, he seems so serious about the business partner thing, she's not sure if that's how it is in Cheliax but if it is she thinks it's worth it, even if most women end up ruined and most husbands end up leaving - if he leaves she'll be fine, because he taught her magic - she loves him far more than she ever expected to love someone - 

Aroden stands very still, for a moment, drinking it in - it's still so limited, but it feels like - he can't even describe it. Like he's been locked in a dark tiny room, and a single brick has just been removed, and he can see again. 

He turns and looks at Parmida, and sees, not her pockmarked face and wonderful smile, but her, the part of her that truly matters. 

He holds out his arms. "I love you. I - I..." He can't even find the words for it. "We are so much stronger together." 

She hugs him. She is thinking that he always sounds so sincere when he says that, and she's not sure what he's doing by it? What he means to accomplish, what he wants - She's not sure people really, in real life, just say romantic things because they suddenly feel them so strongly but he does.

This would be another occasion for kissing but he continues to not be interested and that's probably fine, several of her sisters have said that being with a man is kind of painful and awful and she's lucky, if he doesn't want that, only it doesn't feel that way, only that's silly because she likes liking him so much and if he hurt her then things would just be worse and it's weird that she still kind of wants it knowing all of that, you'd think knowing all of that would've just settled the question which is irrelevant anyway because he doesn't want to - she wants to have his children, they'd be so fascinating and capable and he'd be so excited to teach them magic -

Aroden (privately) is thinking that humans are baffling - he's thinking that someday when she's powerful enough he's going to want to teach her the spell, only it'll be awkward, right, because so many of his thoughts are - clearly not human - and some of them are explicitly about his past and she doesn't know–

–and some pieces of him, the fragments trying to reassemble into a vaguely human-shaped person, are coming together a little more; there's a kind of love a god can feel, and he's felt that for a long time, but gods just don't have 'wanting to kiss someone about it'. And he doesn't either, yet, but - he can see the outlines of how it could be a part of him, and wonder if that's something he wants. For its own sake, because it's the kind of thing that makes human lives beautiful and worth fighting for, right, and Parmida's one of the people.

(And he's one of the people...) 

"...We should talk about things, I think," he says quietly. Glance at his son (what is Saba thinking of all this?) "Alone. At some point, it does not have to be now." And he leans in and gently kisses her forehead. "Thank you. For helping me to have this." 

"Of course. Can you do it through the Charm Person link you were talking about, do you think, now that you can do it at all -"

"I will have to try it! That would be convenient, actually, we could use it to talk while one of us is out, if you wanted." 

"It would! And it bothered you that it didn't work like that at first."

He hadn't realized his botherment had been that visible. 

(His frustration about a lot of things is, in fact, fairly visible to anyone paying attention along standard human communication channels such as 'body language'.) 

Yeah she doesn't find him very hard to read, really. She hugs him, and gets Saba ready for school.

Aroden heads out to his work at the wizard's shop, making and selling magic items - at a steep discount, but he's still bringing in significantly more income than before. (He hopes to someday teach Parmida the skill too; he knows she's not going to advance as far as a wizard, and will do it more slowly than he does, but he wants her to be as strong as she can be. Because then she and Saba will be all right if anything happens to him. And just because it feels good and right, his sphere of influence is still so small but within it he can shape the world towards what it ought to be.) 

He prepares Detect Thoughts twice as both of his second-level spells, the next day, just because it makes him feel more...himself...if only for a few minutes. His spells are lasting longer but not long. He heads out to the docks and casts it twice in succession, once just to skim surface thoughts, once to pay particular attention to a few interesting minds. What are people thinking and feeling, in his city? 

Worrying about unreasonable bosses and unpayable guild fees and whether they can afford to send their sons to school and get their daughters married; worrying about storms at sea and rodents in their apartment and aching backs and sickly babies; impressing each other with boasting and stories and picking up ill-advisedly large loads on the dock. 

Aroden drinks it in. It's still not much like the way gods can pay attention to the world, but - it feels good, somehow, it helps make him feel like he understands people and how they work. Or at least like he can get there eventually. 

The next time he and Parmida are both home at the same time and Saba is out, he takes her hands. "Should we..." And here he is, being very human in his awkwardness around a topic. "Should we talk about - what you were thinking and feeling, the other day?" In case it's not clear to her: "I think you were trying to figure out whether or not you wanted to kiss me?" 

"Oh! I suppose we can? I think about it sometimes because we are married and you are so kind but I don't think it makes any sense to if you wouldn't like it."

"I think–" Being very human is very confusing, is what he's thinking. "I think - I have not liked it before, but - you are different, because I love you very, very much, and so I might like kissing you just because it is you. ...If you are worried you would like that but not - marital relations - then, I would not worry about that, kissing you is not going to make me - lose control of myself and want to do things that hurt you..." That's his guess at what she's afraid of, anyway, after turning it over and over in his head quite a lot. "I will never wish to do things that you do not like or want, and - even if I am wrong and I am tempted, I think I am very good at self-control." 

" - I mean, if you wanted to I wouldn't want you to be trying very hard not to on my account, it'd be a very unreasonable thing to ask of you. Dragging laundry around when very tired hurts but - that's just life, right, that sometimes our duties are hard and still very important. Sometimes I think that it's probably good that you don't particularly care to but I would definitely want to offer you that, if you found out you did care to. You're very good.

I think I would like kissing but I don't know how or anything."

...He can see why her thoughts about it are shaped that way and also it's sort of sad. "I - do not think I would want you to consider it a duty the same way as that? The laundry is important, even though it is not fun, because it is - an investment in our future, right, it earns us money for more spells, and for nice things and Saba's school. And - marital relations are not that, I do not think, unless it were about having children and I - I - I do not feel very ready yet to have another child with you, maybe someday."

Babies eat a lot of slack, he thinks, and are also expensive, and right now that additional expense wouldn't be trivial even if it were affordable.

"But - it seems it would be very stupid if it were inevitable that it hurt for women, and–" it's hard to talk about but probably not for the reasons she's going to assume, "and my - last wife - she liked it well enough, I think." His host-body's memories are pretty hazy at this point, hard to access, but some procedural memory is still there if he hits it from the right angle, and a few flickers of particular events. "It is probably a matter of - practice. And of whether a man listens to his wife and asks her what she likes, instead of just - just thinking of it as a duty that she owes him. And - and I would wish you to think of it as - an investment in the present. A nice thing to have together, because we are two people who like each other. Not a duty. If it is not that for either of us then what is the point." 

"I've heard people say that about Cheliax -well, say that men are different there, and marriage is different - and they say it with a lot of other bad things but it sounds - kind of nice, really.

I think I would like to try things, if you wanted to."

"I would like that."

He takes her face in his hands - she looks beautiful to him, pockmarks and all - and looks into her eyes, and tries to let this body's memories of how kissing even works rise to the the surface. 

He closes his eyes, and kisses her. 

It's really nice! She's so delighted (and also feels silly about worrying for years about it.)

(He's kind of relieved she waited; he isn't sure he would have felt ready for this years ago.) 

They can kiss and snuggle for a while, and his body seems to remember what would usually come next, and produce something that's not entirely unlike wanting it - which is weird, the impulse feels half-alien. He holds off for now, because he would like it to feel more like him and because he suspects Parmida could use time to get used to the idea. "If I am going to take your clothes off," he tells her, seriously, "I want it to be when you are impatient for it and not nervous about the idea." 

"Love you," she says fondly, and looks a bit less confused about this than she would have a month ago, and maybe feels the slightest touch impatient already but - it can wait.

He kisses her forehead. "Love you too." 

Life goes on. He crafts magic items. Reads thoughts at random. Casts the intelligence spell to think about his theories of spells and sometimes to mull over his plans for the future. 

"I think it would make sense to save up for a second-level spell that will be more applicable to earning us money," he tells Parmida. "Wizards who can cast at that level are going to be rarer, right, but neither of my current ones are really aimed at business. ...Although I suppose there are people who might pay to have the cleverness spell cast on them, even if it is only for a few minutes. You could try to find out for me? If any of the neighbours' children seem about as clever as Saba, they might be able to learn wizardry with the help of that spell, and I imagine parents would pay for that privilege. The children might have to be older because I think Saba is very diligent for his age." 

"I can certainly ask about it! If we were to start a school for teaching wizards, we could make good money that way. I think usually they don't take students until they're fifteen so if we said we could do it with children at ten or twelve then that'd be a competitive advantage all on its own."

"I would want to assess the children first - I think some ten-year-olds would do very well and some would not, and I would not wish to promise something to their parents and then disappoint them. I can probably design some tests that we could give children. And mental exercises like the ones I asked Saba to do, I am not sure how standard that is, but I would not have to spend that many hours a day on actually teaching them if I could set them up with interesting self-study. Probably we ought to consider doing it once my year of working at the shop is complete and my time is my own. And we would need a schoolhouse. Or a bigger house if we want to have them come to our home, or I suppose we could pay to rent a room from a family that has more space." He'll leave it up to her to consider all the fiddly details, she has a better head for it than he does. 

And he asks around about spells that exist, takes notes on it. There's a divination spell that tracks ships at sea. (Some divination spells are no longer functioning, since the war between the gods permanently destroyed prophecy, but ones that just find out things that are happening in the world now as opposed to in future still work.) At his current strength it would last several hours. He tells Parmida that he suspects merchants would pay quite a lot for the privilege, given how many of the thoughts he's overheard are worries about delayed ships and losses of goods.