He can do it again! He can also do another one which makes things brightly-lit, and a more complicated one that turns the water into alcohol (though he can't recapture that one to try again) and an exquisitely complicated one whose effects are unclear but from what he remembers of the vision might do translation.

Amazing! Urtho tries all the ones he can recapture several times. He recognizes some of the spells from having talked to the clerics among Khemet's researchers, but it still fills him with awe that he can just make water, out of nowhere, magic shouldn't be able to do that.

Eventually his head is spinning a bit. He takes a break and then goes inside the temple again to actually look for the library. 

There are lots and lots and lots of books about magic including some guides to how being a cleric works and which spells he can choose from each day and how to explore his god's domains and so on.

That seems really important! Urtho collects some books and finds a spot to sit down and start devouring them. 

Carissa takes a month. She spends the first two weeks of it making and selling some magic items so she can afford Teleports for the second half of it. She could've asked for the money, probably, but she doesn't want to be indebted to them. And making magic items is good for her. Meditative. Lets her think. 

Leareth seems - decent. Iomedae claims he is, and she's Lawful Good and probably not a liar though Carissa's going to look into it. He was very invested in - reassuring her that he thought highly of her - that she could decline this - He looked so hopeful, it'd been endearing. ...he thought she was hot when she was a servant and didn't hit on her, which suggests that his bar for that will at least be reasonably high? He is very invested in dating the pharaoh of Osirion, but -

- well, you can have a faithful man or a man who is going to be King. 

She doesn't want to be jealous. If she's going to be jealous then they're going to have a relationship that is about the relationship itself, not about other things. She's been there, done that, hated it. She thinks about it until she thinks she won't be jealous. Will just see - him, being the person he is, and be fine with that, and other people can say what they'd like.  Iomedae picked her for him from all the women in Cheliax. It's very romantic. Even if he also wants a lot of other things, and - wanting a lot of things and arranging to get them all is also the kind of personality trait that put him there in the first place. 

She doesn't want there to be a lot of confusion about the succession but this feels like a reasonable ask she can make without it looming over everything. 

What else is there.

She's not scared of him anymore. Maybe the first time they have a fight she'll be scared. She doesn't think so. She did fine in Cheliax, and these people have - softer edges than Cheliax did. They're dangerous - it'd be stupid to forget that they're dangerous - but - it takes her a while to put a finger on what exactly she believes about them. They're not cruel. They will hurt you to get what they want, but not otherwise, and not if there's another way. Iomedae said that she'd be safe .

Iomedae said a lot of things. She spends the second two weeks in Vigil, the capital of Lastwall, the paladin-order country which holds the line against a north full of myriad horrors. She enchants some weapons while she's there, as a gift. Asks people about Iomedae.

Goes to the Worldwound to witness the ongoing depretrification and rehabilitation efforts. Walks among the statues. Thinks 'this could be me' and 'and I'd still be all right, eventually'. 

She comes back and requests an audience with Leareth.

Leareth doesn't see her immediately but he makes time for it within a few hours. He's waiting for her in another of the nice, absurdly well-shielded conference rooms. His expression is level, but - he's happy to see her, happy that she decided to come back, that much shows in his eyes.

"Carissa. Welcome." 

"Thank you."

She sits down. Swallows. "If you are still interested in marrying me based on Iomedae's recommendation and my two week track record of crime, I will marry you."

He's done a lot of thinking. "That, and - everything else about you. Yes, I am still interested, though I am aware this is a rather unusual circumstance to begin a relationship. Should we - get to know one another better, or something, to be sure we will get along?" 

"That seems like the next thing that would be on a list of sensible things to do? And I guess I have the advantage there, I was spying on you and so had more sense of how to get along with you than you'd have of me. I think - all of the things I have hesitations about are like 'what if you go through interests in people quite quickly' or 'what if you're from one of those countries that insists on murdering your wife rather than divorcing her if she can't bear you children', and therefore not likely to go away if we get dinner, though I have been mostly assuming Iomedae's recommendation covers them."

Leareth nods. Tries to think through what makes sense to say, in the right order...

"I am immortal, as Aroden was before he became a god, and about two thousand years old. I am not sure if you knew that yet." 

"I did not. - are you giving that out."

"...To clarify, I was immortal and I expect to not have any difficulty re-establishing it, given this world's magic combined with my own, but - my previous method was destroyed by the Star-Eyed Goddess. Which is in some sense good because it was - rather horrible. If you are also interested in immortality then I think we could figure that out together." 

"Wow. Okay. I wasn't - going to be too torn up about having to pick up a new magic system in eighty years or whatever but if there's something else to be had I'll take it. 

Rather horrible?"

"I set up several methods, but the one that survived the Cataclysm, a very destructive event in Velgarth, involved - taking over the bodies of my descendants." 

Nod. "But that's not likely to be the method you use going forwards?"

"No. For all the obvious reasons, and - well, also the fact that it is apparently the main reason I read as Evil initially, which was very inconvenient for a time. I think it is worth making other tradeoffs to avoid that, here." 

"I think I'd take learning a new magic system over that but if you find something better then that'd be cool."

"I understand."

The next bit is even harder to say. "Related to my - age - I am, well, not like most people. I will - probably not be the way you expect men to be. Also, I–" he's not quite embarrassed about this, that isn't really an emotion in his repertoire, but it's close, "I - had not had a romantic relationship with anyone in at least a thousand years, before Khemet who is himself - an unusual person. For a long time it had not seemed worth risking even to have close friends. So - I apologize if I am to start with not very good at being a husband. I think I can learn it in time." 

"What were you doing for a thousand years?"

“Trying to fight the gods. I spent the eight hundred or so years before that trying to - fix everything - but the gods of Velgarth were adamantly against change.” Slight sigh. “I was going to create my own god. But becoming a god did not work out for Aroden, in the end, so it was time to reconsider anyway.”

"Trying to fix, like...what things in particular." She is going to marry him either way because if he's wrong he'd better be married to someone who understands people and doesn't want to fix all the things about them.

"...This might take a while." 

He can tell her a little about Predain as it was when he was a child, which he remembers only vaguely, with its sky-high infant mortality and extremely dubious rule of law - and Tantara, where he studied as a young man, far from perfect but better off in many ways. (He does not, for now, mention Urtho, though he will have to, that part of his history is in the present now.) 

And then about the awful century after the Mage Wars, when magic itself was unreliable and the logistics of every civilization in the world relying on it had mostly collapsed. And then the long, long centuries after that, when the world had pieced itself together again but as dozens of frequently-warring kingdoms whose citizens lived mostly as subsistence farmers, and he tried over and over to improve crop yields and invent labour-saving and transport magic and build education systems and legal systems and banking and all the other subcomponents of civilization that would let people coordinate peacefully and - build better things for themselves. It seemed like all people really needed was that foundation to build upon, but it never worked, even when it should have, and eventually it seemed obvious that the relentless unlucky coincidences were the gods' work. 

(He has a little more sympathy for them now, he tells her, Abadar confirmed that among other things They wanted to avoid a repeat of the Cataclysm, but didn't understand its causes well enough to block it any more precisely.) 

She listens and doesn't say anything. It's not the kind of thing she has experience with, Cheliax was the richest country in the world even before Hell and richer under it, and the gods here don't act in that way though maybe they once did.

"You world has different problems," Leareth says quietly. "I am going to have to learn different solutions. Trusting others and working with them still does not come naturally, my world shaped me to be very paranoid - and what happened to me in the pharaoh's palace was not exactly a good reward for letting down my guard - but I am working on it." He smiles a little. "Sometimes when it feels very scary, I pray to Iomedae and then she hugs me." 

"She doesn't do that to me! - I guess I wouldn't find it very reassuring. 

Are there things that would help with trusting me? If that's something you want?"