"Much less terrible than it could have been! The casualty numbers - on the Chelish side, I mean - were quite low in the end, and most of them we were able to raise. We did not even fight most of the army, we stashed them in Nirvana for the duration, I am rather unreasonably proud of this feat." Aroden hugs her back, rests his chin against her shoulder. "It was - still quite terrible. The evacuations to Hell were the worst, I wish..." He trails off. "Anyway. How is Zahra?" 

She tugs him inside. "All right. Very bored. She wanted to disguise herself and go fight but I told her that it wouldn't help. She will tell you that she's annoyed she cannot be a princess of Cheliax but it's not about that, really, it's about - not being quite strong enough we wouldn't be a liability - have you been eating, I know with that Ring you don't have to but it's still no good for you, going weeks without really sitting down for a nice meal -"

“I have been eating some but I confess I have not had a nice meal in some time.” Most people in Cheliax haven’t had the luxury of nice meals lately and he didn’t see why he ought to be different. Also he has a tendency to pay no attention to food unless Parmida is around making him enjoy it.

"It's like having three children," she mutters under her breath to the god who conquered Cheliax, and sits him down in the parlor and calls for some sandwiches. 

Zahra's there. She doesn't get out of her rocking chair but she beams at him. "Congratulations!!! If I'd known it'd be that easy I wouldn't have bothered making all those scarves for you."

"It should have not by rights have been that easy but I cheated." He goes to hug his daughter, stroking her hair lightly, like he used to when she was tiny. "I should eat and compliment the sandwiches or else your mother will be in a tiff with me."

They are in fact very good sandwiches, and it's so pleasant and comfortable to be in his own parlor again. The place he feels second-most safe in the world, even though it's not nearly as well protected as his demiplane library.

"Parmida, love," he says between bites of sandwich. "If you are willing, I would like it if you accompanied me to visit Egorian. You ought to meet Leareth, I think." He snatched only a few brief visits to his wife during the frantic week of leadup to the war, but he did have time to fill her in on Leareth, at least the key essentials. 

"Leareth is the young version of your father," Parmida says to Zahra. "Only two thousand years old. He knows nothing of love or comfort but everything about magic. - your father didn't tell me that part, I'm just guessing."

"It's a safe guess with young men," Zahra says, taking a sandwich.

"I'd be delighted to meet him," Parmida says. "I suppose he'll be needing to get a wife, if you leave him Cheliax."

Aroden chuckles. "Yes, that is right, I think. - that he knows nothing of love or comfort, I mean. He has been alone for such a very long time, and the gods of his world are so awful. I hear even Abadar agrees they are impossible to work with." Sigh. "And, yes, I think it would be good for his position to have a wife. And good for him, but he seemed rather dubious of that when I told him, so perhaps you will have to persuade him of it. You were always better at those human things." 

"Which is precisely why he needs someone." Parmida looks pleased with herself. 

"Perhaps you ought first persuade him to have friends. I do not think he has any, really, it is very tragic." 

Aroden eats, talks to his family, teases his daughter. Absently plays with some cantrips, tries inventing a variation on the spot to see if it works. 

"- I think I will try for the Starstone," he says, reminded by the surging ache of longing to have real magic again. "Not this year, Cheliax requires my attention, but... Enough of the other gods will take my side, I believe - even Milani apologized, you know, and said She would back me." 

"Really?" says Zahra. "I mean, good for her, I guess, but if I tried to murder you and found out I'd failed I'd be running off to the farthest universe I could find."

"She still thinks I might murder her, when I return as a god. And Her reasoning is not false, but - it matters, that She weighed that as a cost, and even if She had known from the start that I would survive and return to kill Her, I do not think it would have stopped Her. She thought if it was worth my death, it would also be worth Her own." A slight shrug. "Knowing that, I cannot really be angry with Her." 

"Well, I can!" Zahra's knitting needles spark. "She caused a worldwide disaster! And killed millions of people! You're too much of a softie."

"He's too used to having well-intentioned plans that kill millions of people, is what he is," says Parmida. "So when people do awful things to him he goes 'well, you know, I'm sure someone somewhere feels that way about me', instead of stabbing them in the face."

"Can you even stab a god in the face?" Zahra asks. "Hypothetically."

“I think Leareth would love to know the answer to that question! He is deeply offended at Asmodeus’ treatment of Cheliax and I am sure would be delighted to enact some more - personal - disincentives to his trying it again.”

Zahra rocks quietly for a minute.

"When you - go for the Starstone - will you still be you, the you that we know..."

"A piece of me will be - mostly the same. I will be able to talk to you, if you pray, all of the gods who were once human can do that. And - I will change less than the others did, I think, since much of my mind is a god trying to fit into a human head. It will be so very nice to have room to think again. Nonetheless, I will certainly be very different." 

"I don't think I'd want to change that much. I know it's different if you're going back to what you were used to being."

"I know. I will confess I was terrified of it, the first time - I waited too long, I think." 

"Because you didn't want to kind of stop existing?"

“I like existing! Existing is very important to me. I suppose that is why I had so many immortality safeguards that one of them lasted through even my death as a god.”

"Some people who like existing try fewer ridiculous things that make them gods as enemies!"

“Yes, yes, that part is entirely on me. The trouble is that I also like the world not containing stupid problems, and since some of the gods are themselves problems, this is rather in tension with having no enemies among them. It is rather unfortunate.”

"Zahra," says Parmida, "I think I would like your father all to myself for a little while."

"Moooom," says Zahra. "You don't have to tell me."

"I can't make you not notice, honey, your shielding is too good." They're beaming at each other. Parmida takes his hand.

He squeezes her fingers. "I missed you." 

"I missed you too." And she pulls him out of the parlor and kisses him. 

He slips his arms around her and kisses her back. It's really, really good to see her again.

At some point they ought to go back to Cheliax, but right now he's not inclined to leave this house for a while.