"If you want to. Her book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe showed that the persecution of the witches was actually persecution of a real religion that worshiped the Horned God. So when I was studying Echavarria's cult I thought I was studying another survivor of an old religion. He was descended from Indians, you know. There's a lot of old cults people practice. And it was so-- fascinating. To get to witness the rites and rituals of a genuine surviving cult from before the arrival of Europeans. I didn't think it was real."

"And you were... going to things, and taking notes on what they believed and what they did, then? And reading, I don't know if that was a different thing. You spent a lot of time in his library, you said."

"He had so many rare books. Well. You know. You stole half the valuable ones."

He makes a noise that might be laughter. "I didn't leave that house with anything. Zoe did all that."

"Still." He says reflectively, "It was beautiful. It was so beautiful."

He sits up some, looks at him. There's a distant searching look in his eye that he so often gets, though it's somewhat unclear even now what he's reaching for. "Tell me about it? What fascinated you. Not the, the opportunity, the -- the details."

"Ramon had-- a way of looking at things. He made them beautiful." His voice is soft and warm and affectionate, reminiscing. "You can see that in his movies, even, the movies he produced are luminous. He looked at things and saw beauty and when he talked you could see what was beautiful about them too."

"I wish I... I could've met him."

"You would have liked him, I think. I did." Does Oswald want someone to idly play with his hair

He is confused at first and then figures out what's happening and relaxes a bit. It's nice. "I like hearing about it. The way you talk. It makes it all feel... shining." And something about the way Lev's face lifts when he's reminiscing that he can't quite figure out how to say.

"It's just. The vastness of the universe. The way it doesn't care about us, how small we are in the face of it. Every single star is a sun, and around each star is a dozen worlds, and on those worlds are thousands of alien species that live and die... And we will never meet them or know their stories. Their struggles and their hopes and their wars and their gods, so important to them. And we know nothing of them, as the universe knows nothing of us..."

"You'd think it'd be frightening," he says softly, a little amazed that it isn't.

"It was once. And then Ramon talked to me, and explained, and I-- could see the way it looked through his eyes-- The Forgotten God we worshipped, who was worshipped by the great heroes of the Hyperborean Age, tens of thousands of years ago..."

"I didn't know there were those kinds of civilizations, that long ago."

"Human history is much longer than you'd expect. We refer to primitive tribes but they're not? They are as complicated and sophisticated as any European nation."

"What were they like?"

(Oswald is willing to let him talk about what anthropological knowledge they have of ancient civilizations for a while. It's so nice to listen to him talk about things.)

Lev can maintain a conversation on this topic by himself with limited input from Oswald.

He is animated. He gestures.

He's so good.

(Though occasionally instead of a relevant question Oswald will ask a seeming non sequitur about something from earlier like "But how do we know there's life out there, among the stars, while also having no knowledge that they exist?")

"Well, I saw Gol-Goroth. And if he is not from the stars he is from another dimension. And either way he is most certainly alien."

"That's true." ...They have already compared notes on the terrible mouth encounters but he can go pensive about it for a while. And ask out loud, more wondering than curious, the difference between an alien and a god.

"Power. Or whether you worship it or not. I'm still-- there is nothing in the world that is mysterious, there is nothing in the world that in principle cannot be explained. The gods are just beings we do not understand. Perhaps ones we cannot understand."

"But something can, somewhere. In principle."

"Perhaps we can, if we knew more and were wiser and more powerful. Echavarria certainly thought so. He was no Samson. He didn't just want power, he wanted to know--"

"How do they-- how do they get power? Lacie said she was going to be His Queen. But it doesn't really make sense to me."

"By selling drugs they source from magical mouths. Apparently."