"Mmm. I wonder if they'd let us talk to the spirit guardian things or if you need to be a shaman."

"Ooh, good question. Do you know how the spirit world works?"

"No, none of these books were that helpful, but I think I found the right references to look up in the library next time." 

"It sounds interesting, I wonder if there's stuff there besides god-avatars. Not that those aren't potentially interesting."

"It does seem interesting! And...maybe we could learn to go there, even if the avatars won't talk to us?" Shrug. "I'll look in the library and we can ask the shaman when we have a chance to go see them." 

"Sounds like a plan." She writes this down.

Ma'ar catches her up a bit more on the contents of various books he's skimmed, and then excuses himself to help Aala with her homework before it's time for her to go to bed. 

And the next day they can go see Summerhawk!

The Kaled'a'in temple to the Star-Eyed Goddess isn't much to look at on the outside; a simple, low stone building, with a garden out front. 

A youngster meets them and, when told they're here to see Summerhawk, ushers them in. 

Summerhawk is waiting in a simple stone room, its furnishings very basic; a rug, which she's kneeling on, and a low wooden table, which has a book on it. 

"Hello?" she says. 

"Hi, I'm Aza, Lionwind's Mindhealing student, and this is my friend Ma'ar."

"Oh, yes! Welcome. Lionwind told me that you two would be coming by - you have questions about our Goddess?" 

"I'm curious about gods in general, but Her as a special case, sure. I guess Her in particular because She's got a people who are Hers and most of them don't do that so much..."

"Also I cannot help so much with your questions about other gods, though I could direct you to Their temples if you wished. What did you want to know about Her?" 

"Why does she want to have you guys?"

"Hmm. That is quite an interesting question - and I must first caveat that I do not know Her mind and so cannot say for sure. But - my understanding, here, is that She - and all of the gods - have only a limited presence in the material plane, unless They have mortals to work through. And They are very, very big; we are as ants compared to them, or even lesser; and, while this means They can see and fight threats to the safety of the world that we cannot, just as an ant could not see a tidal wave coming, it also means that many important things happen at a scale too small for Their senses. And so there is a collaboration; we can help Her, by using our prayers and requests to tell Her what is needed on our tiny local scale, and She can use us as a window into this plane." 

"Can She do things on the tiny local scale particularly usefully if She's metaphorically so huge?"

"Sometimes! She can do healings, or - answers prayers to bring rain, say, when Her senses on the greater scale show Her that they will have particularly needed effects." 

"Is there something that makes her better at that than a weather-mage or a Healer?"

"Well, She is not limited on power as a human would be, right? We have cases in our histories of miraculous healings when there were many human Healers there and there was nothing more they could do. And other cases of very critical moments where a Gifted Healer was not available. And for weather magic in particular, She has the advantage of seeing the bigger patterns, right? And so we can be sure that She is aware of whether She is taking away someone else's badly needed rain, and that if so She has weighed it up and judged it worthwhile."

"How does She decide what's worthwhile?"

"I am not sure of what weighs on Her mind. But - She cares about the stability of the world and its ecosystems, and She has duties to those specific peoples who She accepts as Her own." 

"What duties?"

"Protection. That our prayers will always be heard by Her, even if She cannot respond." 

"Are Kaled'a'in particularly well-protected? Do you live longer or something?"

"- Well, She does not protect us from the vagaries of old age. But - as a people, as a culture, we have been around for a long time. And that is at least in part thanks to Her. Our histories tell of how She warned us to leave our first homeland in the south, because drought and war were coming. And She directed us here, decades before Urtho's Tower was built - but She saw it coming, and that it would strengthen and benefit our people in our future..."