"Yeah. And - I think she's more talkative than most gods? I'm not religious but Ranara tries on religions occasionally and I think the Star-Eyed is the one with the most spirit-avatar-type behavior. If this is as talkative as they get it's hard to - negotiate, if all you can do is follow the advice or not follow it and following it works out fine..."

"It really makes it feel like she doesn't actually want to have a back and forth conversation? Then again, I guess we don't know how hard they tried, it - doesn't seem like they think that's a reasonable thing to ask for here." 

"Well, if my guess about how She talks is right that would make it really hard! Foresight can tell you to say cryptic things and not to say the sky is plaid but I don't see how it would help you understand at all. From that perspective it's sort of impressive she's aware people prefer having enough to eat and not being plague-ridden."

Grimace. "That makes it sound like it'd be so frustrating to - be a god who did care and want to help people, but you wouldn't even be able to figure out what they needed, you don't speak the same– not even language, it'd be all different concepts too... Not that we can exactly tell if She does want to help, or not." 

"Yeah. I mean, most of the things She does seem like they could be helpful, She isn't - acting randomly with respect to helpfulness - but it makes it really tricky to figure out if She's like, doing it because She likes and respects and appreciates people, or if it's incidental to something, or if they're farm animals to Her."

"Do you think Lionwind or Summerhawk are - actually curious, which of those it is? It...sort of doesn't seem like it." 

"Honestly the way Lionwind was talking about it was at times SO weird I made use of my standing permission to look at his gears. - I didn't see anything very out of the ordinary though, I guess it's just how he thinks about it. I think maybe they don't care? Which would be one thing if they were going - okay, there's all kinds of reasons the Star-Eyed could be doing us favors, but they're still favors, it'll tend to go well if we take them, we may as well do that like we may as well put out rain barrels even though the rain is not certified benevolent. But it seems different if they're having all these feelings about her as a person - if she's even a person, which I'm getting less confident of! - based on those favors while having no particular reason to think the regard is mutual."

"Do you figure Lionwind actually does have a lot of feelings about it? I couldn't tell whether or not the shaman actually did, in a feelings about another person way -  I guess maybe you only become a shaman if you have some feeling about it though." 

"They aren't very - active obtrusive feelings but I think they are feelings."

"Hmm."

After a long pause. "People's feelings are really confusing sometimes. Is it confusing for you too?" 

"These ones seem - dumb but not weird? Like, it seems to me like they're treating the Star-Eyed as would be appropriate for... one's weird great grandmother who never really learned the language you grew up speaking but knows a bunch of stuff and shows you when you manage to make it clear what you're asking for and smiles at you when you go by and who is also, uh, the mayor. It's not weird to have that set of feelings available as a thing your mind can do. It's just weird to -

- people can assume certain things about each other because we're all sort of similar, right? I can tell species apart by the gears but even gryphons and hertasi aren't that far off from us. And hertasi specifically don't have a thing most people do where they're more comfortable with familiar kinds-of-people, like their own species or ethnicity or language group or nationality. Humans usually do have that, and it's not a particularly admirable character trait but it makes sense because the more someone is like you in the broad strokes the more you know about the space they'll be drawing their motives and context and norms from. And now that I put these facts next to each other I'm surprised both that hertasi aren't more religious and that humans are not racist against gods, who have absolutely no credibility about drawing their motives and context and norms from a sane place!"

"...Huh. - Sorry, now I'm just distracted wondering about hertasi religion. Would we know if they were very religious - I feel like they don't tell us anything about their personal lives. Although maybe all their religion-energy just goes to being helpful, they do so much stuff, I don't know when they'd have free time to worship gods." 

"I went to meet baby hertasi once! I did not see any evidence of religion around but they might have their evidence of religion somewhere else or use fewer props than human temples."

"Baby hertasi! What were they like?" 

"Sooooo small." She gestures. "One tried to eat my hair."

"Human babies do that too, I think. Or, well, mostly they seem to like grabbing it." 

"I have had a human baby pull my hair but not eat it."

"Mmm. ...Anyway, I wonder if people - kind of want to have something powerful to have their 'weird but friendly great-grandmother' feelings at? Because it's reassuring, or something, to feel like you've got someone like that...?" Shrug. "I dunno, just, in Predain when I was still reading people's minds a lot, it - seemed like lots of people had some beliefs that were - about feeling reassured, more than about being true..." 

"About gods or about something else?"

"About lots of things? It's hard to tell sometimes what feelings about if you don't have context. Sometimes about gods, but - I mean, I never saw any sign the gods were actually doing helpful things, there." 

"Yeah, I think the Star-Eyed might be on the high end of helpfulness."

"It seems like it! But I guess we also know the most about Her. Maybe we should try going to other temples too." He takes a deep breath. "...It's kind of scary. Feels like - priests are people who have a powerful ally I don't understand, and - so it makes it hard to figure out what's safe, because even if I can tell what they think of things I say, I can't tell what the god would think." Shrug. "Maybe it's fine because we're ants or farm animals to Them and they don't actually care what I think, but..." 

"I can't see why they would but I don't have enough of a model of what they care about to be sure, yeah."

"But you're not nervous about asking questions?" 

"...no, not especially. They don't routinely smite people. And Lionwind sent me to Summerhawk because she's used to questions, and I don't think that can reasonably just be a Kaled'a'in thing."