Lionwind nods. Settles himself more comfortably in his chair. "So. This is a patient from out of town - Small Springs, a hundred miles east. Her family brought her here in search of a Mindhealer, claiming she had an episode of madness. She is convinced that it was not madness at all, and rather that - oh, for background, she is a worshipper of Vkandis. She states that He possessed her to perform a miracle." 

"Uh-huh. And her family didn't see the miracle or weren't impressed or it didn't happen?"

"Her parents worship a different god - the Twain, They are popular south of here. She converted. I...get the feeling her parents disapprove." He shakes his head. "If I had seen her immediately I might have been able to tell from her mind alone, but possession by a god is also disruptive, not entirely unlike organic-caused madness, and a week had passed already by the time I saw her." 

"- oh, what does it look like when it happens for real, if you get a look straight off?"

"Very odd! I have only seen it once - it is not exactly a common occurrence, for people to be possessed fully by their gods. And it was a Kaled'a'in shaman, so he was more prepared for it. It is hard to explain... His mind looked - flattened, and widened, as though a great flood had passed through it, and the banks of his river were now much larger than they needed to be, to contain only him. At the time he was very dazed, he was lucid but found it hard to focus on a conversation. It was normal again within a fortnight." 

"Huh. I wonder what that'd look like in clockwork. Okay, so she converted, she thinks she got a miracle and her parents think she had a psychotic break - what was the supposed miracle?"

"Healing her best friend, who was giving birth to her first child and the birth was apparently going badly. The trouble is that it is only the two of them who were present - the friend's husband had been sent out to urgently find a Healer, and by the time he succeeded at this and returned, the babe was born and the girl's bleeding had stopped. The patient does not remember any of this, though - which would be expected for a god-possession in a non-shaman, but is unhelpful. The friend supposedly claimed that it seemed miraculous, but - well, sometimes a woman's labour is stalled and then it resolves itself when the baby turns around, or something, and a woman who was in the throes of childbirth at the time also cannot be expected to remember it with perfect clarity."

He shakes his head. "- And then everyone agrees that the patient seemed very mad afterward - she did not know where she was and at moments seemed unsure who she was - but that, too, is not incompatible with a true possession." 

"- well, do the two cases indicate particularly different treatment from us? If they look so similar?"

"If it was ordinary madness then it is much more likely to recur the next time she is under extreme stress, or has stayed up all night, as she did this time with her friend. In very clear-cut cases I would want to place some preventative measures, but those would be unnecessarily invasive if it were unlikely to ever happen again." 

"Right, that makes sense. And I suppose she might not take advice to get regular sleep and keep her stress down particularly well if she thinks it was for sure a miracle."

"No. And it is - well, it is a very fraught topic in either case, right, madness is - a humiliating thing to have happen to oneself, especially in a small rural town. And disagreements over religion can become very contentious. Everyone has strong feelings about it." 

"I guess! Being possessed and going mad both sound bad to me but I guess the one has nice side effects sometimes and is less likely to recur."

Lionwind shakes his head, lips twitching. "It would certainly be a great honour to be possessed by the Goddess, but I do have to say, it is an honour I am content to let other people have who are not me." 

"Do gods possess people who don't want to be possessed? That's not an honor at all, that's just as bad as - sticking a set-command on somebody and making them forget about it, pretty much, isn't it? Plus all the psychosis-like side effects."

"...You would have to ask a shaman or priest for exactly how it works, I am not sure. I - do think that a god needs some sort of connection to a person, in order to possess them? But, for example, in sufficiently dire circumstances it would be enough that I am of the Kaled'a'in people, who are Hers. And possessions do not always take place at convenient moments for the possessee." 

"How'd She get all the Kaled'a'in to be Hers?"

Lionwind blinks at her, as though he's not sure whether he's parsing the question right. "She - looks out for us, and loves us?" 

"...so she can possess you if she feels like it? Are you allowed to convert or is this solely by ethnicity."

"I - mean - if I wanted to convert and worship, oh, Vkandis or the Twain or the Ever Burning Flame instead, I am sure She would respect that? I am not sure why I would want to?" 

"Can you convert to not being anybody's?"

Lionwind seems so nonplussed by that question!

"I...do see why not? But - I am not sure why anyone would - choose to leave the protection of any of the gods–" 

He stops himself. Lifts a hand, takes a breath, and then shakes himself a little. 

"I am sorry. I know this is - a personal topic - I generally avoid bringing up the subject of the gods with either my patients or my students, for that reason." 

"I guess we don't have to talk about it if you don't want, we can't really tell whether the patient was possessed or not anyway so we have to do things that would make sense either way."

Blink. "Oh, no, it does not bother me to talk about it, if you are interested - I just do not want to pressure you into it..."

He shakes his head. "I do not even have any idea what god you or your family worships - because of that same policy that I keep, I suppose." A self-deprecating chuckle. 

"Uh, Ranara shops around like she's picking out a bouquet of flowers and I... don't. My dad occasionally swears by Vkandis when he's startled but doesn't do... anything... about that."

"I see." Lionwind nods, as though this slots exactly into some existing template that he's already familiar with. "- Are you still curious about the subject? It is a very fascinating one, albeit something of a tangent from our actual lesson material."