"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..." 

"Okay, so she's after - continuity of the Kaled'a'in culture as opposed to its assimilation or destruction?"

"Yes. Well, to the extent that 'our culture' is the kind of concept that She can reason in - my teaching has been that She sees the world from a very different angle from us, and therefore I should not assume any of our words for things can directly translate. But, yes, that is part of what it means to be Her people." 

"Okay.

Why do you care about that? I mean, obviously being destroyed is bad but lots of people assimilate and don't continue to identify especially with their ethnic groups, what's wrong with that."

Summerhawk seems just as baffled by this line of questioning as Lionwind was, but she's nonetheless patient and calm about it. "I - because they are my people? I - like belonging to a people, having a long tradition that stands behind me." 

"Okay. But why does She like it? And why does it seem especially good for it to go on? I am from no ethnic background in particular and I'm fine and if your grandkids were three-quarters miscellaneous they would also be fine."

"Hmm." And Summerhawk gives this a long moment of careful, thoughtful consideration. 

"I - suppose that it makes our future more predictable, and the same for Her." She tilts her head a little to one side. "Sometimes youngsters born to the Kaled'a'in people choose to leave the faith. If they value their freedom, as individuals, more than that safe future. It is, of course, their prerogative. But - for myself, I like the security of knowing that I have a people and a Goddess to fall back on." 

"How come She wants the things she wants?"

Summerhawk blinks.

"I - think that part of it is inherent in the kinds of thing that a god can see and care about in general, and then some are specific to Her. I am afraid that neither is the sort of question that I, personally, can answer for you." 

"I was talking to Lionwind about how it might be that a god could keep a people and even work fairly hard on keeping them safe without, like, respecting their interests and being ultimately friendly to them, the way people are with farm animals."

"...I am not sure what the question is that you are asking here." 

(Ma'ar is feeling very tense but doesn't want to be discouraging to Azabel and so he tries to hold himself perfectly still.) 

"I'm wondering if there's a way to tell if that's going on or if you're guessing."

"I told you already that there were many cases where I would be guessing. I do not know Her mind, nor whether mortals could even comprehend it." 

"So... you don't know that she has your best interests at heart at all."