"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."

"I guess that's fair." He takes another deep breath. "I'll figure out a different temple to go to and make a list of questions that I can ask this time." 

"Do you want me along or should we split them up?"

"I guess it'd be more efficient to split them up? Also it'd mean we don't need to coordinate who's doing the asking. I might want you to be in Mindspeech range the first time I go alone, in case I - get stuck and scared - but my range is pretty far at this point so that should be fine." 

"Well, tell me when so I'm not busy then."

"I will! And I guess our plan is to go back tomorrow or some other time soon to see the shaman and ask if we can go to the spirit world with her?" 

"Yup! Does tomorrow right before dinner work for you?"

He thinks for a moment. "Sure, should work fine. I'll try to read through the rest of the books before then and take notes, so we can give them back at the same time." 

"Good plan. We can divvy those up if you want or you can read them all, I'm okay either way."

"Hmm - we've got these three we haven't looked at yet, I can give you one if you want?" 

"Sure." She picks one.