Khemet stops smiling teasingly at Leareth, looks back at Tadesse. "You're very unhappy."

What is he even supposed to say to that? "I do not exactly have a good reason to be unhappy, given–" vague gesture at the surroundings. 

"- well, I recognize it because I am often that flavor of very unhappy, and I am legally recognized as a god in my country and all its neighbors and have seven wives and a thousand servants."

"To be honest being legally recognized as a god sounds exhausting," Tadesse says, with faint sympathy. "...When I think about why I am unhappy, I mostly think about how everything in Velgarth is frustratingly broken and I have– had, no good options. Leareth says this world offers better options for his Velgarth - but also mine is probably too far away, and out of reach of your gods..." 

"Probably, but it might still offer options for a source of magic for Leareth's original plan. ...or Urtho might just know how to harness that much magic safely, he did build lots of superweapons that release mage-energy on approximately the relevant scale. I bet he'll be hard to talk into it but not impossible... anyway, I think Leareth's hope was actually that you'd help baby Ma'ar fix Predain first, which is much more achievable."

"Yes. And it would be of great value to do it sooner - you would understand that - and I am already thoroughly occupied here." 

"I know it is important." Tadesse is pretty sure that usually this would translate into more than a faint flicker of motivation about it.

Khemet is still watching him closely. "Sometimes I wish I had something all our healers can't treat, and would die sooner, in a year or so rather than in seventy."

This gets him an alarmed look from Leareth, who hadn't heard that before, but now doesn't seem like the best time to interrupt. 

Tadesse nods, slowly. "And then you would - come here, right, where there are buildings forty-four stories tall..." He sounds sort of wistful. "When I die I just go back again. I...was hoping that someday in the future I would come back and not be tired. It seems plausible, Leareth does not complain of it and he is older than I am." 

"I would come here and I wouldn't need to fix anything, here is fine, and you can't do much for the rest of the universe, just - get a job for some spending money, meet some people, study lots of things..."

"...It sounds nice. More - restful. But - Leareth must have said this - I made a vow. To fix everything, and - there is...even more everything than I realized, there must be so many other worlds out there..." 

" - so, yes, but there's a thing where - if you can't just say to yourself 'I'm done for right now', then -" he frowns, and his affect changes slightly; he's suddenly holding himself like Hemaka, though no one except Leareth could possibly notice it. "There's some situation where you might ordinarily say 'I'm done for right now', but you have told yourself you're not going to say that. But everything that made it true is still there, it just can't be said, it can't be intended, it can't directly shape what you do next...Making a vow to never give up for good is fine and sensible, making a vow to never give up even for a while because you're done for now is just making a vow to ignore a feature of reality, and then it'll still be there. Making you very tired, apparently, probably because you're more used to letting yourself not do things when the reason is that you're tired?"

Tadesse blinks at him. "...I am not stupid, I take breaks. The - larger problems, did not feel very tractable right now, so instead I sailed around the world because there were interesting places and things to see and it was distracting, and - I like Ekunde's family..." Shrug. "I have tried just - not doing much at all, before. According to my notes I did it in the past when I was not sharing, and sometimes I will leave Ekunde to do whatever he thinks is fun and just - rest. But it does not actually make it hurt less, when the problem is that the world is broken and I do not see the path to fixing that... My notes said that doing work that is interesting for its own sake helps more." 

"I don't really mean that you should take breaks. I mean that if you can never - say that a problem isn't yours, right now, and maybe it will be later or maybe it won't, then....everything has to get fixed, but you don't have to do it all yourself, you know, and if you don't do it someone will get to it, so it's all right to do more than take a break from things."

Going by his expression, Tadesse finds this a hard concept to wrap his head around. 

Leareth is nodding in agreement, though. "Yes, that is an important mental move to have access to. And - easier, I find, in a world like this one." He glances at Khemet, smiling fondly. "It helps to have allies. I - have the impression that you were feeling very alone, in your Velgarth, and having Ekunde's family around did not really relieve that." 

This seems like a very self-evident thing for Leareth to point out, and so it's unclear to Tadesse why it also hurts. 

"I think that people who are like you and Leareth and Aroden are pretty sparse. It took Aroden, what, four thousand years of picking clerics before one of them was Iomedae, and that's with the example to work from..."

"We seem to be amassing quite a collection here, though." 

Tadesse nods. "That - makes sense. I am still not sure what to..." He trails off, unsure even of the question. 

"You are still unhappy," Leareth notes. "I - am not sure either. I suppose you could talk to Vanyel more, he is frequently unhappy and he knows what helps with it, but - I am not sure how similar a flavour of unhappiness it is, with him. I am getting the sense that there is - some mental motion I learned after the point you are at now, in my own timeline. Maybe because of your time... I know it was a painful realization, admitting to myself that everything I had tried so hard had failed, and not seeing any way forward except the one with horrifying costs... That particular scenario no longer applies, of course, but the world is full of bitter tradeoffs like that." 

Nod. 

"...And you might also need something else, right now, but I am not sure what." He glances hopefully at Khemet. 

"- has he talked to Aroden? He should talk to Aroden. I don't know if that's itself the thing he needs but it...might be close, and it's easier to orchestrate."