"Yes." The man sitting in the cottage nods. "I think that people like us cannot do otherwise. We will always keep going, no matter how tired and lonely and hurt we are - no matter how many things we have lost. I understand that. So does Leareth, but I think right now his recent victories are freshest in his mind. It...is easier for me, as a god, to remember all of it, the good times and the bad." 

Tadesse looks around at the dark, damp cottage. "You - lost. You died. And you - came back, and kept going..." He shivers. "You lost so much more than I did. Than I have. You were - so alone - I am not sure how you went on." 

"It is easier, in a way, when one has fewer options. There is a simplicity in it. I think you too would find it easier to move forward if death were always one step behind you. And - instead you were plucked out of the sea into a world full of new options, and you are not ready for that." 

"Whether I am ready is not the point." 

"I know. But - it is not and yet it is. You are the pattern that you are, and the tool you have to work with." 

Tadesse has no idea what to do with that. 

"Leareth thought you needed something else, and hoped I would know. I - think that you need a great many things. You need rest, and you need hard-won victories, and you need to stand under the stars alone and grieve for the world that is so precious and yet stands so unprotected - you think you grieved for that centuries ago, but I do not think it is a process that ever really ends. And you need your mother to hold you and promise everything will be all right, and you need to fight desperately to win back that which you have lost, and you need to celebrate triumph alongside your friends. And many other things that I am not sure I can describe to you in human words, yet." 

"I know. Not all of those things can be had even in principle. You - would have found enough of them, on your own, given time. Leareth did, and I can see it in the shape you are. Still, now that you are not alone in it, it would be good to find a faster way for you to be okay. Not because this is an emergency, or because anything will be irretrievably lost, otherwise, but because the upside of winning more, sooner, is worth that much." 

....Tadesse nods, slowly. 

"It feels unfair, right now," Aroden says slowly. "I - will not speak in terms of fairness, since it is not a concept that reality recognizes, and both of us need to live in reality, as it is, in order to change it on purpose. But... I can recognize which worlds are better than others, that too is something that neither of us must ever give up. It would be better if you had lost less. It would be better if, from the very beginning, the world had been more protected. It would be better if your mother had lived to see you grow up, and be proud of your accomplishments." 

(Tadesse, personally, is right now feeling like it's unfair of Aroden to keep saying those things.) 

(Ekunde is not interrupting, since this is clearly Tadesse's thing, but he's simultaneously impressed, and sort of scared, and also not sure if Aroden is being an enormous asshole right now or if it's inappropriate to think of a god that way.) 

Aroden pauses for a long time, then pats the soggy bed next to him. "Come sit with me? ...I want to grieve the brokenness of the world with you, because that is not something I am ever finished doing either." 

Fine. He will go sit on the soggy bed next to the version of him from another world who's a god. 

"It would be better if your Cataclysm had never happened," Aroden says softly, barely audible above the rain. "It would be better if your gods were more forgiving, and also better at talking to people. It - would be better if there were more of us, across the worlds, and - more allies not like us, but whom we could work with all the same. There are a great many tragedies, and - we will fix it, someday, we will fix all of it, but it is a long road, and almost always it is harder and messier and comes at far greater cost than it seems it ought. And it does not make either of us any less the people we are, to recognize that. Or to be damaged by it, sometimes, and to recognize that we, too, can need time to heal. That time is not wasted." 

"But -"

"No buts. There will be plenty of time for those later. I think you ought talk to Vanyel. And pray to Iomedae, at some point, you will like her, and maybe speak a little with my wife, from when I was human - she is in Axis now. I think you ought let Ekunde's family love you - they will, if you give them half a chance. None of those things will fix the world for us, but I think they might make it easier for you to bear, and then we can keep going. Together. I remember what it was like, being alone, and Leareth remembers it too, and now we have it in our power to offer you something better than that." 

He's there for a long time, whatever 'time' even means here, in the cold and dark with the sound of rain and Aroden's arm around him, and then - 

- falling - 

He's back in Leareth's cozy meeting-room in Axis, and for some reason he's crying. 

Leareth has been occupying himself catching up with Khemet, occasionally glancing worriedly at Tadesse.

He starts to rise, then hesitates. :Is there an obvious thing I should be doing right now?: he asks Khemet. 

:I ...don't think so? Talking to gods is kind of overwhelming.:

Leareth waits quietly for a minute. 

"Tadesse, do you - need anything...?" :He does not really seem in the mood for a tour of Aktun. It might cheer him up, I suppose, but I am not clear he wants to be cheered up: 

Tadesse shakes his head and hugs himself and goes on sobbing. 

It's inconveniently hard to talk when the person you share a body with is using it to cry that hard, but Ekunde eventually manages it. "He - needs a hug," he says thickly. "Maybe to get really drunk and vent." After his first sweetheart broke up with him, it helped a lot when Ayodele dug up a whole bottle of sherry from the market and they got very drunk together. 

:Probably you should hug him, I don't think he feels comfortable around me yet.: