:Hmm. I - would not have expected that to work? I am fairly sure it would not work for me, in any case, so - Leareth must be doing something else: 

:I think it'd work for me if I - thought the gods wanted the right things. Which I don't. But she does. And if you do believe that then they're - asking you to make yourself vulnerable, but - for a good reason, whether or not the good reason is that it'll work out well for you personally -:

:I think Aroden wants - the same things I want, probably, adjusting for the god-angle view of the world? But it would not work at ALL if He told me that I should trust you!: 

:Huh. I feel like whether I should trust someone is like, I don't know, whether I should go to a planet, or whether I should learn a spell. If someone has more information than me and I trust them then that's - transferrable -:

:I feel as though different meanings of 'trust' are tangled together there? ...At least, for me I think there are two things. If Aroden told me that it was a good idea to work closely with you and rely on you in achieving my goals– well, he did sort of tell me that. But...that does not automatically make it - less scary to feel attached to you: 

- nod. :Whereas I keep having the impulse to feel attached whether it's a good idea or not so if it were a good idea I could just stop fighting it.:

:...Huh. I - guess that makes sense: Sigh. :Maybe you can teach me how you do that - how your mind is set up so that becoming attached is - the path that is flowing-downhill...: 

:It might be a - gender thing. At least I have heard the advice specifically for girls that you shouldn't fall in love with the first guy to be nice to you and I don't think people tell boys that - they do warn them not to trust girls but I don't think they warn them not to fall in love with them? I think ...the version of this that I was told is that if you let a man fuck you and you cuddle and you give each other presents and he's nice sometimes you're going to start thinking you're in love with him, and he's committed to you, because the part of your brain that - forms expectations, in the background - can't track anything complicated, it doesn't know the world is big and he could walk away the next day and leave you pregnant and starving if you live some place that's not Cheliax -:

:Hmm. I - think that in places that are not Cheliax, most men seem perfectly capable of forming close attachments? Perhaps it takes them longer on average, that seems plausible, but... I think that is not all of why: 

A long pause. 

:...I remember when I was at Urtho's Tower, and - everyone seemed so trusting. As though they - lived in a world where no one was hostile and no bad things were expected to happen. And most of the people I saw there did not seem to be scared of - closeness with other people: 

:Urtho's people seemed - insane, to me. Not living in the real world.:

:I think...maybe that is their real world? It would have gone disastrously if they had acted that way in Predain, but - it is not as though I frequently saw people being taken advantage of or harmed in ways they were too innocent to guard against. It... There was something good about it. Even if it felt as though they were - doing a lot of pretending - I think mostly the pretending was about ignoring the rest of the world, and the fact that not everywhere was like Urtho's Tower? It...was hard to get people to take problems outside seriously, when they had never experienced those problems firsthand: 

:It seems like it wouldn't be stable even internally, one person who was good at lying could tear through everyone...:

:You would think? That is not especially what I observed, though. - Honestly I think you are better at lying than anyone I have ever met. Including in Predain. I suspect Cheliax - forces people to become very skilled at lying - and, in fact, if learning the skill is not incentivized so hard, then most people will not be very good at it? I grew up in a very hostile place and I am not that good at lying. Even Leareth is not as good at lying as you are. And maybe it is easier to catch people out on lies if it is not - taken for granted that everyone is always lying all the time: 

:I would think that would make it harder, since you wouldn't have the assumption in your mind in the first place.

I guess maybe it could be a skill that no one learns.:

:Maybe: Another sigh. :I...am not even sure what my point is, here. Just - I think there is something I want, with you, that I do not have yet? And part of the problem is that I am not quite sure what the thing is: 

:Well. I'd help, but I don't know what the thing is either. I assume it's not 'marriage and children' since that is a relatively well-defined thing to want and you'd be able to notice if you wanted it?:

A sad chuckle. :No, I think it is not that. ...What do you want? Or, what would you want if it were safe and never pathetic to want things?: 

: - to be in charge of everything so no one could do any invading Hell. Or bother me personally.

Sorry, that's not really in the spirit of the question.:

:- Very reasonable of you, though: 

:I don't think I have a sense of what I want from relationships other than - power, and safety, and someone who's nice to me, and likes me...:

:Well, at least that is straightforward! I like you, and I try to be nice to you - I am not sure if you feel safe or powerful with me but I could work on that...: 

- giggle. :I feel very safe. And - we're trying to find something that'd mean we don't need to fight Hell. So.: Shrug.  :Are you imagining that I don't love you because you aren't doing a good enough job of being lovable, because it's not that at all.:

:I mean, 'lovable' is not a single thing, right - it depends greatly on the person doing the loving. And...it seems as though, in fact, I am not doing a good enough job of being - worth loving, or safe to love, or - something in that space...: 

:No? It's - not like you did something, and then I went, oh, I'd better not get too attached. It's - I grew up, and I saw people do stupid things that got them killed, or ruined their lives, and probably what it felt like to be them wasn't 'this is stupid and it'll ruin my life' -:

:Right, and so you - do not trust your own judgement and internal sense of it: Shiver. :I hate what Asmodeus did to your country and its people: