"We're rare because we have to agree with them that the thing they're a god of is the most important thing of all, and talkers don't usually do that. I'll get into that a little more in a minute."

"Trying to pass off a fake diamond won't work, if that's what you mean; the magical properties would be different, and the god would be able to tell even if the cleric didn't figure it out. If you mean that someone who didn't care about the god's thing at all might try to buy a spell from one of their clerics, that does happen, and different gods feel different ways about it; Fharlanghn doesn't care, as long as it's not hurting him and we can use the money to do things he does care about, but some gods' clerics are much pickier about when they'll cast a spell for someone."

"They do give us a magic budget! We get a certain number of spells every day, more for more experienced clerics who the gods trust more, and most of those spells don't cost anything more than that. It's only a few spells that they want to make sure we only use when we really need them."

"I mean it could be anything that the diamond is for, if you don't have to buy it."

"You don't get to keep your money?"

"What does he want you to do with the money?"

"Why don't you have a separate smaller budget of those spells?"

"I don't understand what you mean."

"Different gods' clerics handle finances differently, but in general the spells our gods give us don't belong to us, they're entrusted to us to use on our gods' behalf - think of it a little like scrip, maybe. Fharlanghn trusts my judgement - he wants me going into strange situations where I might need the flexibility to sell my spells in order to support myself - but if there's no benefit to him, something's gone wrong, and that's the sort of thing I wouldn't be surprised to lose my clerichood over."

"Different gods have different ideas about that, and I do want to talk about them in general soon. Fharlanghn expects his clerics to travel, which can be expensive, and help any travelers we meet who are in trouble, which means we do things like buying extra travel supplies so we have some to give out or paying for travel expenses for other people, and if we end up with a lot of money he likes us to use it to fund things that will make travel easier for everyone - hiring people to improve roads or cut passes in mountains, or funding waystations, or things like that."

"I don't actually know why we get our magic in the exact way we do; I think you'll need a specialist scholar to answer that one."

"So if I want to go on vacation to the Volcanic Atoll you'll buy my ticket?"

"I want to go caving in the south..."

"Is Fharlanghn your mate or your mom or what? If it's scrip?"

"If you want to go to the somewhere and can't get there on your own I'll help, yes. Maybe by buying you a ticket, maybe some other way, but that's part of my job. And Fharlanghn's my god, which is about as different from those as they are from each other, but you're not wrong that it's the same sort of relationship - he's more like a parent than a mate in that he's much more experienced than I am - he's thousands and thousands of years old - but more like a mate in that I'm doing important work in the relationship too, and he doesn't guide me the way a parent guides a child. - I should probably mention so that you aren't surprised; gods and humanoids don't have much in the way of gender differences, and female clerics relate to their gods about the same way as male clerics do. The gender of the god doesn't matter much either."

"I mean I could get there if I dropped out of school and took all the tuition money but I can't afford it otherwise."

"So you're like his employeechild."

"Well, good thing you know a cleric of travel, then - there's probably a library with an atlas around somewhere, and once I know where it is I can fly there, and then once I've been, I can teleport us. Sounds like a fun couple of weekends. This is a bit of an unusual situation, though, usually I'd be busy with other things and we can say no, in that case, we don't have to offer more help than we can easily give."

"More or less, yep. Maybe a little more of an independent operator than either of those, but that's about right."

"So, gods." And he launches into his explanation. They're a kind of talker, but unlike almost all other kinds, they're fundamentally made of magic, not flesh. In particular they're made out of the fact of a particular thing or group of things - called domains - being important, which is admittedly weird but still true, and answers the question of what it means to be a god of something - it means being made of that thing. Gods' health and strength is tied to the health and strength of their domains, and by nature they're very interested in them in general, so they consider it very important to make sure those domains stay useful, and that people do them well or often. They also often have magic relating to their domains - Fharlanghn can modify the land to make roads and bridges, for example - and can see things relating to their domains if they're impactful enough, even without having a physical body there, and the most powerful gods can see those things before they even happen.

Clerics come at this from a slightly different angle - they start as ordinary mortal talkers who are also very invested in some domain or other, which makes them easier for the god of that domain to see; there's other things they can do to get the god's attention, and if they do, and the god likes them - or if they do that for some concept that could have a god but doesn't, he's not sure why that works exactly - then they'll start getting magic. Occasionally a god will notice someone suitable on their own, too, and give that person magic without them doing anything; it's almost always younger gods with smaller followings who do that. These talkers are called favored souls; they get the same sort of magic as clerics, but with different limitations, and they're generally held in slightly higher esteem than clerics by other followers of their gods.

(Souls are the non-physical part of talkers that persist after death and go to the afterlives. Various sorts of magic interact with them, too. They're a more fundamental part of someone than their physical body, which can be changed in any number of ways or even replaced entirely without changing who the person is - your memories and your sense of morality are part of your soul. Deities and religions often consider souls particularly important.)

Clerics, but apparently not favored souls, can lose their powers if they stop taking enough interest in their gods' domains, or if they act against it; this is uncommon, since clerics are the type of person to be deeply devoted to their domains in the first place, but it does occasionally happen. This means that you can be sure a cleric is in good standing with their god if they can demonstrate magic - though it is still possible to be fooled, if you can't confirm which god the cleric follows. Fortunately most spells require touching a holy symbol of the god they're granted by. (He passes around a copy of Fharlanghn's holy symbol, and drawings he's made of a couple of fancier ones.)

Next: churches. Once a god has clerics and followers, it's usually a good idea to have them work together; they're more likely to be able to accomplish their goals that way. That's what a church is: several people working together in the name of a god. Usually they'll have a building, and do things for the people around them, but how a church works and what it does exactly depends on the god and on the talkers who run it; there's a lot of variance, but they'll commonly hold lectures or other community gatherings to explain what their god thinks talkers should do, do charity work, offer individual advice and counseling, adjudicate disputes, and help coordinate the community to handle threats and problems. Many of them hold ceremonies for welcoming new babies into the community, acknowledging new mate bonds, mourning the dead, and other major life events. They support themselves financially in different ways; almost all take donations, some offer paid services like classes or specialists for hire, some run businesses related to their domains, some are supported by other organizations. Usually there's a degree of internal hierarchy, often with more experienced clerics leading the church and making most of the decisions. "Priest" is a related title, for someone who's involved with the running of a church; not all priests have magic, and not all clerics are involved with a church - Raafi himself is a cleric but not a priest, since Fharlanghn doesn't have churches.

There are also a few other sorts of divine spellcasters, besides clerics and favored souls. Druids are similar to clerics, but devoted to nature; the way to become a druid is a closely-kept secret, though it's understood that anyone with the right mindset for it has a chance to figure it out. Their spells are suited to working with nature and with talkers as creatures rather than as souls, and experienced druids can shapeshift into animals; some gods with nature-related domains will have druids as part of their church hierarchy. Similarly, some gods have paladins, which are a type of divinely-powered fighter; they get less magic than clerics, but other powers that make them stronger in battle, and in addition to losing those powers for losing interest in their gods' domain, they lose them for any immoral act, which makes them suited for positions of very high trust. Paladins most often work with other paladins rather than the general public, in paladin orders, but it's not uncommon for a large church of a god who empowers paladins to have one or two of them working there. Rangers are also a kind of divine spellcaster, with magic similar to druids but weaker; they're only rarely involved with churches, and are most often found in the wilderness, working on their own or alongside druids to protect the natural world.

"Oh, so you're feeding him."

"So if you took me to the Volcanic Atoll that would feed Fharlanghn? That's weird..."

"Immoral act according to who? Their god?"

"Wouldn't that make it hard to have them stay in practice fighting?"

"It's a bit like feeding him! I'd say it's closer to farming than to feeding him directly, a lot of the time, and since he is travel it means something a little different from feeding a normal talker, but it's not a bad metaphor."

"Well, that's what I meant about it being a little different than feeding a normal talker - it's not a bad metaphor but it's not a perfect one, either. He gets about as much out of a trip like that being the kind of thing that would be valuable to you as from you taking the trip itself, and he's not really eating any part of the situation at all."

"It comes down to what they were trying to do, and whether they should have known better - gods give different advice about how to best do good, they don't all agree on which parts are most important and not all of them even care about it at all, but in general if you're trying to help talkers, that's good, and if you're trying to hurt talkers just to do it that's evil, and if you're trying to help talkers but the best way you can figure out of doing it involves hurting some talkers that can still be good, but you do have to try to figure out if that's really the best way and if it's worth the harm; you can't just do it because it's easy or because you want to."

"I haven't heard of it being, but I haven't spoken to paladins much. I know lots of kinds of fighters stay in practice by sparring; maybe we have more of a tradition of that than you do."

"I heard that sparring doesn't really work because if you don't really intend to devour your enemy you'll act too different."

"Maybe their magic powers fix that."

"If he's just as fed by me wanting to go to the atoll why would you bother taking me?"

"I think the difference there might be that we fight with artificial weapons, we don't have claws and teeth like you do, and we can use safer artificial weapons for sparring. I have a staff that's magically safe to fight with partly for exactly that reason."

"It's better to do both - it helps him that it would be valuable and it helps him again for you to actually do it. And if you do go, that has more benefit than just the trip itself - it'll give you a new perspective on things, and maybe you'll learn things and might come back and teach them to other people, not even necessarily in a circle or anything but just by talking to them, or maybe you'll be inspired to make some art, or it'll give you an idea for something to invent, or maybe you'll just know a little more about what you like and don't like and have a nicer life because of that. There's lots of good things about traveling."

"Does art and stuff feed him too?"

"Can you show us your magic staff? If you hit somebody with it what happens?"

"I think it does, but I haven't actually studied that. I do know he likes it when talkers write about places they've traveled to, though, that's fine for clerics to spend spell money on funding."

"I think we have enough time for it, if that's what you'd all like. It hits just as hard as a regular staff but it only makes you tired, or leaves mild bruises at worst, and it can knock someone unconscious if they get too tired or I get an especially good hit in but they'll wake up after a minute or two, even without healing."

"I'll try it!" volunteers a girl.

He looks around the rest of the circle for objections. "All right! It's in my storage - I have fragile things in there, so I'd rather nobody else come in, but it'll only take a minute to get it." He's taking out a folded piece of fine black cloth as he speaks, and shakes it out and spreads it on the ground, where it shimmers slightly and opens into a hole leading to a cluttered space with rough stone walls; he climbs in to grab a bleached-white staff with bands of yellow stone set into it from a stand by the entrance where it sits by three others - one with a thunderstorm motif, one of natural-looking wood with a rough green gem embedded in the gnarl of wood at the top, and one with a carved geometric pattern dyed in a muted rainbow of colors. More staves in a wide variety of colors and patterns stand in a tall basket nearby.

"I want one of THOSE," says a voice as he descends. "The black thing, not the stick."

The volunteer rears up on her back four legs and play-swipes in Raafi's direction, nearly a yard away from his person.

He sets the staff down when he gets back out of the hole with it, and tidies up the cloth - which shimmers back into being an ordinary sheet of silk when he picks up the edge - before doing anything else. "It's really handy. Very expensive, though, and I'm not the right kind of spellcaster to make one even if I knew how."

He approaches the volunteer, making a couple of playful feints himself before closing in to strike at her shoulder.

"Oof!" she says. "You hit hard for your size." She flexes the joint.

"How expensive?"

He backs off. "You all right?"

"Yeah! I didn't say you could hit me with a stick 'cause I have a skeletal disorder! I'm fine."

"All right. I can heal it if you want - you'll be fine either way but it'll take the sting away."

"Sure, I'm curious about that too."

"What's casting spells like?" someone asks.

He casts and touches the spell to her shoulder, and the pain fades as if she'd never been struck.

"It's not very much like anything else, but it's a little like swimming in a river, if you're comfortable in the water - it's definitely a thing I'm doing, but I'm working with something bigger and stronger than I am and I have to go along with it a bit to get anywhere. And usually it's like swimming downstream, the extra power helps me."

"Is it hard to learn how?" asks a boy.

"Once you have the magic at all it's very intuitive, I've never heard of anyone having trouble with it. Getting the magic is the tricky part."