This man, for example. He wakes before dawn and looks around, confused, before packing up his bedroll and heading up the road toward the city.

It's a long walk.

Also heading toward the city is a bus, which comes to a stop well behind him so the driver can lean out the window and ask if he needs a ride.

"Yes please!"

He's a little confused about how to get on, but he can figure it out.

Inside the bus there are several rows of seats, most of them about half full. He could sit next to someone (some of them look potentially friendly although a large fraction look a little shell-shocked for some reason and someone is crying silently), or pick the last empty row (with slightly damaged seats), or stand in the aisle.

Well, he needs time to himself for his devotions, first; he makes his way to the empty row and watches out the window, fascinated, until his spells come in.

Out the window things gradually look less abandoned. There are farms, but they seem not to be run with any particular attention to efficiency - lots of niche herbs and attractive landscaping - and every single farmhouse looks to be in good repair.

Parts of the city they're heading for are dozens of stories tall and the ground starts sloping up as they get closer, so the city is visible a long way away. By the time he's done with his spells they're still not there yet, although it's becoming clear just how huge it is.

Wow. Where is he?

He watches for a few more minutes and then gets up to head for the front of the bus, glancing at the other passengers as he passes them - he should know more about what's going on before he tries to talk to anyone who's visibly upset, but that wasn't all of them, and maybe one of the others will be willing to answer questions.

There's someone who looks concerned that he's walking around while the bus is moving and someone who watches him with the dead stare of someone who is not taking in anything else until they've rested and someone who looks up from their book to smile and wave.

(Walking is a little tricky, but he's been on ships before and picked up a few tricks; as long as he takes it slowly he should be all right.)

He sits by the one with the book. "Hi!"

"Hi." They seem a little at a loss for what to say but they bookmark their book and shut it. (The cover shows a picture of a pair of children playing under an arbor and the title A Child's Garden of Verses.)

"I'm Raafi - cleric of Fharlanghn, and I'm wondering if the name is even familiar here."

Blink blink.

"...Not to me, anyway. Is this a... sorry, I'm sure there's a politically correct word that isn't 'demon', uh..."

"-no, Fharlanghn's neutral. God of travel. So am I - good leaning, there's just a bit of history there. Though if the first thing you think of when I mention being a cleric is demons I suspect there's more to explain than that."

"...None of that made sense. I just mean, you know, there's probably only the one kind of supernatural creature, and I don't want to call all of them gods... but where are you from?"

"Not here, definitely, I could name three dozen types of magical creature that I've personally met. I've only been here since this morning, though, I couldn't tell you whether this is some uncontacted plane of the world I'm used to or I'm farther afield than that somehow - we call the world I'm from oerth but I don't expect that to be useful."

"...Okay, well, this is heaven, and normally if someone had just appeared here I'd assume it was because they died, but you don't sound like you came from the world of the living."

"-I was expecting at least another forty years and wouldn't expect heaven of all places to have me. I suppose it's not unheard of, at my age, though - really?"

"Well, I guess it could all be an elaborate ruse? You can get a book about it in the city. Fair warning, most of what they say about it at home isn't true. Although I guess I have no idea what you've heard."

"I haven't heard much, I was leaving it as a surprise! I suppose I should have had a little more faith on that count." He touches the wooden pendant hanging from a cord around his neck.

"Then you'll probably be plenty surprised. You seem to be taking it pretty well." They glance around the bus. "You know."

He shrugs. "I mean, I was never going to be done there, and I wasn't leaving this as a surprise because I wasn't curious. I'm a cleric of the god of travel, exploring new places is what I'm for."

"That makes sense. Um, just so you know, I don't think any of the religions I've heard of are completely accurate, they don't have much to go on back there."

"I'm still not sure what's going on with that, if we're from different worlds originally but ended up in a place we've both heard of. I guess it might be that there's more than one material plane that heaven is an afterlife of? Mine does know things about it, we can call on the... do you not have the word... angels is close but they're a slightly different sort of creature... we can call on them too, though, all the sorts of creatures that are native to the afterlives, and ask them questions and things."

"Getting people back home from any of the afterlives is tremendously difficult and I don't think it's widely known that it's possible at all. And I am... uncomfortable using the word 'angels' for anything that actually exists, personally, because most of them are pretty disappointing."

And they're going to not argue too hard that his religion might be fake. That sounds like an uncomfortable argument all around and maybe he's really from another planet or something.

"I haven't found them to be, particularly - what were you expecting them to be like? Maybe they end up overblown if they're rarer to see."