This clearly helps a lot! "Thank you again! Why, I feel I could get down and walk now, and perhaps ought to, since the rest of you are."

Also, when the Cure goes off, a small piece of metal is forced out of his skin and falls out from under his shirt.

Samora breaks her stride to examine it, but it vanishes into mist before she decides whether or not to pick it up.

"No wonder you felt so poorly! The tip of that knife must've broken off in your shoulder. But it's gone now."

Marc also stops to frown at the ominously disappearing knife shard, but it seems entirely gone.

He smiles at Frodo.  "Please don't get down and walk. The magic is wonderful, but we wouldn't want you to need any more of it."  When you suddenly feel better, it's easy to overestimate just how much better, and they have a long way to travel.

"I'm happy to take more of the baggage if anyone else is uncomfortable." Meaningful glance at Sam, who is keeping pace with everyone else but has definitely ended up with more of the baggage than any other hobbit. "Tomorrow someone should just hand me a bag, I'm never going to be useful during packing-out but I can still hold things."

"I'm alright, ma'am, I've got a light load already," Sam lies through his teeth. 

Marc looks uncertain at her request, then realizes he should really just ask. She gives a very strong impression of being someone you can simply talk to when you're uncertain about something.

"Back home I would never let a priestess carry baggage I have the strength for, if there wasn't dire need. I can let you be handed a bag in the morning if you truly prefer that, but you needn't carry anything you don't want to, and," a wry smile to make it clear his discomfort also doesn't have to be her problem, "it may take me a while to get used to it if you do." 

Sam clearly does not trigger the same reaction -- and looks like he's doing well enough that Marc is not inclined to argue with him.

Oh, of course, without casters who can keep up with fighters you could hardly have female adventurers and probably couldn't have priest adventurers either.

"I think priests on my world are different from the ones on yours. Back home I spend most of my days underground killing monsters. And the belt I'm wearing makes me stronger than I look. I'm not going to say that adventurer women are just like the men, I am still a woman, but I'm, hm, more like a male adventurer than like a female civilian, in a bunch of ways? Including the way where there's no reason for me not to do a share of the carrying." 

That gets her a thoughtful but no longer uncertain nod, and then a smile. "That still doesn't tell me whether you want to do a share of the carrying."

There's a bit of a narrow path between two awkwardness-traps here, the mirror image of the one preventing her from pointing out Sam's blatant lie. Ah, there's the answer. "Of course. Wouldn't you?"

"I would, but I'm really quite sure not everyone does."  But if she's the way he is about it, then he's certainly not going to try to prevent her from doing what she thinks she should.

"In more important questions – your world has so many monsters that you spend most of your time killing them??  And I've been slowly getting an impression that it's not just you."

Samora chuckles. "Oh, definitely not, there are thousands of adventurers on Golarion. We've got monsters in the forests, monsters in the oceans, monsters in the mountains, and more importantly we've got multiple open rifts to the lower planes with fiends invading through them. My friends and I are trying to stop one particular evil witch from attacking one major city; it's important work and if it didn't seem to be the gods' will that I be here I'd be anxious to get back to it, but I'm fundamentally replaceable. The problem is that there are so many separate threats that civilization has to prioritize."

"Oh. That's... my world had one problem like that, and we solved it, and now all that's really left is-- people and their difficult personalities and disagreements. Which can go awfully enough on their own, but not very soon, I hope." 

How much larger and more complicated her Golarion has to be!  No wonder she sounded so well-prepared for this deeply strange situation, if her world is full of them.

"And..."  The strategy of just talking to her seems to be working well so far, so: "You would, in my world, be the greatest holy priestess in generations."  All of them, quite possibly.  "Nobody can do that much magic that easily.  So-- that's how I've been reacting to you, if that helps explain anything?"  He's not sure what about his behavior needs to be explained, but it's increasingly clear that some things do.  And of course there would be some, really.

"That--does rather explain some things, yes. I think I should tell you plainly that I'm not at all like that back home. I'm a blacksmith's daughter who got to go to theology school because I got lucky with magic, and I've been an adventurer less than half a year. It is unusual to end up as powerful as I am this quickly but that's because I've been getting in an unusual number of dangerous situations and that's the kind of life where either you die or you get powerful fast. I'm good in a fight but I'm not--unusually holy, I'm not quite sure what having a lot of magic means on your world but on mine it just means my small amount of life experience contains more getting stabbed than average. Does all of that make sense?"

She sounds like she thinks he... what... would regret the way he treated her if he knew she wasn't highborn?  "There is, to be clear, no reason at all why a blacksmith's daughter shouldn't be the highest priestess.  I think it's often better that way than if she was born to a noble family.  And that you aren't a particularly high priestess wouldn't-- well, it would make me look at you with less awe in my eyes, but it wouldn't make me stop offering to carry things for you or calling you 'lady Samora', except that you clearly don't want me to do these things."  So she gets a straightforwardly friendly smile instead.  It's not as if he ever wants people to do those things for him either.  "I will do my best to ignore the fountain of miracles, if you ignore all this I'm wearing."  A slightly embarrassed gesture.

"I wouldn't say that it all makes sense, and I think it won't for a while, but I'm starting to see the sort of person you are.  I just don't know what getting stabbed a lot has to do with magic, or what being lucky with magic means, and I'm not sure what you can mean when you say your goddess giving you a lot of magic doesn't mean you're unusually holy.  Does she not give magic to people she thinks are doing the right things with it?"

Friendly smile and tippy-hand gesture. "The gods give magic to people who will use it to pursue their goals, but some people having more magic than others is because they've been in more of the kind of stressful situation that makes people stronger. Our wizards and swordsmen work the same way, they get stronger the more they do things where being stronger helps. Back home there's an older priest who I ask for advice on moral questions when I need it, and he has less magic than me but a lot more life experience and when I don't know what to do, he does. Which of us is holier? It's not how we'd think about the question, generally." 

"And then my getting lucky is unrelated to all of that. I stepped in a weird magic thing when I was twelve and got useful powers instead of being horribly cursed, which really it could have gone either way, I was a fool at twelve. But my parents and the local priest decided that it'd be a waste if I didn't use them for anything and they thought I'd make a good priest so they sent me to school for it, which was even better luck for me than the powers in some ways, I'm good at my job and I like it."

Awwwwww.  "I'm very glad you didn't get horribly cursed!  And that you had people to guide you as well as they clearly did.  It sounds a very good life."  He has to admit to himself he envies her a little.  It sounds so simple, in her world, to find a clear and good place in it, and one that makes you stronger and better with every year.  Though likely it's not quite as simple as she makes it sound.  She seems the sort of person everything goes well for, in a way that looks effortless, but only because she doesn't mind the effort.

"It's difficult to improve with the sword in any way other than by taking risks with your skill, but I never heard of priests being the same way.  I suppose I don't know much about the stresses of their lives, and I would not be surprised if it took trials of one sort or another to become the right sort of person, but– I wouldn't expect it to be risk, or certainly not the fighting sort of it.  The high priests are mostly people who don't leave the sacred places much, except when the kingdom needs their advice."

"But we have barely any magic at all.  I had not seen any for over thirty years of my life, and one of my friends didn't even think it was real until we were blessed by one of the handful of people in the world with the gift of healing."

"The gods find it costly to act in the mortal world, and choosing priests is one of the cheaper ways but it's not free. They say that direct divine intervention is a sign you've screwed up; maybe the gods don't do much on your world because they think your people are doing a good job already and don't need help." 

A soft laugh.  "I doubt that, unless it's because our problems are so much smaller.  But... the entire system of choosing priests more cheaply and giving them specific abilities, instead of just... intervening directly, even if still through a person... I don't think our gods have that.  Or... it's possible they could have it but neither of them would use it, each for their own reasons."  And more quietly, half to himself: "I wonder if the third one would have."

Would have? Did they have a god die? He might not want to talk about it. "Would you like to tell me about your world's gods and their teachings? Or I could give everyone the rundown on the rest of the spells I have prepped today."

"Your spells sound much more important to know, for the moment."  Though it is also important to have normal human conversations with the people you're fighting alongside, and he's very glad they had this one.

She'll ask about the potential dead god when they know each other a little better.

"Alright. Least powerful to most powerful, I have: three of Protection from Evil, which does the same thing as standing close to me in terms of being a lot harder to mind-control and harder for Evil creatures to damage; if there's a fight where we might need to split up and we have eighteen seconds of warning I can get it on three people."

"Two Comprehend Languages, which will make someone able to understand but not speak any language; if Marc needs to have a conversation without me being in it I can use those for that. Lasts about an hour and a half."

"And one Ant Haul for making it easier to carry heavy things; that one will last most of the day as soon as" and here she grins to make it clear she's joking "someone is willing to admit to wanting it. If nobody does, perhaps I'll cast it on the pony."

"Second circle I have Bless Weapon, makes a weapon much more effective against Evil creatures. If a fight starts without warning it's going on whichever of you two" points at Strider and Marc "is standing closest to me. We should figure out who gets it if we do have warning."

"Two Align Weapons, which are like Bless Weapon but a bit less good; I can only get one copy of Bless Weapon a day. Both of those only last a few minutes so I can't just do them all now."

"One more Lesser Restoration, same kind of thing I used on Frodo. If nobody else gets injured I'll use that one on Frodo too this evening, sometimes two does more than one but sometimes it doesn't."

"Marching Chant, which will make us cover ground faster but only as long as I'm continuously chanting, so we should get all the conversation and spellcasting we're likely to want out of the way and then I can do that for the rest of the day."

"Third circle I didn't fill all my slots immediately, so I can prepare a couple more spells with fifteen minutes each. I wasn't sure if I'd need multiple tries to remove the curse on Frodo but I didn't so I can prepare some other things. One good option there is Create Food and Water, which should make enough food for everyone including the horse. The food goes bad after a day if nobody eats it but until then it should be the right kind for the people I'm casting it for even if people here need different food. If we have enough food that it's not worth the slot, I can do two more copies of Searing Light, which is a combat spell that hits undead especially hard."

"At fourth circle I have a spell to tell my party back home that I'm alive, as soon as we're done planning for the day I'll want to spend ten minutes on that. Plus some combat spells that hit everyone in an area--more on the tactics of those later--and one that makes all my allies a little better at fighting."

"At fifth I have Dispel Evil, which makes me harder to hit and can let me counter some Evil spells, and two of Breath of Life which is a healing spell that can heal someone who's technically dead if I get to them within a few seconds. Also all my other spells can be turned into basic healing spells if we need them."

That is a fountain of miracles all right.  He gives a soft laugh at the Ant Haul, and nods at the rest, though it's taking more and more effort to remind himself that all this is normal in her world. 

"I have no conversations I don't want you – or anyone else – to hear.  If someone wants to have one with me, he can, though I think we are all confused enough without adding more circles of secrets."

For all the rest, Strider is clearly the one whose input will be the most valuable, since he knows much more about their situation and their enemies.  Marc waits for him to speak first.

"Create Food and Water would be most welcome; we have provisions enough to reach Rivendell if we stretch them and forage, but more food means greater speed, and greater freedom to go off the straight road to evade pursuit. But you mentioned last night some magic that required gems. Tell me of it; I doubt there will be a safer time."

"There's a spell I didn't prepare today that requires a diamond the weight of a couple grains of rice, and consumes it in the casting. It can restore life to a body that has been dead for less than nine days."

That would shape the choices she makes in battle, wouldn't it. "Many such jewels can be found in Rivendell at need."