Samora's face shines with pride and affection. "Oh no, if I tell you half the things I love about my people I'll wear out your patience. My homeland Lastwall is Iomedae's country, that she founded before she ascended, and the government works closely with the church. It's the only country I know whose people see themselves as having a mission that we're all working on together. Our army holds part of the Worldwound border, and we keep the arch-necromancer Tar-Baphon sealed away, and we contain the Orcs in Belkzen, and we advance the Inheritor's interests in a bunch of other things and deal honorably with all other nations, and our people live well and reach Heaven. We can't do everything we ought to be doing, but we are doing everything we can."

Oh she is so good and so happy.  Marc is filled with reflected happiness for a long moment, until it's tempered with the contrast to his own life.

"It sounds a wonderful place."  A softer smile, and then a sigh.  "I wish I could love my own country half so uncomplicatedly.  I do love it, but... twice in my life, most of the honorable men of Gorhaut were led by evil to attack our neighbor and to murder women and children, and-- it's not really that I don't understand why Corannos lets us do these things, but... I hope we can keep it from happening again, and I am not sure."

(He does not think, consciously, that this is really rather a lot to tell someone, unasked, in a conversation that started on a different and cheerful topic.  He wouldn't have said these things yesterday, and wouldn't have thought of it consciously then either – but it's very clear, by now, that she's the sort of person who would want to hear, and who will react well to anything she's told.)

"I'm sorry that happened to them. One of the greatest injustices of the world is that some people face worse temptations and pressures than others."

Oh.

Oh, even knowing she would react well he did not expect that.  Perhaps he should have, but... it's been increasingly clear today that he doesn't know what truly good places are like, and maybe he knows as little about people who grow up in them.

It takes a moment before he manages to say anything.

"You are not making it easy not to look at you with awe in my eyes."  But he shakes his head a little and smiles at her like she's a real person.  "But I think I know what you'll say already – that you were lucky, to be shaped by your country and your goddess into someone who would say that.  Still... Thank you.  You can't know how much it means to me, to hear a stranger say that they were still worth something."  There are tears in his voice, and he's not particularly trying to hide it.

"I have been lucky. In a lot of ways. I'm glad the sort of person I am is the sort of person you need right now. Do you want to tell me more about your people, or speak of other things? I'd like to hear their story if it's one you want to tell."

"I... don't know if I can explain them very well.  I'm not good at... being surrounded by people who don't know me or the basic sort of person I am, or what my world is like.  I expected to never in my life meet anyone who couldn't look at me and know, if not everything that's important about me, enough of it."

"But... hundreds of years ago, it was in our country that Corannos came down to earth, to teach us how to build and defend our families and keep our word.  We've been trying to do these things.  We're not good at politics or art; we're not always good at even knowing what the honorable course is, when the world turns out more complicated than we expected.  But... if we end up on opposite sides of the battlefield, it's because we disagree about which oaths are the most important ones to keep, not because we stopped caring about them."

It's so difficult to make it sound like it means something, especially when he knows how badly it failed, sometimes.  It's easy to claim to have honor.  Everyone does it.

"... One time, in another country, a band of barbarian raiders attacked a place I was in charge of defending.  They were losing, we wanted them to surrender, they clearly expected they'd just be slaughtered if they put down their swords.  We had barely any words in common.  But when their leader saw me, he only said 'swear', and believed me when I did.

That's the thing everyone knows about my people."

"Oh. That's such a good thing, to be the thing everyone knows. That's--a foundation you can build just about anything on."

"Yes."  He's so glad she understands. That she agrees how important that trust is, for preserving at least the possibility of better things.

"And I hope we will.  ...That they will.  I cannot say I left everything well, but well enough for everyone else to do better with it, I hope."

"As the Sarenrites say, every day is a new chance to make better choices. If there's anyone you want to check in on back home, I can prep a Sending--or a Scry, once we get to Rivendell and I can sit in front of a mirror for an hour."

"Sunrise always keeps its word," he smiles – the saying from home that can mean much the same thing.

Then: "I..."  Does he want to do that?  Part of him wants to do it so much, but it doesn't feel right.  What good would it be, for him to be distracted by worrying about home, and for everyone at home to keep thinking about him when he can never come back?  "God, that's a disturbing idea, somehow.  I don't think I'd know how to live like that."

Samora thinks for a while, then nods slowly. "Yeah. I've been assuming I won't be able to get home and shouldn't try, at least until whatever we were sent here for is accomplished, and--that's kind of a relief? If I had the ability to either get home or stay here I'd want to do both. I still want to do both, but it's easier not to think about it constantly."

"It really is," a sympathetic and slightly relieved look.  "I will need to think about it at some point, I imagine, but... not now.  It doesn't feel like anything good would come of it."

A moment's silence.

"I... Do you expect to get home, eventually?"  Apparently he will not be doing a very good job of not thinking about it just yet.  It doesn't feel like anything good will come of fighting his mind about it, either.

"I don't know. I have magic for traveling between planes, including to one of the afterlives and back, and I might be able to get home that way if the gods permit it. Maybe we'll do whatever we were sent here for and I'll vanish back home as suddenly as I arrived. Maybe I'll die on this world and see my family in Heaven. I don't have to figure it out right now. I'm staying here unless something changes."

"And certainly so am I."  A companiable nod and another moment of silence.  Maybe he will also see his family in heaven, or maybe he will not; and that is enough thinking about it, now.

The next three days are spent much like the second one: conjured food, Air Walk practice, hours and hours of Marching Chant over nameless hills with no creatures larger than birds. Samora sometimes feels as though they're being watched, but the feeling never has enough detail to it to act upon. 

"The birds are watching," Aragorn says when she mentions it. "Some of them have no love for the Enemy." And that's all he'll say about it, but the rest is implied. 

At some point Marc realizes that a Comprehend Languages can be used to get better at this world's language much faster, and requests one of those every day from then on, if possible.  It does seem strategically important for him to be able to communicate with people who aren't Samora in an emergency – but more than that, it feels wrong to mostly spend his time talking to Samora, for all that he feels the most at home with her even aside from the Truespeech.  They both live here now, and it will do nobody any good for them to feel isolated from the people whose world this is. 

He spends a lot of time asking the hobbits about their lives, while doing all the things that obviously need to be done, mostly quite contentedly.

... He wonders what the birds think about them.

The hobbits are happy to have someone to talk to while Samora is doing the Marching Chant and Aragorn is being grim, so that works out nicely!

Two nights before they reach the first river, a shape moves in the darkness during Aragorn's half of the watch.

"EVERYBODY UP!"

Samora Holy Smites first and leaps to her feet second.

Marc is up, sword drawn, instinctively facing whichever way Samora isn't, until it's clear what's happening.