"I'm actually an atheist," she confesses.

"That must've been a fun conversation."

"For very, very liberal interpretations of the word 'fun.'"

"Yeah."

"Are the two of you religiously or just culturally jewish?" she asks.

"We go to temple sometimes but not all the time and in terms of actual belief we're agnostic."

"Are your parents religious, and if so are they okay with that?"

"Mom's a raised-Episcopal atheist and Dad's got a sort of 'no atheists in foxholes' thing going on."

"Huh."

"Marrying goyim isn't that unusual."

"I guess not, but the 'huh' was more about a religious person marrying a non-religious person. I guess that's also not super uncommon, but my father's left me with a somewhat biased view of that."

"'No atheists in foxholes' also isn't a conventional kind of religious."

"I suppose."

"I don't really get atheism, personally, but maybe someday someone will figure out how the heck magic could arise in a truly randomly generated universe and then it will make sense."

"...I should probably qualify my atheism. Given the way magic works, it's not unlikely the world is artificial, but in a—simulationist way? Like, I don't expect the world's creators, if they exist, to come down here and do anything."

Shrug. "Could be. Like I said, agnostic."

"I'm Buddhist, for the record."

"Really? That's more unusual."

"My parents aren't, but--it's one of the only religions on the planet, it has really good moral teachings, and it's not actually incompatible with any particular state of affairs from 'kind and loving god' to 'nada,' so I converted."

"Huh. Yeah, guess I can see it. Although 'kind and loving god' doesn't... really seem to jibe with the way eclipses work."

"And Buddhism doesn't care!"

She grins. "You'll have to tell me some more about this Buddhism thing, then."

"I am happy to commit proselytization if and only if solicited."

"Sensible."

"Buddhism is good at that! ...Better than Christianity, anyway."