(It's not, actually, the case that Merrin is more easily bored than Mariona and more disturbed by boredom as an underlying personality trait. But she sure has grown up in and been shaped by a society where boredom is a major threat to most people's wellbeing, and where enough slack exists to take this seriously rather than relegating it to the bottom of a list of more critical priorities. Merrin thinks of herself as hating boredom, and she has undertaken SO many unnecessarily laborious arts-and-crafts projects over the last six planetary months. She's trained to repair her own essential equipment under time pressure, and in comparison this task is easy and soothing.) 

...She follows Estha's logic. It gives her the slippery helpless feeling of this being a topic that she isn't nearly smart enough to reason about, but she does follow it. 

"- My arrival here also felt...carefully set up, like that," she says. "I started out at the bottom of the river valley, with the tide going out. It was possibl, but just barely possible, for me to recognize the danger and salvage all of my gear before the tidal bore hit. It's - at a lot of steps it felt like this whole scenario was...somehow made for me, specifically? Not just a dath ilani, or even just an Exception Handling specialist, but me. ...Except for the part where I'm a medtech and I had a bunch of medical equipment and there was no one else I could treat, but - then you arrived." 

And she had wondered, long before he arrived, whether someone was going to show up for her to rescue! Not because this would make any logical sense - it continues not to make any logical sense! - but because it felt like a possible plot beat. 

Merrin still doesn't trust that whole line of reasoning, at all. But she can't deny that it's made at least one prediction that turned out to be accurate.

It is encouraging that Mariona sees, and is allowed to see, that much of the trap.  Esta will not seize on it, he thinks, not even through too much encouragement or praise.

"If you say so, Merrin, then I so credit it.  It would fit with some of my other speculations about what might be happening."

"But consider now the failure of [Planar Binding], perhaps because the [Outer God] placed us far off the usual interplanar paths --"

"Or -- perhaps because It continues to watch us and directly intervened to make the spell fail.  [Outer Gods] are not limited by the [Compact of Creation] in how much They intervene, when They expend the force to intrude on [Creation] at all."

"Regardless.  What was the averted counterfactual, had the [Planar Binding] succeeded?  Our recovering the Bag too quickly?  My contacting an [outsider] that could convey news of our situation to our mutual department, which might then rescue us both, and too quickly for Its game?"

"Those are both possibilities, but not certain to be Its full motive.  It is not certain, from our own perspective, that either of those things would have happened otherwise."

"Consider then that in the averted counterfactual, an [outsider] can also talk to me and answer questions, should it be so minded.  A [Lawful] [outsider] might even tell the truth, and could [swear] to its answers."

"One of us or both have been altered, given false memories."

"If my memories are all true, an [outsider] should tell you that it does not remember your version of {dath ilan}.  This probably does not move you much.  The [outsider] is to you a mere thing of altered-Estha's, and of course it just believes what altered-Estha believes.  If I read your books I would expect them to confirm what altered-Merrin believes, and not be much moved by that.  The [Outer God] would then see little meaning in averting that event, which would change little of Its game."

"Suppose however that my own memories have been altered."

"I would by default believe a [Lawful] outsider which [swore] to me about that."

"So maybe that is the real reason that my [Planar Inquiry] and [Planar Binding] failed: in order to avert the counterfactual where an [outsider] told me something about how my memories had been altered."

"No action on your part is commanded by this.  But it seems to me that you ought to be aware of the chain of reasoning."

“Acknowledged,” Merrin says.

There are so many pieces here and it’s so slippery to think about and why can’t she have a straightforward horrible impossible logistics problem to solve instead.

Taking this whole incredibly silly premise as given: would Merrin expect the "[Lawful] outsider" to know of dath ilan? If - as a hypothetical, there are a lot of other ways this could work, this is just the hypothesis with the highest salience to Merrin right now - if dath ilan "really exists" and, for some sense of what it means for a thing to "exist", so does wherever Estha is from? 

(Does Merrin have the faintest idea how that would work? No! But plenty of things in dath ilan work without Merrin understanding how, she's used to that, and it's never inconvenienced the workings of the things in question. Reality does not require Merrin's understanding in order to do its thing.) 

The answer, within that particular set of assumptions, is...pr...obably not? Since dath ilan certainly showed no sign when Merrin lived there of having heard of [Lawful] outsiders? But, like, she's not certain of that. Maybe a [Lawful] outsider would just confirm that both of their sets of memories happened, for some definition of "happening", just in different...places...by some strange definition of "place"? 

Having read plenty of fiction that involved characters trying to read hints in their surroundings as to what sort of story they were in, Merrin is also definitely has the reflexive thought that, uh, the hints visible to the characters can also be selected for what the narrative wants the characters to think, distinct from whether those tempting inferences are in any way accurate. Estha's hypothesis about an [Outer God] is not quite the same shape of hypothesis, she thinks, but it seems like the same logic could hold, and in short, it feels very difficult to make any trustworthy prediction from here. They have evidence, sure, but the kind that feels like it could indicate completely different updates based on which hypothesis they're comparing it to, and Merrin probably hasn't even thought of every possible hypothesis in the space and in short, aaaaaaaa, Reality is messing with her and she is NOT SMART ENOUGH FOR THIS. 

...She kind of wants to ask Estha what, if Reality is messing with them here, would be a particularly entertaining-plot-generating way for it to do that, but she cannot even slightly think of a way to phrase this question that doesn't sound incredibly stupid, and - fine, maybe she's feeling kind of inhibited on expressing her unformed unfiltered thoughts that might sound really stupid to uncanny-Estha. 

"Do you want to register our advance predictions about what it implies for this theory if you do versus don't get new spells in a few hours?" she asks him. Wow that would have taken less than half the number of syllables to say in Baseline. 

Esta has a feeling that Cultural Adaptation would have told him something about the significance of this question which he may himself be missing.  It is not something that Mariona would've said to him, that's for certain.  It has the feeling of not only a clever question but a culturally clever question.

"I suppose -- if I do not get more spells, it predicts the Outer God's game does not last through this planet's summer, for then neither will we.  It is profoundly improbable that It will in this case helpfully send us back, once Its game is over; but we may be permitted to return through successfully finding the Bag."

"If I do get spells -- the game may be a longer one.  Or it may simply be the sort of game that requires us to successfully speak to one another."

"I think for the most part, I predict that we are meant by It to speak to each other of our altered memories.  From which the spells would follow."

"Whether it is actually our [god] sending those spells, or if It is sabotaging the spells I receive or my ability to ask for them, is of course a separate question."

“…I mean, it’s possible we could survive the summer?” Merrin says. “I was planning to try, on my own, and more plans are possible with two people. But it…doesn’t seem very interesting, if we can’t talk to each other and are just spending all of every day doing really repetitive tasks to stay alive. Probably an [Outer God] could have - different taste in what games it finds entertaining - so that’s not a guaranteed argument, but I think it could still be evidence.”

If Outer Gods found anything like human entertainments to be entertaining, They would be constantly watching humans all the time, and kidnapping mortals on a regular basis... well, Esta supposes he does not know this to be false.

"I doubt It is entertained by anything like what we find entertaining," he says nonetheless.  "But that It has troubled to put two of us here, at least one with false memories, suggests It to take interest in some interaction between us which is liable to depend on us talking."

If there is nothing more to say, Esta will go back to thinking, or thinking while working on such useful work as may not be obviated by his spellcasting.

That he told altered-Mariona of his concerns -- well, partially, a little, it is because of that properly paranoid practice which keeps Worldwound fortresses free of succubi.

But mainly it is to set a good example for Mariona.  See, 'Estha' is willing to consider that his memories may have been altered!  He does not find it too distressing to think about, or a loss of pride to discuss with her; and above all, he does not consider the possibility to constitute himself losing, and Mariona winning, in some game between himself and Mariona.  All of this implicit statement is a lie, of course, but a helpful one.

Esta has a guess, now, though only a guess, about what the victory condition of the Y̷̼̚o̷̪͒g̵͚̋-̴͕͠S̸͚̀ǫ̵͆t̸̥̾h̵̺̋o̴̜̕t̴͚͝ĥ̵̟'s game would obviously be -- if It has troubled to make Its game winnable at all, as may not be remotely in Its own nature.

The time has come when, by Merrin's chronometer, 24 Golarion hours will soon have passed -- as near as Esta can convert those units, for Share Language (Utopian) will not define them any sharper than Esta knows.  They are still in the base; the tide is not yet low enough for them to go hunting along the riverbed.

Esta, then, is already meditating, alert for the contact of his god; if it is his god; and if gods are even a thing.

There is a certain strange fascination in the prospect that everything he knows might be a lie.

But that is not what Esta needs to be thinking about right now, so he does not think it.

Yo.

Oh good.

"Merrin, I have divine contact!"

As soon as he says those words, Esta is already casting Planetary Adaptation on himself.  Hopefully it gets refreshed, but even if not, it would in any case be lost otherwise.

Oh that is good news!

...unless it's not for some reason? Maybe Estha's [god] is terrible or something! 

(This is almost entirely a reflexive contrarian response because Laeirthe, too, is kind of bored and restless from all the waiting.)  

(Merrin ignores Laeirthe because he is being very annoying.) 

She was also watching the time, and staying nearby while she checks power output and usage calculations; she'll pop over to him for the touch-range [spells]. 

Endure Elements.

Share Language (Utopian) (only).

And then -- despite general Asmodean best practices -- because, Esta has said to himself, it seems more likely that Mariona is at the center of this game than himself; and while Esta would be amazed and indeed doubtful if it seemed as simple as curing 'insanity', Mariona may do better without any subtle ability damage she's picked up over the last months of eating strange things --

Heal.

And Esta will not be present to hear out Merrin's reaction to his use of what might or might not be an irreplaceable resource on her and not on him, because Esta now must actually pray.

Estha had mentioned having a healing spell, and that it cures some kinds of...she translated it as "psychotic disorders", Estha's vocabulary in the language he shared did not have the most detailed vocabulary for mental illnesses...and that it seemed unlikely the [Outer God] messing with them would make it that easy, but that he was still considering which of them to use it on. 

...Merrin is faintly surprised that it came out in favor of being her, given that Estha is the one who, one, NEARLY DIED OF TRAUMATIC INJURIES less than a planetary day ago and, two, was transported here in way that seemed to involve a lot more direct contact with the [Outer God] entity playing games with them or whatever the fuck it is, with corresponding impairing side effects. 

But - wow. Wow. 

Merrin has very few reference points to even describe what it feels like. It's not really the same experience as trying on the [belt], except in the abruptness of it; she's not sure how much she was interpreting the sensation of that through her pre-existing expectations, but it did feel like just...having her underlying stamina, the thing she has a lot more of than average but isn't unlimited on, increased dramatically, which is not the feeling she has now.

It doesn't feel like suddenly recovering from an illness; one upside of being alone on an exoplanet for months is the complete lack of anyone to catch infectious diseases from, and either she's been careful enough to avoid problems with local bacteria or they aren't interested in her. (And apparently this isn't the sort of narrative where realistic-yet-inconvenient things happen like "Estha is harmlessly carrying a virus that Merrin has zero pre-existing immunity to" or vice versa.)

It definitely doesn't feel like having injuries instantly fully healed, though she is noticing the lack of a whole lot of vague muscle and joint aches she had been tuning out. She's been pushing her body hard for a very long time. 

She's not at all tired!! It's incredible!!! And there's some kind of subtler ickiness that's gone, too. She really shouldn't have had any micronutrient deficiencies to correct, yet, but maybe her body wasn't delighted at getting exactly the required bare minimum of essential fatty acids and otherwise barely any fat she could digest, and of course her GI tract is probably in a chronic state of mild unhappiness at all the food she's eating that she can't perfectly digest. And now, instead of feeling mildly icky and mildly low-energy, she feels GREAT. 

Aaaaand she can't even thank Estha yet because he's busy! 

...She'll park herself back over at her electronic-screen station and go back to finding and reviewing saved bits of video footage of the river; she's been meaning for a while to use that to draw a more detailed map of the riverbed, and since they're tentatively planning to go walk around looking for Estha's Bag at low tide, now is a good time to actually have a map of the search area where she can mark out caves and obstacles that might catch debris. 

...A couple of minutes into that, Merrin explicitly has the thought that it did not do anything to her memories, or her current set of - hypotheses, none of them feel solid enough to call 'beliefs' - about her situation. 

She doesn't feel surprised at all, really, but it's still more than zero information. Whether it implies that she's not psychotic and has been perceiving Reality more or less accurately (you know, within the usual human limits of sensory perception and filtering and confirmation bias etc), or just implies that whatever entity is messing with her doesn't want to make it that easy to sort this out, is another question. 

Merrin's mind keeps trying to bounce back to - assessing, orienting, making-sense-of. What information does she have, and what hypotheses are compatible with her observations so far, and how does the evidence she's seen weigh for or against each of them? 

But it feels like falling, because...once she thought she knew things, right. Not everything, but - things. That rising CO2 levels reduce blood pH and this triggers the respiratory drive. That both low or high potassium interfere with cardiac electrical signals. That the vascular system has receptors for epinephrine and will respond like so if it's injected into a vein. Simple things like that, things that a medtech who isn't actually all that smart can understand, but however much the greater workings of Civilization were beyond her, she knew medicine as deeply as she knew that two plus two equals four. 

Except that...maybe she doesn't??? Maybe dath ilan "isn't" "real" and none of her memories are of things that actually happened, maybe 'Merrin' is the construction of an [Outer God] playing games with Estha who was her senior colleague in the actual Reality where they were both [clerics] of a [god], and so even the things she thought she could treat as solid ground to make other updates around...aren't that. 

It doesn't feel like it fits together. The feeling Merrin has about it is probably closest akin to "come on, that can't be the twist the narrative is going for, you couldn't pull that off without completely violates suspension of disbelief."

But, of course, it WOULDN'T fit together from her own perspective if all of her memories have been OVERWRITTEN by ones that are MADE UP, and honestly the problem is that that entire angle of thinking about it mostly leaves Merrin feeling like the act of thinking cannot even in principle help her to end up believing truer things. 

...Which is not at all helpful when she's trying to do logistical planning that might keep them alive. 

Merrin will hold in the back of her mind that maybe none of her beliefs are correlated with Reality and maybe no amount of thinking will accomplish anything, you know, just so she's tracking that hypothesis in case something happens that would update her toward it. 

And then she's going to draw maps anyway. 

And Esta prays.

He would like several Locate Objects, please.  Extended Locate Object works too.

If Asmodeus can hear anything more than that, he'd like the Extended Planetary Adaptation and Endure Elements again, and Share Language, and another Heal, and Tongues and 2x Cultural Adaptation, and a Greater Make Whole and the Mending cantrip, and a Imbue With Spell Ability and Word of Recall.

But Esta thinks that part relatively briefly, though as loudly as he can manage.

Esta wants Locate Object.

Esta wants Extended Locate Object.

Four Locate Objects, three Extended Locate Objects.

There is an object he'd like to locate.  It contains things that are useful to Esta, and which will help him serve his Lord; and the contents belong to Cheliax, which belongs to Asmodeus in turn.  So he'd like to Locate that Object, in his Lord's name!

If Esta is correct in reading the Commune as an implied instruction to try to talk to his god, then that bag contains incense.  Which in turn will help Esta to

OBEY ASMODEUS'S ORDERS

if only he can Locate that Object!

Huh.

Asmodeus is sort of getting the vague, distant impression that this squirrel might maybe possibly want to locate an object.

The Day 2 loadout isn't as preset as the Day 1.  Asmodeus can see from here which spells His squirrel still has at the time of prayer; and therefore, implicitly, which spells the squirrel didn't use the previous day.  Asmodeus's plan can be based on that information, without too much increase of intervention cost, so long as Asmodeus is not adapting the rules based on His direct perception and prediction of the surrounding situation.

The squirrel used both the Endure Elements and the Planetary Adaptation, as shouldn't have both been necessary for itself alone.  Also two Share Languages, the Tongues, and the Cultural Adaptation?  That's a bit surprising for a planet that's uninhabited; or at least, devoid of any inhabitants close enough to Asmodeus on the alignment chart to be perceptible to Him, which argues against a planetwide population.  If His pet squirrel got lost in a companion's presence, Asmodeus would not have expected the Share Language to prove necessary.  If His pet squirrel found a native alien of foreign alignment, why did that alien need an Endure Elements?  There are many possible hypotheses, here, but not enough evidence to narrow them down.

Asmodeus's preset plan says to mostly restore those spells of the Day 1 loadout that ended up being used; He will therefore restore the Endure Elements, Extended Planetary Adaptation, both Share Languages, the Tongues, and the Cultural Adaptation.  The squirrel also gets a refreshed Greater Make Whole and Heal.

The Liberating Command got used, which is going to trigger some other helpful spells for that sort of implied situation and its possible developments; although not a repeat of Liberating Command, because probably that spell either worked or it didn't.

The Augury got used, but not the Divination or the Commune.  That plausibly corresponds to a situation where an idiot squirrel tried to test if something weird could be 'incense', not understanding that this is not how anything works.  Asmodeus will refresh the Augury, but not the Divination, in hopes of helping to convey the general default of 'you usually retain the spells you use'; also it's possible the squirrel just needed an Augury and not a Divination.

The Commune stays, because the pet squirrel CONTINUES to be instructed to TALK TO ITS OWNER if possible.

The Planar Inquiry and Planar Binding have been used, and won't be refreshed.  They'll either have worked or not.  This tiny fragment of Asmodeus's attention is not about to start checking with Hell's chain of command to see if the reporting attempt was successful.

Some of the lower-expected-value default spells in the Day-1-updated Day 2 loadout will be replaced by a couple of Locate Objects and an Extended Locate Object.  It's hard to tell how much object location the squirrel wanted, exactly?  Asmodeus did get the impression the squirrel wanted more than one.  If the squirrel keeps using all the Locates every day, it'll eventually start getting even more.

With any luck, the incredibly lost squirrel has been told of some hugely valuable object nearby, which can be found by simple Location -- or maybe, whose containing dungeon's entrance can be found by Location -- and the squirrel will someday get that object back to Asmodeus's part of Golarion!  Asmodeus has won a couple of planets that way, in the distant past; though expecting it to play out that way for Rovagug's Cage would be a lot more to hope for.

Asmodeus will accordingly delay longer before giving the pet squirrel a Sending that might succeed in contacting Asmodeus's favoritest pet squirrel for a Gate to retrieve it.  This pet squirrel might be doing useful things where it is!

...Esta will take this as evidence that his deity can maybe hear him a tiny bit if Esta focuses really hard on conveying one request, but is otherwise almost entirely unable to see Esta, or the planet that Esta is on.  Asmodeus may in fact be reasoning largely off which spells Esta has used.

(There's a strange sort of internal disquiet, bubbling about this thought; and for some reason Esta's mind decides to take this moment to remind itself that a 6th-circle is probably worth a Discern Location and Gate to retrieve, if he is incompetent enough not to retrieve himself.  Or, for that matter, a 7th-circle Greater Scry might succeed in placing a sensor on him, where a 6th-circle Planar Binding failed to bring forth an entire outsider.)

Esta has back the Cure Light and Cure Moderate that he used, and not some other spells that he did not use.  Esta has an Augury but not a Divination.  That seems particularly indicative of spells being refreshed according to their having been used.  The Commune is still there, perhaps by way of indicating an outstanding instruction to talk to his god if possible.

Esta received other spells for escaping, defending himself, or enslaving local mortals -- maybe on account of his using the Liberating Command? -- which Esta is probably going to ignore, unless he can think of a way to talk Merrin into accepting a geas without that interfering with their current working relationship.  Esta cannot think off the top of his head of a geas that would be worth the relationship risk.

"I have been [granted] some Locate Object, though not as much as I asked or as much as I hoped.  Two 3rd-circle each [12 minutes], one 4th-circle Extended that will last [24 minutes].  Endure Elements and Extended Planetary Adaptation were both refreshed, and Share Language, and Tongues, and Greater Make Whole."  And Cultural Adaptation though Esta is not naming that one out loud.  "No [Word of Recall], no [Imbue with Spell Ability].  My initial guess at our situation:  I can perhaps request one new spell at best, per day, by concentrating hard on that alone; and old spells I use will usually be renewed."

"I have also received a new 2nd-circle divination, Lay of the Land, which will grant me one day's knowing of the geography for [6 miles] around wherever I use it."