See, that's the thing: if he thought he had good enough judgment he'd look into all the churches, figure out how they work and whether any of them are likely to be secretly run by demons, and make use of any that aren't. He's not going to because he can't, because he doesn't have good judgment and because he can't take any actions at all. And Atsinni probably isn't going to because it's not fun. It's not clear that Atsinni could, or should, it's just that whether he could or not doesn't actually factor into what happens. Or maybe it does, who knows; the mind reading only goes one way, after all. Anyway, it doesn't matter.

<I wish I understood - so I haven't been to one recently, and I got the idea that it's not very common to do that anymore, but, you know, I think demons discouraged me from it and I remember churches being important before and if there are lots of them around then maybe they are still important - I guess what I'm getting at is, is going a good way to seem like an unremarkable human?>

<I don't have to spend literally all my time doing things that are fun and going to churches seems safe. I haven't gotten orders about it one way or the other so it's probably fine.>

Somehow that answer isn't within the range of answers he expected, not that he thought through explicitly what he did expect. He'd kind of like to ask for a better model of Atsinni's goals than he currently has but maybe there's no point in that, since he wouldn't trust anything Atsinni said, and maybe it'd be unfair to ask and then not believe the answer. But it still seems silly if he's going around stupidly expecting something really uncharitable and not even checking. Maybe the solution is to just do a better job of realizing he doesn't know anything and not imagine he has any idea how Atsinni feels about anything.

<Maybe you'll get used to me after it's been a few weeks or something.>

On the way home they can stop at an Episcopalian church and have a look around.

It's... a nice place.

He has complicated feelings about church that he's not interested in untangling right now, some tangle of homesickness and anger and grief and self-loathing.

They can... sit in a pew and look through the books that are lying around?

Apparently they can.

He'd have an easier time figuring out what was up with this church if he could watch the people who come here interact with each other. No, false, he can't trust any impressions he might have of them, never mind. They can read books. He hates nonfiction, it's untrustworthy but text worms its way into his thoughts and even if he doesn't trust it he ends up thinking about explicitly rejecting it in particular... but this is important and he's not complaining. Sort of. Insofar as it's volitional at all. 

Well if it'll keep him from complaining Atsinni is happy to sit there and read for a while. <I do want to sleep tonight, right after a Pool visit is the right time for it if you want to be groggy for those.>

<It's fine.>

He shouldn't have asked Atsinni not to sleep in the first place, it makes it easier to zone out and not have inconvenient preferences but caring about that is selfish of him and he should instead want to be as functional as possible.

Presumably he means selfish with respect to the denizens of Hell; it's not too inconvenient for Atsinni.

They go home and Atsinni skips dinner and goes to sleep.

Awwwww. He's not sure he should be happy about that, Atsinni has made all those arguments that he shouldn't be, but in fact he's overcome with affection and very touched.

He has the usual complement of nightmares but the last one tonight involves rescuing Aang from the Fire Nation.

Aww.

They do have to eat breakfast but then it's off to the mall to mill around - oh, and attend their embroidery class! It lasts three hours and they are doing a sampler.

He's more upset about breakfast, having gotten his hopes up.

But there's something - steadying, or something, he can't identify the feeling - about the idea that Atsinni would do something for his sake that wasn't trivial. It doesn't mean existence isn't miserable. It doesn't mean either of them wouldn't damn the other if it seemed like a good idea. It doesn't mean either of them has a plan, or that they're working together, or that it will ever happen again. It just means that one day someone chose to sacrifice something for him, and for no particular reason that means he finds it easy to focus on the thinking he needs to get done.

Also it means that if he were confident in his decisionmaking, and confident Atsinni hadn't planned it that way on purpose, and confident it wouldn't damn thousands of other people, and confident that for some reason exactly one of the two of them would have to go to Hell and suffer forever, and if it were his choice who - exactly none of which conditions obtain - he'd go himself, and it wouldn't be a hard choice.

So anyway. Three hours of embroidery class, which is sort of nice to watch and doesn't take much attention to enjoy in the background while thinking. And how do you get to be confident of things? How do you come up with a well-founded idea of some things as more likely than others, if you can't be certain? Of course Atsinni behaving that way could just be a plan to win his loyalty and not actual kindness - a thought that hurts very badly - but surely it means something, even if the thing it means is that Atsinni wants his loyalty, even if the thing it means is that Atsinni either wants his loyalty or cares about him - it seems like it's more likely to mean one of those things than to mean that Atsinni is really fascinated with spiders, right? Only why? Is that just an untrustworthy feeling or is there something to it?

The thing is that if it meant Atsinni were really fascinated with spiders, that would raise some questions, like "how do you get from being really fascinated with spiders to skipping dinner?" Whereas if it means that Atsinni likes him, it doesn't raise questions like that. Is there a way to be sure he's not missing questions? What exactly defines the category of question he's concerned with? It feels like in one case all the steps that would lead from the theory to the observation are clear, but in the other he doesn't see how the theory leads to the observation at all. But doesn't that say more about his imagination? Couldn't there be an explanation that he just isn't aware of? What if which sorts of connections between theories and observations he can easily think of has to do with what he was taught by demons trying to make him wrong about things? Is there something that doesn't rely on his poisoned intuition or judgment, something mathlike in its objectivity?

If Atsinni was nice to him because Atsinni is really fascinated with spiders - what, does Atsinni want to ask him later to ask another slave questions about spiders while they're at the Pool? Maybe there's a slave who studied them before being captured? Something else could happen to be true that, in addition to Atsinni really liking spiders, would explain Atsinni being kind. (He's going to feel so stupid if Atsinni actually just wasn't in the mood - another simple explanation - but that's not the point.) Atsinni liking him would explain it without needing any extra facts - is that true? What if Atsinni was going to Hell and didn't want him to grieve and decided to be an asshole to achieve that? Okay, additional facts do determine whether Atsinni liking him leads to Atsinni being kind to him. That feels somehow weirder and less default, as though there's something default about being nice to people you like that's not default about being nice to people you don't like when you're fascinated with spiders, but maybe that's just poisoned intuition. If there were a quantifiable amount of expectedness and he could be confident about that then he can see how he could get somewhere from there without relying on poisoned intuition about how to change his mind when things happen. But that's a big if, that he can basically only see how to apply to extremely simple and objective things like how many fingers he subjectively experiences himself as having.

Well, but aside from that - he's confused and mostly feels grim and afraid, but he'd say he's okay for the first time he can remember. (He'd say so because he doesn't have experience with a wide enough range of possible amounts of okayness to know what being okay even means, but still.)

There's a section in the sampler that the teacher leaves open to put whatever you want at the end of the class. Atsinni puts a spider in it.

He wonders if he's being made fun of.

<Partly that but partly because you were thinking about them so much I couldn't come up with anything else.>

<I guess.>

It's a delicate carefully-embroidered little spider and the teacher compliments it.

Maybe he should be proud of Atsinni. Or maybe the teacher is lying. Or something. Who knows.

Atsinni doesn't have an opinion on that. He buys a sewing kit and more thread and embroidery hoops and muslin and embroiders in the atrium for a change.

It seems nice that he has a hobby.

Which is odd, because arguably having any preferences or goals besides destroying Hell is not nice at all. But still.

This time he is doing flowers and birds.

Flowers and birds are nice. They're right up near the top of the list of things he missed while he wasn't on Earth.

And end-of-day they go home.

And when they're out of sight, there's an unexpected touch and they're elsewhere, in the middle of a cherry orchard.