Korva is going to just turn around and continue being annoyed with Shelyn. She's not sure whether she's annoyed about the event itself or annoyed that she doesn't understand how this has anything to do with - well, she supposes Shelyn probably cares about concerts. STILL. DUMB. STUPID. POINTLESS. Sosiel would probably like it.

She will generously allow Ember to play with the lions and toddlers for ten minutes, because apparently Ember wants to do that, and then they are going to someplace less stupid. Which is closer, Erastil or Irori?

Erastil! Irori's out on a hilltop with a monastery attached.

Hilltops are stupid. Actually she's pretty sure she doesn't usually feel like that and is just annoyed at Shelyn, or possibly at Nirvana for having lions that play with children ( - Zara would love them, probably), but whatever. 

Are they doing anything at the temple of Erastil at this hour.

Of all the temples she has gone to they are the one having most recognizably a worship service. There's a sermon and hymns and pauses for quiet prayer and readings from Erastil's holy book and so on.

You know what, she can just sit in the back and listen. Having a recognizable worship service is not patently offensive to her.

She feels kind of bad about getting that one Erastil cleric eaten alive by rats. Daeran brought him back five seconds after without them having to waste a diamond on it, he's not dead or anything, but she feels kind of bad about it anyway. This is probably a concerning association to have with Erastil, but it was kind of her most recent interaction with one of his clerics, so that's mostly what she finds herself thinking about.

This Erastil cleric is an old man who does not look like he led the kind of life in which he was eaten alive by rats even temporarily. He has a deep, gravelly, reassuring voice. 

Well, you can't tell from whether someone has a reassuring voice, can you. Ember has a reassuring voice. Give Kyado forty years, and he might be fine.

She's heard it said that in the rural regions of Cheliax -which is most of the country, as it is everywhere - the peasants are almost as devoted to Erastil as to Asmodeus, and Archerfeast is the largest festival of the year. She's mostly heard it with the gloss that the peasants are weak, idiotic people who place their stomachs above all else, and who need to be reined in by their infernal masters and subjected to harsher and more complete control than the rural nobles are willing to bother with (the rural nobles also being weak and idiotic, in some of these conversations). But she wonders, listening, whether their stomachs are only most of the reason that Cheliax has this problem.

She ducks out just as the service looks like it's winding down, so she doesn't have to deal with talking to anyone as everyone leaves.

"Why are we only looking at temples? The temples won't tell you what a city is like."

"...I guess because the temples are the obvious thing that wasn't here when I visited last. I guess I was wondering how it's changed."

"What do you want to see, Ember?"

So Ember takes them to the very worst part of the city, where the poorest people live.

...okay, fine, but she's going to disguise what she's wearing and at least take off Ember's most obvious magic items, so that they look like remotely normal people.

There are, actually, temples down by the tanneries, too, and among the densely-packed shacks that cling to the outside of the city walls. Just Sarenrae and Aroden, and this Arodenite temple doesn't have a library or a glass roof. (It does have murals urging you, personally, to sign up for the Shining Crusade.) The children here aren't clothed, but do actually mostly look fed, and no one is visibly injured; brightly colored scraps of fabric flutter in the windows of makeshift houses.

They are watched warily. 

Yeah, well, the children in her Kintargo are fed, mostly, and also they have clothes. Sometimes they're injured, but you can't have everything, can you.

She feels uncomfortable here, and wonders whether she's really lost so much touch with who she used to be that she feels uncomfortable in slums. But that's not it, she realizes, after a minute. She's uncomfortable not knowing what they're here for.

Ember's not uncomfortable anywhere. Did they need to be here for something specific? Is that how sightseeing works?

Ember says hello to people, and heals a bird, and has a long conversation with a cat, and asks children how to play the games they're playing. If she runs into anyone who looks like they need help with something she knows how to do, like laundry or cleaning, she'll ask if she can help.

The children will teach Ember their games! They're playing marbles, and hide-and-seek, and Crusaders, in which you are a crusader and stab the undead with your magic sword.

No one will turn down help with laundry. They're trying to get it done by sundown so they can nip in and get their skin, scoured raw from the lye, healed at the sundown healing. They do ask Ember where she's from.

Ember likes doing laundry. It reminds her of when she was very small, and used to help her mother with it.

"I was born in Kyonin! But I've lived in Mendev for a long time, and it's nice there, too. Korva grew up here, so we're visiting together. Do you like it here?"

(Korva does not, particularly, like doing laundry, but she'll follow Ember's lead and try not to look grumpy about it. It's kind of grounding, really, after you get past the fundamental absurdity of spending an evening on this.)

Most of them have never been anywhere else! One woman grew up in Korvosa and says Kintargo is nicer, the streets are safer, and one grew up in Menador and says that there are more monsters there. They mostly haven't heard of Mendev or Kyonin but Ember is an elf so it makes sense she'd be from fascinatingly exotic places that no one's heard of. Is Mendev in newly liberated Molthune province, one woman's husband was thinking about going there where they're giving out land to anyone who'll build a good farm on it.

"Mendev's in the north, where it's very cold in the wintertime. I'm not sure where Molthune province is."

The woman whose husband wants to move there knows! It's north of the duchy of Isger, though you actually get there by boat from Kerse, in the duchy of Druma. It's mostly forest, of course, but the crusaders cleared it out of undead and now they want people to live there so monsters don't all get settled in and make it too dangerous.

"That sounds nice! Kyonin is mostly forest, too."

Korva is not sure how much she's learning from this, either, but in Ember's defense she has literally not told her what she's trying to learn because it's a secret.

They can do laundry until the evening healing and then tag along for that, even though they can of course just heal themselves. In case it's somehow instructive.

It's the Sarenrite temple, built in a big ring for a channel, and of course if there's more people than space they'll do a second one. They go home, first, to get elderly relatives and pregnant women - it's said if you make it to the channel lots of times while you're expecting, the baby will be stronger and healthier - and then on over. One man is chair-bound and four people carry him.

There's no sermon; the priest greets them at the door, mostly by name, and then once the room's full does the channel and then shoos them out. They talk the whole time, including while the priest is invoking Sarenrae, which the priest doesn't seem to mind (though somebody's grandmother does, and tries quite heatedly to get them all to show some respect.) The children are chattering and singing. 

"You'll be staying for dinner?" one of the women they did laundry with asks.

"If you'll have us! Thank you so much, that's so kind!"

...sure. Honestly she feels kind of weird about taking people's food, but sure, fine, they can stay for dinner.