On a very smooth black street lined with strange, very uniform two-story houses and a few small trees. It's either just after sunset or just before dawn and nobody is around except a cat, which runs away, and a teenage boy, who takes one look at her and collapses to the ground in terror and despair.

This is it this is the end he got away with it this long and now it's over, the future was always pain and now it's nothing but pain--

(a tiny note of confusion, because he's not worth sending an angel to kill him personally, but he doesn't have his wits about him enough to really notice it)

- is there anything here menacing him other than her? No? 

:Where am I?: she asks the cowering boy. 

???????

"Magnolia Street in Greenville Iowa?" he says in a shaky voice, and then adds "The dominion of God?" in case it was a rhetorical question. He continues lying prostrate on the pavement waiting to die.

"You can stand, child, I don't intend to hurt you. I think that I arrived here by enemy action from the departing side, not from this one, and I have never heard of Iowa. Do... you have cause to think the forces of Good are your enemy?"

Bruce gets as far as kneeling upright but can't actually manage standing up as a purely physical task. (Enemy action? Departing side? What?) Is the angel giving him a last chance to repent and ask for mercy? He wants to, but he knows it won't work, because the voice of his pride is still there in the back of his head saying no, this is bad, he doesn't deserve to die.

"I am a depraved and unrepentant sinner," he says, ashamedly, because that much at least is true.

"Well, you can't kill people just for that." She sheaths the sword. She is very very confused and she doesn't like being unarmed while very confused but it's clearly sending some wrong signals, here.

It belatedly occurs to him that the angel is probably on some other task altogether and he isn't worth killing specifically after all. He should feel relieved about that, probably. Mostly he just has no idea what he's supposed to be doing or why the angel is talking to him.

"Is, is there anything you want of me?" He feels like he ought to apologize for wasting the angel's time but probably the angel has some kind of reason for talking to him?

"I did not come here by my own intent." She already said that but maybe he missed it. "I don't know anything about Iowa or Greenville. If you like, you could tell me more about this place, and direct me to the nearest temple before my translation runs out, but if you don't want to do that I am not going to insist. I am guessing I'll be able to find some people who are less frightened of me?" 

He has finally acquired enough space in his brain for a new flavor of fear, this time fear of what kind of demon could cause an angel to be somewhere by accident and need help finding a church. This one is actually a sufficiently ill-defined fear that it doesn't stop him from saying, "I can show you where the church is--I don't know if anyone will be there at this hour. Most people have no reason to fear angels. They'll just be very surprised." He figures out getting his feet under the rest of him and points up the street. "It's this way."

"Thank you. Which god is it a church of?"

Blink blink blink. ". . . The true God?"

" - I see. Tell me more about the true God?"

"Uh, created the universe, sent His Son to die for our sins? Sorry, um, are you quizzing me or are you not actually an angel?"

"I am a paladin, and only an angel for fifteen minutes at a time when it's helpful, and the angels I know serve several different gods and usually don't serve the Creator of the universe because She's, you know, not Good."

"I think possibly I may have gone insane. Or you're from? Somewhere else? Outside the universe?" Or she's a demon but nothing good can come of pointing that out.

"I don't have any good guesses myself. If I had to start guessing I would guess that this place is, uh, a vanity project of a powerful person purporting to be, but not in fact, the Creator of the universe, though it's also possible that I am indeed outside my normal universe." And getting more likely as time goes on and no one shows up to find her, though it hasn't in fact been long enough yet for Alfirin to prepare and try a Gate if a Greater Teleport failed.

"Do you maybe want me to get you a Bible? I have one in my house; it's a lot closer than the church."

"That's the holy book of your local god? That sounds useful. Yes, please. Can you also give me a short summary of His - teachings and so on -"

"Okay. Um." He turns around and starts walking back towards his house, kind of sideways so he doesn't have to take his eyes off the air a few feet to Iomedae's left. "I'm really not the best person to explain this--I'm kind of the worst person actually--but the basic outline is that Adam and Eve, the first humans, disobeyed God by eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and ever since then humans have been sinful" (does wherever she's from have humans? do they have original sin?) "but God sent His Son to Earth as a human to live a sinless life and then die for our sins, and anyone who repents and accepts Him will go to heaven."

" - oh, that's clever. I mean, I'm surprised that it works, but if it works then it's - a very big deal, we should introduce it in the places that I'm from. ...in the places that I'm from, you have to be a lawful and good person to go to Heaven, and lots of people end up in the Evil afterlives which are bad for them."

"Yes! I still don't understand where you came from but probably if you can get back there and spread the gospel to everyone that will do it. It's pretty amazing that you have anyone going to heaven at all without Christ; do humans not have original sin where you're from?" (This is still probably a demon playing games with him but if so it's a demon with a very infectious smile. And his day is still going infinitely better than he thought it was going to a few minutes ago. And it's kind of nice to pretend for a bit that he's going to be peripherally involved in saving a whole planet of pagans.)

"Well, all people do some bad things, even very virtuous people, but you don't have to have never done anything wrong to make Heaven, just to do much more good than harm, and try to improve when you do harm, and keep learning and growing." 

"Oh. That sounds nice. Here any sin separates you from God, and everyone is born having inherited the sin of Adam, so we need Christ to reconcile us to God. Maybe the thing you have is what God did for salvation in your world and sending Christ is what He did in ours?" This is probably heretical but he's already damned. Also he's at his front door. "Um, I'll be back with a Bible in a minute or two?" He doesn't want a maybe-demon in his house with his sleeping parents but he doesn't actually think he has a choice about it.

She nods agreeably. "I'll wait."