"I see. So this is what you're talking about, when you say that your personal form of love will necessarily be more specific. You are not in a position to have a typical marriage, the kind of marriage in which you marry a man and bear his children and raise them. If you find love, it will not look like that, it will be different. Unusual. Atypical. And because of that, you distrust it, you're not sure if you can learn anything from it that is generally human and good for you to know as you move into your existence as a goddess. Is that right?"

Fuck if this didn't turn out to be a queer oppression case after all.

"Well, I can't have the set of experiences associated with being a wife and mother. And for that matter I can't have the experiences associated with being a husband and father, or the experiences associated with being a slave, or a peasant, or an orc, or a merperson. I have approximately resigned myself to that, though I do think it will probably impair me in becoming the ideal god.  When I say that love seems specific I mean something more than that - that loving Alfirin does not seem to me to be mostly about experiencing love, it seems to me mostly about experiencing Alfirin. Maybe I'd feel differently if I'd been in love with more than one person."

Okay, okay, Ramona will rein in her desire to launch into some sort of soapbox speech about how Non-reproductive Lesbian Love is Love. Iomedae has a good point.

"Is that because of who Alfirin is? Does she seem so very different from other people you might love? Or do you think you would feel this way no matter who you loved, if there were only one of her?"

"Alfirin is very different from everyone else in the world," she says fondly. "There is no one like her. There are other people I could imagine falling in love with, and it'd be for some similar qualities - ambition, honor, ruthlessness, a sort of self-containedness - but I would have to go to some pretty extraordinary lengths to find them. There aren't ten, I'm sure of that."

Iomedae is almost beaming!

"I think a lot of people feel like that. That their beloved is special, different, very hard to replace."

"Now, I'll grant you that Alfirin really does sound quite remarkable, objectively quite different from the general population of your planet! But I am not sure you are having a unique experience for all that. I guess it's hard to know until I hear more about your actual relationship."

"When I was in my twenties I thought the degree to which Alfirin seemed special to me was probably an error of some kind but at this point she is an archmage and I feel justified in my assessment."

"Is it possible that Alfirin is objectively extremely special, AND that your experience of loving her is still in some ways typical of what love is like for a lot of people?"

"It could be, but it seems a striking coincidence if so!"

Ramona is in danger of extending too far, trying to convince a client of a point of view, and not even one she's sure of at this point. It's too much and she should back off. If she's right, she can always come back to it later. Timing is everything.

To Iomedae: "Fair enough, I guess it's hard to say!"

To Alfirin: "Hello there, sorry to ignore you for so long. Welcome back to you also, I'm glad to see you. How has your time been since our first session? Anything you want to share about what you've been thinking about?"

"I have been thinking about Shelyn's goals and the extent to which I endorse being guided by them. I have not yet determined that. I spoke to Her priestess who - eventually - told me that she thinks our obligations will be fulfilled after three sessions, and I think it is likely that I would prefer to stop at that point, which it seems good for you to know as I expect it affects your plans."

Ooof, that's a bit of a blow. Three sessions is not very much time at all, especially when you haven't even established goals for therapy after the first 1.1 sessions! Still, Ramona is grateful for the heads-up, it's more than she often gets, and Alfirin is right that it will help her plan.

Ramona wonders... does Shelyn think three sessions is enough because it will have worked by then? Can gods predict the future? Or is it more like, if three sessions doesn't do it, then more won't help?

This is among the questions Ramona does not actually need an answer to, to do her job.

She tries not to let her disappointment show. Alfirin doesn't need any more pressure than she's already under.

"Thank you for telling me! You are correct, that does help me plan."

"I've been thinking about Shelyn's role in all of this as well. It is quite awkward, having only Shelyn's word for it that this process is good for you according to your own values, but not knowing how or why that might be true. Can you say more about how you wish to proceed? I don't want to be a party to coercing you in any way."

"I am not being coerced." Why does everyone seem to think she's being coerced? "Iomedae and I are doing something for Shelyn, in exchange for Shelyn doing something for us. I think Shelyn is probably wrong about this being good for me by my values, though it might be the case that undergoing this process without Her having been involved would have been... I think it's best to proceed as you would for any other pair of people with our history, and not change things because of how we came to be here, apart from taking into account the time limit. Unless you think talking about Shelyn's involvement is an important part of relationship counseling."

Ramona wants to know more about whether Shelyn could be wrong about Alfirin's goals. Are Golarion gods omniscient? Apparently not?

Ramona also really wanted to ask about the Shining Crusade, or about any of the other confusing cultural terms she's encountered so far, but with the clock ticking, she's not sure she can afford to. She'll have to prioritize.

"All right. Thank you for being so clear. It is hard for me to tell what is important -- I remain very curious about Shelyn's involvement -- but given the time limit, I think I'd better focus on your history as a couple and the issues you brought up last time. Those things almost certainly matter, and we'll have to stay focused just to get through those in three sessions, so we had better press on."

"When we stopped last time, we were on the verge of talking about the breakup, but Alfirin, you wanted to go and think about Shelyn first. You also said just now that you hadn't really resolved your questions about Shelyn. Did you make enough progress that we can talk about the breakup, or should we choose another topic?"

Alfirin has the option of choosing another topic and running out the clock if she wants to. Ramona can still give her that much.

"We can talk about the breakup. The only things I'm still uncertain about are about what I endorse doing outside of here."

"All right, good."

"If that works for you, as well, Iomedae?" she looks in Iomedae's direction and pauses for objections.

"Either of you can begin, if you're both ready. Tell me the story. What tripped you up, and why were you unable to fix it?"

"The short version is that - we worked well together as friends, and as partners and - I was very happy being intimately involved. I believe Iomedae was too. But things came up - that are I guess we never really resolved. Me seeking immortality. Me being more comfortable with doing evil. Iomedae ascending, and the god that she expects to be... And I realized it would not really be fair to her, to continue to have a relationship with her while being - likely to at some point be evil. While being someone who would pursue immortality at - many costs that she would not consider acceptable. So I left."

" - I broke up with her. Because of - the things that she mentioned, because she wanted to be immortal and was willing to do things to do it that I - couldn't countenance, that I was making laws against which I - couldn't exactly make an exception to because I loved her - and - and in general I couldn't - make exceptions because I loved her - I realized that I believed on some level that she would go to Hell, and believed on some level that I would chase her there to get her back, and - that wasn't fair to anyone else -"

"I think maybe it is time I learned more about what you mean by 'evil,' exactly."

"And I realize, we talked about this early on, Alfirin, you might choose not to get into specific plans that you have for the future, it may be better for a variety of reasons to keep that to yourself. But can we talk generally about the class of things you're both thinking of? I don't have a very clear idea."

What are they going to say, Ramona wonders. Sacrificing babies? Summoning demons? Blighting crops?

"Prioritizing my own selfish interests sufficiently strongly over those of others. I believe I would kill a significant number of innocent people in order to preserve my own life. Hundreds, maybe many hundreds. I would probably torture someone if I had a good enough reason and expected it to work. Likewise for destroying someone's soul, or - many other things that are generally considered extremely bad to do to someone else."

This is Ramona's neutral, unjudgey face.

"Do you feel inner conflict about that, or are you at peace with it? How do you make it okay with yourself to do those things?"

"I would prefer that the things I'd kill hundreds for could all be easily achieved without harming anybody? I care about other people living, I just care about myself living much more than that. It would be - convenient, in a sense - if there were never tradeoffs between things I cared about, but I don't believe that to be the world we're living in. I don't know whether you'd call that inner conflict."

Iomedae is more still and less expressive than before they got on this topic, and not doing the thing where she suppresses the urge to linger on an interesting conversation. She is also picking her words very precisely. "The - usual - methods of attaining immortality involve a lot of human sacrifice. There might be something better. I hope very much that Alfirin finds something better. But most people who think they will find something better are mistaken, and either end up dying and going to an afterlife or end up - trying steadily worse and worse things in increasing desperation.

I - do not want to say that there is no evil I would ever countenance, I am fighting a war. I do not want to say that there is no unnecessary evil I would ever countenance. There are - kinds of selfishness - that do not seem to me to be as - dangerous, as much a road to greater evils in the future. 

But I think that the willingness to bring about the end to many other peoples' lives for immortality is a degree of evil that is - sufficient to cause nearly all of the great horrors that hold civilization back from surpassing the gods, and the cause of much of it, and - I can, self-evidently, love someone while knowing this is true of them. But I think that I could, when I was young, only really feel good about it to the extent I believed that Alfirin would - do better, if I could find her something better, and that I could if she trusted me. And I do think Alfirin believes herself to be a worse person than she really is, and I separately believe that there are lots of routes to the things that she wants which only become available if you are predictably someone who won't slaughter innocents. 

But it seems ill-advised to - attempt a romantic relationship with the premise that if only I love her enough she won't do what she believes she will, or that I will always be able to find a better way, or that ultimately I am right and she is wrong about being a Good person being on balance the better way to accomplish the things she wants to accomplish. Especially since - one of the things I believed until a few years ago was that if she wasn't willing to do great evils for selfish reasons Arazni would obviously help her with a better kind of immortality. And now Arazni is dead, or worse than dead.

Also she - knows now how it goes in the future. Maybe that changes things. I can imagine many possible ways it could have gone in the future that would change my assessment here."

Alfirin is very still. Iomedae's words might be directed at Ramona but most of them are meant for her to hear. And mostly touch on topics that feel very dangerous, though they'll probably get to them all today anyways. (Alfirin feels that even though her obligation to be here expires after two more sessions, she still needs to take relationship counseling seriously, and that means completing all the conversations that have been scheduled unless Ramona has other recommendations to displace them.)

...But later today does not have to mean right now, and she is, after all, a bit of a coward. "I think," she says instead, slowly and carefully, "that if Arazni could have helped me with immortality if I were unwilling to do significant evils for immortality, then doing so would have come at a substantial cost. It seems likely that that is not any less - selfishly allowing people to be harmed - than pursuing immortality myself would be, if one is only counting the harm, and is not particular about which hand deals the blow, and counts evils willfully not prevented as much as evils actively caused. That was not among my reasons for not asking her for help, but would have been if I had not had other sufficient reasons, and were I a Good person. And I believe that, given that cost, she would not help if the consequence of not helping was merely that I would die and go to Heaven in twenty years. Or longer than that, longevity is a much easier problem."