"Ridiculous."

Control your face, Iomedae, it's making things worse. But of course Alfirin has always been the best person in the world at reading her. 

"Shelyn will help us on the condition that you and I get 'relationship counseling' from a relationship counselor she recommends. On another planet. To mitigate confidentiality concerns."

She blinks. "Well. Doesn't She have anything better to - nevermind. I'll do it of course, assuming there's no trick - did Her priest say how long we're expected to spend on this?"

"I didn't ask. I should have, of course, but I was - surprised. Thank you for doing it. I will ask Aroden but I doubt there's a trick, just -" dumb priorities. That's an unkind and uncareful thing to say about a god who is helping her with something she cares very deeply about and maybe also an unkind and uncareful thing to say to Alfirin. "I told her I'd have to ask you. I'll make another appointment and get some clarifications. It'll be substantially inconvenient for us both to be out but manageable if we schedule carefully."

Bad priorities. Yes. She doesn't take it personally, she agrees wholeheartedly. It makes sense that Iomedae wouldn't say it. "Did she mention which planet? If it's not one of the ones around the sun Shelyn might need to provide transportation."

"She didn't say. I will follow up on that as well. - I guess getting to visit another planet will be pretty fascinating, though if it's coming out of Nirvana's budget I suppose we can't go run around acquiring all their books."

"A pity."

Imagine having that kind of power and using it on relationship counseling - this is not a productive line of thought.

She reaches out to the church of Shelyn requesting some clarifications on the requirements. Is transport to the other planet included. How much time are they expected to spend. Can Shelyn offer any assurance about whether this is a good idea by their own priorities, or failing that by Aroden's. 

They'll set up a specialized mindscape for interworld relationship counseling. Sessions are generally an hour a week for a few months, but the question is mildly suggestive of having an attitude that will make relationship counseling less productive: the point is to do it for as long as it is improving your capacity to love and relate to and have justified trust in one another. 

Shelyn thinks this is unambiguously a good idea by their own priorities and wouldn't have asked it otherwise. 

Iomedae conveys this to Alfirin.

Well, a mindscape would solve the logistical problems of transit to another planet and also keep them away from any libraries. Not that either of them actually would pile up the intervention bill for Nirvana, but - other people might. She wonders if Shelyn's church extorts people into relationship counseling often.

Over the years Ramona has gone back and forth about her intake processes. She started from her Earth Human templates. As cultural missteps mounted she added more and more questions to her intake questionnaires in hopes that she could prevent any repeated disasters.

"What do you wish for more or less of in your sex life," for example, turned into "Describe in detail what a typical sexual encounter is on your world/in your species, and how you are atypical with respect to that," and then "please explain the cultural, biological, and relational significance of any acts associated with sexual or asexual reproduction and/or the sharing of pleasure in your species, culture, and your relationship in particular."

This did not work.

Clients do not want to write whole textbooks prior to their first session, they just want to get started. And sometimes even that's a bit much; just like on Earth, interdimensional clients often have mixed feelings about being in therapy in the first place. The less you get in their way, the better.

So right now, Ramona's intake process pendulum has swung all the way to "seat of the pants" mode. She's winging it.

She's winging it so hard that she barely even glances at the materials the Astral Therapy Agency sent over prior to this appointment. And when the clients' astral projections fuzz into place in her therapy room, she's pleased to see that they look humanoid, or even actually human, though of course that can be deceiving.

"Welcome! I'm Ramona. I'm going to do my best to help you. Please arrange the projections of your bodies comfortably on the couch there, and when you're ready, could you please introduce yourselves and say a little bit about why you're here?"

She sits, somewhat stiffly. 

"My name is Alfirin. I am a human wizard from the planet Golarion, which I assume you've never heard of but if you have then maybe that reduces the amount of cultural translation we'll have to do from what I'm expecting. Proximately, we are here because Shelyn demanded it as the price to save our friend from involuntary lichdom. Ultimately we are here because we were romantically involved briefly, about sixteen years ago, and..." And what, Alfirin? And she still loves Iomedae, but she can't just say that. "...I suppose there's some - aftermath - of that."

Even in astral projection form she is wearing shimmering plate armor that covers every inch of her body. Her helmet is invisible because that way she can see through it. She sits even more stiffly but mostly because of the plate armor. "My name is Iomedae. I am a human paladin of Aroden from the planet Golarion, where I command the Shining Crusade. We were instructed that our objective here is to 'arrive at a better understanding of each other, and love more accurately and therefore better'. I take no issue with the objective but it would not have been among my priorities if Shelyn had not made it a condition of saving our friend."

Ramona can't remember if she's heard of Golarion before or not; the planets are all kind of blurring together at this point. It doesn't help that some of her clients have been a little over-eager with their termination-session mindwipes. She'll treat it as a brand new mystery planet and figure it out from scratch, though that's not the first order of business.

She's also going to let 'wizard,' 'paladin,' 'Shining Crusade,' 'involuntary lichdom,' and the shimmering plate armor go for now, because none of those are the most important thing to tackle first.

There's an old precept in therapy that every client is a customer, a complainer, or a visitor. Customers really want to be there and are willing to work to get the results they want. Complainers come to therapy to inform the therapist of how terrible their partner is. They're hoping to team up with the therapist to browbeat the partner. Visitors are just there for the ride; someone else made them come.

So far both of these two are presenting as visitors. That's not ideal, though it's more pleasant than two complainers.

"Who is Shelyn to each of you, that they can command that you go to relationship therapy, and then you go? Do you have any of your own reasons for being here, or is it just the price you pay to save your friend?"

"Shelyn is the goddess of love and beauty, and Her interests also encompass the redemption of beings that have been twisted towards Evil and damaged in a philosophically complicated way where they wouldn't necessarily endorse the damage being undone, which is what happened to our friend. There is no other power who can help our friend, and She can.

Shelyn says that this is also a good idea when evaluated by our own priorities rather than Hers, and I expect She's correct about that - more confidently for me than for Alfirin, Shelyn is more likely to be correct in Her evaluation of my priorities - but insofar as that means I have my own reasons for being here I don't ....know what they are. I care deeply about Alfirin and the state of our working relationship is very important to me, and if there is some respect in which I am wronging her I would want to know that, but I would not have identified talking about our relationship as likely to be a good idea, had Shelyn not claimed that it is, and I don't envision any specific way it's a good idea even knowing that apparently it is."

"I have no particular relationship to Shelyn beyond what Iomedae described. I... can see how it is possible that something like relationship therapy would be in our interests, but resent it when gods meddle in my personal life." It's an acceptable cost, obviously, to help Arazni, but that doesn't mean she's happy about it.

More words to put on the conceptual confusion pile: 'goddess,' and 'her interests,' though Ramona has the sensation of understanding the rest of Iomedae's first sentence.

"All right, let me recap what I understood so far."

"Shelyn is a powerful goddess and she's the only one who can help your friend, someone you both care about. What's that friend's name, by the way?"

"Iomedae, Shelyn told you that she wanted you to go to relationship therapy, and furthermore that it would be good for you even from your own perspective. And even though you can't really see that clearly for yourself, you trust Shelyn to be right about that and tell you the truth about it. So you're pretty sold, and you don't feel manipulated, but you also feel confused about how this works or what you want from it."

"Meanwhile, Alfirin, you're less on board. Shelyn is meddling. You're here, so at least some part of you is willing to check it out, but you're under duress."

"Please tell me what I got wrong."

"'Under duress' is stronger than I would phrase it. I am here willingly as a - trade. A sacrifice. But - I don't intend to be any less cooperative with this therapy than I would be if I were here on my own initiative. It's just that - it doesn't really matter, whether this is something that might benefit me, or that I might have chosen on my own in different circumstances. I am here because Shelyn wanted me to be here."

"It matters to me if this is expected to benefit me because - if this had been proposed by an entity more hostile than Shelyn I would be very concerned that their intent is to create a rift between us or damage our relationship, and I am not very worried that that is Shelyn's intent or a likely result, so in that sense my participation is - conditional on my understanding of Shelyn's intent. But I would be willing to do things more costly than I expect this to be to fix our friend - Arazni. Her name is Arazni."

"All right. It's a bit unusual to do relationship therapy when neither client actually wants it, but you've convinced me that you're here for internally consistent reasons. It may be a bit more work than usual to figure out what your goals are, but I'm game to try."

Normally at this point Ramona would ask how they want their relationship to be different by the end of therapy, but she has the sense that would be pushing for too much, too soon with this pair. And so far she's detected no signs of animosity. What is their basic deal? Best way to find out is just to ask.

"Can you tell me something about who you are to each other? So far I've gathered that you were in a romantic relationship a long time ago, that it was brief, and that now you work together. Can you fill in some of the details?"

...She's going to let Iomedae answer that one first.

Iomedae glances uncertainly at Alfirin. "I don't know how it would be wise to approach confidentiality here, but I suppose I can just start by saying what I intend to put in the historical record? Alfirin and I met in the Shining Crusade, a war against the evil necromancer Tar-Baphon. Alfirin was a wizard compacted with the Crusade for Teleports, and I was the commander of the Knights of Ozem, a paladin order I founded. We enjoyed working together and did so frequently. We were lovers, briefly, but I was not competent to - be a lover - after which Alfirin left the Crusade for five and a half years. When she returned we took some care to have a functional professional relationship, which became particularly important when Arazni died and it looked likely we would lose the war unless someone became powerful enough to replace her as the Crusade archmage. Which Alfirin did. She does not accept much pay from the Crusade. We owe her a favor of nearly unimaginable scale but she has not asked for much of anything. We haven't discussed her plans for after the Crusade. I think very highly of her. I worry about what she'll do to be immortal because I know it is very important to her to be immortal. ...I want her to be immortal, obviously, but most of the available methods are very Evil."

"I see!"

Ramona clears her throat.

"No, that's not right, let me try again."

"I think I've got some pieces of the picture. I admit that most of it was deeply confusing, because of all the context I'm missing, but I'm not too worried about that at this stage. It's normal to take a while to get oriented."

She pauses and looks steadily at each woman in turn.

"We've only just met, you're not sure whether it's safe to trust me, and you're not sure what you're going to get out of this process. Despite all that, I'd really like to ask you lots of nosy, personal questions. Do I have your permission to do that? Even if you agree, you can always skip any specific question."

"I should also mention that under my personal ethics and the ethics of my profession, I will not talk about anything you tell me here without your permission, unless I have reason to fear you're going to do very serious, preventable damage to each other, yourselves, me, or the other inhabitants of my planet or yours. And, ahem, I guess I also gather that you're in the middle of a war on your planet. The kinds of serious, preventable damage you were going to wreak in your war anyway doesn't count as a reason to break therapeutic confidentiality."

Well that saves her having to figure out whether she wants to elaborate on Iomedae's description of who they are to each other. And the qualifier on the confidentiality puts a bound on what questions she'd be willing to answer here, though not really much more of one than Iomedae's presence already does. "Understood. You may ask your questions... though, with respect to confidentiality, do you expect a substantial risk of being forced to divulge anything that you learn here?"