Iomedae nods. Then regrets it because nodding hurts. "Does anyone…need anything from me?"

"When you are recovered enough to do a broadcast, I think everyone with a radio is expecting one."

"....ah, shoot, I missed today's, people will think -" No, her head still hurts too much to worry about that. "Is it a secret that the goddess used me for the miracle? Did people see me?"

"People saw you though we don't right now think very many of the people who saw you know that you're Freedom."

…trying to think that through gives Iomedae a headache. "Okay. Then I just want to be with Alfirin I think please."

He nods and leaves.

"I wish She could've picked someone else. I know, I know, anyone else would also be suffering, also has loved ones who'd be worried sick. I still wish it wasn't you."

"I wasn't going to say those things," Iomedae says. "I bet there are people in Lastwall who were praying for Her to save them who wouldn't mind the headache and would just feel honored and glad and uncomplicated, if She'd gone through them, whose families would just be proud and not worried because their trust in Her goes this far without faltering…I would've felt that way, when I was fifteen and it was Aroden. I mostly don't now because I'm too busy feeling like - how many things are going to happen - I know that's kind of cowardly, we're the ones that picked a fight with Hell itself - I don't think we only did that because we were deluded about how easy it would be -"

"I worry about more things happening, yeah. Just one after the other. First Cheliax kidnapping you, then your god doing it, and…it's a lot," she says kind of stupidly because she's not sure what more there is to say there that's not obvious.

"I think…I need a plan to be okay for my whole life which is not 'things stop happening' and is instead one where it is fine if things happen, so long as we come out of them in one piece. Or resurrectable. If I wanted to be safe I should've stayed on Earth, and - I don't wish we'd done that."

"Mhm. It would be easier if it felt like we had…any control over the outcomes at all. Like if things go kind of badly that's because we made mistakes and we can learn to not make those mistakes again - or if it felt like we were accomplishing anything besides just surviving. I guess I should focus more on the wizardry. This time might sit a little better if I'd gotten second-circle spells out of it."

Iomedae squeezes her hands, and then closes her eyes, and then sings Alfirin a song that she sang her a long time ago, the first time she made a mistake that destroyed peoples' lives. She hasn't sung Aroden's songs since she learned he died. She thinks that perhaps that was, in some sense, an important mistake. 

"Iomedae appeared in Vigil to fight Arazni," Lilia tells her mother. 

"I know. I saw it. What's being said about that fight?"

"I gave up my agents in Vigil, I only have rumors," and she's now very annoyed about not having the agents. She doesn't like being blind. She had been ready to defiantly stay out of the whole mess once she'd helped avert the Oathday attacks but when Arazni's out and about and doing things and Iomedae's out and about and doing things one can't really stay out of that. "They say that the whole city was made silent by magic, and the walls shattered very systematically, heading towards the seal, and then Iomedae showed the whole city visions of the Shining Crusade, offered to free Arazni from Geb - Arazni accepted - spoke to a few more people, and then left. A possession, apparently, not an appearance, she left Her servant behind." Lilia's understanding is that possession is cheaper and safer for the god for a short appearance, but that the god will burn through their mortal host very quickly and that the requirements for a host are obscure-to-mortals and often prohibitive. "If you want more urgently I can ask Cansellarion; I think 'tell me what I'll have learned in a month anyway' is only a small share of the favor he now owes me for saving his whole war."

"No need for that. I know what happened, I was interested in what people are saying happened." Lilia usually would not miss that distinction.

"Are you back from Vudra already?"

"Yes." She'd been planning to stay away, but there was no Freedom Radio broadcast Oathday,  and that made her nervous enough to go by Absalom, where the rumors in the streets included that Iomedae had murdered Arazni, that Iomedae had dueled with Geb, that Vigil was in ruins, that Arazni had murdered Iomedae, that Abrogail Thrune was secretly Arazni, that Geb had joined the war on Cheliax’s side, that Nex had joined it on Andoran’s, etc etc etc until she was frustrated enough to go to Vigil herself and spy on people in person. 

"I know it's not how we usually do things, but you could have asked me if you wanted to know what happened. I didn't expend any significant resources, the forces of Good lost a thousand people or so and a lot of stone, but nobody important. The biggest loss was Vigil's walls which they won't be able to put back the same. Iomedae is willing to do big interventions to save Lastwall and the war, Arazni is free and I'm sure will start taking actions we might have to worry about in a year or two but my best guess is that right now she's going to be focused very hard on her own security."

Lilia is not easy to read but to the extent she looks anything she looks surprised. Myrabelle meticulously never tells her anything she doesn't need to know. ...though it is of course less true now that it's quite likely to be eventually tortured out of her.  "All right. Your orders?"

"Apart from passing on anything your remaining agents send you I don't have any right now. Go back to Vudra. Enjoy yourself if you can - those aren't orders, just recommendations. You did well, I'll need you again in a month if all goes well, possibly sooner if it doesn't. You've got some time, make the most of it."

Definitely surprised, now, and also confused, and possibly some complicated things under that. "Understood," she says, and would leave, but Myrabelle's the one who breaks off their mindscape, usually.

"You may ask your questions. I don't promise answers, obviously."

"If you have no applicable orders I don't understand why I ought to know what happened in Vigil."

"You wanted to know, did you not? And we have fewer constraints on how long it's wise to talk, now, I can spare a few minutes for your curiosity. And it might be important context in the future, so spending the time to give it to you now instead of later is not even costing me the full few minutes it takes."

And now Lilia has wasted more precious time wondering why her curiosity is now to be indulged than she wasted with the initial curiosity. She nods. "Nothing else."