"I can learn from the mistakes of the past!"

"Have you picked a name for yourself yet?"

"I have a name! You refuse to use it!"

"We agreed that was only for the undercover mission!"

"No, you agreed to that. I never agreed to anything. Anyway, it was inspired by Cherry." He looks around. "Uh, by Azalea, I guess."

"You only picked it to get me to change mine and I am not calling myself Kala Bash. Or Basheed or whatever your idea was for going undercover. And we don't need to be undercover anymore and you're giving a bad name to all Gords everywhere."

"So don't be a Gord, if you care about their good name so much."

"I think they started with pre-mission banter to psyche up and forgot to stop," Gord stage-whispers to Azalea.

She laughs delightedly.

"I think that Squash is a perfectly lovely name," she tells them. "It sounds very lyrical. And it's better than a theme name like 'Mauled' or 'Impaled' would have been."

She pauses for a moment, and then asks "Wait, does that even make sense in Hallit?"

"I got the idea from you! Choosing a name is a big deal. People take a long time to decide what to name their children. Some places they have another naming ceremony when a child becomes an adult and chooses a new name for themselves."

"So I didn't want to pick something off the cuff, like this guy." He points at Gordy. "I wanted something inspired. But I didn't have time to pick it. So I took inspiration from you - well, from Cherry - I copied how you do names. With vegetables. Er, plants. And since he was Gord, the rest was easy."

"'Mauled' doesn't match though - what kind of a gourd is a mauled - wait, a mould! I guess that's... maybe a kind of plant? And 'impaled' is - imp aled - imp paled, imp pailed - imp ailed - is Imp-Ailed some kind of poson ivy?"

Gord walks over to Bar, and returns with little examples of each of the named plants, which he names to Azalea. (He can totally believe that mould is a plant if it gives Azalea points in a wordplay competition against, ugh, 'Squash'.)

She nods, and notes which name corresponds to which plant for future reference.

"Names can be a very personal thing," she remarks, producing a bundle of yellow squash flowers and experimenting to see if she can make them into a flower crown. "I've changed my name many times over the years -- or, my short name, anyways; I just tack the new ones onto my full name. And each name now represents to me the person who I was when I had it. I remember being Ash, for so many years growing up, and then briefly being Birch as I worked to grow the first fixity crystal into something more. I was Poplar for a long time, doing post-doc research on high-energy physics. I was Weeping Cherry when I moved to Jupiter and opened a door to meet you."

She gives up and cheats a little on the flower crown, handing it to Squash with a smile.

"And now I'm Azalea, and who knows what I'll remember about this part of my life in the future, when I look back on what I did with this name?"

She tucks an Azalea blossom behind her ear, and grabs some white gourd flowers to make matching crowns for Gord and Gordy.

Gordy accepts his flower-crown with a smile and a little bow. Azalea probably doesn't know that flower wreaths are traditionally given to Kellid maidens by their suitors. On the other hand, down in Taldor and Andoran they give wreaths to victorious generals... He shakes himself mentally.

"So! We have exchanged names and flowers. And then we exchanged names again, or at least some of us did. I think we are now well and truly acquainted."

He turns to Cayden. "What did you want to tell us?"

"Do you want to be private for this? It's nothing that could reflect badly on you, and all the gods know by now so it'll probably get out regardless, but it's your privacy."

"Is that a riddle? If you tell me in private I can always reveal it. So this is about whether I am - the kind of person who grasps after every bit of secrecy?" Ugh that feels like a game where one wants to appear differently from what one really is like and he's too busy figuring out what is he really like to pay attention to appearances.

"Which isn't a bad intuition to have and one that's often served us well, tactically, but it feels - wait, is this because we don't trust Azalea as much as Gord does, because he spent the most time with her?" He's not going to lose a game of who trusts Azalea the most! But is that what they mean for him to think? He trusted her with the fate of the world and it worked but this is something personal and - he flounders for a moment.

"Guys. This isn't a test or a game. We're among friends, and allies. It's a friendly courtesy, is all."

Gord is beginning to realize that that his time with the gods and Azalea and maybe most of all Irabeth has changed him in ways he hasn't fully noticed yet.

If he had to think of this as a test, then it would probably be a test of how he reacts to every inconsequential little thing. And Gord can't deny that - trusting Cayden enough to not read too much into every word, trusting Azalea enough to not keep secrets from her that he doesn't even know himself yet, are good and valuable lessons from the day-and-a-half that the other two hims missed out on.

He's spent a day around people he could trust - not to order Creation exactly to his liking, or to agree with him on everything of true importance - but to not stab him in the back, metaphorically or otherwise, just because he hadn't been paying enough attention.

He decided to trust them before Cherry forked him. The other hims wouldn't joke out loud about actual tests. But they didn't quite behave as if it was true yet, not all the way down.

Gord decides that the lesson he'll take from that is that he too has more to travel down this road. And that Cayden thought that would be good for him to notice.

Gordy looks at Gord consideringly.

"I'm going to catch up to you," he says firmly. "I trust myself, and I trust Azalea, and I don't need to keep secrets from her."

Who knew he could get so - flowery?

"We don't want to impose on you," he tells Azalea. "It might be something boring only we care about, you don't have to stay around and listen if you don't want to."

"Now that Hell is no longer full of torment, I have all the time in the world," she remarks. "But Squash was right -- if it's something you think I should know, you can tell me. I'll go over and chat with Bar with a sound baffle up, and you can wave at me when you want me back."

She goes and sits at the bar, receiving a series of napkins and then an engineering textbook.

So Cayden tells them the story of Gord's clerichood; and how he earned Chaotic Good that day, and grew too far from Norgorber to give him spells anymore.

Halfway through the explanation, Gord starts laughing uncontrollably and has to sit down.

"We already knew we might not be getting cleric spells anymore, since we're - extras. But - Azalea can give us spells now, everyone is going to have spells, it's not important anymore, it's -"