She's just not hungry.

Good, she has room for more fruit. She will keep time while the angel is gone by seeing how many kinds she has time to try.

There's lots and lots of kinds. Some down the walk a bit, or along another less obvious path. She doesn't trip or stumble once. She does eventually start to feel kind of full. Pleasantly full, not bloated.

This is about when Daniel comes back, bringing with him a wooden table shrunk to the size of his palm. He sets it down and watches it expand, complete with chair and ball-point pens and a small stack of notebooks.

"- oh, that's a neat trick." She takes a seat and a notebook. "Explain the thing about how much stuff costs, with numbers, please?"

"You have an allotment of heavenly energy, quintessence, with which I shall craft your angelic form. Quintessence is used for your foundation - grace, speed, strength, blessings - water breathing, additional senses, esoteric defenses, and form - the design of your wings and halo. You must swear at least one vow, and swearing vows gains you virtue. Virtue is used to grant you the capacity to channel varieties of miracle. One quintessence can serve as one virtue, and two virtue can serve as one quintessence. You have forty quintessence, and zero virtue to begin with. The vow of fidelity grants two virtue. Compassion, Honesty, Diligence- Three apiece. Honor, four. The miracle of healing costs two virtue, the miracle of the Sun costs three, the miracle of resurrection four, and so on. The grandest miracle available is Repudiation, to reject and nullify the magical properties of a foe or other subject. Costing six virtue to access, and moderate favor to use, though an immense amount to extend it for longer than the span of a few hundred heartbeats."

"So an angel uses quintessence to be a - being, and virtue to have abilities on top of that, and favor to... stay an angel? Fuel the abilities?"

"Not quite, a subtle distinction. Quintessence is used to be a being that has properties, yes, and virtue to have active abilities: Miracles. Quintessence and virtue are relatively fixed. Favor is accumulated, and used specifically to channel miracles. If you act with evil you stop or slow accumulation of favor. Separately, if you act with great evil for an extended time, sufficient to stop gaining favor entirely and continuing well beyond, your abilities will slowly fade and eventually you will perish of this, finding yourself at the gates once more."

"So virtue gets me more spells, as it were, and favor is like mana and I get it by being good in an ongoing way. Uh, what's the working definition of being good?"

"Indulge not overmuch in sins such as lying, wrath, gluttony, or lust; Bring joy to others in all its myriad forms; Show compassion and forgiveness; Defend the innocent; Forgive those who have harmed you and turn the other cheek, so long as they had repented; Be patient and kind and generous; Hold to your Vows and test not their limits; Pray or meditate carefully on the right thing to do and do not deceive yourself that all you might do is righteous; Show temperance and judgement, not reckless abandon; Love thy neighbors and seek their fulfillment and comfort and safety and happiness."

"What counts as indulging overmuch in gluttony or lust? What is the process for doing prayer?"

"It is not a clean line. Overindulging is when a matter begins to swell into other aspects of life and induce other sins. When it causes problems, rather than happiness. If you spent so much time on prurient interests as to avoid work, or acted callously or cruelly to others in flirting, romance, and sex as a result of your desires, that would be overindulging in lust. If you ate lavish meals and consumed drugs often or always sought novel trinkets, and the expense prevented you from charity or caused you to act in haste and greed in order to sustain such things, say by raising taxes or stealing, that would be overindulging in gluttony. All things in moderation; It is not a sin to not give away everything you have, or to enjoy pleasures of the flesh, but it is a sin to fail to give charity when you could easily spare it, or to allow pursuit of pleasure to make you harm others."

"But having a nice dinner like once a week and getting myself a nice birthday present is okay?"

"Those things would be okay in most scenarios I think you are imagining."

"Okay. - how does the Sabbath day thing work in worlds without Earthlike astronomy."

"In such a case you may choose some other sign to mark the passage of days and weeks."

"Do angels sleep?"

"Most do, but an enhancement of the Foundation of Endurance can obviate this. Five hours a night- One quintessence. Eight hours per week, three. Naught but an hour a year, five. This same Foundation does insulate you from fatigue of the body as well of the mind."

"Does all my quintessence come from vows or is there some I get for free?"

"You have an allotment of thirty quintessence before making any vows. Your wings and halo, unless you should choose to forego them, will require five."

"Are halos useful?"

"When you let a halo shine, it imparts a small measure of Heaven into the world; Effects subtle yet real, soothing pains, promoting health and growth, pushing back the influence of Demons, tempers calm and anguish softens, and grime and filth sublimate away. All these things are slow and subtle, such that they might be missed entirely if one is not carefully looking for them- Save for the effect on Demons, which is both potent and immediate. Someone who is cursed or possessed by a Demon will see their clear-headedness return under your halo's glow."

"- temper calming and anger softening sounds slightly mind-controlly?"

Headtilt. "How would you define 'mind controlly'?"

"- affecting people's thoughts, beliefs, and moods in ways other than just directly altering the stuff that their sensorium presents to them, and maybe particularly hostile sensorium-stuff alteration? As a first pass."