Ramona will just kind of sit here nervously. There isn't much to say at this point. They're waiting for Luka to cool off, they're waiting for food to arrive.

She can run herself through some of the regulating exercises she gives her anxious clients, that's what she can do.

Traveler also waits in contemplative and slightly sad silence, watching the door.

Luka returns. His expression keeps shifting between different flavors of bitter, antsy, annoyed, and maybe nervous.

"Well," he says by way of greeting. "Ramona. How do people here honor bravery?"

"Welcome back."

"Um."

Ramona is not at all sure how to answer that question.

"I guess if you successfully land a plane in a river or something, they give you a medal?"

Does... Luka want a medal? For coming back?

Would he maybe accept toffee instead?

Ramona holds out the toffee.

He glances at Traveler but Traveler is apparently too busy being visibly baffled to participate in an exchange of Meaningful Looks. Luka accepts the toffee but doesn't immediately try to eat it. "I don't have a medal and anyway that seems a little excessive. You don't have the slightest idea what you're doing or how to avoid fucking it up, and this isn't going to work, but you know what? I appreciate that you tried. I'd have a complaint or several if you'd been any less straight with us about your incompetence, but you were perfectly frank about it and we went into this with our eyes open. It's on me that I trusted you. I would offer you my blessing if we were going to move forward from here and I had anything to spare, but we aren't and I don't."

Oh, no, Ramona is having Feelings. She tries not to have too many of her own feelings while she's working. She'll often have a flood of empathy for the trauma or joy of a client, but she tries to keep her own stuff out of it.

She has a spike of irritation about the concept that "at least she tried." Trying doesn't cut it. And then she sternly reminds herself that she wouldn't stand for that kind of self-talk coming from a client.

The last thing Luka said was actually pretty sweet. She'll try to focus on that.

"Oh. I didn't realize you were saying that I was the brave one, or I wouldn't have suggested a medal. Just the compliment will do, thank you for that."

He nods. He glances at Traveler again, raises his eyebrows and also the toffee, and when Traveler nods he stuffs it in his mouth with an unreasonable amount of haste.

"Sorry it's only toffee. There's a proper meal on the way. It'll be another fifteen minutes, though. And, um... I hope you can actually digest that, I'm not sure how this works."

He looks back and forth between her and Traveler and laughs. "Or I could be wrong about you having no idea what you're doing and being useless! My apologies. Now, will you only find it tantalizing and painful if I offer to answer any questions you have about us while we wait? Not - therapy questions, I mean. Just questions."

Ramona is, as usual, confused, but it sounds like this is an opportunity to become less so.

"I'm scared to ask my question, because it was the last thing I said before you left the room, but... are you gods? Or something like that?"

He favors Traveler with an incredulous and offended look. Then he points to himself and then to Traveler as he says, "Loki. Odin."

"Oh. Wow. Well."

"Hello. Nice to meet you."

This was in Ramona's hypothesis space but she somehow still wasn't quite expecting it.

"I've heard of you, of course, but I'm so sorry, I don't actually know all that much about you. Is that... terrible?"

That's such a gratifying response. Luka smirks. (Traveler also smiles a little.)

Luka sits on the arm of the couch. "Well, it's terrible how no one" (pointed look at Traveler) "has told you anything. - I did want to tell you, earlier, but I was still hoping I could avoid making it clear to him that I had enough context to know what that would take."

"When you talk about your son consuming the sun... should I be worried for my own planet and all the people I love who live here?"

"Maybe. I can't promise nothing weirder than this being the Earth I know is happening. - If nothing weirder than that is happening and you don't know anything about me, then one of the things you don't know is that my daughter is the queen of the misty realm where the unclaimed dead are." Luka's voice is quiet and earnest. "I have been there to visit her. I have played knucklebones with the dead. I have heard them laugh."

Traveler looks at Luka and seems to maybe consider saying something and then just sighs.

Ramona has no idea what to do with this information. Maybe she should just say that.

"I admit I am not sure what that means or what implications it might have."

"...Well, if I expected a large fraction of the people I love to die, I might want to hear a reliable account of what that's like, and at the very least I'd care to know if there is a thing it's like."

(Stifled urge to interrupt intensifies.)

"I admit... I am confused. I have had other clients who assured me that we did not have afterlives on my planet at all, and of course I had no way to check their work, so it's hard to know who to believe."

"I guess you are saying that it's not so bad, being dead? There's still laughter and fun?"

Ramona is flinching, internally, because her past attempts to recap Luka's points have gone extremely poorly, but she only has to do this for a few more minutes and then the food will arrive. Maybe it will not be a disaster this time.

"There is."

"He's overselling it, it's dreary and grim - but if you think your past clients would know about any afterlives you have, I'm inclined to take that as a point in favor of this not being our Earth. That already seemed plausible for several reasons."

Luka glances sourly at him.

"This question of what it is like to exist after death -- this feels important, and if you have different opinions about how good or bad it is, that would change the whole conflict between you."

Ramona's just saying obvious things now.