"Thank you," Arialla said, smiling. There was a little amusement in her voice as she added, "I think you're quite nice and normal as well."
Normal was maybe stretching it, but then, it was Caido -- who could say what was really "normal" here?
"Apollo is -- was -- our god of healing, music, and the sun," she continued. Once, she would have loved expounding on Apollo's virtues; now it made her a bit sad to talk about him, honestly, knowing that her prayers would never reach him again. Not that she had expected him to actually speak to her again: encounters with gods were far rarer at home than here in Caido. But she had felt warmth and comfort just from knowing he was out there, watching over her, hearing her prayers. She decided to confide some of this in Samuel: "We didn't speak to the gods very often at home -- or, rather, they didn't speak to us very often. It wasn't like here, where you can go to a shrine and actually expect a god to answer you. For a god to personally bless me wasn't just a once in a lifetime even for me; it was the first time something like that had happened to my entire village."
Arialla gave Samuel a sympathetic grimace, though she wasn't sure what to say to his grievance against the gods. Harm she could understand, but she didn't really understand how you could take a god's words or actions as a personal insult -- a curse, perhaps, but an insult? That implied pride before the gods, and her homeland had an entire repertoire of myths and songs and plays about what a bad idea that was.
But she could well imagine that the Old Gods would not be pleased with Samuel for choosing the Voice over them, and might even take their displeasure out on his immortal soul. (The idea of fearing the afterlife herself did not occur to her, so she didn't even realize he was trying to comfort her.) Hm, she might have to keep that in mind as she spoke to Safrin about the souls of the Ascended -- she didn't want to try to free them from the Voice only to sentence them to eternal torment in Mort's realm.
"I don't know much about Mort," she confessed. "I have heard that Mort's herald, Ludo, can be ... difficult. But ... what are your experiences with the Old Gods, if you don't mind me asking? How have they harmed and insulted you?"
She wasn't sure whether the question would make Samuel feel worse by revisiting past hurts or maybe give him a chance to vent, but she was curious. And since she didn't really have any comforting words about the afterlife, they might as well move on to another subject.
please don't take my sunshine away
