More food, more notes.

"…soul trials?"

"Pharasma is Creator and Judge and presides over a court system in the Neutral outer plane, the Boneyard, to determine the final destination of each soul. It usually matches one's magical reading in life, if one had one - you have to be about as powerful as I am or empowered by a god to be read by the standard spells - but it is not guaranteed to do so as in the case of, for instance, last-minute repentance."

"Huh. We have some stories sort of like that."

"The state of information here is... strange."

"Agreed."

Chris finishes eating, clears his plate, and gets back to annotating until the lights in the room dim.

"It's a reasonable hour for bed. Let me show you to your room. Steve will be outside the door if you need to use your phrasebook to ask him anything."

"Understood."

Off he goes to bed.

Outside his door is a small pile of clothing, and someone sitting in a chair.

"This is Steven."

Chris hands off something on his belt to Steven and then leaves, assuming Blai has no further questions.

Well he's sort of curious what the thing is but it does not seem worth keeping Chris. He collects his clothes, changes into something that fits for the night, and goes to sleep.

Chris kneels on the floor by his bed. It's distractingly uncomfortable. He gets up, brushes off his knees, climbs into bed, and awkwardly kneels on the mattress, head bent to avoid hitting the ceiling.

God, it's been a while. I haven't been the most faithful, and I apologize. There's a few things I want to go over – ugh, is that really the way I talk to God? Really? I'm supposed to see you as more of a father, not a co-worker. Anyway.

Thank you for not letting Blai die in the cold, I really appreciate it. It was very fortunate that he was within visual range of the base. I would like my season here to have zero fatalities.

I think you should pick your own miracle-worker, if you can. Uh. I mean. Of course you can, you're God, you can do anything, I'm sorry. It just seems dubious to have only a pagan working such blatant miracles. If you're actually also known as Iomedae or Aroden or they're among your angels or such I would appreciate you clarifying the matter to Blai. I am not myself asking to work miracles. Uh, that's not a hard no, if for some reason you really would want to empower me like that you of course may, it's just there's a lot of better candidates.

As you may – As you definitely know, I have not pressed Blai about blood tests and have not explained to him what guns are. The former because it's really a lot to ask of him, and he seems so confident in his health, and because if he wanted to kill us he could presumably start conjuring water in our lungs. And if someone else wanted him to kill us he could plausibly have some disease that doesn't match anything the biologists are familiar with and looks innocuous under a microscope. The latter because … he seems to me like a good person, but I could be wrong, and it could be that he'd flip out over something reasonable. And he's a much more experienced fighter than I am. So if, god forbid, it comes down to that, it seems like it would be good to have an edge.

I would appreciate a sign if I am making a mistake in either case. If he is the Antichrist I am not going to figure it out without you, he really isn't acting like it, he seems to care a lot about doing the right thing and have no interest in ruling the world. 

Another thing. Possibly the most important one. I really, really don't want another holy war. I know a lot of this relies on humanity to do our part to understand things correctly and not kill people over confusion regarding your will, but please. They get really bad. Blai does not seem the type to want to start one and I do hope things stay that way but we could have one anyway and … please don't. Please.

I'm really sorry to doubt you so much. Having Blai here makes it really clear to me. He believes in his god the same way he believes in his coat. I don't have that kind of faith. Possibly the bit about moving mountains with a mustard seed's worth of faith is not at all a metaphor and nobody on the planet has that kind of faith. If you could help us to grow in faith that would be great.

Amen.

As usual, he doesn't get a response. He knows people who claim to have gotten signs from god or talked to him, but he's never been one of them.

Today has been a very busy day and his sleep thankfully comes quickly.

When Blai wakes up Chris is the one sitting outside his door, drinking a cup of the same thing he had yesterday that allegedly helps with staying awake.

Blai does not have a great sense of time without dawn having come while he was in bed, so he's not sure if Share Language is still up. It probably is, because dawn hasn't come yet and he cast it after dawn, but this is a peculiar astronomical situation. "Is Share Language still up?" he asks.

"Yup. Good morning."

"Good morning. Dawn does not appear to have come so I don't have much sense of when it is, do you have a guess when it will have been 24 hours since last time I prayed for spells?"

"In a few hours. We should get you a watch."

"I've never learned to read one, if they are even alike here."

"There's two kinds. One has hands that go round in a circle, pointing at numbers, and the short hand indicates the hour and the long hand indicates the number of minutes divided by five. The other kind just says the time, but it says it in our numbers so it might be worse for you since with the kind with hands you could maybe just remember the positions or put tape over the numbers and write on the tape."

"That does sound worse, yes, I could write down a particular time to consult but not know confidently when it was approaching."

"We'll get you a watch with hands, then. And some tape and a local pen, I'm not sure yours is suited to writing on tape."

In the absence of other plans from Blai Chris is inclined to lead them to the dining room.

"The food's going to expire, right? If you'd like, once you've taken what you'd like for breakfast I can announce the rest being up for grabs."

"I would expect it to have expired already. It lasts 24 hours and I cast it from the spells I had on arrival, not the ones I prepared here."

"Ah, okay. Did you prepare another one? I'm sure the requests have been collated by now."

"It doesn't count as dawn yet so I haven't prepared anything. I can do a Create Food today. What else was requested?"

"We'd like three share languages – one for your day shift secretary, one for whoever's on night shift, one for someone to translate texts. We'd like Detect Poison so you can eat from the warehouse-stable food and we can get more fresh food, and plausibly Create Water because it's very exciting, creating something from nothing on-demand. Some more Comprehend Languages for you would probably also be good."

"I take Create Water every day. Three Share Languages is all my second circles, which plausibly makes sense but so you're aware."