If the conversation feels too personal one can always gain more altitude. She's almost even with the dance floor, now. Have you made any progress on figuring her out?

...This is her own fault for letting the conversation move to this topic instead of carefully avoiding it.

I - have been unproductively dithering and worrying about making things worse. Arazni gave me some good advice - it amounted to “stop that” - which I have not yet actually put to work.

If I can be helpful in any way, let me know. 

Mm. I will keep that in mind. Was there anything else? Asking about Lilia mostly explains the jumping off the dance floor together, so that’s one mystery solved at least. The pineapples remain an enigma.

….I also just wanted to stretch my wings a little. I find the city stifling. You’d think less so once we’re floating high above it, but somehow that was moreso. 

It’s not the architecture, Alfirin agrees.

Have you been to Axis?

Yes. I think I felt more out-of-place there than here. But it wasn’t stifling.

I suppose there must be people who find Axis stifling, there are people who want the Maelstrom, but I am not one of them. I mostly just found it …irrelevant. You can build a place concerned with nothing that interests me, and I suppose you might as well, but it sure won't be interesting.

Oppara I cannot accuse of being irrelevant, but - I am not in awe of the things it is trying to awe me with, and the things that do awe me would surely go away if I pointed straight at them, and everyone is watching.

She does a twirl in the sky, gracefully, a dancing angel. I’m glad you came. Too personal? Probably, but she can correct it. I think it is meaningful to Basil.

 …Yes. I had hoped to be more present, but - it seemed better than not showing up at all. This conversation has been dancing around overly-personal for a while and she should probaby find some way to leave it before she missteps. …Are you sure he won’t mind his guests fleeing over the edge?

Probably if we never go back. And she will reluctantly bank and spiral on back down to the celebration.

"Let's talk."

Lilia unfortunately does not have anything useful to report; prophecy did not offer obvious avenues to answer the question of where her soul'd go when she died, probably because if her soul is owned by a devil it's by a devil under Mephistopheles. She was tempted to stay away a month longer, chasing down less-likely avenues, but they weren't going to get her anywhere either.

She's not afraid that her mother will be disappointed; she's afraid that she won't because she expects nothing.

Her expression shows none of this. "All right," she says levelly, because this version of her mother dislikes deference.

"I am not your mother and I think you’ve noticed that if you keep expecting me to be her you will keep being surprised and disappointed. But - if I were her, what is it that you would expect? What would you want from me?"

“I would expect her to have a plan. Probably not one I slot into very conveniently, I’m - very specialized - and certainly not one she’d tell me about, but I’d expect her to be able to tell me it’s useful to stay with the Shining Crusade and get myself a land grant in Lastwall, or useful to go learn the ropes in Oppara, or useful to work on immortality. -or perhaps it would be most useful to destroy me, that wouldn't be surprising." It would be far more reasonable than the current situation. "But I would know what objective I should be working towards."

"My interests, for now, are best served by the destruction of Tar-Baphon. If you are determined to pursue that end, I expect the most you could do - beyond what you have already - would be sharing your spell innovations from the future, though there's obviously benefits to keeping many of those secret. I do not expect you to be individually decisive by direct contribution, with your skillset. If I thought I would benefit from a land grant in Lastwall, I expect I could get one easily myself; Learning Opparan politics could be" ugh "useful, so long as you are mindful of the Crusade's reputation... I would" ugh ugh ugh "like it if you were immortal and dislike it if you were destroyed but do not consider my opinion here to be determinative. Immortality practical for most purposes is straightforward so long as your soul is not owned by Hell and difficult if it is."

 “Of course you can have the spells, and will be better qualified than I to guess which ones are worth sharing more broadly. I think it will take me a long time to get anywhere in Oppara while being appropriately cautious but I can do it, and would probably enjoy it." Which you shouldn't care about, but do. 

"...I haven't made progress on determining whether my soul is owned by Hell. You picked a devil under Mephisopheles, because His will compact for absolute secrecy, but relatedly I do not know of any way of confirming a soul to be theirs without the contacts in Hell that infernal Cheliax possessed, and prophecy did not fix that, at least not with my limited skill with it."

"It is beyond my ability as well. Not, most likely, beyond Arazni's."

"Good people are usually very unreasonable about people selling their souls to Hell. I would presume she'd kill me for it, but you know her more specifically."

"...she would not. I expect her to be very displeased with me, though."

"With you? You didn't require it. Your other daughter in that lifetime didn't do it."

"...Then you did it because...?"

“- so I could be in the Chelish intelligence service. It certainly - mattered to me that you thought that would be extraordinarily useful, but - it’s not as if Iomedae doesn’t put Her people in danger of Hell for Her projects. Whether or not it was ordered matters to that kind of person.”

"Were you instructed to join the Chelish intelligence service, or was that your own idea?"

“It was what my mother believed would be most useful. If I’d been poorly suited to it I’d have done something else. - I’m not claiming I sold my soul in my own interests or something, that’d be absurd, but if it matters to your allies I think I can say I had a choice about it.”