"Nothing's wrong!" he says hastily when he sees her looking. "Or—nothing's wrong with me. Or not—um." He clears his throat. "I was... in the woods, with Gusion, um... well, anyway. My Lady, there's a camp of strangers out there who are having a really rough time, and I think they'd join our Cult if you asked. We didn't lead them here, but I can show you to them, if... if that's all right?"

"Yes, of course," she says immediately, while she's still working through the baffling question of just what put that look on Amdusias's face.

She follows him up the steps, past the big stone circle, through the trees and out into the woods, still puzzling over it, and then stops in her tracks and blurts out, "Oh! You were sneaking out here to have sex!"

"...yes, my Lady," he admits. "Sorry. I—I know we aren't supposed to be out here alone—well, we weren't alone, but—"

"It's fine," she interrupts. "I'll, uh. I'll see about maybe building the two of you your own cabin, how's that."

"...my Lady is very generous."

They proceed toward the strangers' camp in an awkward silence.

One of the strangers is a bright yellow donkeyfolk with red stripes painted on her face. The other is an ordinary grey-pink pigfolk, wearing clothes so threadbare they're nearly disintegrating and lying on the ground clutching his stomach.

"...are you the Lady?" asks the yellow one. "My name is Julnana, and this is Joobre. Please... will you take us in? We're lost in the woods with no food, eating grass to survive..."

"Of course," she says without hesitation. "Absolutely."

...she looks dubiously at Joobre. "Can he walk? It's a while back to the camp... no, you know what, I don't want to risk something happening to you on the way. I'll have my crown carry you both."

"Thank you, Lady!" says Julnana, and Joobre nods weakly, groaning.

Her crown sweeps them both into its bottomless pocket.

She follows Amdusias back to camp.

Julnana's indoctrination proceeds normally, but Joobre, when it's his turn, collapses onto the ground as soon as the levitation is no longer holding him up.

"Sorry..." he says. "Not... feeling good."

His eyes flutter closed.

First things first: the Lamb unpockets a handful of raw berries and gives them to Julnana, who starts munching gratefully.

"I'm going to go grill a fish for you both," she says. "I'll be right back."

It's almost the fastest fish she's ever grilled, and a sick dread rises in her as she stands over the fire, because she's remembering the last time she grilled a fish in a hurry. Joobre's just hungry, right? He'll pull through, right? She won't have to kill another of her followers so soon, right?

Right?

She hurries back to them with the fish.

Julnana alternates eating it with helping feed it to Joobre, one morsel at a time. But try as he might, Joobre can't seem to swallow the food. He can barely even chew it. When the Lamb tries pouring a few sips of water into his mouth, he coughs weakly and it trickles back out.

The sun is sinking, the light dimming. It's almost time for her cultists to sleep.

She has to decide now whether she thinks he'll live to see the dawn without help she doesn't know how to give. Or else, what? Dither about it for the next six hours while he grows weaker and weaker, then drag everyone out of their beds at midnight to suffer for her indecision? Let him die alone in the dark so she doesn't have to face up to the consequences of her mistakes?

"Please, Lady," Julnana whispers tearfully. "Don't let my husband die forsaken."

There's that word again.

"I won't," she says, picking Joobre up to carry him to the temple.

The crowd gathers naturally this time, drawn by threads of rumour.

It goes much the same as it did for Amdusias. A circle of worshippers. A Follower barely able to open their eyes. A bittersweet celebration.

Afterward, walking out of the Temple, she sees the chest where she's supposed to sacrifice goods to the One Below, and she's too angry to stop herself from walking over to give it a vicious kick.

Now her foot hurts, and Joobre is still dead. Great job, mighty Leader.

The crown is not really sure what to do to cheer her up. She isn't into Sermons (baffling but valid). Gardening...? This is not a gardening type of problem. Building? They could build something? She was going to build a cabin for Gusion and Amdusias...?

Right, yes. Separate housing for couples so they don't have to sneak off to fuck in the woods. Sensible, except for how if she tries to do that right now she will think about Julnana and Joobre and definitely, definitely cry.

Ugh. What if she went fishing, what if that.

The Fisherman is always happy(?) to sit in stoic silence and fish next to another person who is also sitting in stoic silence and fishing.

It occurs to her, halfway through the night, to wonder why the Fisherman also never sleeps.

Then she decides to ignore that question in favour of more fishing. Her Followers are going to have so much fish to eat.

She gets back to the camp just as dawn is breaking and the first of her Followers are beginning to stir from their beds.

First things first, she starts a big pot of fish stew. Then, as an afterthought, she dumps a bunch of fish into the One Below's offering chest. In her heart of hearts she imagines them falling disgustingly onto that veiled face. It's probably not healthy to hate her patron so much, but in her defense, her patron is extremely hateable.

Then she realizes she's been so desperate to avoid social contact that she hasn't distributed blessings in... she can't actually remember how long. She sighs and affixes a benevolent smile to her face and goes around greeting the early risers and offering the kindest words she can excavate from her brain, and it does, in fact, tip one person over the edge of the glowy-eye thing and allow her Crown to connect to them, so she should be glad she did it, and not desperate to escape by any means necessary.

However, since she is in fact desperate to escape by any means necessary, she stops distributing Blessings after that. Do we have enough for another Doctrine? What Doctrine could we even make next?

Her crown has ideas about that, actually! It thinks they should forge the Ritual of Feasting first, because after the Ritual of Feasting comes the Doctrine that lets her Followers survive happily on a diet of nothing but grass! And if they had that, then the next time this situation comes up maybe the starving Follower wouldn't die and make the Lamb sad?

The Lamb tries to picture throwing a feast right now. She feels that she would rather throw herself off a cliff. Point taken, though, she would rather have better options if this happens again. And grass-eating will make her Followers easier to feed without forcing any of them to learn to cook.

Absent-mindedly, most of her thoughts still focused on the future, she sips Devotion from the Shrine. Her crown, its thoughts feeling oddly shy in her mind, offers her an Inspiration. It indicates that it's been working on this one all night, refining it from a cruder and less effective version. A building for healing, so that when people are sick or injured she can do something about it, so she won't be helpless in the face of death again.

The Lamb stands frozen. All her willpower is consumed by the effort to not just sit down in the grass and cry.

Thank you, she manages, and the crown gives a pleased little hop on her head. Her face cracks into a smile and she nearly loses control of herself, but after a few moments' struggle, she takes a deep breath and opens her eyes, blinking back tears. Okay. Okay. She can do this.

She accepts the Inspiration, and in a whirlwind of motion and magic they build it together, a little hut just across the way from her Temple. There are camellias twined into the doorframe. Looking at it makes her want to cry again.

This is perhaps not the best time for Julnana to approach.

"My Lady?" she says tentatively.

"What is it?" She learned this person's name yesterday and is already blanking on it. She'd read their—her—mind to find out, but actually the Lamb thinks that if she reads anyone's mind right now, she will have a breakdown.