Quoted By:
>Tent time
"...Maybe? Maybe. Still concocting a, a brilliant plan for the— do you know what's in those tents, by any chance?"
"What?" Gil spins around to look. "Um, they have signs on them?"
"I can <span class="mu-i">read,</span> Gil, I just don't... I don't..." Your furious waving is met with a blank stare. "It's all pagan... ask him!"
"Him? Who, Richard? I-I-I— oh." He pushes up his glasses. "Um, i-if you're sure it's the only..."
"<span class="mu-i">I</span> did it last time."
"Nobody asked you to," he mumbles, but squares his stance. He breathes deep—
"You don't know what the tents are? They have signs on."
"I <span class="mu-i">know,</span>" you hiss. "I literally just— oh." The transition was subtler than you expected, but the man staring at you isn't Gil. He doesn't recognize you. "I- I- know, the signs are just— they're weird, alright? They're in weird fancy letters, they—"
"It's the same ones every year, lady," Notgil says. Teddy says. "Have you never been—"
No, Teddy, you're not hundreds of years old. God. "Just <span class="mu-i">tell</span> me."
He raises his eyebrows unkindly at you, but shuts his eyes and points at each tent in turn. PROGNOSTICATIONS: "They tell your future. Sort of. Not <span class="mu-i">usefully.</span>" ABSOLUTIONS: "If you've got something to get off your chest, you tell them. Supposed to be good for you." INTERCESSIONS: "If you need a favor done, you tell them, it goes on a great big list, and <span class="mu-i">supposedly</span> that gets sent off to the Eight. Never did anything for me." EVALUATIONS AND EXTRACTIONS: "Sometimes people get it in their head that they drank some funny-looking water or met some blue-eyed naked lady on the beach and now they have some bona-fide spark of divinity riding around in them. Usually don't, but these people will sit there and check it out and take it out if need be."
"Take it <span class="mu-i">out?</span>" You touch your own chest. "That's— but, I mean— why?"
"Causes ulcers." His voice is impassive. "Maybe. Allegedly. It can attract more attention than it's worth. And it's, you know, the right thing to do... if you care about that."
"The right thing to—?"
"There's only so much god to go around. Do you want to be the one to take the last of it? Better to recycle."
"...Uh-huh," you say. "And- and you keep saying 'they.' Who's they?"
"The liaisons?" (You give a 'I dunno' look.) "Do they not have those wherever you're from? They're the point people, the middlemen, the—"
"The clerics!"
"What?" Teddy shakes his head slightly. "They— you can't expect to talk to the Eight on a normal day. They're busy doing... god things. So they have people selected to do all the busywork. Like that." (He gestures to Kenzy Certified Liaison.) "And those." (The tents.) "Normally it's a pain in the ass to even get ahold of them. You have to go through <span class="mu-i">their</span> liaisons. But it's Godsday, so—"
(1/3?)
