She reached out tentatively to put a gentle hand on his shoulder. If her touch, if the thumb rubbing circles into him could calm him at all, then she would try. "They remember seven days and dividing a firmament," Tea said softly. "Some gods I've spoken to remember a very different creation story. They remember Tiamat or Brahman."
In her many years, Tea had of course encountered devout men from other faiths, realizing the fragility of their own immortal truths before her eyes. In four thousand years, few things were ever new any more. But Christianity was a special case of religious arrogance, and until now she'd taken a special kind of pleasure in seeing it undermined. But in the face of this man, this Saint George, her many Christian followers felt more at the forefront of her mind, and the wisdom she'd had before coming into such a religiously divided city as Istanbul came back to her.
He was so frail. So delicate, and Tea understood in that moment what it really meant to be a Saint. The ones who prayed to them thought Saints on the level of the angels or better, for their accessibility, but it was suddenly easier to understand that they were every single one of them human, with longer life spans.
When she spoke again into the silence, her voice had the soothing cadence of water tumbling over rocks, or the gentle delicacy of blooming jasmine. "If you ask one of your angels about the politics of Babylon before the Israelites began believing in the god of Abraham, their answer will be hopelessly vague. They remember what their religion dictates that they remember. But it doesn't mean that everything is a lie." This was the part she struggled with. Tea herself didn't necessarily believe that a god had actually created the universe, so how could she advise someone to believe a lie, even if it helped them? "You have been to your Heaven, haven't you?"