Everyone talks to the gods, no one expects them to answer. - Lois McMaster Bujold

One learns better than to hand one's choices to fear. With age, with every wound and scar, one learns.

How many details had to point in the same direction before one decided they pointed true? Depends on how costly it is to be mistaken, maybe?

You were kind.”

Cazaril shrugged. “Why not? What could it cost me, after all?”

Bergon shook his head. “Any man can be kind when he is comfortable. I’d always thought kindness a trivial virtue, therefore. But when we were hungry, thirsty, sick, frightened, with our deaths shouting at us, in the heart of horror, you were still as unfailingly courteous as a gentleman at his ease before his own hearth.”

“Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice — if not whether, then how, they may endure.