They don't give us much opportunity to flee these days.

[No, Mat hasn't heard the story of the great exodus from Thorne. He can't say he blames anyone. Hard to trust the folks who've uprooted you from life with barely a 'sorry for the inconvenience'. But they do care well for their kidnapped other worlders.]

Good to meet you. And I've never been much of a praying man. My people don't have gods the way the people here do. It's not...it's not a being, really, it doesn't have form or thought or wants. It doesn't listen to us, it doesn't help us, or punish us, it just is.

[He knows other places have more accessible deities, and figures they worship. But that sort of thing had never caught on in the Two Rivers.]

I'd feel odd, praying to gods I don't follow or hold close.