transmerle:

honestly merle engaging with pan and the whole pan faith in maybe unconventional ways vs what he normally had to do in the enclave is v important to me

he doesnt exalt his wildernessness at 10 am every day but he does pour an extra cup of coffee or booze or what have you and sets it next to his makeshift altar each morning

he prays to him when he can but sometimes its not just praises, sometimes he just talks about his day so far and complains about x or y and maybe he asks pan what kind of fruit or veggie he wants as an offering because hes going planetside to go grocery shopping and figured he should pick something up

merle rearranges the plants in his room and offhandedly asks if the bonzai should be by the lemon bush, sometimes he gets nothing, sometimes a leaf falls off the lemon and he complains that that tells him jack shit, and /then/ he feels a tremor in his wood arm and grumbles fine, fine, ill move it by the lillies. when hes done hes surprised because hey, that actually looks nice, and decides to leave an extra offering as thanks

merle has the entirety of a normal pan service memorized both from the clergys pov and the priests but when prompted to give a service or recite parts of it is more likely to give ad-libbed versions of holy verses and make jokes. if given a pan flute and told to play he COULD play one of the ten repeating but very pretty melodies he heard in church for 50+ years… or he could move to the highest-pitched note and blow so hard everyones ears burst. pan blessed him as he did it bc he laughed so hard he fell out of his holy throne