"Sorry."

She clears off the slate again. Sighs. Draws some more. First a sketch of the room they're in, hammock and shelf and curtain. Then a stick figure of Beau, with prominent round ears. An arrow through the curtain - violently scribbled out. She gestures at the drawing; does he understand?

"You mean I shouldn't leave?"

"Jeh."

"Will anyone else come in?"

Handwobble.

He's going splotchy again.  "Is there anything I should do if that happens?  That, um, you can say.  Or draw."

"Pon."

"Okay."

She taps the picture again, then gets up.

Yeah, he'll stay here on the floor.  He unduffles the book he was reading on the plane but ends up spending more time staring at the page or the wall than making progress through it.

He'd been reacting to things as they happened, since landing in Port Angeles.  Without any of those... his head hurts.  It would probably be sane to question whether any of this is real.  But he knows what he's seeing.  The ceiling octopus didn't get him that bad, but it definitely did get him; he's sure of it.

Then the light goes out.

It doesn't make any difference, really.  He puts the book away; it's not like he was reading it in the first place.  He wonders about Charlie, whether he got teleported as well.  Beau hopes his few seconds of diversion were enough.  And his mom is going to be totally freaking out.

Ugh.

The stone floor is finally getting uncomfortable and he feels cold; he moves to sit on top of his bag and buries his face in his hands, elbows on knees, his throat tight.

One of the shenta comes in to exchange the chamber pot for a fresh one after a while. (He can tell this is what's happening because one of the buttons on the shentin's clothes is glowing.)

Okay.  It's very relieving when they leave.

They (it's kind of hard to discern a gender, they do not seem attired in a way designed to communicate that to, at least, Beau) do kind of stare at him for a minute, but then move on, taking the light with them.

He hadn't already resigned himself to being quite this alone in quite this dark, but he'd done that a little.  He's fine.

(Will he ever see the sun again?  Will he die down here, soon, or will he be stuck in the black for years upon years?)

Eventually the girl's been gone long enough that he figures it's worth it to get up enough to kneel at his bag and fumble around for an extra layer to put on.  Then it's back to (warmer) sitting.

She's back a couple of hours later, though it's not obvious it's her till she lights a convenient pebble again, since she doesn't enter with one. She does that, then sits down with a book she pulls from her bag, and a scroll she produces likewise.

"Hi."  His eyes are maybe a little wild.

Spell-cast. Ear-cup-gesture.

"Uh, how was your trip?"  He spent some of the time trying to come up with useful questions.  It didn't work.

She raises her scroll in slightly ironic triumph.

"Cool."  Okay, he can shut up now.

Okay if he doesn't have any yes-or-no questions or anything urgent to tell her she will pull a folding chair-and-desk arrangement out of a niche by her bookshelf. It looks like it may be constructed out of bones. She lays out her book on it, and her scroll, and starts - copying the one into the other?

Doesn't really seem like he needs to talk for this to happen.  (Bones??  Bones.)

He adds another layer after a minute, now that he can see well enough to search for a sweatshirt.

She notices that but apparently doesn't have any more layers for him apart from the cloak that doubles as a door-curtain. Scrawl scrawl.

Partway through this a shentin comes in with a bowl of stew for her. She speaks to them and they look at Beau and nod and go get one for him too. It's mostly mushrooms, some fish.

"Thank you."  He digs a granola bar out of the side pocket of the duffel and offers it to her, when he's done.