"It worked!" she says, laughing, "Still, don't look down, but there's more portals out now - "

“Thank the Bumbling Astronomer and his rare grace -  is it otherwise safe to open my eyes?”

"Think so!" She starts looking around for a likely landing place.

He opens his eyes, and starts doing the same thing.

(Fluffy clouds and blue sky and portals made of circular rainbows, fluffy clouds and blue sky and portals made of circular rainbows, no eldritch horrors definitely no eldritch horrors -)

Bina's possibly more imaginative - or more stubborn - than him, because they're in peppy bubble land. There's ribbons of multicolored light winding their way through the voidscape, fizzing collections of bubbles around pools of water that look very soft to land on - 

Which they do, bouncing a bit. The bubbles feel smooth to the touch, and give easily.

Peppy bubble land is personally offensive to any reasonable sense of aesthetics and - he has better things to think about.

“... thank you,” he says, tentatively standing. “The ribbons are a nice touch.”

"I wasn't picturing those! I don't know what they are..." She shakes her head. "The pools should be more like the doorway."

“The last doorway didn’t go so well.”

"Don't think it's much safer to stay here."

"Let’s take a two minute reprieve from blindly barreling through whichever exits are available without forming concrete plans, anyways. Are your mysterious dream instincts telling you that going through this door is going to get us closer to the old man, and do they include an instruction set for how we're eventually going to go back to the normal world?”

"I think waking up shouldn't be - too hard, especially once we've... There's a tension, and it'll - get easier to release once we find him? And I don't think he'll be here, which means some door, and I think the doors that go to places I don't recognize might go to his memories."

"We really should've gone through any of this beforehand. Okay. Our time to ask him questions is going to be limited; what should we prioritize?"

"What happened, and how he ended up here. 'What he knows' is relevant, but might take too long to explain."

"First we ask what he concretely knows about the eldritch horror, then we ask what happened - maybe with a clarifier like 'such that you were ensnared by the monster' so he doesn't start talking about his brother's wedding - then we ask how he ended up here, then we ask what other information he thinks is relevant... okay. Through the portal?"

"Yeah - maybe lean through to check instead of jumping through. I can do that, since I'd be able to identify my-memory or not-my-memory?"

“Yes, you can.”

"Any other thoughts before I peak through?"

“- you’ve been dealing really well with this and I’m proud of you and glad to be able to help. Nothing else.”

"...Thanks." She takes a deep breath, leans forward into the water - and back. "No dice. It's my memory. Not one that'll be - good for jumping from, I don't think."

“Have any convenient rabbits to pull out of your hat?”

"Nope. But I think we can jump to another platform."

“Or turn into birds and fly to one.”

"That too. Sorry, not used to having - magical resources."

“Neither am I, honestly. At home I used them to escape from fancy parties, not - skeletons and beautiful greenery and laundromats. Count of three, we go to that one over there?”

"Yeah."

"One... Two... Three..." And bird time!