"It's hard to not wing it with this type of thing, unfortunately. But we're trying to find the old guy, ask him what happened, maybe get him out of here if that can be done."

Young Bina is worrying very loudly in her head about her parents fighting.

Bina looks around, says, "Come on," and goes to jump out the window she's pretty sure used to be here.

Shaitiren goes to follow her. 

(He’s jumped out of windows before, after all - it’s a less intimidating prospect when you can turn into a bird halfway down.)

They're elsewhere. The air is sort of yellow, and it's raining softly. Bina hums, ignores a younger version of herself laughing with a girl as they run out of the rain, and climbs a fire escape.

Beyond there is a white room with girls sketched in - probably early adolescents - with only a small splash of color each, and the little dog sleeping, and one's telling a story about herself and Binamir - 

There's a scratching outside the door and in the story and the scene's kind of flickering.

He has no idea about how concerned he should be about any of these facts. Bina’s lead: continues to be followed.

Binamir groans. "I hate this memory," she mutters - and indeed younger Bina looks miserable and upset - and steps towards the girl telling it. "But I think we might be able to get somewhere in the story... And I don't want to linger long, I don't like that scratching."

“Oh, so it is appropriate to be concerned about that. I was wondering.”

(He leans down, and pets the little dog - no real reason not to.)

"Not original to my memory. Which is usually bad."

Creak, creak, creak, and now the girls are stopping talking and getting confused and alarmed by the sounds outside.

"And we should go." 

Except one of the girls notices them - the first one to have actually done that properly. 

"What's going on? This didn't happen - how did I know that - Sam's story was wrong," she says, addressing the grown-up Binamir. The other two girls appear entirely unaware of their observer. "Who're you, anyways?" she asks Shaitiren. 

He’ll worry about the ethical implications of dream people reacting to novel stimuli later - 

“Don’t have time to chat, kid - where are we going to?”

"Bina are you okay - " the girl asks.

As Binamir says "The factory story had the weirdest changes, I think we need to start there - "

And the door bursts open.

- Shaitiren continues not being trained in using force pearls in combat, and accordingly doesn’t manage to block it in the doorway, but he’s been thinking over about how he’d take down the damn thing, and one idea pops into mind quickly enough to override the terror and decision paralysis -

Hi, eldritch abomination. Have a - ridiculously durable and difficult to move, perfectly smooth - force pearl, formed suddenly in the place that your paw is going to land, while you’re still in mid stride, another one positioned such that you’ll slam straight into it, and a bundle of a dozen different random articles of clothing suddenly snatched from nowhere and thrown in your face by someone who is, in the next moment, a small, quick little bird.

The hound is very unhappy with this, and its jaws creak open warningly.

"Time to go!" Bina shouts, scooping up the little dog, and heading towards the window. "Shaitiren try not to get lost, I'm not sure what happens if we split up!"

The small, quick little bird isn’t capable of making snarky comments in response to that, unfortunately, but it is capable of fluttering over and clinging to her shoulder. It does so.

She darts through -

And they're elsewhere, light dim enough they can barely see, air smelling like dust and clay, walls blackened by fire, debris on the ground.

"...Is this the factory?" mystery dream girl asks.

A bird flutters off Bina’s shoulder, and ceases to be a bird.

(He is unclear on how this is supposed to lead them to the old man. Bina is presumably following mysterious rules of dreamland navigation that are too complicated to trivially explain.) 

"Yeah. It's different, though. Doesn't feel like the same factory."

Also how is Lash following her, this usually doesn't happen.

She sighs. To Shaitiren: "I'm mostly trying to find stuff that's - out of place. Doesn't fit with its surroundings, or with my memories. Second one's mostly on me, but - you're observant. If you see anything that's weird or unusual or not what you'd expect, tell me, okay?"

Apparently dreamland navigation isn’t too complicated to trivially explain. He sort of wishes she’d mentioned that earlier, but maybe it’s a contingent strategy and the more likely one was more complex -

“Okay,” he says. 

He’d already been passively scanning their surroundings, but he can do it more intently, and with a different focus - anything that doesn’t seem to be following ordinary physical law, anything with shadows misplaced, anything that seems to induce out of the ordinary emotions when observed, anything that seems even slightly incongruous brought up to conscious attention and then either dismissed or or analyzed...

Muffled voices, in and out in waves, that Bina doesn't seem to be reacting to - 

Tiles scattered on the floor with strange scratches that seem to be a lot of different things all at once - 

A young Bina, voice reedy, saying "Sam I think we should leave - "

And something smells like ozone and brick dust.

Lash is walking around, peering at stuff - she clearly notices the tiles, listens to the muffled voices - "I think I know what they're saying, but it's weird, something about displacing the factory and its shadows echoing?" she whispers.

Shaitiren does not have strong preconcieved notions about the ordinary odor of factories.

“How vaguely ominous... Bina, can you not see the obvious, magical tiles on the floor or hear the possibly-magical voices coming through the walls, or are you choosing not to react to those things for other reasons.”

"Uhhhh yeah do either of you see that."

She points.

There's a dog skull, illuminated rather dramatically as she gestures.