"Hey, Lucien.  Do you know what the date is?"

"September 30th?"

"Okay.  You seem lucid, mostly.  Are you, I don't know, cold?  Should you come inside?  I don't really know how to deal with—this, with emergencies.  I don't even know CPR, I think you probably didn't need CPR, really, I don't think I did it right—I'm rambling.  Come on inside."

Oh yes CPR that make- wait no that's nothing like how he was taught to do CPR. Probably not all schools have those lessons.

"That sounds good?"

"Yeah.  Yeah, it's, uh.  It's this way."  He leads the way to the front door.  Opens it, after pausing with his hand on the knob for a moment.

The house is in nicer condition on the inside than the out, if decorated somewhat over-cozily and kind of retro.  The incandescent lights turn on fine and it's pretty dust-free; it certainly doesn't look abandoned.  "I'm Jeremy, by the by," says the first-although-perhaps-not-best responder.  "Do you want some water—you maybe don't want some water."

"A towel would be nice."

"Yeah, of course."  He approaches a cupboard and produces a towel to drop into Lucien's hands.  It's kind of a weird fabric but it works fine to dry him off.

That will do.

"Um. I'm sorry for almost drowning in your creek... Also for trespassing in your tree house. I has heard this place was abandoned and didn't think to check whether the Internet was lying to me."

"You're not the first person to make that mistake.  Well, the trespassing one.  You're the first on the almost drowning one, and, uh, I don't really think you need to apologize for that."  He takes out another towel and wrings his hands in it.  "I'm—really glad you're okay."

"Yeah! I uh. Am very happy you pulled my out. Really, than you for that."

"I mean, yeah, course.  I wasn't just going to let you die if I could help it.  Then the internet wouldn't be lying anymore and so many more people would come to my house, is I think how that works."

"Heh, you have any idea where those ghost house rumors come from?"

"When my parents bought the house we didn't really know anything about it.  Now... I dunno.  Do you believe in ghosts?"

"No, though I wasn't 100% and figured that checking out the ghost house near my grandparent's place couldn't hurt... which I guess I was wrong about."

"Maybe a little."

"Wait was that your copy of Banners and Watermarks?"

"One of them.  If you mean in the tree house."

"Yeah, wow. I've never actually met anyone else my age who read it." Much less someone who is also really hot. "Why do you have multiple?"

"The one you saw was my first copy, and then I got an illustrated set.  Which I'm much more careful with.  Who's your favorite character?  Mine's Bera; I like the way she talks.  'As the finest beads of water on a spruce's needles glint each alone, so does my interest here.  It has not coalesced; it hasn't the context to.  But I do sparkle, while I may not yet shine.'"

Oh wow he has passages memorized.

"I'm a fan of Gildas."

90% of Gildas' presence is in the form of providing numeric tables in footnotes. He appears onscreen exactly twice in the entire series. Lucien is aware this is a very dorky character to have as your favorite but it's not like he's going to lie about it.

"Oh."

"Listen, I think there's a lot you can tell about him based on what he finds interesting enough to annotate! And the tables really do provide a lot of details about how the supply chain disruptions actually interact with everyday lives!"

"No, I think it's neat that you like him.  A lot of his stuff went over my head, at least the first time."

"Me too to be honest - though I did figure out the bridge betrayal in advance because his tables were missing information about the goods that the third scribe was supposed to be tracking."

"No way!  That's really impressive; I didn't see that coming at all.  Though I did guess that Harkle was sincere and being framed all the way back from his—well, 'his'; Eresin's—letter to Neskrid's king."