I know.

Eventually someone brings them food.

Karen thanks them and makes a valiant attempt at eating and then announces that she should maybe go to bed.

She cuddles her dog and cries herself to sleep, when she's otherwise alone.

He sits outside her door. He tells Maedhros what's going on since Maedhros should know what's going on. He doesn't talk to anyone else. 

Wishbone starts licking her face, like, the second she looks like she might be awake.

" - OK, OK, I'm up, ready to - aww, man, we're gonna have to talk to Ryan today, aren't we."

Snuggles? Will snuggles help??

They help a little. Pat pat pat.

All right. I'm up. Let's - talk to Ryan about doing this, if we're gonna do this. Man I'm gonna hate this conversation. And I wish everything else could be only as bad as this conversation's gonna be.

Okay. 

It occurs to him that she should maybe have a change of clothes, both because it's been almost a week and because if she's going to go convince a boy to - but if he says that then it'll be more salient and she'll be less comfortable so - yeah, not worth even asking - 

- whenever you're ready.

OK.

- mrrrgh, I think this is one of those plow through and then have a breakdown about it later things. Let's just go.

She redoes her hair and sighs heavily and opens the door.

Hey.

Hey.

Some people might consider eating at this point but if I don't eat then I'll be less likely to throw up, so.

- m'sorry about all the complaining, it just - helps. Not very much but a little.

You are really really not complaining an unreasonable amount. I guess you might be complaining an unreasonably little amount.

Well I'm gonna do more of it later. But if I do too much now I might think about it too hard and get upset again.

Thanks for - I dunno. Being cool about stuff.

Hug.

Hug.

"Aight. Let's go find Ryan."

Ryan turns out to be just around the corner, in a similarly nice room, halfway through attempting to shave with a dagger when they knock on the door. He opens it. "Oh, Karen. Hi."

"Hi! Are you doing OK after all of the - I actually kinda forgot to ask what happened to you guys, I might be a weirdly self-centered person."

"I'm told we got lucky it wasn't much worse but it wasn't actually very bad. We ended up in territory controlled by Quendi enemies and had to hike out."

"Well, I guess as long as you guys made it out. Uh... I need to talk to you about something."

"Of course. Come on in."

"OK."

I think - I think maybe wait out here.

Mmhmm.

He closes the door. "So you know, they can still hear us."

"Yeah, I know. It's OK, it's not, like, terribly secret at this point. Alex already knows. Uh - so, uh, apparently these people are gonna be at war for another four hundred years or so, and a bunch of terrible things are gonna happen and a really large number of people are going to die and then some other god-things are expected to sink the entire continent beneath the ocean. Or something. I guess."

"Wow. ...I guess if all these civilizations didn't get destroyed we would've noticed them around."

"Yeah. I'm, uh, not a hundred percent sure that this is our world's past exactly, because I came through at least six hours after you and Alex did and everything hadn't just ceased to exist from the timeline disruption or anything - if that's even a thing, who knows how time travel works in real life - but it's identical enough that Alex thinks it'll probably go about the same way."