He looks at Lev. "I'm sorry."

"You don't have to be, it was fine."

"I was cruel, and I'm sorry."

"I was, was stupid and I kept making mistakes and making you angry and--"

"I was too foolish to see what the drug was turning me into," Ayers says, "before-- I was afraid I would never be able to apologize. I was afraid I would never see you again."

"You can't get rid of me that easily," he says, failing at humor.

Pat pat pat? Continued self-hatred? Steadfastly pretending he's not present for this because it feels kinda not intended to be public?

His face is all wet.

"What I don't understand," he says suddenly after some amount of time, "is how this ties into the summoning and the -- was it going to end the world? I definitely remember some apocalyptic imagery."

"What summoning?"

"Ten years ago in Los Angeles the cult summoned the mouth-thing. -- ten years ago you might already have been in Ethiopia?"

"Yes. I left in 1923. Echavarria never mentioned it to me. You said... they summoned it?"

"Yes. It killed - most of the cult or at least most of the cult who was in LA, I don't remember exactly how many -"

"Who--"

"Samson and Savitree and Daniel and Montgomery for sure," Lev says. "There's a Cristobal de la Luz in Mexico City who might be Cristobal Vega. Samson died recently, allegedly of cancer--"

George snorts. "Was the summoning disrupted?"

"Yeah, there was a group -- Winston and Henslowe and, I don't remember who else, those were the survivors -- that's what our group was originally hired to look into, actually. Finding out what Walter Winston had been trying to stop."

"That is good. I-- would not like to see the Mouth present in the world."

"What... would happen. If they had succeeded fully."

"I do not know."

"...fair enough."

"In my meditation, I have found that the mouths... are connected to a Maw. I do not know what would happen if the Maw came to exist on Earth. It would not, I fear, be good for us."
 
 
 
 

"Uh. Speaking of the ritual. I realize you were not present for it but, but, would you happen to have come across anything at any point that might explain, um --" very quickly: "Lev was the conduit for the ritual and he's been in supernaturally perfect health for ten years and it keeps feeling like the other shoe is going to drop and this will turn out to be really bad but maybe not?" Is this good news or horribly insensitive??? Good thing he's not tracking any of that!

"...I have no idea. ...I would not expect this to be an effect of the summoning?" He looks at Lev more closely. "...have you aged? You look as you did when I left you. Somewhat thinner."

Ahahahha that's not terrifying or anything.