Is he just announcing this apropos of nothing? That's kind of cute in itself. "They are very useful."

He absolutely is. "You should have seen my old notes on the cult."

"Because they were meticulously well-organized and easy to read?"

"So he could organize them."

"On the one hand I have so many notes on so many things, and this is kind of absurd, but on the other hand I keep being right that things that came up once in a very specific context keep coming up again and I want to remember it when that happens so I'm just writing down everything that's mentioned in the context of the cult or things next to the cult, and -- I had a point when I started talking. I think my point was that this index is getting really long."

"Maybe you should be cross-indexing instead? I guess that doesn't have the advantage of a single list..."

"I can also cross-index and indeed probably should but what I want mostly is a single list of all the things that have come up and the pages where I can find more details about them so that it's all in the same place, yeah."

"Have you considered having a wildly disorganized set of notes which are occasionally interspersed with recipes, notes about your appointments, and the time you got bored and started trying to prove the Pythagorean theorem. And then you can connect things through serendipity."

Tiny laugh. "Not only have I not considered that, I will not consider that, and in fact I have already forgotten what you said."

"Well. When it turns out the Pythagorean theorem is integral to understanding the Thing with a Thousand Mouths, won't you be eating your words."

"I love you so I am deciding to forgive you for whatever nightmare your paperwork looked like. Do we really need to prove the Pythagorean theorem ourselves to understand the Thing with a Thousand Mouths, I feel like Pythagoras did that part for us."

"Maybe the proof is important! You don't know! Wasn't there that one book about that Great Old One who was a mathematical proof?"

"Was the Great Old One specifically a proof they teach to high schoolers across the nation?"

"Maybe our sanity has all been rent by Pythagoras. You don't know. You don't have a comparison."

"I'm a languages person not a math person, if the proof is important I'm not going to get whatever insight it's important for by serendipity anyway."

"I guess our comparison is Mordred who, admittedly, does seem saner than either of us."

He nods mock-seriously. "The math is probably what drove us insane, then. There's no other obvious explanation here. Which I think is an argument that you shouldn't try to prove random math in your notes, really."

"I have been defeated by the power of logic." He sighs. "I can't believe Ayers is alive."

His hair-ruffling turns slow and pensive. "It's quite remarkable."

Mordred is not quite close enough to non-awkwardly pet Lev's hair about this and really doesn't want to move. Also there are all the other reasons it would be at least a little awkward to pet Lev's hair about this. Fortunately Oswald seems to have it covered.

"I knew he would have come for me if he could."

"I hope he'll be able to... that you'll..." he tries to find a phrasing that works and sighs. "I hope it all works out this time. I'm really glad that," vague gesturing, probably the sentiment is obvious enough that no more words are required.

"I miss him."

"Yeah. Yeah, I know."

Mordred is... extremely quiet.