"Hello!" the ghoul says cheerfully. "You're not fleeing in terror."

It has very sharp teeth.

Well that's not terrifying or anything.

"You're not attacking me," she says, because explaining that when she's scared she is more likely to freeze than flee seems like a bad idea.

"I don't eat humans, my boyfriend doesn't like it." He sounds like he's indifferent to the question but wants his boyfriend to be happy.

"Glad to hear it. Hi. Is ghoul the word you use for yourself or is it really rude, it's the only term I know."

This is such a surreal conversation. Then again, Inaaya has spent the last month determinedly learning about Ge'ez so she can email an academic in Ethiopia in the hope of learning more about her own psychic powers; she supposes surrealness is relative.

"Yep, we're ghouls. I'm not sure anyone really cares about being rude to ghouls, given our culinary habits."

He successfully digs up a coffin and starts to chomp on an arm. 

Inaaya is not going to protest that only eating humans who are already dead is not the same as not eating humans. She is also not going to point out that buried bodies are full of poison. "I feel like caring about whether or not you're offending someone who might eat you is a basic requirement to not be suicidal but I guess it takes all sorts. Are there a lot of people who... know things... about ghouls, and if so where would I find them."

The ghoul considers this. "You could go down with me and meet my friends? --I promise none of us will eat you. It would be very rude."

Chomp chomp chomp arm.

"For context," Inaaya says, "I have spent the last month trying to learn about Ethiopian languages so I can respond to emails from a university professor who I cold-emailed because I was cold-emailing everyone on the entire faculty list at Miskatonic in the hopes that one of them would explain to me what is up with the psychic abilities I have. The thing I want is not so much information on ghouls specifically as more information on the world in full generality. —Also last time I saw a ghoul I killed them but in my defense they were trying to kill me first."

"That's fair of you. --I thought the humans had some people whose job was to deal with that kind of thing."

"If we do, I didn't get the memo. Unless 'that kind of thing' is 'someone trying to kill you' and the people whose job it is to deal with that is the police, in which case I did get the memo but I don't like getting the police involved in things."

"These humans came to us and they said 'you can eat people but you have to be discreet about it or we'll shoot you.' Probably they know about what's going on?"

Thank you.

"Probably they do. Do you happen to know when this was, or where this was, or any of their names?"

"They didn't talk to me," the ghoul clarifies. "Just someone. We passed it along. --I knew a bunch of stuff when I was human but I don't know how much of it was actually true and I don't know anything about psychic powers."

Still. If a group of people exists then a group of people exists, and she can find them. Maybe. Hopefully. She's closer than she was before she knew they existed, anyway.

"That makes sense. Um. Do you by any chance have contact information, I don't go by graveyards much."

"I'm going to be coming back to this graveyard to eat for a while?" he says dubiously. "You could leave a note."

"Fair enough. Thank you anyway."

"Randolph-- he's my boyfriend-- would love to meet you."

"I would be interested in meeting your boyfriend." This is the understatement of the decade but it's whatever. "My name's Inaaya, I'm free pretty much all the time."

He collects the rest of the dead body and throws it over his shoulder. "You'll need to go through this hole."

Well, this is certainly not getting any less surreal.

She follows him through the hole, doing her best not to think too much about Alice in Wonderland.

The ghoul climbs easily down the hole. It's designed for people who are significantly more dexterous, or at least more used to rock climbing, than Inaaya is. 

"There are places where the line between the Earth and the Dreamlands is thinner," the ghoul says. "Cliffs, islands, rivers... but the best way to get to the Dreamlands is just to go down." 

She has to ask for help a few times on the way down. Hopefully help will still be available on the way back up.

She's not sure what, exactly, she's expecting from the Dreamlands, but the Alice in Wonderland parallels just keep going, don't they.

The ghoul is very helpful!

The climb takes a really, really long time. It feels like she's been climbing for hours. 

She is very very very tired and also much too stubborn to stop.