Well. She's going to have to be nicer to ants, then, just in case.

"Not as bad as it could be, I guess. ...I am still not sure in what sense your city is Providence, Rhode Island."

"Interesting fact, by the way, ants kill ten to fifteen humans a year."

"Probably more than that these days. More people around and all." The way she's smiling is extremely sincere.

"My city is, specifically, Providence, Rhode Island as viewed through my memories of growing up there and my nostalgia for what I once had and have now lost, both metaphorically in terms of childhood innocence and literally in terms of gambrel roofs."

Nodnod. "That makes sense and also does in fact sound extremely cool."

"The gods thought so when they stole it."

"What, like picked it up and made off with it—"

Inaaya can spend quite a lot of time asking an enormous stream of questions about Randolph Carter and the Dreamlands ("There's a university run by cats? What do cats write papers about, are there other earth animals with language, how did cats get to Saturn, is Saturn still made out of gas in the Dreamlands, if the Dreamlands is underground how do you get to space from it—") but eventually, she is going to have to go home.

"Technically you don't have to go home."

"I am fairly free-range as teenagers go but if I suddenly vanish with no explanation there are people who will be very very worried and who I would prefer not grieve their daughter at least if I'm not actually dead. —unless there's a thing where if I leave I can never return in which case I want to actually think about it, but Pickman clearly can go back and forth so I've been assuming it isn't that?"

"Well, you can come back down, it's just that you're going to run into a lot of people nastier than Pickman. Or, well, equally nasty, more likely to murder you."

"Thanks."

"So it's even more important that I go back, then. Most people don't know about the things that are likely to kill them and I'm not the only person who lives in the world."

"To be fair, nearly everything that lives under the earth won't bother you as long as you stay above the earth. Other than ghouls."

"Yeah. Well. I think it's important that people know what's actually happening and also I have family and things that I don't want to just leave."

"Fair enough. If you run into Pickman again you're welcome to come visit."

"I will do that."

The climb up is... well, she's still not a rock climber. But she manages and when she gets to the surface she calls an uber, all of her limbs feeling like rubber.

And the next morning, when Louise Fauche checks her work email, there are two messages from ikhadpo@gmail.com.

The older one — dated from 2:32pm EST that Wednesday, three days before; subject line "Re (8): Research inquiry" — is much like all of I. Khadpo's other messages over the past month and change: scrupulously polite, in a professional tone; the writer is clearly doing their absolute best to keep up with the conversation and equally obviously has no goddamn clue what they're talking about and is scrambling to compose coherent questions based on seven open Wikipedia tabs.

The newer one — sent at 6:13am EST the previous day; no subject — reads:

Hi Dr Fauche,

It's currently three in the morning where I am and I did like four hours of rock climbing earlier so I'm very tired and not gonna be super coherent, sorry about that. Today I went underground until gravity flipped and met someone who could build a city out of love and nostalgia and also talk to cats (not in the sense that everyone can talk to cats, in the sense where he and cats share a common language. apparently cats only have the one?). I don't know what you're doing in Ethiopia because you are very determinedly being incomprehensible about it but I hope it's at least that interesting, unless you are one of those people for whom interesting is always meant in the Chinese-curse sense, in which case I hope it is very boring and you are spending all your time in nice quiet libraries where nothing happens.

Look I know I'm probably really annoying but I can do telekinesis and set things on fire with my brain and I have been trying to figure out what was happening to me for literally my entire life and you are somehow the most promising lead I have ever had. If you want me to leave you alone and never send you an email again I will do that but please, please, refer me to someone who will help.

Thanks,
Inaaya

Can you get on a plane to Miskatonic?

-L

Two minutes of looking up internship paperwork templates, four minutes of filling out fake paperwork, twenty-three minutes of talking to her parents, and an hour of comparison shopping between airlines later,

I can get there by Monday afternoon.

-I

Excellent. We'll meet outside the rare book room at Miskatonic Library.

--L. 

Nice.

Inaaya has no idea how long she's packing for but calls it a week and if she needs more than that she'll find a laundromat. Over the next two days she obsessively researches transit times, AirBNBs near Miskatonic, and how exactly airports work. (If her parents think it's weird how much this internship does not require them to help with logistics in any way, they're used to it by now.)

And on Monday afternoon, after six hours on a plane and half an hour on a bus and twenty minutes wandering around asking for directions from anyone who looked like they would know where things were, Inaaya is outside the rare book room of Miskatonic Library with a duffel bag and a backpack.

Louise Fauche is reading a book. She doesn't look up when Inaaya appears. 

That's fine. Inaaya looks around until she sees the person who matches Louise Fauche's photo on the faculty list and sits down at the table with her.

(Even for a sixteen-year-old, Inaaya is small, and the oversized denim jacket she's wearing isn't doing anything to make her look less so.)

"Ma'am, the prospective students' tour meets downstairs."

".........okay, but you said we were going to meet here."