"Would you mind if I was curious about it?"

"She claimed that the devil was, or perhaps was an agent of, Shub-Niggurath. Which is a name I've heard from Roby but from no one else. Apparently Shub-Niggurath is an obscure British fertility god, I looked it up. I thought that perhaps she'd read about it somewhere."

"...that does sound like something Roby would talk about. It's nice to be able to help solve one mystery, at least."

Meanwhile--

Well, that was certainly an interaction, which happened. It doesn't really feel to Inaaya like she learned much? She has most of the same uncertainty as she did before but with more vivid imagery. (This is transparently-even-to-herself an attempt to stop being upset and angry about a miserable person who is more than likely going to live the rest of her life in a cold, tiny room with a barred window, seeing horrible things and having nobody believe her while they talk about how she deserves to die not for the crime of murder but for the crime of loving wrong. It isn't actually working very well.)

Sal considers Inaaya. Looks away. Studies the wall. Steps in closer to her, somewhere off to her side. Barely above a whisper: "The Dreamlands, is it."

"......is what."

"I'm collecting arcane and cryptic statements. What are the Dreamlands, are they relevant to everything else."

"....moderate but not super compelling evidence for them being relevant, some weak evidence against, I'm not sure whether I'm just pattern matching, and if I try to explain it it will sound extremely stupid."

"If you're lucky it'll only be the fifth dumbest-sounding conversation I've had in the past two days."

"..............fair."

"So, some people, not everyone and I don't know how many but some, and almost all children, have dreams that take place in consistent locations over time. There are some common themes-- enormous and heartbreakingly beautiful architecture, things in general are-- sized more universe-scale than human-scale? If that makes any sense? I haven't explained this to anyone except my Joan before--"

"And it's a real place. I don't know how to get there from the waking world but I know it can be done, and the things you learn there carry over, that one I tested, I learned math in my dreams and checked it when I was awake to see if it still worked, and-- this is going to sound even dumber and I want you to know that I know how dumb it sounds."

"Well, I can't really disprove the claim that some children dream of breathtaking architecture and mathematics. I'd expect a massive amount of selection bias, seeing as I'm an engineer. And it's not as though I can remember whether my own dreams were consistent back then."

She laughs, a little. "Okay so the incredibly dumb part is that specifically cats can go to the Dreamlands whenever they want and they have a spoken language and you can learn it and I have. I recognize how stupid this sounds, it's a claim I'm willing to back up if you want to find a street cat later today, and Nessa Clapper knows it and I have no idea how she knows it."

"...You know what? That's testable. There is a coherent thing you've claimed to know how to do, and you have a way to provide evidence you can do it. Just for that I would rank this only the fourth-dumbest conversation I've had since we got here, and if you can prove it you'll be better than Terrence. Lovely job."

"......thank you, I think."

By coincidence, a stray cat is sunning itself not too far from where Sal and Inaaya are.

Are they testing this now? Yeah, okay, they're testing this now.

"Hi!" Inaaya says, in Cat.

"Hello," the cat says. "I want scritches."

"And you can certainly have them. Do you mind if I relay a few questions from my friend here while I'm doing that?"

"He should learn to speak Cat," the cat says.

"Indeed he should but alas, most people don't have the time in the day to do that as well as all the other things they should. So he has to rely on me."

"Meowing extensively at them isn't much proof," Sal says (in a human tongue).

"Yes, I know, I'm explaining to her why we're doing this," she says to Sal, in English. "Do you have any specific questions you want answered."

"...What would I know that the cat knows and you don't. I could... hold fingers up behind my back? Can cats count?"

"Cats can count."

Cats can do calculus. Cats can publish papers on the calculus they can do. All of these things sound wildly and incredibly dumb. Everything she's said so far sounds wildly and incredibly dumb and it seems to be working out?? Still she's keeping those sentences to herself.

"Tell her that I don't believe you can speak Cat, and you want to prove that you're right and I'm wrong, so I'm going to stand with my back to her and hold up fingers behind my back, and if you can successfully communicate with each other about the number of fingers, then I will concede victory."