"I've loved the stars since before I knew why. I grew up in Bombay, I couldn't see them, I just-- wanted to, and knew that I loved them, or would love them if I did see them--"

"Do you remember it-- have you spoken to King Kuranes, can you--"

"I-- don't think I know a King Kuranes, it's a big place and I haven't seen much of it and for a bunch of years my Dreamlands-self was just trying to figure out how to get my waking-self to realize it was real at all--"

"Oh. I miss him, and I can't-- I think he's a tramp, somewhere, in the waking world--"

"I'm sorry. I don't know. I can maybe try to ask around but I don't really expect to get a helpful answer."

"How did you-- manage to stay." He sounds heartbroken. There is nothing at all he wants more than to stay.

"I-- I didn't realize people didn't? Or, I mean, I knew people stopped, there are so many more children and nemos than adults, but-- I think I maybe don't make the same distinction as you? The Dreamlands are part of the world, and I love the world, it's not different, to me, to love the Dreamlands, than it is to love the stars, or to love math, or to love cities or mountains or trees or the sea or any of the rest. And the world is enormous and beautiful and infinite and unfathomable and I don't think I could be jaded about any of it if I tried."

"I don't-- I don't see how you could feel like that about London if you've seen Ulthar."

"So-- I live in a boarding house for dockworkers. My best friend, who lives with me, is named Joan Clark, and she loves birds, she calls me robin because robins will just go right up to people. She's from Northern England, she came to London because there was work here, and to this day if she hears birds she can identify them with her eyes closed. And she's so gentle, she's great with animals, when she's gotten a bird to eat out of her hands it's hard to believe those are the same hands that do dock work."

"But I spend most of my time in the library, and one of the people I've met through math is Emma Stark, who's kind of a dumbass in a lot of ways-- she's an alcoholic who spends way too much time at parties-- but she also adores math, and she's so good at it, she approaches everything like a puzzle, if there's a problem in front of her she lights up at the idea of getting to solve it."

"Or, Oscar Latz runs a bookshop and he's not brilliant but he's driven, he's served prison time because he cares so much about making banned books available to the world."

"And I can keep going, you know? There are thousands of thousands of people in London and every one of them is a complicated and fascinating world and I will never in my whole life have enough time to know them all, not if I spent every waking minute on it."

Carter starts to very quietly sob.

Oh no.

This is some ugly crying. His nose is leaking snot.

Inaaya has no idea what to do with that. She knows what she'd do if it were Joan or even Emma, someone she was close enough to that she could just hug them. With Randolph Carter, though, she's just-- frozen.

"It's gone," he says.

"I'm sorry," very quietly, well aware that this is incredibly weak. "I don't-- I'm sorry."

"I wasn't good enough to keep it."

That's--

She wants to protest five different things about that statement and they tangle on themselves and she winds up protesting nothing.

"It's the only thing I want in my life and you're saying-- if I wanted something else I would be able to have it."

"I don't know what it would take for you to be able to have it."

"How well do you remember it?"

"I don't-- I have sense memories? Mostly? I know what it feels like, I have some procedural memory, I can talk to cats even in the waking world, but I don't-- keep facts, mostly, I know I once dropped everything to go climb a mountain but I couldn't tell you the first thing about mountaineering."

"I remember all of it. Names, locations, everything. It's more vivid than the waking world, sometimes."

"I'm sorry."

"And-- I'll never be able to go back. I can't stand to be in Providence anymore, it just-- reminds me-- London is ugly so it's better, I can't mistake it for there-- In the right moment, in the sunlight, Providence looks like home."

"I--" she swallows, "I haven't figured out yet how to get people there who don't go already, but I'm working on it, I swear I'm working on it--"