Unfortunately, before Terrence can get much actual work done, Inaaya and Sal come to visit and talk about DREAMS.

"I wanted to follow up on those dreams you've been having," Sal starts, making zero mention of the note on which he left Terrence's apartment.

(Inaaya can be in charge of explaining why she's here or if she has any connection to the psychic stuff Sal's been going on about.)

"Oh! Uh, certainly."

Inaaya might be in charge of doing that but she's not totally sure she... wants to?

"Sal didn't tell me most of what you guys talked about before," seems like a decent way of scoping out whether that's a good idea.

Terrence puts the kettle on for tea, and fishes some only-slightly-stale shortbread out of a box somewhere and puts it on a plate. "Um. I don't, uh - I mentioned to Sal that I've been having rather evocative dreams since I first read the book. It's not - I don't know how much interest you'll find there, but I don't mind answering questions about it if you're curious."

She is, indeed, curious. She's taking notes again, in fact. "Evocative how?" 

Terrence sits down at the kitchen table, fidgeting with a spoon. "Um. Chaotic. Emotional. I mean - both positive and negative, certainly. The - elements from the book feature heavily, certainly, but so do elements from my life I wouldn't have previously considered related. Sometimes there are interesting parallels but sometimes it seems as if drawn from a hat. I could... recount one? Would that be helpful? They're rather hard to recall but I could give you an impression."

"Go ahead."

"Alright. Um. A few nights ago - one began en media res, I was waking from my childhood bed into a building I've never been in, sort of the trappings of my childhood home but with elements of the University. I had no concept of the place or my being there being unusual. I saw fire in the walls and smoke pooling around the hallways - I tried to run, but it was as though my feet were trapped. I did make it out though, and The - uh - the - a figure, robed in... strange garments, told me that the place was burning and that new things would grow from the ashes. I asked him to stop, but he told me he would show me what would be planted there, and... he reached into my mouth and painlessly pulled out one of my teeth, to show me. I woke up then. The, um. I was confused the whole time, it very much had the semblance of waking life and as though the events were... naturally unfolding. If you follow."

...yeah okay that's not the Dreamlands. It might just be a normal weird dream? Inaaya has never experienced a normal weird dream but she is informed that people have them.

Sal can't tell. "That's certainly very dramatic."

"It... was. I would say that, uh. I mean, that's a dramatic example, many of them are quite - quite pleasant. The chaotic places are a recurring theme, I would say. Or - chaotic elements. Amalgamations, etcetera, no continuity. The missing tooth never came back, for instance."

Scribble scribble scribble. "How have they changed since reading the book?"

"Oh, what I just said. Chaos, a lack of continuity. Every place and person comes for one night and is never seen again. An... upheaval of familiar roaming-grounds. At the same time, the mind turning up old fixations or feelings. I don't want to be too hasty to attribute this to The King in Yellow, mind you. I was revisiting a lot of things around the same time. ... I mean, like I said, the King, the Sign, fragments of the City, they show up there. But the rest is... well, I don't know. The city doesn't feel properly like a city, in the dreams. I'm sure that's on my end. ...Does this make any sense? I'm not really used to describing dreams to people."

"Did cities used to feel properly like cities?"

"I mean, of course."

"Hm. And were things generally recurring before? You'd talk to the same people and be in the same places from night to night?"

"Certainly." Terrence is confused at the question.

...she has a suspicion. She doesn't want to be right. She really, really doesn't want to be right. "What does it mean when you say cities felt properly like cities?"

"I mean - Hmm. I could draw you a map of London. I could draw you a map of Carcosa, though I've never been there and it would just be one man's flawed interpretation, I could draw you a map of my mind-scape if I were particularly inclined after a night... But in each, if there's a room, it'll be the same size in and out... If someone lives there, they're likely to have a bed and cooking-pan and stove, they're likely to have their things scattered about... Broadly, if not always, there are aqueducts for water and storage rooms for supplies. ... Whereas lately, all of that seems askew. In doubt. Not assured. It... sounds frightening, phrased like that. It - " Terrence catches himself, fidgets with his spoon some more. "It's not. ... It feels like my foundations are on shifting ground. Transformation can be frightening."

"Of course," she says. "This... might be a weird question, but how would you describe the architecture? In your dreams before you read the book, I mean."

Terrence is curious about her curiosity. As he thinks about her question, a wistful smile breaks across his face. "It was lovely. I should know. I built it." ... He pauses. "I mean. Not - all of it, consciously. But a lot of it, consciously! The roots of it were rather Egyptian, or Babylonian, I suppose my younger mind's conception of something Biblical. At accordingly grand scale. But I built up in whatever style I was interested in at the time: Greek, Roman, Ottoman, Arabic..."

That may well be odder than the current dreams. "Thank you, that's very informative," he says, looking at Inaaya to determine if it was actually informative.

It is.

She does not want it to be.

She doesn't want to be right, she doesn't want to live in a world where the King in Yellow can take this away from people, she does not want to, but-- you can't change the world by pretending it isn't there, whatever is true is already true--

"Now-" Terrence glances between the two of them, pleasant and confused and interested at this reaction, sympathetic but even more interested at Inaaya's look - "Do you think you could explain to me what you could possibly have learned from that?"