Nope. No freezing. Keep moving.

"I don't want to be here," he says petulantly to nobody in particular. "I don't want to be here."

There's no use fighting back because it just makes everyone decide you're a disgusting insane brute even if someone is flagrantly cruel.

...that is. Not the reaction he expected? You can't really apologise to someone for mysteriously messing up an apology, which is very unfortunate.

He's just going to leave the stairs and go up to their rooms so Oscar can freak out with Inaaya who he doesn't hate.

"Yeah," Inaaya says to Oscar, like she thinks he's a frightened horse or something, "I know, none of us do, let's go upstairs and be somewhere else, okay?"

She's got Oscar's wrist in a vice grip but she's tugging very gently in an upstairsward direction.

(Thank god Sal apparently ran ahead of everyone else and everyone else decided to let him hide in peace for a moment while they struggle on the stairs; the moments alone are really helping with the terror.)

Jing Yi is just going to join Sal on the floor. Other people who are Actually Freaking Out can have the beds.

(He's fine. He is the most fine person ever. He has had his revelation that the things in his dreams are real, and he is coping with it Brilliantly.)

He cooperates.

(If he doesn't Inaaya will probably decide there's something wrong with him and he ought to not to be around anyone and-- no.)

"Can we cover the windows," he asks in a small voice.

Once they're all in a private room, Inaaya lets go of Oscar's hand, pulls hard on her hair. It's not as stabilizing as she hoped it'd be but it helps any. Gets to covering the windows.

Oscar's presence makes Inaaya feel terrible.

It makes the room claustrophobic. (Christ, we're picky, says a part of her that's gotten fed up with the mental breakdown.)

"Okay, now can we - can we talk? Inaaya. Do you have any idea about those beasts?"

He's pleading a little. At least they've established that nobody else really knows either, given how much they were freaking out, he couldn't stand to be on his own about this.

This was not in The King In Yellow, a corner of his mind thinks petulantly. The rest riots, and starts in - the author had to have known about such things - somewhere in the book must be a reference, or an instruction, or a framework for approaching such - and that cog starts ticking away.

"Remember when I said there must be things there that don't exist here, because if they were here we'd see them," says Sal, a bit hysterically.

"We can talk."

She's pacing, now, three steps and then a sharp turn over and over again. It's not really helping but it feels better than trying to keep still.

"Jing Yi dreamed about the beasts, and they're carved on the weird meteorite whistles that keep turning up. Sano didn't have any information on them, at some point we're presumably going to go back to the asylum and I'll-- not ask Roby, I'm going to ask Valentine."

Thanks for telling everyone, Inaaya. Though it is...fair.

"Roby knows. He must know. Do you remember the -- the window on the top floor, broken from the outside--"

"It makes more sense than the other possibilities. Fuck."

"Oh, he absolutely knows, I just don't expect him to share with the group.

Sal makes a good point but we still have no idea which of the things that exist in the Dreamlands, if any, I don't think I've ever seen whatever those things were, also exist here. Jing Yi I am very sorry for how little sense that probably made to you and I can explain when I get the part of me that explains things up and running."

Oscar's going to continue to stare miserably at a painting of the countryside and feel like an abject parasite (who nobody's going to put up with! and nobody is going to help! and who isn't worth anything to anyone) but not actively impede the conversation.

"Nothing makes much sense now, so that's fine."

"Thank you! Did anyone think to mention the demons carved on the space whistles before - ah, bother."

He frustratedly kicks a baseboard, gently.

"Bloody hell. How would nobody see it. He lives in London! He has neighbors!"

He's going to have to explain the whistles.

"The whistles also-- supposedly-- increase the strength of spells. So maybe these things can do magic too? Just to make everything worse."

"They what! Oh my god."

"Yes, someone thought to mention the-- ugh I don't want to call them demons because that has assumptions baked into it but I don't have a better word. Sano had no idea what I was talking about."

He kicks the baseboard again, gently. "Oh, I'm sure Sano has no idea what we're walking into."