"Cowardly? What's your plan for exorcising gargoyles, Sal? What should we do - tell the local police just what happened? Is the constable of Clare Melford going to fare any better against those creatures?"

"Jing Yi, if you want to go back there and bury the body -" Well, he was going to say 'help yourself', but he can't actually bring himself to say that, so, in a small voice: "please don't."

"...I assume they're predators. They had something of a vulturey look to them. I don't know. There might not be much left to - I don't know."

"We'd really have to check that to be sure." Going back would be a horrible idea, and he doesn't want to do it, but...

"Fine. Okay. Fine." His voice is quiet, shaky. "But it's rotten of us."

It is rotten of him to not want to be locked up again. Fine. They're doomed and they're going to peck each other apart like starving chickens and at the end of the day maybe that's what people are like.

"It's rotten options," says Terrence. A little of his enthusiastic energy is dissipating and is metabolizing into just pure anxiety.

"I," she says, pulling her hair isn't working very well but hey it's what she's got, "I don't. Want to just leave things here such that people will die. Except every time I try to think about things we could do that aren't that I keep running into problems like having no idea what the hell I'm doing."

"In your defense, we only found out about this a few hours ago, at best."

"In not my defense I still have a responsibility to try not to kill people and I'm pretty sure the gargoyles don't care whether I knew about them!" 

"We can come back. Cripes."

"Okay then." He stands up. "Let's go. Like you said. Time is of the essence." 

"Great." Terrence grabs his luggage.

"We really shouldn't leave a body out in the open."

"What, are wild animals going to get to it?"

"I, I think the most likely mechanism by which people die in the short term is 'investigating the body'? I am probably missing something but I don't know what. If we are trying to prevent people from dying, in the short term which is what we can take actions about, I-- don't think the thing to do is just leave it there. We could. Move it away from the monolith so people investigating don't touch the thing? That seems like it has to be a terrible plan but I'm not thinking of a better one and--"

no come on inaaya think about something else, think about something that involves probabilities and reasonable assumptions and leaves you able to talk, preferably in ways that aren't just rambling in response to nobody but she'll settle--

"I don't know if I can make it to the train station."

Oh, right, Oscar. Yeah, that guy doesn't look too great. Hoooo boy.

"Maybe, but I'm more worried about the locals." Look, Oscar is a great reason for everyone to stay here for a few hours so he can go steal a shovel and deal with things.

"We could try and take the body back to his house. That'll slow down people finding it. And maybe... make it look like he got hurt and dragged himself to his house and couldn't call a doctor before he passed."

Oscar isn't crying but looks wild-eyed and if you look carefully, he's still trembling.

"The sky is a problem," he manages. "Being outside."

Terrence blinks. "Why is the sky a problem?"

Is the sky a problem??? oh god maybe the sky is a problem full stop now, they're doomed.

It takes Jing Yi a moment to parse that. "--you could probably just stay here or on the train."

"We're nothing to the sky," says Oscar. "It shows us we don't matter. Like you're seeing your reflection in water and it's wrong."

He is pretty sure people are going to decide he is insane but it doesn't matter because they are all probably going to prison.

...that is a different problem than the one he expected.

"If I avoided everything that scared me," Sal says, sharper than is really necessary, suddenly fed up with this entire town and needing to be gone already before everything comes crashing down, "I wouldn't ever get out of bed."

He really thought Sal was a nice kid.

Hoo boy. Hoo boy. Hoo boy. Say something helpful, Terrence.

"We can buy you a hat."

Nailed it.