Terrence nods. He speaks slowly and looks a little confused as he puts the words together, not sure exactly what he's trying to ask, but he's determined to be a pest about it. "Certainly, certainly - well. When you asked about Carcosa, or the city - the city of my dreams - you were asking about it as, as one might ask about a real place one may have seen. Can... you explain that to me?"

.....does he not know.

She glances at Sal, who is probably not going to have answers about this since Inaaya's the local subject matter expert, and then back to Terrence.

Terrence is earnest and curious and kinda baffled.

"If I said the phrase, 'the Dreamlands,' would that mean anything to you?"

The word sounds vaguely familiar-- like it itself is a dream.

His face twists through confusion and faint recognition and then back to confusion. "......I'm not sure. 'Dreamlands.' Maybe I've seen it before?" But as he says it aloud he's not really convinced that he's, just like, read it in a history book somewhere and forgotten it.

"Maybe." She's been chewing on her lip, she should probably stop doing that. "But-- hm. Do you think Carcosa is a place one might visit?"

He's caught off-guard. "...........It's not a place like, like Paris, or Beijing. I, um. I think it. I think it represents... something... real."

"But do you think it's a place like-- I don't know, like the moon?"

"....No, I wouldn't say so," he says, but he's even less sure of himself.

"Something stranger, perhaps."

"...Something stranger, yes. I - have theories. I could theorize to you. But that's all it would be. I'm just a man who's read a lot. But the two of you - seem surer about what you think is happening, and I don't think you would be that way without reason."

"How much did Sal tell you, last time you two talked?"

"Just the very basics, as I recall it."

"...We raised the notion of psychic phenomena." Maybe if Terrence says it out loud in sort of a casual investigative tone of voice, it'll sound less ridiculous. It doesn't. Dammit!

"Right, but how much did he tell you about them?" If it's ridiculous, she doesn't appear to notice.

"Um - a friend of yours" nodding to Sal "who got impressions from books, without reading them. I understood that it was perhaps not just limited to getting impressions from books. But our conversation was brief."

"I felt strange making too many claims with only my word to back them up."

"An admirable practice."

"Indeed. --Well, I'll make a few more. I'm the friend, and it is indeed not just limited to books."

"Oh - alright. Alright. Alright. Excellent." O_o "... Could I request a brief demonstration, for my own, uh, you know..." Stance on reality? "approach going forward?"

"Of course. If there's a cat around I can talk to them, or you can hand me an object you know the history of and I don't. --Nothing related to the King in Yellow, please."

Terrence nods and stands up to go to his shelf, then processes the entire sentence and freezes. "Wait, the cat thing is real?"

"I don't know how Nessa Clapper knew it either, and I suspect if I asked she would not tell me."

"Terrence, can you talk to cats when you dream?"

"I never tried! Was everything else she said to you true??" Terrence is having just a little worldview crisis. Just a little one. He glances at his bookshelf. "Can you do it with a text in a language you don't read?"