That's fair. Yeah, okay, he'll start on Azathoth And Other Poems.

Nessa Clapper seems nice. No way she'd lead him astray. Besides, might be a fun new lens to interpret The King In Yellow under!

In the meantime, he stops by Oscar's house, or something, in the evening when he thinks he might be home, and offers to take a walk or something? It'd be weird to discuss money matters in front of the whole family, after all.

"Sorry to pull you away from your family," Terrence says casually, as they leave.

"Good to get out of the house," Oscar says blandly.

He still feels a bit awkward and tense around Terrence, to be honest,. It's pretty hard to tell how he took the news from Nessa, and in some ways worse he's not mentioned it or shifted in demeanor in any way. Oscar feels kind of pitiful and adolescent for thinking about it, especially given the stakes of most everything else going on.

But-- Terrence invited him, and he's pretty sure it's about the money he offered for the shop.

"Certainly, certainly."

It is! Terrence isn't a big believer in drawing things out, so - "Um - I know you've been having legal troubles and the shop is closed, and, uh - call it a minor spot of political activism, or helping out a friend, or both, whatever you prefer." he hands Oscar a check. It's, like, not an enormous amount but it's pretty hearty.

"I, er - I wrote this before we - um - I wrote this a while ago, I just never got around to handing it over. I just, um, I would have written it anyhow, it's not to do with - uh." Terrence blushes a little and looks away.

"I know," Oscar says. "I mean, we talked about it before-- I know it's, um, not like that." Terrence has, in fact, given him an enormous sum by Oscar standards. And he is extremely grateful, but also... Hmm. "Thank you. My shop-- it was my life, before all this began. I owe you a pick of the rare books."

It's strange to think they met at his shop and that the first conversations they had... weren't about the King in Yellow at all.

Meanwhile, does Sal by any chance want to go with Inaaya to a graveyard.

Yes. Definitely.

(She will make sure to adjust her affect if this is a mournful occasion and not a goth one.)

It isn't not a mournful occasion, but it's not for someone Inaaya knows personally. The grave of Portia Barclay, lover of Valentine Donovan, is in Abney Park Cemetery.

She found flowers and realized only belatedly that Sal's presence means that laying violets on a grave has a second, more personal sort of subtext, but it's too late to back out now and the first subtext is still important, so.

She stares at the violets and bites her lip and carefully doesn't translate any of her feelings into thoughts.

"You care a lot about her." It's not disapproving; sympathetic, rather, and something else underneath.

"Yeah. I do. It's..."

It's personal, in a sideways sort of way. You can want everyone to be free, and Inaaya does, but. It's not like they say in the papers.

"It'd be hard for me not to, I think."

"Oh, it's this one."

She wants to reach out and touch it. She doesn't know what she's feeling inside.

"--There's something about a gravestone that simplifies things, isn't there? Valentine is all color, the story all passionate and bloody and someone broken and messy underneath. But there's no color here. There was somebody who was alive, and she was in love, and now she's gone."

"And we can't talk to her. There's no way for the color to get filled in."

There are leaves fallen over the headstone; Inaaya brushes them away.

"I don't-- know anything about her, really. Except her name, and that she loved a woman and she's dead."

"Maybe that's better. I think -- I think she deserves some privacy, after everything."

She doesn't know if she means it. She's thinking about the silence of the grave, like some kind of aesthete. She's also thinking, despite herself, about everything the newspapers said.

"I think... if it were me I'd want people to know."

"That it wasn't like the newspapers told it, that it wasn't glamorous or salacious or anything. That I was just-- a person, who'd loved another person, and it wasn't a thrilling melodrama, it was just ordinary and human."

"But maybe she'd disagree." She sets the violets down. "It's not as if I can ask, after all."

"I'm not sure you could be yourself and want anything else, I suppose." Sal is becoming very fond of that. "I can't imagine it. It terrifies me, the thought of other people knowing who I am. Though I still... sometimes I still sorely wish they did."

"There's so many things you can't say to almost anyone."

It's not clear whether she's talking about herself, or Sal, or Portia, or all three.

"And-- I think if I could tell everyone all of it, I wouldn't? But it never stops grating that I can't."

"I like having secrets. There's something very thrilling about it. But I can never tell when it's safe to let go of them."

"I hope Valentine will be alright. She's not going to be. But I can want it either way."

"Yeah. I want it too."

"Her and every lion in the world, and it's not going to happen and I can't make it happen. But we can want it."

A few days later--

Oscar is in a coffeeshop, which is-- fortunately for him-- small and cramped and musty and absolutely doesn't involve anything involving the sky.

Skies are terrifying, these days.

And then Ruby sits down across from him.

Talking to people's been hard enough even when it's not a person who cried on him and hit at him at basically the same time. But-- she was grieving, and he can't just ignore her. Does she seem poised to break into tears at any moment?

Yes.

"You know about Roby," she says.

"Yes," he says. Ruby is definitely going to burst into tears but to be fair, he can't blame her.

Also, she won't make a pass at him in a coffeeshop. Probably.

"...and William Jing has disappeared and I can't find him and his idiot roommate says he's in a coma--"

Tears, all right.

"You heard right. Unfortunately. We at least got him to the hospital." He's a bit irritated about the offhand Terrence comment but whatever, Ruby can think what she wants.

"Alexander wrote me."