The girl is hugging her knees and staring off into the distance, rocking back and forth slowly and looking very distracted. The mounting pressure of unreality morphs into sharp spikes pushing against the skin of their souls, almost turning into physical pain in their hearts and lungs, making it feel like they can't breathe. 

And then the girl notices them and spins around, dropping to all fours and baring her teeth. Her ears press flat against her head and her tails stick out back, taut. A high-pitched sound comes out of the back of her throat, a long continuous whine on the verge of becoming a scream.

Annika's metaphorical grip on her Skills tightens, but she won't initiate hostilities.

"Easy, easy," he says, in a low voice, not showing his teeth, and spreading his hands a bit farther away from his body. "We're not here to hurt you, we're not enemies." The previous tension he'd been showing has almost entirely evaporated, though he's still sweating. The feeling isn't gone, but he's focusing on something more important, now.

The whining sound she's making starts to fade out slowly as the two newcomers don't advance nor do anything else threatening, until she's completely silent—except for the nervous jingle of her bell, which is twitching slightly from her tense grip.

"I'm not going to get any closer if you don't want me to. I can just sit down right here. Would that be okay?"

...she doesn't say anything but she doesn't seem to be getting more hostile?

"Easy, slowly," he says again, dropping down to a crouch and then to a cross-legged seat.

He's making himself more and more vulnerable. A cross-legged seat is a lot harder to jump out of and wastes precious time, in case it becomes a fight.

"Annika, could you sit, too? It won't mean much if I'm the only one doing that, you're just as much of a threat, if not more."

...he cannot be serious. 

He's serious. Seriously?

"Please?"

Fine. But he's covering her resurrection if they die to this. She sits down, in a lotus pose.

"There's a girl, thank you Annika."

The foxgirl watches this warily, not dropping out of her ready stance herself. 

She looks terrified.

"We can be patient. Take as long as you need, we're not going anywhere unless you tell us to. We just want to chat."

...she's going to trust him, on this, because it does seem like it might be working. Or doing something, at least, since they're not being attacked.

It also gives him time to readjust himself, psychologically and spiritually. The foxgirl's strong reaction is also grounding, though perhaps less than it could be, since she's the source of the feeling and if anyone would be able to perceive someone who doesn't exist it would be a fox spirit. Still, he can try to, as Annika does, find his center, and ground himself in his body.

After several minutes of watching them she does start to relax, hiding her teeth again and slowly letting her ears perk up and point at the two of them. Her tails are still mostly held rigid, but there's some give, now, a couple of them being a bit more relaxed than others, their tips flicking here and there.

That's promising. "My name's Taharqi, and my friend's is Annika." The girl probably caught it but it bears reiterating. "What's yours?"

"Moonlight," she says, after a few more seconds. "My name is Moonlight Flower."

"It's nice to meet you, Moonlight."

She looks down at herself, then carefully lowers down to a seat, again, with her knees once more pulled close to her chest. "It's... nice to meet you too.

"Mum says I shouldn't talk to strangers."

...oh no.

"We're not strangers, though, are we? Now you know our names! We're acquaintances."

"I don't think that's how it works."