"You're the right amount for what you're doing, which is danger, and I'm the right amount for what I'm doing, which is art and trying not to think about you dying."

"I'll be finished with it soon, and then I can spend the rest of my life not dying."

Meanwhile--

Inaaya is... well, mostly she's tired, and would like for things to stop from keep happening constantly, but that's not going to happen any time soon now is it. And in the meantime she is probably the only one of them who can talk to Oscar without there being fireworks. Except for Terrence but you can't outsource thinking clearly about things to Terrence.

So she heads to the park. Hopefully there will not be more things happening today. There have really been enough things to last several months in the last week.

It's easy to find Oscar at his regular lakeside spot. He looks disheveled and tired-- even his beret looks unkempt somehow-- though it's a modest improvement on his demeanor in Clare Melford. He starts a little as he notices Inaaya.

"Hello," he says. Inaaya probably knows Oscar enough to notice he's not giving off much warmth but his smile, awkward as it is, suggests he wants to.

Yeah, it does. "Hey."

There isn't a good way to say this so she's just going to say it the terrible way. "I-- wasn't sure how much of the stuff everyone was saying stuck with you, you seemed pretty out of it, so-- I wanted to check, I guess. And make sure you were doing better."

"I don't think I'm any good at being around disturbing magical things."

Or horrifying things in general, honestly.

"Are any of us? Everyone panicked about the bat."

"Terrence passed out and I couldn't help him."

Shrug. "And I froze up and Sal had to drag me to get me to move, I wasn't exactly helping anything."

"I guess it was bad for everybody. I'm sorry for complaining." He feels pretty bad about getting comfort from Inaaya whenever anything bad happens. "You could tell me about whatever you guys figured out at the tavern when I was freaking out about the sky."

That... wasn't the point but she can take a hint and stop trying with the feelings parts of this.

"So the upshot is that we all know magic exists and had for at least a couple of days, although I think William was the last to find out."

(She is not actually sure of this but she's sure enough that it seems worth saying, given Oscar's worries about everyone thinking he's crazy and refusing to tell him anything.)

"Good to know, given my curse." It feels a bit melodramatic using the word curse in reference to a condition of his life but it's possibly technically accurate.

--right, Oscar has the inabaility to speak thing. At some point she's going to need to integrate that into her model of how Sano but she hasn't really found time yet.

"Yes. Anyway, William's engaged and forgot to mention it to anyone. Which is, uh, not the biggest secret any of us were keeping, but. His fiancée is engaged to Chris Parker and can control animals; she also has one of the whistles that keeps turning up, with a bat-thing carved on it, and meanwhile, William had been dreaming about the bat-things for a while before they showed up."

"Chris Parker?"

"Yep! I assume William has some sort of plan for dealing with this but we didn't exactly get into it, things were tense."

This is the understatement of the decade. Oh well.

"That's a hell of a coincidence," Oscar says. "Poor woman."

He doesn't like the sound of the whistle or her strange powers but he doesn't want to jump to any conclusions!

"I guess if it is a coincidence is sure is a hell of one."

Yeah, it doesn't actually sound like a coincidence to him either.

"Trying to think what else came up that I'm not sure if you already know... oh, right. I speak Cat-- that's not a magic thing they just have a language and I've learned it, because cats are just as intelligent as humans are. As of last week we also know that this applies to everything feline, including zoo lions, and I have no idea what else might be a person with a language that I just don't happen to know."

(This is, she has to say, a moderately terrifying thing to have no idea about, and by moderately she means extremely. But she's not really sure that's a conversation she wants to have with Oscar, as opposed to Joan or Sal or ideally both.)

Oscar considers this for a moment. It's a long shot, but... "...Were you ever able to talk to Goethe," he asks.

He knows they met-- in previous years Goethe was a gregarious extravert around the shop-- but maybe Inaaya hadn't learned Cat.

"--yes, I was."

"I hope he didn't talk your ear off."

He's smiling a bit now.

"He did but it was fine." She's smiling too. "Taught me everything I know about epic poetry of feline Babylon. Which is not a sentence I have occasion to say very often."

Oscar beams. "Well, I'm glad he was cultured. Though I can't take much credit for it.

I can't believe you speak a Cat language on top of everything else! Best thing I've learned in a long time. Thank you."

"Yes, my life is very strange and always has been." She's still smiling. "You're welcome. It's.... good, I think, knowing that what's out there isn't all horrible."