# Baku
	>"You're awake."
	>"I--wasn't so sure you would be okay. How are you feeling?"
	<"Okay--but who are you?"
	>"..."
	>"I'm 

# Transport
	About them, a susurrous and mercurial world erupted, emerging in large, blotchy strokes. Cassarah threw her hands over her face as vitriolic color rashed over every surface, communicating unintelligible emotion. Turbulent ground crashed against itself in a discordant attempt to form paths through the breach, blasting the newcomer with sand and grit. 
	"Welcome to the Shared Conscious," Chandrakant said coolly, serving as stability to Cassarah's uprootal.
	Cassarah fought to keep her eyes open in the vociferous winds to survey her new frontier. They stood at a peak, writhing terrain radiating away in every direction. They solidified at certain points in the distance, defining zones. Directly before her was the most violent, volatile piece of land, hot like magma. Dense block sludge circumscribed it, presenting a dull barrier for the neighboring slithering organic mass. The vivid landscape was a panoply of pools, rifts, voids, peaks.
	Chandrakant kept chattering gently as she stared: "I'm sure you have a lot of questions, but I don't know much. This is my home, it's the home of that leech baku, and it's the home of anything that haunts the human imagination. It's not like the place you come from. It's wild, undecided. It's dangerous. It's easy to get lost because landmarks will disappear as soon as you mark them. Most are loners and disperse, finding their own haunt and ignoring passersby. The lost are on their own. Still, there are rare settlements that persist along the landscape. I wouldn't rely on their hospitality, though. Any communities born here are warped and wicked, just like the landscape. Just about everything exists here, really, in some form or another. Don't trust them, though."
	"Depravity. This is how people feel?"
	"There's theories on that stuff, but I don't give credit to anything. I just know where I come from. You can find tunnels between worlds sometimes. The kind of thing that brought you here is what I use to visit your world and disappear when I need to."
	Funwa crossed her mind. Those times he disappears, does he really go here? What could he want in this abject reality? She had grown so used to his loitering presence about the apartment that she came to feel it was his home, or at least similar to it. Chandrakant called this mercurial wasteland his home, though, and Funwa's, too. It was hard to picture, so she didn't bother. Chandrakant was speaking again, though, after a pause.
	"There's one problem with all of this," Chandrakant's tone dropped harshly. "And it's a big one."
	Cassarah's heart thumped irregularly. Chandrakant looked into her eyes quizzically with high black and initially blank eyes.
	"Humans can't come here."
	His voice came smooth and easy, carrying a message at odds with Cassarah's sense of safety. They both gaped a moment, thoughtlessly studying their own inscapes.
	"Can't! What will happen to me?"
	Cassarah's hands shook with a chill that killed the marrow in her forearms. He didn't offer a response quickly, coldly brooding over her with unresponsive black eyes that illustrated growing disbelief and aggression, tinged with fear. Cassarah panicked, begging him to answer with her dewy eyes and quivering lip.
	"Can't."
	The response came as a whisper at first then grew into an accost.
	"Humans can't walk here. They aren't made of that stuff. If anything comes here, it isn't human."
	The word lingered in the air. Chandrakant's suspicion and self-defense boiled over, and he erupted into a brittle tirade, beginning with a vitriol that decayed as he saw the listless confusion that spread across Cassarah's face before becoming beading streams of tears.
	"What are you! I knew something was wrong that moment. So you aren't human! Then what are you? What was it that you were doing to me? It hasn't been right, nothing's been right! What were you scheming? You and that devil baku--Cass?"
	He stood before the broken girl, she as lost as he.
	"You didn't know?"
	She shook her head weakly. Chandrakant is a simple guy without concerns for the hidden manipulative behavior that may rest under anyone, so he immediately accepted her sincerity. After all, he is the predator who views all as prey. It is rare when he feels powerless before another, despite their wiles. But how can she not know yet live that boring human life in a dorm with such false confidence and self-acknowledgement of her humanity? And what is she? And how did she end up in this situation? Chandrakant asked himself without answers, while Cassarah's heart overflowed with horror that struck her paralyzed and thoughtless. She did not know what any of this meant and what dangers she may be susceptible to.
	"Hey-" Chandrakant broke the silence. "You look pretty cute like that."
	Cassarah, violently uprooted and now flustered, was finally set for tears that poured like a stream, salt irritating her eyes and cheeks. Chandrakant was flustered now, too. 
	"Sorry. Hey--look. A gazebo popped up next to the brook. Why don't we sit there and calm down?"
	Cassarah was overwhelmed to the point of taxing her brain. No concern for her safety in this uncertain place. If Chandrakant says it's fine, it's probably fine anyways. No will to protest her attacker. His softer, confident voice struck her heart in its deep need for sympathy and strength greater than its repulsion of him. She weakly nodded once more.
	"Wha--"
	They were there. Chandrakant was already seated. 
	"Travel's less linear here, too. Just sit down and don't worry about it yet."
	Cassarah consented, legs closed sharped, and arms hugging herself, seated more than two spaces away. She looked very small and vulnerable in this state. Chandrakant was moved but unsure how to act on his feelings. He looked at his feet, at his hands, the scenery, his feet, thinking through every scenario in which he makes Cassarah hate him or run away. Staying quiet and uninvolved was included in his failed scenarios.
	"Whatever you are, it's okay, you know?"
	She maintained her wavering downward glare and white-fisted grip on the bench. She began sniffling. 
	"Really, it's just different here. I'm sorry I said those things. I didn't know if you were plotting. I see you're scared, though. You don't need to be. I'm not."
	He sighed and stretched his arms over the bench in a display of ease. Cassarah remained silent, so he followed her energy level.