Quoted By:
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Gil, smokeless, follows you in, and watches as you stash the bomb and go rooting around elsewhere. "What are you looking for?"
"Richard is busy, so... yes!" You have located the bottle of painkillers. "Just in case I nick something. Not you. You don't feel pain, I think. Wait, didn't you steal some pills from Headspace? Did you put those somewhere? Also, you have your gun, right? The one I got you?"
"Um, yes. For the gun. Gimme a sec for the—"
"Ooh!" This is the problem with stashing things in drawers: you keep forgetting about all of it. "Remember this, Gil?"
Gil tilts his head. "I-I-It's a... bird."
"It's not a bird, silly. It's a wind-up alarm, um, bird. Remember? I bought it from the evil shopkeeper in that one manse? You might've been in the rucksack." You dangle the alarm-bird by its golden beak. "I think the point is, you wind it up, then a while later it starts squawking. And if you're in a trance, the squawking's so annoying that it snaps you out of it. Which is perfect, considering Us is probably gonna try and stuff us in— I know you can just come wake me up, but this would be a lot easier, wouldn't it?"
"Oh, shit. Yeah, anything that... uh... I-I-I really don't want to have to come find you..."
"Right! So I'm bringing this. Have you heard anything from the mantis yet?"
Gil sighs deeply. "Lottie—"
"What? It's a legitimate question."
"I-I-I can't talk to bugs! Bugs can't talk! Even I-I-I couldn't talk before you magicked me, before you— I know you were going to say that. I-I can't... there's no secret language only bugs can hear, either. They can't talk. Annie couldn't talk, Buster couldn't talk, this thing can't talk—"
"But?" you say pertly.
"There's no but! I-I-I can't talk to it. Nobody can talk to it. Sensing things i-i-isn't remotely the same as talking, so— sorry. I-I don't know what to tell you."
"Sensing things?"
Gil looks as though he bit half a lemon.
"*I* can't sense anything from this charming mantis here, so that's really interesting! It looks like a big fat shrimp to me. Pray tell, would you enlighten this poor, two-legged, bones-having young lady as to what might be gleaned from—"
"I-I-I have two legs! And I— I'm not even the same kind of— I don't think shrimp and beetles are the same thing. They're totally different kinds of animals. So i-i-it doesn't even make sense that I'd—"
"What do you mean, not the same? Beetles are bugs. Shrimp are bugs. *Worms* are bugs. Earl's thingy was totally a bug. They all crawl around, and they don't have any bones. Bug. And it makes perfect sense you can talk to your fellow bugs, so don't even try to deny it."
"They don't talk..." Gil says piteously.
"Mm-hm. So what have you gleaned from your comrade Mr. Mantis? Or whatever I'm naming it. Work in progress."
"...Uh... i-i-it's mad about me holding it. And about the bands on the claws."
(2/3)
