It had been easy for her, hadn't it? She'd just killed herself, let everything go, then started over somewhere else. He wondered how it felt walking back into the life expected of her here in Emillion. He'd never asked her. There were so many things he hadn't bothered to ask her. There were things he didn't have time to ask her or even think about asking her. Everything had started to escalate before she'd arrived. "You think the stars are aligning maliciously against us?" While he was a man of science, he did understand the principle of magic and its influence on creatures, people, and other things.
Every experiment needed the right ingredients and the right conditions to be successful. He was still sleep addled, although his shoulders had relaxed considerably since when he woke up. The longer he stayed awake, the more he tried to concentrate on things that weren't his nightmare, the more control he gained over himself. The less he wanted to return to the land of dream. "Don't worry about the water," he said shifting a pillow behind him so that he could lean back against the headboard. "Just come back to bed."