Quentin felt Eliot stiffen at the hug, so that answered the question of what point in time from home he was - after he was already dead. Julia had been the same, so it was a surprise, but maybe a small part of him had hoped that this Eliot would be from before if only for the the simple fact that he didn't want his friend to feel any guilt seeing him again. Quentin remembered the pain he'd felt in Eliot's words during his and Alice's trip to the top of the mountain in Fillory.
But either way? He was more than happy to see him in the flesh.
He knew the questions would be coming, but he couldn't help but just be there and soak in that this was happening. Quentin let out a light laugh, one inappropriate-in-the-moment laughs that he couldn't help but then took in a deep breath before letting it out with a sigh. "It's kind of a long story that isn't going to seem real at first."
Finally, Quentin took a step back and smiled up at him. "Right. So, this is Narnia, but you probably already figured that out. We're in a place that, I guess a lot of people refer to it as a pocket dimension outside of normal time and space. Not like Fillory or the Library, but it's own place outside any of the worlds we've been to or were connected through the Neitherlands. I showed up here after... well, after everything happened at home over a year and a half ago."
By the look on Eliot's face, Quentin wasn't making much sense. Not to mention the shock of seeing a dead friend again. It was a shock in itself seeing Eliot, and Q was the one who knew what was going on. More or less or as much as any of Goodland did.
"This isn't normal. Narnia, I mean. Sometimes our surroundings change, but it normally looks like Manhattan -- whatever this place's version of a god is, calls it Goodland."
He'd said a lot of words at Eliot, and Quentin just smiled at him again. "It's a lot, I know, and doesn't make much sense" he said and placed a hand on Eliot's arm. "But it's real."