Returning from a cigarette run to Lower Tadfield, John walked into the lobby and was immediately assailed by a sense of disorientation that made him think he was having another amnesiac fit.

But no, this was something different, he realized after the first jolt of panic subsided. He hadn't been trying to remember anything in particular, for one thing, and for another, his memory lapses didn't usually include...multicolored frogs and butterflies? Or girls with pinwheel hair.

"What the fuck...?" he said, staggering slightly as his sense of balance went haywire and he momentarily had the impression he was walking on the ceiling (or everyone else was....?) Had somebody slipped him a hit of acid?

He meandered to one of the lobby couches and leaned on it, peering at the other occupants of the room as he fought not to let the dark and demented things scuttling about the edges of his mind break into the light. He'd had practice with that, lots and lots of practice back in Ravenscar--no don't think about Ravenscar!--so it was all good. Rainbow bugs, yeah, no problem, he could deal. Right then. Pinwheel girl, Uriel, wolf, Loki. Very-not-looking-good Loki.

"Oi. Loki, mate, you feeling all right?"