Wilson gives Darcy a squinty, skeptical look. But maybe the weird backpedaling is a moody teenager thing and it really isn't important; he can ask Erin about the Changeling stuff later. He leans against the counter.

"This guy tricked me into building a portal that sent me on a one-way trip to an island with no human habitation and the first thing I saw when I got there was him making fun of me. Then he disappeared and left me to my own devices with the packs of not-quite-dogs that wanted to eat me, the spiders the size of my head-" A shudder runs through him at the thought even now. "The living darkness who was only deterred from tearing me apart by keeping myself in range of a light source every waking moment, what I thought were stress-induced hallucinations until they bit me in the face, the giant mutant deer that showed up in mid-winter and took personal offense to the structures I'd built, et cetera, et cetera."

"It seemed like it could be Earth when I first got there, but even before I ran into any monsters, the animals were weird and the ocean was fake. It looked like a stage backdrop."