Ethel had thanked Darling profusely for the campsite: for setting up the tent, neatly laying out the blankets, stoking the fire, and instantaneously divining the best ways to cook squirrels. Disguised Lord Nyx would have done the same, but collapsed into sleep about as soon as the pillows and blankets were ready. Consuming one soul was tolerable, it seemed, but add onto that the souls of the handful of squirrels and hares they caught along the way and it became a real burden.

It was nighttime. The dome of deep blue and stars reminded Darling of many of the places she’d known: Nyx’s spare rooms, Agi’s voids and borrowed castle, the trundling assembly line on which she’d first developed anything like consciousness. Darling remarked the similarities without putting any weight on them. She remarked that the soul spiders she’d often called forth from the underworld also knew darkness, and might have reacted in the same way. She did not wonder about them.

She hadn’t needed spiders or soul threads for quite some time now. Lord Nyx had taken big wads of it weeks ago. Perhaps they were tools from a bygone existence. Another thing to calmly note.

Darling sat criss-crossed before the fire, still as a pillar, her arms tucked under her cloak. Ethel sat beside her, absorbed in eating. She hadn’t complimented Darling on her cooking because after all the initial thanks, Darling had insisted that she was just a mannequin-automaton and it was all superfluous.

But now Ethel was almost done, and she began to speak. “Hey, Darling,” she said, “I have several questions. Is it okay if I ask them?”

“Yes.”

“And will you...are you under any orders to...be completely honest?”

“My contract does not specify. But I have no reason to lie.”

“No reason that I would know of.”

“Yes.”

Ethel looked away, trying to process all the possibilities of the statements. In the end, she cast suspicion aside. “For one thing, I’m wondering how the underworld works and how it was created,” she said. “If you would know.”

“It runs on the souls of all present individuals,” said Darling. “One could say it is acting through them. Each of the worlds it constructs is cast from a different consensus. Each hell, and each sub-hell between them, is a template that comes with its own ideas pre-loaded.”

“Or maybe someone put them there,” said Ethel, thinking of chthons.

“Perhaps.”

“So why is gold valid currency in the underworld? I would think demons wouldn’t even care about gold—it seems quintessentially mortal. Doesn’t it?”

“I guess avarice is universal,” said Darling.

The fire glinted across Ethel’s non-functioning glasses. “...If demons believe themselves to be not only superior to Gaia, but antecedent to it,” she said with a hand on her chin, “then how do they justify the obvious resemblances between—and the very names naming -- demidemons vis-a-vis animals?”

Darling paused, processing.

“I notice you did not ask why demons and mortals speak the same language, or why the written language of the underworld is so much more complex than any of the Gaian.”

“Heh,” Ethel chuckled. “I sure didn’t.”

“I do not know if there is anyone both alive and willing to speak on that point,” said Darling, “but suffice it to say the two worlds are more intertwined than most demons would like to confess. Any other hard questions, Ms. Grisham?”

“Do you like it here?” she said immediately. “With Nyx?”

“Yes,” said Darling, just as fast. “I enjoy the comforts of a safe wooden box, and like most sound living things, I find comfort in safety.”

“You don’t suffer boredom,” said Ethel, mostly to herself.

“I was born in darkness. My original home is a pitch-black factory punctuated by gusts of flame. And I was designed for service in backrooms.”

“...Sorry,” said Ethel. “I meant whether you enjoy working for Nyx as a servant. Do you enjoy...who they are? Do you like their personality and how it bounces off of yours?”

“I do not follow,” said Darling. “Are you projecting yourself onto me?”

“Kind of.”

“Then I cannot answer. I was designed not to have a personality.”

“Which is nonsense,” said Ethel. “Saying you don’t have a personality is like saying that some people don’t have an accent.”

“But I never said that. I said that I was not designed to -- and I give my personality as little weight as my constructors. The concept is not relevant.”

“But when you battle, or do anything at all...”

“There are overriding strategies for every movement,” said Darling, “when my own thoughts get in the way. An automaton with a consciousness is only as good as that consciousness lies buried.”

Ethel looked at Darling for so long, with the firelight splashed across her glasses, that Darling began to suppose she was meditating, then sleeping.

Ethel then broke the silence by speaking and the moment by standing. “This is all good to know,” she said as she stretched her arms and back. “I’m going to keep thanking you from now on.”

“I accept whatever you give,” she replied.

Darling knew her time on this road was short-lived. The chalky road from the Tellurom-Barkneys was coming up on a thicker one with more traffic. There was a slim chance that Nyx would disguise her in some way, but it was far more likely that she’d be packed away. And she was torn between believing that the best input for a mannequin was more stimuli or less.

Shortly after Ethel went to sleep, Darling, with all six hands, fanned the fire dead in a single swish. Then she crawled into the same tent. She had no blankets, but she laid down just as if she was another regular camper. And she smiled at her Lord Nyx, just to see how it felt. She closed the tent.