"Bella only has a very very small empire," says Soph, pinching her fingers together. "Just her demonic minions pretty much, and one village of refugee demons with three heads each that didn't have anywhere to go. I'm not sure if it's big enough to qualify her as an empress, let alone for me to get any spillover princessyness. So I don't have any titles at all."

"Refugee demons?"

"She's been talking to a lot of demons, and she found some demons that were being jerks to some other demons so she talked to the less jerky ones and set them up in a little village on Mercury, not too close to the palace."

"That sounds about right."

"And these demons are still kinda jerks so I don't go visit them and play Monopoly, but they can't actually do anything on Mercury because of the ground rules, which they agreed to as a condition for getting to live there away from the jerkier demons."

"I just realized you specified 'three heads each' and now I'm imagining a village of demons with three heads, like, shared communally," says Helen.

Yseult giggles.

"I would actually not put it past Sunshine to contain a kind of demon that works like that? But no, three heads on every pair of shoulders in that village, except there is a blue one who lost her left head in an accident."

"That sounds unpleasant. Is she okay?"

"I don't visit, but she's, you know, alive, so more okay than I would be if I lost my head? I think if she were desperately impaired by it Bella would have fixed her jerkiness or no jerkiness."

"Sunshine is strange," she concludes.

"Yes. Sunshine is strange and full of demons who are many and varied."

"I am definitely getting that sense," says Helen.

"I heard you have, like, talking polar bears in your world though, we don't have those!"

"Armoured bears!" laughs Helen. "Yes. I've met a few, but not talked to them for very long. I think Kas was friends with one once, but she died and didn't come back."

"She didn't want to or nobody wanted her back or the harpies stopped her?"

Helen shrugs.

"Are they basically like regular people who are bear shaped or are they strange?"

"...I'm not sure," Helen says thoughtfully. "They are themselves. I don't think they're exactly like humans and they're certainly not very much like witches."

"For that matter how different are witches from humans?"

"...Somewhat," she says. "Definitely somewhat."

"Okay, how are witches different from humans?"

"We have magical powers and don't come with an expiry date," she says. "And then there's a bunch of cultural stuff."

"Like what kinda cultural stuff?"

"Oh - no nudity taboo, wearing ripped-and-tied silk when we wear anything, clans and queens and fighting with bows and daggers and separating from our daemons when they settle so they can be as far from us as we want - I'm glad I did that, there's no way Kalavar could come in here. Too crowded."