Blink, blink. "Oh, hi. I didn't meet you downstairs, I'm Ivan Vorpatril. Do you happen to know where the stairs are? Got lost, wandered in here. I didn't know Alexei's family had a cat."

"...The fuck," he repeats, staring at Ivan and then looking with increasing bewilderment at Ivan's immediate surroundings. "Do you - no, obviously you don't know a daemon when you see one. What the hell is going on?"

"I don't know a what?"

"A daemon," says the cat, in a quiet female voice and deeply contemptuous tone.

"AAAH TALKING CAT!"

The talking cat lashes her tail. The talking human shakes his head. "What did I do to deserve this?" he asks, probably rhetorically.

"Where did you get a talking cat? An intelligible talking cat? I've bloody been to Cetaganda and even they don't have talking cats!"

"Come out here and I'll show you," he snorts, but when he turns back to open the door it won't budge.

"Is the door stuck?"

"What's it fucking look like?"

"It might look the same and feel different if some prankster had decided to lock us in Alexei's weird bar room for a laugh, but point taken."

"Who the hell is Alexei anyway?"

"Hostess's brother. She's using his house."

He gives Ivan a look, like it is not even possible to measure the depth of idiocy Ivan has just displayed.

"I can't imagine what gave it away."

"Mostly your looking at me like I had sprouted a talking cat out of my forehead. Seriously, where did you get one of those? Jackson's Whole?"

"You were born with a talking cat. What."

"I was born with a soul, who settled into the form of a cat when I was thirteen," he says. "You apparently don't have one at all. Maybe that's why you're so thick."

"Excuse me! On my planet we do not have cat souls! Same with other planets of my acquaintance, you're acting like this is some extremely commonplace thing!"

"Well excuse me," he says, rolling his eyes again, "I don't know where the fuck you're from but on Earth you'd be a zombie."

"I've bloody been to Earth and they didn't have cat souls there either! Purring thermo-fucking-taxic cat blankets yes, cat souls no!"

"Clearly this is some sort of fucking dimensional bullshit," he concludes.

"Some sort of what the fuck?"

"Have you not got the word yet in your zombie universe? Bunch of universes, some of them apparently full of zombies? Until just now I didn't know it was possible to walk between them, but I don't know how else to explain all this."

"We have not got word of this, why do you keep calling me a zombie, is it because I don't have my own cat?"

"Yes. You don't have a daemon, therefore you don't have a soul, therefore you are a zombie."

"Well, that's just peachy, isn't it."

"And she probably wouldn't be a cat," he adds. "Maybe a sheep or something."

"I'm nearly certain that you are attempting to insult me."

"Well spotted."

Ivan rolls his eyes. "Well, this has been fascinating. Budge over, let me have a go at the door."

He moves aside, as does the cat. The cat keeps well out of Ivan's way, in fact.

Ivan isn't touching the talking cat soul. The talking cat soul is weird. Ivan tugs at the door.

"Okay. I'm trapped in a - an interdimensional bar with a person who hasn't introduced himself and his talking cat soul. Well, at least it's not the inside of a seawall, that would just get repetitive."

"The inside of a seawall?"

"When I was on Earth I got briefly kidnapped and stuffed in aforementioned. Can't say I recommend the experience."

"But it sounds like so much fun. Anyway, I'm Ethan."

"I'd say I'm pleased to meet you, but I'm preoccupied with this door."

"I'd suggest breaking it down, but for all I know it might explode. I've never been to an interdimensional bar before."

"Nor I." Ivan pauses, then pulls a sort of wandlike object out of his pocket and gestures with it. "Aaaaand no signal, so I can't summon help from the other side."

"Eh?" he says, peering at the object.

It is projecting holograms into the air! Then it's not; Ivan pockets it again. "Network signal doesn't reach in here, so I can't send a message to Mireille or m'cousin or anyone."

"They have weird phones in zombie world," Ethan concludes.

"If that's what you want to call it. It's a holo-pen."

"I guess zombies have to do something with their time, might as well be inventing gadgets."

"What, does having a soul-cat take up a lot of your days off? Cleaning up hairballs?"

There's that look again!

Ivan makes a helpless gesture, trudges over to the bar, and has almost sat down when a napkin appears and he goes "AAAH!" and lurches back.

"What is it now," says Ethan, wandering over.

"Why the fuck would it have to do with s—with daemons?" asks Ethan. "And why do the talking napkins want us to drink here? This is some fucking Fairyland shit."

"Principal attractions of the venue, is it? What are the rest of those, then? I bet the door's a favourite."

"I wonder what the door wants with us, then."

"I don't suppose you know why his entire universe is full of zombies?" inquires Ethan.

Most universes don't contain daemons. Or refer to those lacking by such vocabulary.

"That's weird. I don't know how the hell they manage."

"What does your soul cat help you so much with that you can't imagine doing without?" wonders Ivan.

"You're a zombie, you wouldn't understand."

"How do the zombies manage?"

It depends on the person and their culture. Substantial amounts of the socialization your daemon does for you are embedded in their body language rather than being made explicit in the subchannel. The other features are simply done without.

He shakes his head. "Poor things."

"We get along fine."

"Well, you'd say that."

"It doesn't sound like I'd want one on balance. I mean, there your soul cat is, out soul catting around, and apparently daemon touching is a form of extreme intimacy? What if someone trips?"

"Nothing good."

"That just sounds dangerous, then. I will avoid tripping on your soul cat."

"You'd better," snorts the soul cat.

Ivan peers at her, unsettled. "Do soul cats get names?"

"You said you were born with her, where in the process does one's soul cat...?" Gesture.

"Appear? I don't know. Do zombies remember being born in detail?"

"No, but I know how it works."

"In that kind of detail?"

"If you don't know you can just say you don't know."

"I did that."

"You didn't just do that."

Snort.

Ethan eyes the pink thing suspiciously.

Ivan drinks his pink thing with every sign of enjoyment and non-poisonedness. When he is done with it, he thanks the bar again, and tries the door again, and with an over the shoulder wave is let out into a hallway that he seems relieved to see.

"Who the fuck're you?" inquires Ethan.

"Sir Jann of Raxwell. Yourself?"

"Ethan Rayne. Why am I beset by a parade of strangely similar zombies?"

"That's not a known hazard of the Caves of Fire and Night, but then, neither are human-scaled bars hiding where I was expecting a passage to a dwarven settlement..."

Ethan glances at the bar in case she has commentary.

"Whoa, I can understand her, profanity and all! How are you doing that?"

"She's a daemon, not a cat. All daemons talk."

"Iiii don't know what a daemon is but she looks like a cat and those talk too, just usually not - comprehensibly."

"Not comprehensibly to who?" asks Ethan. "And if it's not comprehensibly to anyone how is that different from not talking?"

"No, no, witches can understand their own cats, and cats can understand each other, and dragons can understand cats. And my cousin isn't a witch but he and his cat have worked out an elaborate system of code and guessing so he more or less can understand her. But I can't usually understand cats."