"The circle in the sky is the moon. What's the sinkhole?"

"Where I'm from there isn't a 'planet', it's just flat, and in the middle of all the flat, a hole opened up to Hell and demons came out of it. Klaonso and other kinds."

"I see. That sounds oddly familiar," he says. "But in the local case, the hole to Hell spends most of its time closed and not emitting any demons. And there are a vast number of other sources of demons, none of which could accurately be described as a 'sinkhole' as far as I know."

"Sometimes demons come up if there's a big earthquake, we heard... But the planet thing is definitely not how it is at home."

"Yes. There are some worlds that could be described as 'just flat', but this isn't one of them. I was right, you are interesting."

"Do you know how I can get home? I don't even know if the demon got Lightning. That's our brother's cohabitor."

"I don't know how you can get home. But I'm reasonably certain there is a way, and the only tricky part will be finding it. And avoiding demons who might eat you in the meantime. There are rather a lot of them, especially around here, but at least the vast majority are straightforwardly corporeal."

"Not all of them?"

"I would hesitate to say anything at all for certain about the category of demons as a whole; there are too many kinds to keep track of. But all of the common kinds that eat people do it using fangs and so on, not sleep-based magic or anything similar."

"Okay. I still wouldn't like to meet one, but." She shrugs.

He snorts.

"What, do you have friendly demons here we should like to meet?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes. You remember I told you something unpleasant happened to my soul? I'm a vampire."

"I wasn't planning on it."

"Good."

"And what sort of magic are you good at?"

"Besides demon stuff there's only the one kind where I'm from. Well, two if you count swaps and transfers as different but they aren't very. Um -" She turns up the hem of her jacket; there are a bunch of different-colored little squares of fabric sewn there. She pinches a blue one and her jacket and the swatch exchange colors. "That's a basic one, Crystal could have done that too."

"Magic here comes in countless varieties, and I don't think any of them is specifically that," he says. "Oh, my name's Sherlock, by the way."

"Seyr-lahk," she approximates. "We should probably translate our names. I'm Holly and my sister-cohabitor is Crystal. Uh, how would you pronounce those?" she asks, peering at the translation.

"Holly; Crystal," he says, indicating each on the page. "Not that I have much trouble pronouncing Pyay or Sohng, but the book seems to translate them anyway."

"In Kuigao everyone is named something that means something. Our brother is Book - he picked that himself - and his cohabitor is Lightning."

"Some people here are named something that means something, but most English-speakers aren't, myself included."

Holly nods. "We know someone from a neighboring country who's just named Namree because her parents thought it sounded nice."

"It wouldn't be odd to encounter a 'Holly' or a 'Crystal' here, but 'Book' or 'Lightning' would be strange. Why did Book pick his own name?"