When she and Sunny first met, there was something about the way Tegan acted at the time that is now making Cameron curious. It seemed like Sunny belongs to a different ideology than Tegan.

"What would you say it means, to be a Burner?" Cameron asks.

Even if Sunny isn't one herself, Cameron suspects her answer will be interestingly different than what she's already heard.

"Interesting phrasing."

"I think I'd say, it's about being there for each other. All for all. It's easier to balance on two legs than one, and building a community means standing on a hundred. The Cherries tend to think more in terms of persons, rather than people, if that makes sense."

"I've been given some rather obviously one-sided explanations, during my time here," Cameron elaborates wryly. "I've been told that the civilization I am from sounds like a dystopian story invented to satirize Burners, for example."

Her eyebrows rise, slowly. "...How bad is it, actually? —are you okay?" Her voice is softer, again.

"I have a lot of advantages," Cameron says, reassuring.

"Um, I think that thing was said while talking about how my society runs on performative outrage with the actual law being an afterthought. But I make porn in my mundane job and that is at least stably divisive. With a handful of notable exceptions."

"That sounds like something a Cherry would say, yeah. Sometimes it seems like they care more about dead rules than actual people."

They reach the Inn, approaching from the back. The side and back exterior walls are wood-paneled; Sunny pushes on a particular panel with her knee, and it swings inward to reveal a doorway.

"What do you mean by 'make porn'?"

Neat. Cameron follows her inside.

"I have sex in front of an audio-visual recording device, for the express purpose of distributing and selling those audio-visual recordings to strangers who seek entertainment that is sexually stimulating to watch."

"You're a model for a kind of pornography that can be both seen and heard?"

Nodding, Cameron pulls her tablet out of her Pocket, wakes it up, and brings up a clip from her most recent shoot.

With both competent lighting and cinematography, a Cameron dressed in harem-girl cosplay is depicted creeping through a cave. Suddenly, purple tentacles (stretched and enlarged by an obvious after effect) lash out of the darkness and yank Cameron out of frame. It cuts to a woman in a bulky dress and headpeace, brandishing a wooden ruler as she steps into the now-vacant cave backdrop, then it cuts to a Cameron affecting wide-eyed fearfulness in the grasp of a monstrously masculine purplish four-armed figure with tentacles for a face and one hand tight over Cameron's mouth. The other woman passes into frame, doesn't see Cameron or the monster, then moves on. The monster's tentacles molest Cameron's head as it shushes her, then rips of her gauzy bottoms, the view cutting to his dual dicks as his extra set of hands yank Cameron's hips into position.

Cameron scrubs forward through most of the run time in which Martin pounds her in both holes from behind, then resumes normal speed just before the end of the clip.

The Cameron in the torn harem outfit screams in muffled orgasm, and acts insensate, and then the monster is covered by a glow effect. When it fades, a second Cameron has taken its place. The second Cameron turns the insensate Cameron around, kisses her with an evil grin, then moves out into the cave. Off-screen, the woman from before is heard to scream.

Cameron closes the video and puts her tablet away. "For example."

The after effect is not at all obvious to Sunny, who has never seen digital special effects before in her life.

".....," she totally fails to say, when the video has concluded. She's staring at the screen with something like a deer-in-the-headlights expression, awed and dazed and turned on.

She turns her gaze back to Cameron, and collects herself. Or at least looks less dazed.

"...so. Uh. You're a pornagonist. For pornography."

"That was — I dunno if that was real good costume and prop work, or if ya got an artist that can — I hope ya know what you're doing. There's a fine line — folks gotta be able to trust, y'know? We ain't useta seein — ta stuff that can —"

"— y'know we got stories? Creepy stuff, for when ya wanna — get the creepy. Fey in the foggy woods at twilight, a hundred years in a single night, wandering off and coming back strange, that kinda thing. And illusions. If you got — and it doesn't help that — even if it was just the skypool and not the —"

"— wouldja take offense if I asked — what are ya?"

"Well, firstly, what was actually going on there was that my friend and colleague Martin, who used to be human but got accidentally transplanted into a different body a few years ago, just ducked down so you couldn't see him and then we painted over the image so you couldn't see him do that, then I used my Duplicate ability to pretend to be the monster. In the silly story we made up for this, there's a monster that can take on the form of anything it fucks and is trying to corrupt a convent. In the preceding clip, Martin plays the role of a demon the nuns have locked up in their basement before the monster sneaks in and fucks him to take his form. Real demons don't look anything like Martin, though, that's just for the story."

Cameron isn't immune to bouts of creative pride.

"I can't show you that one because I don't have it in my tablet's memory, though."

Cameron pauses for a moment. She should maybe stay away from the word "god" in addition to the word "soul".

"The thing I am is called a magical girl. Which doesn't mean anything to you, I know. There's this whole cultural concept behind the name, where I'm from it means a much more specific a thing than just a girl with magic. Real magical girls like me, we're, part girl, part machine made of magic? Most of me exists in, extra directions, directions even I can't directly perceive, while my fleshy body acts as the anchor that earths my power. But that rest of me is where I keep my stuff and where my raiment lives."

"Ex-humans, demons, and half-golems?" she says, setting down the stool. "Y'ain't sellin' me on this not bein' a fey story, hon."

"And if folks like to – 'take mortal offense'," this last phrase said slower, and enunciated, and in a subtly different accent, "at stuff that we wouldn't even notice, well that's a fey thing too."

"I've only ever actually taken mortal offense the one time, and believe me, that woman knew exactly what she was provoking. She just overestimated her bodyguards."

You know what, sure. Should be interesting either way.

"So if I was to ask you to help making breakfast... I'm not saying don't try any funny stuff, but — you know?"

Sunny thinks Cameron's joking, doesn't she. That's actually kind of hilarious, itself. And weirdly, nice.

Is it actually weird to be pleased when someone hesitates to believe outright that Cameron has committed cold-blooded murder?

"I'd be glad to. What're we making?"

Sunny perks up, her usual bright-and-bouncy demeanor reasserting itself.

"I wanna get my buns stuffed!"

She opens a door, and firelight spills into the storeroom from a cozy kitchen area, together with the scent of warm fresh buns.

(In Cameron's periphery, the previously-dim shapes in the storeroom resolve into disorganized piles of the sort of especially miscellaneous objects that do not make it easy to say if they are treasure or junk.)

In the kitchen, every wall is covered in cupboards, and every cupboard door has a bundle or two of herbs hanging on it by an iron nail.

Sunny peeks in the oven – "these're gonna be a couple more minutes" – and starts laying out a wide variety of possible fillings, from jams to some sort of nut paste to venison to a single olive.

Sunny's innuendo-fu is strong.

Cameron spares a moment to look around and take in the cozy. It's a scene that wouldn't look out of place in period fiction. It sure has an aesthetic.

On a whim, Cameron resets her Style, veering away from 'alien space babe who doesn't have your quaint taboos' and towards 'alien space maid who doesn't have your quaint taboos'. She's kinda curious how that'll come out, here. Back home that impulse typically shifts her outfit by some percentage towards the 'naked apron' look.

"Alright. Where would you like my hands?"

Cameron's boots shift to a somewhat different style – higher in the front to cover the knee, and dipping lower in the back to expose more of the calf; the heels are slightly more pronounced, the toes slightly squarer, the ankles slightly tighter, the soles smoother and flatter. Her top acquires a built-in corset and ruffled collar, and her shorts gain a dark gray hem.

"Let me show you," Sunny purrs, insinuating herself behind Cameron and into her personal space. As she guides Cameron through the motions of opening jars and handling knives, her hands find their way onto and across Cameron's waist and hips and arms and hands; no individual touch is overtly unrelated to the practicalities of the task, but the overall effect is distinctly warmer and more extensive than quite fits within the bounds of plausibility.

At some point – "did you change your clothes? Without me watching?" There's just the shade of a mock-pout in her voice.

The touching is nice, of course. She follows Sunny's guidance with her typical superhuman dexterity as she leans into her touches. To soft caresses, Cameron's clothes feel like real material, texture and volume both, but firmer contact causes the simulated cloth to break apart like it is little more than mist around Sunny's hands, exposing bare skin beneath.

"I don't know. I wasn't watching either," Cameron teases.

It is funny how all the reasons this kind of slow, plausibly deniable seduction would grate on Cameron don't apply, here. Sunny, after all, rather conspicuously isn't unknowingly (or knowingly) insulting Cameron's integrity by implying that any amount of deniability is necessary. She's just... playing for the sake of playing, because that's fun in its own right.