"They're doing okay! Caramel doesn't like this weather, he kept sniffling. He'd like it better if he spent it somewhere with trees, I think, they take the sting out of wind."

"I'm glad we were able to get you something nonhorrible."

"How's yours?"

"Moderately horrible. The artifact is making an effort to make it tolerable, but this mostly consists of talking to me about its favorite topics."

"Oooh, does it talk about me?"

"...some. Mostly in the course of discussing how I feel about you."

" - okay, I guess I can see how that'd get annoying."

"It could also be trying to talk about things that I spend a lot of time thinking about. I guess. It's at least a better conversationalist than the locals."

"Well, shall we make cookies?"

"Yeah, let's."

She's not actually an expert on baking and does not have a cookie recipe memorized, but hopefully they can produce something cookie-like if they try hard and believe in themselves.

He knows no things about cooking. He knows that you buy ingredients and he knows that fire is often involved but that's it. 

They get weird crumbly overly-dry sweet things that are more, like, cookie-adjacent than actual cookies.

"Possibly they needed more butter? Or milk? I am not really sure on the ratios here."

"I think they're perfect."

...hug. "Hopefully the next one's'll be perfect and also more like cookies."

"I guess I could be persuaded to hope for that."

Hee. They can eat their weird dry sweet stuff. And snuggle. Snuggles are important.

"These poor people must be so confused and disoriented when they get to Axis and have to ...have preferences and spend their time on things and stuff."

"I wonder whether they're glad to be free or if they want to go back to being - like this."

"Bet you anything they're glad. This is - awful."

"They've never known anything else."

"Every kid grows up not knowing anything else and a lot of them are miserable."

"Nah, lots of kids grow up hearing about other things and wishing they could have them. I acknowledge some of them are miserable for lack of things they've never heard of. But - I don't think these people are miserable? Depressing, empty, maybe pointless, but - not miserable."

" - I guess. They're not experiencing misery, they're just not - not getting to be people at all."

"...yeah."

"And I really really doubt that they'd choose to go back to it, once they're out. I guess there are some people in every afterlife who destroy themselves on purpose because they don't want to exist at all, but there's not lots."