Wilbur was crouched next to the mouse hole. Since yesterday, a trench had appeared around the hole where dust and loose stones had been dug away, revealing cracked rock beneath. A mass of chewed grasses, dust and pebbles had been jammed into the entrance, and Wilbur could see the little creature through gaps in the dam busily filling the holes. Is it trying to protect itself from me, thought Wilbur, I wonder if it knows I could just reach out, pull that wall away, pluck it from its nest? Maybe I'm the only predator out here, and it doesn't know any better.

It had been two sleeps since the others left. He was trying to build a routine: without the sun to tell them when the day had ended, Trix and himself had agreed to sleep when it felt like a day had passed, keeping their schedules synchronised. It was morning, and he was working on a routine. He started at his solar still prototype. He had built this yesterday. The wall of the classroom that faced the old yew tree had contained a large double window, he had removed one pane and propped it at an angle in the dust, filling the gaps with spent cactus chunks and grass fibers. He had tucked a plastic bag around the bottom corner of the glass pane to collect the water the formed on the glass and dripped down. He had left a few fresh pieces of cactus inside the day before. The glass was covered with condensation and he carefully removed one block and peeled away the plastic bag, slipping it out to see how much water he had collected. There was about a cupful at the bottom of the bag. Well, the prototype worked as expected he thought, if I had another ten panes of glass, I could build something useful. Still, this can be a little treat every morning. He strolled back toward the ruins with the bag swinging in his hand. Inside, Trix was deep in conversation with Salomé again.

"Trix, I've got a delicious drink of warm water for you" he said as he entered, the two looked up at him in unison, the cat somehow mirroring the girl's expression: frustration?

"Thanks. You can have it" she said.

"No, that's fine, I'll have some tomorrow, you take this one." he passed her the bag and she took it, holding the opening to her mouth and pouring the water into her mouth. Her eyes opened wide. "That tastes...incredible. Sweet? Thank you."

Well that was worth it after all, thought Wilbur, "You're welcome" he said, "Anything tastes good next to cactus water, I guess." he wandered back out to the still and hooked the bag back up, adding another piece of cactus beneath to be dehydrated. He was learning to take his time. There wasn't much to do, and hurrying just made him thirstier. He spent some time collecting grass stems, and then sat down with his back against the old yew tree and got to work on the screen. He was weaving the stems together into a square screen to block up the holes in the ruins and make it feel more homelike. Would you date me if it were the end of the world, and we were the only two people left he thought, or am I cactus water? He let his mind wander as he relaxed into the rhythm of weaving the woody stems back and forth across each other. Salomé's voice floated over the wall.

“...which is why I remember that sun so vividly, like a dreadful banging drum, hanging in that orange air, impossible to ignore. It filled up the whole sky, the whole world. It consumed them, one by one, but none of them gave in to my temptations, not until their final moments.”

He tried to ignore the cat's story as it grew slowly more depraved. Trix was trying to turn the conversation back to hell but the cat preferred to hear itself tell old stories of its time on earth.

Trix's voice: "well that doesn't really answer my question, what did it look like before these fragments?"

"No, you mistake the nature of this place. There can be no before, this place has no time of itself. Its time, its ground, its creatures, all are taken from other worlds. I asked my father once if he remembered the creation of hell — for our memories are perfect, and he should remember his birth — and he bit me on the leg, rather than answer — of course we were in beast form, hunting in the jungle of..."

Wilbur had finished his first screen, he propped it up against the tree and stepped back. You could see through it somewhat but it was better than nothing. "Not bad" he said under his breath. He reached for the next bundle of sticks and settled down to make another. The grass was thinning out around the ruins where they had been gathering sticks for fires, and he was needing to walk further and further to find enough.

He couldn't help listening to the cat's stories as he worked "...tens of thousands he said. Only the most powerful were able to push through the membrane between worlds, but they left behind the bulk of their kind. Hordes of demons, unable to hunt. Bottom feeders he called them, forced to sit in hell and wait for prey to fall into their mouths from other worlds."

"Have demons also gone to other worlds?" asked Trix.

"I remind you that I can merely recount stories told by my father, a demon among demons. I am sure that every word he told me was carefully designed to control my behaviour, to mould me according to his wishes. Each story containing only the rarest scraps of truth. Perhaps they have, perhaps demons can travel easily between worlds, perhaps my father is not the most powerful creature in hell and earth, perhaps we come from some other world and fell into hell ourselves, perhaps, perhaps. I do not know, and I do not care to find out. I believe it is better for all of us if we do not meet a demon down here. It would probably kill you soon enough, but I can't help think that us earth-born demons are revolting to the denizens of hell, and I would be tortured for all eternity by some hideous slime-filled pustule of a creature, unable to die, unable to escape, pain and boredom until hell itself shatters and dissolves into the blackness."

"Could you not fight back?"

A long pause here, and Trix laughed. Wilbur wondered what the cat had done. He'd never heard her laugh before. Why was she spending so much time with that horrible thing, it had just so said itself: it was a creature of lies and manipulation, it wasn't like they could trust anything it said.

Salomé was talking again, "and my father told me this story: Before I was spawned, he wanted to understand how mammals learned, so he could better manipulate the humans he so loved to hunt. He found a bear cub and taught him many things. All creatures learn in the same way, he said. You punish their bad behaviour, you reward the good, and eventually they associate their actions with the response given, and do more of what is rewarded, less of what is punished. Humans are unique, of course, in that they internalise the responses, they punish themselves with guilt, they reward themselves with a feeling of moral superiority. They are the easiest to train, he would say, because you could do it with words alone, you could talk them into holding their own whip. He kept this bear in a cage while he was out hunting, and would come back at night to train the beast. During the day, he said that the bear would scratch constantly at the cage to be let out. When he finally returned and opened the cage, the bear thought its scratching had finally paid off, reinforcing the behaviour further. He told me that he decided to resolve the issue by making the creature understand that scratching would only work at certain times. He began hanging a piece of cloth over the side of the cage. When the cloth was in place, he ignored the bear's scratching and whining, then he would whip it away and immediately open the door as soon as it requested. It took only a few days before the bear understood and stopped scratching the cage while the cloth was in place. It knew that the door could not open if the cloth was present, so why waste energy.

"Then one day, my father said, he returned from his hunt to find the bear scratching again more furiously than every before, the cage's bars all but ruined — for the bear had managed to pull the cloth from the cage itself, "ahh, now that the cloth is gone, the door will open when I scratch", it must have thought. He killed the animal immediately, he said, for it had taught him what he needed to know."

"I don't understand." said Trix

"The bear was mistaken about what controlled its world. It thought the cloth was part of the mechanism that opened and closed its cage, it saw a simple cause and effect: scratch when the cloth is absent and the door will open. It missed that the cloth is merely a reflection of my father's state of mind, it has no control over the door in itself. He is like the fool who sees the flag flapping when the boat moves, and assumes that the motion of the flag moves the boat — no, it is the wind that moves the boat."

"Ok..."

So this is a perfect example of my father's approach to my education, for I am sure the bear did not exist, he would never have had the patience to train an animal. No. He was telling me that if you wish to influence the world, then you must be clear in your mind where the true source of power lies. You must ignore the impressive structures and complicated machinery that seem to order the affairs of man and demon, for they are but empty clockwork skeletons that draw your attention, clicking and spinning, unattached to reality. You must look beyond, find the true source of power. Of course, he meant himself. A threat, a lesson, rather self-indulgent, to be honest."

"So in this story, you were the bear?"

"Our family relationships are less loving than humans."

Trix was quiet. "You should see my family." she said finally.

"You have no father?"

"No...how did you know?"

"What happened to him?"

"He killed himself last year."

Wilbur's stomach dropped, he wished he hadn't overheard. He quickly left the screen he was working on and got to his feet, he would make another circle around the ruins and pick some more grass for weaving.

By the time he came back Trix was sitting at her desk and Salome was gone. He brought the screen into the room, "I thought we could split up the room with this, make some bedrooms for some privacy."

"Thanks" said Trix, "great idea."

"Where's the demon?" asked Wilbur

"She's gone for a walk."

"Oh." he stood the screen against one of the walls of the room, seeing how it looked. "You seem to be getting close."

"She's the only source of information we have on this place, and her kind."

"Her?"

"She's...female? I think."

"It's a demon. It isn't trustworthy. I know it looks like a cat but it's not."

Trix slammed her book shut and looked up at him, "Ok, I didn't ask you to protect me, I'm not interested, I told you already. You're not my boyfriend, ok."

Wilbur flushed. "I'm just looking out for you, I didn't mean—"

"Well I don't need you to look out for me, I can take care of myself." She looked down at her book.

"Ok, fine!" said Wilbur, he threw the screen on the ground and walked out.

Salome watched them from where she had been sitting in a crook of the yew tree, her black feathered fur barely visible next to the dark brown bark, her tail flicking back and forth.