Dark Damsel Ashley:
At my apartment with BoB henchmen to get my things and talk to landlord. Moving to apartment in BoB territory. Taking chance to send message while away from the c-voyants.

She’d sent the message to everyone.

I reported, “Ashley’s moving into Cedar Point, which I’m not sure I would have recommended, but she seems to know what she’s doing.”

“She’s doing fine,” Sveta said.

“She’s doing exceptionally, when it comes to the acting. If that’s acting. The way she’s letting these people see where she lives and she’s taking her stuff to Cedar Point, when it might be the site of some fighting? Or infighting? That’s where I might have given her other advice.”

“The way she’s unreservedly going forward might make it more believable.”

I nodded. “She’s in Stratford, isn’t she? We could bump into her.”

“Other direction from the station, but yeah.”

“Do you meet or anything? It’s hard to picture you guys together without the group.”

“We’ve met a couple of times. Um. Mr. Armstrong came by twice, and he invited us all to lunch.”

“Weld’s foster dad, kind of.”

“Kind of. And he looked after Ashley, once upon a time, when she was in custody, once, and making sure she had some of what she needed, when she was homeless. He’s a big reason she’s free now, instead of being an unofficial prisoner with a protective guard, like some of the people from the Birdcage and the S-class threats.”

“Yeah. You met for lunch?”

Sveta smiled. “It was a bit awkward, most of the time it was two or three of the four of us talking and the rest didn’t have anything to add. But I’m glad we did it. There was one moment where we were talking about something, I forget what led up to it, but for most of that lunch we were all very aware of the difference between us, and Weld said something about how people stared. Ashley said she’d trade places with me or Weld, because she would like to be monstrous, because it would simplify things and it would make it more natural to be intimidating. Nevermind that we’d really rather not be called monsters.”

“Yeah.”

“And Weld said something about that, and Mr. Armstrong tried to clarify, but it wasn’t getting through. I remember thinking of just how huge the gulf was between us, and then I tried to explain things too. I said how it was different from wearing a certain dress or acting a certain way, because you can’t take it off. You can’t get away from it. And that makes it something different. Any situation you don’t have control over is automatically worse.”

“What was her response? You said it was a moment.”