The morning fluttered by in a haze of little tasks she’s only recently come back to having time for: small bits of cosmetic maintenance, nonessential decorative things. Something beyond a quick buff and some dark liner around the eyes.
Then she’d spent the afternoon doing research and reading the latest scientific journals and various reports heaped on her desk that had built up over the past decacycle, because it was becoming untenable.
And now she has spent almost two joors waiting at this upscale neutral bar for a date who has, she has to concede, likely abandoned the plan they had made after asking her out and will not be showing their face.
Had someone gotten to them? They were an offworlder, a shuttle from Caminus— some micro-celebrity with a podcast who, by all of her calculations, didn’t have enough social credit to do more than maybe trash her current paint scheme to a modest following of fashion devotees should things go south— but to not even show their face?
Sabotage. Betrayal. Blackmail, maybe, or just… just telling them who Starscream really is.
…
She’s never actually been, hrm, asked out before. Or stood up. What, actually, is she supposed to do about this?
