cast of the End of the Tunnel
The Audreys don't like their picture being taken and we don't have any sketches of them yet for similar reasons.
They are taller than Erik and shorter than our own system (Sarah and Goreth), and they stand out by being fairly skinny, especially in comparison to Erik and us.
They like to dress in patterned tights and baggy tops, and do bind their chest when they have the endurance for it. And they have a bright yellow backpack, and a black metal cane with a silvery scale pattern etched into it that they bought on sale at a pharmacy for $15. They do seem to need the cane to walk.
Like all three of us, they are autistic, trans, and plural. And as far as they can tell, they're all essentially agender and prefer to use they/them.
It's sometimes hard for them to be sure about those things, though. There are a lot of them. Over a 140 members.
A fairly high number of those members are fictive introjects of characters that they've identified as also autistic (whether or not the writers intended them that way).
This includes Brock, Donnie, Ray, and a number of others I've yet to meet.
They think that Shelly and Mill, who appear in my book, are among the number they call their core. But they don't really treat either introjects or core members very differently.
They report that they are commonly fairly co-conscious and fairly switchy, but also blurry. And only a few members, such as Brock or Donnie, are capable of identifying themselves clearly when they front. At least right away. They do have some mental tricks to tease out identities, that aren't 100% reliable, if they want to bother with it.
It's never mentioned in the books, but they do use Simply Plural to try to keep track.
They've been good and tight friends of Erik and Sarah and Goreth since the they met with them by chance in Aunti Zero's, but despite the celebrity of their fictives also have a tendency to feel like the odd ones out in most of the conversations. A little behind the pace of the discussion. But they seem to have made peace with that, too.
They've also been very quiet about their own personal life and romantic pursuits, if they even have any. Nobody knows if they're dating or not. And nobody asks, because it's not really anybody else's business.
When they're not hanging out with us and Erik, however, they do seem to be spending most of their time either on the computer entertaining themselves, doing their freelance design work for some unnamed international corporation, or sleeping. They sleep during the afternoon, and get up before midnight to get most of their work done when it's dark. Noon is their evening.
Despite this reclusiveness, they do end up playing a pretty significant role in the integration of Ktletaccete into Portland society, along with Erik and, of course, my hosts, Sarah and Goreth.
We owe them quite a bit for their hospitality and insight.
