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Ioan Bălan --- 2350
How has this become my life? Ioan thought, as ey always did, when stepping away from home to the now familiar café.
May had, as she always did, dotted her nose against eir cheek, licked at eir nose a little too wetly, and said, "Good luck, have fun, say hi for me, and do not die," and then ey stepped from home to arrive in front of the squat wood paneled coffee shop. The same sign proclaiming "Open 24 hours" fading in the sun. The same chipper baristas. The same sparklingly clean espresso machine. The same couch in the corner.
The same thing, month after month, stepping into the coffee shop to order the same coffee --- delicious as always --- and wait for the same True Name to arrive.
Their standard greeting would be for Ioan to stand and bow --- ey was always there too early --- set up a cone of silence, and share a bit of chit-chat before settling back down on the L-shaped couch, each to work on their own projects.
The only thing that seemed to change was the topics they talked about and True Name herself.
She was always smartly dressed, she always smiled brightly to em, always ordered the same mocha with extra whipped cream, and would always seem to get dabs of it on her nose-tip, but over time, the skunk had slowly picked up some ineffable quality about her that Ioan could only ever describe as 'stressed' or perhaps 'harried'. It wasn't in her grooming, for her whiskers were always neat and orderly, the longer fur atop her head well brushed, and her claws neatly trimmed. It wasn't in the things she talked about, for she always had some interesting bit of news about any of the three --- four, if one counted Artemis --- Systems out there.
It was, ey decided, something to do with her eyes, her cheeks, the way her hands moved. It was in her voice, in her mien, in her bearing.
Once a month, ey'd meet True Name for coffee, and each time, she seemed that much more worn down, carrying that much more tension in her features, looking just that much older.