#ch:kw

Tori had been wondering how to ask this question for the last minute and a half. Giving up on overthinking this, she walked right on up to the woman, and asked. “So here’s the thing. I really like your shoes, but they look like just like a pair that I tragically lost two years ago in the great cleaning of December of 2018. Is there any chance that you acquired those used sometime within the last two years? Size 42?” She glanced upward and chuckled to herself, realizing only after speaking that she had asked an extremely foolish question. “Or you could have gotten them new yourself because they’re not one-of-a-kind shoes. Okay.”

Lark did not know this person at all, but that did not mean that there was always an opportunity to dispense knowledge about important causes. “Hey! Excuse me!” She speed-walked over to the stranger, and tried handing over a well-worn pamphlet. “Don’t walk away. Read it, and then give it back so you don’t have to go through the performative nonsense of throwing that away. Anyway. Let’s talk society. Why Icaria’s is unsustainable, even with a halfway competent mayor, and is one of the things that encourages so many inequities. How much do you know about communal living and the steps we’d need to take to get there?”

Tori had been having a pleasantly mundane time reading a newspaper that someone had left sitting around somewhere. Apparently there were people out there that still bought paper newspapers, which was wild to her. For a short moment, she had been somewhat convinced that this was a hoax, but did not feel like verifying the facts of the articles online. So she would just take it for granted. She had gotten to page 4 when she put down the paper to swat at some sort of leaf that had blown at her face when she spotted Kassandra. “Oh! Hey there, Kassandra! What’s up? I’m not interrupting you on your quest to go to work, am I?”