"Dawn generally has to convince Sun and Moon to help her, they're usually more ambiguous than heroic. Sometimes Midnight can still convey messages through the glass case and she advises Dawn on what to do, that does sound like it could be you. There's a lot of different Dawns, but the ones I like work together with everyone to ultimately triumph. In the bad ones she's kind of a spoiled brat who just insists that she get what she wants and the sun and moon literally move for her, like seriously who writes a story like that?"

"Authoritarians who hate fun, probably," Sable wrinkles her nose. "What a way to try to ruin such a tender and heartfelt tale."

"The Dawns who work to unite everyone's contributions together sound really right," she adds, her expression softening again. "And yeah, that Midnight sounds like a pretty good fit."

"It's such a lovely story. I should try to find a copy." She reaches to pull her phone from her purse, then freezes.

"Oh, I'd love to read one of the really good versions with your art alongside it. I... could I keep these?" she asks, gesturing at the cards with a bright violet blush coloring her pale cheeks. "And could you help me pick out a particularly romantic version of the tale?"

"You can..." 

She pauses for a long moment. 

"... you can keep those if you let me sign them. And I would have to dig for the best one that would be most appropriate for you - I know which one I like best, but..." 

She blushes brighter and slides the cards across the table, dipping her hand in her purse to pull out an elegant black fountain pen with an amethyst inlay on the barrel, then she passes that to Pigeon as well.

She looks at the pen and blinks. "Gosh, that's pretty high-quality for a - technical person - where'd you get that pen?"

"Oh! Um, there's a little stationery shop on Arcbright that caters to mages of various sorts called Miscast Missives that a coworker introduced me to. I've kinda been on a handwriting kick for most of the past year."

"Cute." Pigeon smiles. "I mostly work with digital media, though, so I don't know how to use a fountain pen. Let me get something out of the console."

Sable blushes some more, nodding. Pigeon thinks she's cute!?

Pigeon taps at the tablet, and a pink ballpoint pen appears on the table, a glittery gel coat cushioning the base where it's held. She clicks it out into writing position and starts signing the cards. 

"... so Sable, um... what do you like least about the OTC?"

"Oh, hm! Good question. Probably the cultural losses when we empty some hellworlds, things that nobody takes the time to figure out how to recreate separate from the awful places they came from."

"Like what, for example?"

"That's the fun part! We don't know in most cases, because a generation or so down everyone's forgotten the faerie tales they didn't think to write down on their way out of the universe."

She sighs a bit, shakes her head. "Seriously, though, I've heard of a world where they used to have a particularly unique style of poetry that was only practiced among the nobility, who fought us to the last as we were taking their slaves away. That style is mostly gone, buried as the cost of rescuing those people."

"I want us to figure out how to do better than that."

"I see..." 

She signs the last of the cards, and passes them back across the table; the pen vanishes when she sets it down. 

"You really care a lot about artistry, don't you?"

She smiles warmly and collects the cards, gazing at them for a bit before putting them away safely in her purse.

"Yeah, it's one of the most straightforwardly tangible manifestations of a person's individual expression, their individual story, and one of the easiest ways to tell how suppressed a world is — critical or inconvenient artistry is one of the first things to get censored, as you saw with the faerie tales on Vallmer. Plus it's just a fantastic way to fill your life with beauty."

"Hmmmmm." She tilts her head, then nods. "Then, um. I've been trying not to ask, but. I can't help but notice that you're... showing off kind of a lot of body art. Does it all have meanings to you, then?"

Sable blushes, smiles, and nods. "Yeah, every bit," she says, and then giggles, "which is funny considering that I didn't have any of it yesterday. I've wanted to get some body art for a long time, but first I was waiting until after True Persona, and then I just hadn't realized how much easier it was with modern magitech. What pushed me over the edge was the aftermath of that round of crying. After reading the letter, I took a relaxing bath and then called up outfit recommendations on the room console. The inclusion of tattoos and piercings in the initial rec finally reminded me that we actually can do body art extremely easily, and so I don't have to capture everything in a single set of designs. Instead I can just tell the story of this day, week, or month. So I started customizing, trying to capture something that felt right. After a bit of fiddling, and then letting the Bowers refine it for me, this was the result."

She waves a hand at her body illustratively.

"Every piece has a at least a little bit of a story: some just a theme or a resonance, others a very specific explanation. Feel free to ask about any or all of them — really that just applies in general. I might get blushy or maudlin at times, but I'm not going to get offended about being asked something."

"Oh, so you're the kind of person who goes for really overelaborate designs, got it got it.~" She grins. "Um, well. I've been avoiding asking because it's probably really personal, but you've been taking like literally every opportunity to say you have a custom body so, um, why?"

Sable's mouth drops open, she blushes bright violet, and she buries her face in her hands. After a moment, she starts giggling, then manages to speak while she's collecting herself from the shock.

"Nngh, very excellent question. And yes, I do have a tendency to overengineer or overdesign things."

She takes a deep breath, looks back up, and smiles warmly despite her still-vivid blush.

"I got True Persona cast because I'm transgender. I talk about it so much because I spent so much of my life before then trying to tell the story everyone else wanted to hear, rather than the story I wanted to live, and now I'm perhaps oversharing to compensate for the built-up shame and lost time."

When Sable comes up, blushing and smiling, she's met with a look of concern from a Pigeon leaning in towards her across the table. 

Her confession gets a blink - then, a steadily growing blush. 

Pigeon leans back and crosses her arms over her chest. "I, um. I thought it was like, a status thing, and that you were... bragging about being hot or something..." 

She looks away. "Um. So you... I mean, I can guess that transgender means you - this is really awkward, but - you used to be... physically male?" 

"Ahh, that makes sense. No, I don't like that kind of bragging, though I can see how I accidentally sounded like that. The only 'status' things I can enjoy bragging about are sincere self-expression, skill, and helping people. I can enjoy other people's bragging about more than that, but for me only those ever feel close to right."

She nods at Pigeon's question, still smiling. "Yes, though in the trans community we usually prefer phrases like 'assigned male at birth' to describe that."

"Is that... a common thing, in the OTC?"

Sable nods, smiling softly at the familiar question. "We're around a fifth or more of the population everywhere, give or take, it's just easier to tell in the OTC because there's less reason to hide or give up."

"Gosh, really? That sounds... really implausible..."

A grin and a quirked eyebrow, then she grabs her phone, pulling up a demographic report before sliding it to Pigeon, showing a rough average on more-cosmopolitan trade worlds of 22%, with generation-over-generation trends toward similar numbers as worlds get more exposure and populations get more education.

"Is it so implausible that a world where they try to steal your faerie tales might also suppress inconvenient identities, even just accidentally?"

Pigeon picks up the phone and looks at the report. 

"... this certainly looks official..." 

She pulls a purple-cased phone out of her dress and types in a query. 

Slowly, her eyebrows rise. 

"... Really? Okay, let me have a look at what the rate is on Valimer -" 

She taps at her phone, bringing it in closer to her. Her eyebrows pinch together a little, and she raises the back of her thumb to her lips, brushing them against her nail.

"... maybe it's different for Aevii? But if it's so significant on other worlds there should at least be statistics..." 

She types in another query, and the corners of her mouth quirk up. "Someone's out there blogging as 'Bird Girl'... how old is this... five years. Ex-Valimerite... And she's making all kinds of wild claims, wow. I think I'll do my own research, thanks... ooh! An official estimate, that's exactly what I was looking for - study by a doctor of sexual psychology, they'd probably know... 'About half a percent among Aevii.' Okay, that seems much more reasonable. I guess it makes sense that aliens would have different gender."