In a subtly luxurious bar that happens to be both quite magical and situated at the end of the universe, at a table for six that happens to be just what it appears, there's an elegant but somewhat reserved young woman in her mid-twenties who happens to be a robot covered in enameled flowers, holding hands with and gazing raptly at a tired-looking woman a decade older, who happens to be dressed in imposing head-to-toe black, embroidered at the shoulders and hems with silver thread that catches the light of the exploding stars. Sitting with them is a gangly teenage boy of perhaps thirteen or fourteen, trying to watch all the other patrons at once in barely-disguised fascination, who happens to be a seven-foot-tall bipedal war machine without much more than a metal bump rising between his shoulders to serve as a head.

There are other patrons at the bar, chatting with each other or telling stories by the fireplace or betting on the results of some kind of board game-arm wrestling hybrid in the corner, but something about these three catches the eye.