Oxi is in a band. It's not anything special. They mostly play off-hour gigs in small party-houses. They aren't bad, though! They have their own style somewhere between Raider Noise and Hard Opera.

Oxi plays an electric guitar, because, well, of course he does. Annahella the torfed does vocals and can do some cool synthersizer-stuff with her soul. Paulis the loda leech colony does drums and flat-base.

It's usually too much--too many people, too much noise, too much everything--for Alieka, but she goes and supports the team when she can. Yihiri usually goes when she's having a good phase and isn't a confused mess that needs to be looked after constantly for her own safety.

Paulis is a mess. Its parent was a musician, and when it divided, Paulis ended up inheriting all of its parent's musical talent--all of it, not just a splintered portion of it, but ALL of it--and very little else. This band is just one of its many gigs--it's the only one of the group who makes its living exclusively through music. This is normally where you say Paulis is That Friend who wants to make it big with music but never will and mostly just plays at dive bars and talks very seriously about itself, but Paulis is actually practicing to be a professional auroral-gurdyist, which is where you play an electric auroral-gurdy that's been fitted with painter rods that allows it to channel aurora. They can make forcefields and shoot people with music and stuff and it's pretty great. Paulis isn't sure what it wants to do with that skill once it really gets there. Probably go off and die in Coolin's Grant. So. Yeah. Paulis is less that friend who keeps talking about making it big with music and more the friend who keeps talking about how it's going to make it big in the frontier and make a Big Find and retire rich or something.

Basically everyone dies in Coolin's Grant, so.

Annahella is a secretary in the Ancillary Tax Office. Being part of the Ancillary Offices, she already has a rivalry with Alieka, who's in the Ancillary Library (the Offices usually offload excess work on the Library on the belief that they aren't doing anything important). She's also a torfed, who are zombie-ghosts that feed on dreams and aurora and are really, really not friendly with void corrupted individuals.

Which isn't to say they don't get along at all! I mean. They try. I mean, Annahella tries, because she knows Alieka is Oxi's... girlfriend? Second-girlfriend? So she tries to be okay with this horrible abomination that is the death of all souls, because, you know, you do that for friends. Alieka's at least not a bad void freak and she hasn't given Annahella any specific reasons to not like her.

Annahella is just naturally good at singing because torfedden speak by vibrating their soul clouds and it isn't that hard to sound awesome when you put a bit of practice into it. She can also simulate instruments on it though which you gotta imagine is a skill she cultivated over many, many showers. Annahella is pretty content with doing her life as it is--well, she's forced herself to be content. She wishes she had more, that things were better, that she had a more satisfying job, but she understands that that's just life. Life isn't always great. You find the small pockets of enjoyment where you can, like, say, an awesome band you hang out with, even if the guitarist is dating a horrible monster.

Alieka doesn't really appreciate Annahella's efforts to be friendly because interacting with people makes her uncomfortable, but she seems in a good mood this cycle! Maybe they'll go out for snacks, Annahella thinks. She's curious what kind of snacks a void freak actually enjoys.

Turns out, butterscotch. Yihiri jokes if Alieka's planning on losing all the teeth on the right side of her jaw, too, and the three of them laugh. Annahella isn't sure if they're just masking their discomfort with her self-mutilation with humor or if they've become that accepting of it. She trills a laugh, though, just to join in, because it's easy to fake it when you're as good at emulating sounds as she is.