Persephone

Dizonia was not fooled by the assorted spirits' blatant attempt to throw her off their scent…

Krystal had spent countless hours in the woods around the cabin, silently stalking any prey she could track, gradually maturing into a fearsome apex predator undaunted by any kind of weather. It was what she'd always done when her mother would bring her up to the mountains and then disappear into the wilderness to perform her “rituals,” but this time felt different…

Augusta, haunted by the many ghosts of her childhood…

Not quite alone in the woods, Sybil had an exceptionally clear vision of a very murky immediate future.

Rosalia had never been a daydreamer. Nor had her dreams at night meant much to her or stuck with her through the days. She was fine with this, blessed with an innate talent to find fulfillment in the pragmatic. What life threw her way, she enjoyed tackling, even when it felt like life was throwing an abundance of pipe wrenches at her ankles…

Rhea, in the garden, alone…

Prescilla believes in the cyberpunk future we all deserve…

Lucia preferred the tranquility of the underwater world to the hectic, more populated surface. She'd worked with the Ocean Reef Group, helping to maintain Nemo's Garden, an agricultural experiment off the coast of the Italian Riviera that grew samples of land-based crops in underwater greenhouses called biospheres. But after storms & the pandemic cut off access to the project for months, the team was pared back to a skeleton crew, & she was cut loose. Not long into her hunt for a new job, she was contacted by a company called Reprion & recruited to work on their research submarine, the Thalassa. Eager to get back underwater, she didn't ask as many questions as she probably should have…

Inka, aware of the Minders for several years now and long past cycling through self-doubt (am I dreaming? high? crazy?), had simply accepted their presence, and the fact that no one else seemed to be able to see them, as a novel fact of her life. For the most part, they just floated around, though it was clear from the get-go that they gravitated toward populated areas…

Jolie observes an exhibit, and/or is herself an exhibit being observed…