The Stardust She Shook from Her Shoes

The Bridge to the End of the Night: 590 words.  Katy is annoyed by astrology, and we get our first hint of how much even the 'happy' part of her genuinely happy 'ending' cost her.  There are reasons she is so adamantly defending the fairly nice life she has against the fairy-tale fulfilment she walked out on at the end of her Deed.  And I'm beginning to see another reason she is going to do the decisive thing she does at the end of this Prologue.  It's not in her nature to refuse this particular call for help - but she can't afford to get sucked back into any of this ichor-and-starfire nonsense, either.

Which is why she is going to set up this story - and ultimately be more affected by it than she can now imagine - without actually being a part of it, beyond this section and the Epilogue.

Hard set-up is hard.