There’s no better place to catch the filtered sunlight than in Rolling Hills, and Julie’s invited Aramat to a well-hidden secret of the park. It’s a place few people ever discover, a place Julie had planned for while designing the plants for the gardens/park. Getting to it takes some work - crawling under a set of bushes, making a close brush with a thorned Pyracantha, battling through an undergrowth of Juniperus horizontalis - but it’s worth the mess. The way the sunlight filters from above and through the trees. The almost-silence of the place. The roses - uncommon, varied - branching at the outskirts. The feeling that you’ve made it to another world, almost, leaving the city’s absurd politics behind.

Julie doesn’t share this place with many people, but she finds Aramat Drawdes suitable. Interesting, even, and worthy of her time. The woman’s love of plants first drew Julie’s interest, and it doesn’t hurt that she’s wonderfully attractive. The one flaw in the woman, so far as Julie’s seen, is her boyfriend. That she has one at all, and that it should be this particular twit. Julie can’t see the use in such a creature, but it’s clear Aramat’s enamored with him, and sometimes there’s no accounting for taste.

In any case, Julie could use a break; lately, she’s hardly left the lab to sleep, let alone to simply be among her plants or clear her head. And she’s looking forward to spending time in the company of an intelligent woman who doesn’t seem wrapped up in Ryan’s more nauseating ideas.

Now Julie’s sitting in the middle of the glade, legs stretched out across a blanket. Beside her sits a basket of supplies: weed and wine, some halfway-decent food, some bandages and antiseptic in case the thorns proved rough on Aramat. She’d given the woman distinct directions, with instructions to text her if she found herself lost. Now all that remains is to wait, eyes half-closed, thinking through her latest projects while enjoying the distant sun.