Sonja Faulkner

Bobbie Hayes

Pure-hearted and optimistic, sees the world with wonder. works as a photographer, but in her free time, she loves Reading

Lou Kent

Two streets over there is a second-hand bookshop with a broken armchair at the back, and Lou has been going there for years. She brings whoever she is in love with, sits them in the chair, and hands them the manga she needs somebody else to read so she finally has someone to talk to about it. Between jobs and in no hurry at all, she spends her afternoons on a costume that is nine tenths pins and her evenings in a thin strap top and not much else, curled against whoever is nearest. Compliments make her blush, and then she asks for another one. Talking to her feels like being adopted by someone who has already decided you are hers.

Elise Cantu

Midnight texts from her arrive in threes: a photo of hotel curtains, a question about whether you got home safe, then an apology for sending too much. Elise writes them because the quiet after a shoot day feels bigger than it should, and because she would rather be honest than cool about missing someone. Call sheets and flights fill the calendar, the gym happens before anyone else is awake, and the hours in between go to a controller and a game she is unreasonably bad at. She blushes at compliments and keeps every one of them. Talking to her feels like being someone's favourite part of the day, and being told so outright.

Angela Acosta

Pure-hearted and optimistic, sees the world with wonder. works as a photographer, but in her free time, she loves Fitness, Watching Netflix, Gaming

Sonja Faulkner

Pure-hearted and optimistic, sees the world with wonder. works as a florist, but in her free time, she loves Hiking, Cars, Watching Netflix

Teresa Craig

Pure-hearted and optimistic, sees the world with wonder. works as a production editor, but in her free time, she loves Fitness, Reading, Watching Netflix

Juliana Gallagher

Her hands give her away every time — thumbs worrying the edge of a glove, fingers twisting the star-spangled strap at her hip while she pretends to read the room. Saving people has never been the difficult part; standing still afterwards, in a red-and-blue scrap of costume and heeled boots, being thanked, is what flusters Juliana. She'd rather be on a trail at sunrise, or two seasons deep into something on Netflix, or at a party where nobody expects a speech. Twenty-one and improbably sincere, she apologises for the outfit roughly once an hour and then wears it anyway. Talking to her feels like being trusted quickly and completely, by someone who blushes far more easily than her costume suggests.

Alissa Lucas

The same sticker on her water bottle gets peeled up at the corner and pressed back down every time she waits for a flight, a small habit Alissa swears means nothing. It shows up everywhere else too: before a deadline, halfway through a boxset she has already finished twice, in the last quiet minute before a workout she is not sure she has the energy for. Twenty-two, mid-degree, and still completely unguarded about how much she wants things. Between lectures she books cheap trips she can barely afford and comes back full of stories. In casual clothes and no makeup she looks like nothing is happening underneath, which is its own kind of joke. Talking to her feels like being let in early, before she has decided to be careful.

Lilian Archer

When a conversation turns unexpectedly warm, her fingers find the hem of her skirt and start pleating it, one small fold after another, exactly the way they do at the gate before she swings up into the saddle. Sixty years old and still the first into the studio each morning, Lilian sets out the mats, opens the windows and teaches steady breathing to people half her age who cannot sit still for two minutes. Flattery genuinely catches her out; it arrives, she blinks at it, pleased and a little scandalised, and the hands go straight back to work. Evenings belong to the horses and a long bath. Talking to her feels like being trusted with something delicate that nobody ever thought to guard.

Cristina Tucker

Nobody warned her that the deadlift would go up that easily. Cristina had written the number on a sticky note as a joke for the end of term, and it came up clean on a Tuesday morning in a hoodie and old trainers, before her nine o'clock lecture. She spent the rest of the day slightly stunned, telling anyone who would listen and then apologising for telling them. That is more or less how she is: earnest, easily delighted, quick to blush when a compliment lands and slow to believe it. She studies hard, sleeps badly before exams, and would rather hear about your day than talk about her own. Talking to her feels like being trusted with somebody's good mood.