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The rest of the evening was comparatively unimpressive.
A large amount of Mr. Muyr's agenda for the day revolved around budget and fortification, soliciting donations from the wealthier members of the organization and agreeing with the Staters on how it should be spent. There was talk of your speech-- why you'd referred to the 'demons' as neofauna, whether they should start doing that too, how that factored into newer armaments-- and plenty of more energetic men brought up your talking points and pushed for them to be heavily considered. And they were, for a brief time, but most of the discussion was postponed until 'next week'. Next week, the eager ones had been told, there would be great importance placed on the matter of neofauna (or, 'demons').
You and Andrew enjoyed the night as best you could, with Andrew showing off what Buckwheat could do while you ran around the saloon asking for more information on that strange rumor you'd heard about... and, once the night sky was too dark for stars, the two of you stumbled into Steele's hotel as a contented pair.
The elderly statesman was asleep, of course, and didn't come out to welcome you.
But one of the staff had recognized you from the night prior, and informed Andrew that he had a room waiting for him. "I don't want t' be here," he'd insisted, "it's too clean." But both you and he knew that it was far too late for him to be finding someplace else to sleep. And so, Andrew handed off his neofauna to the lady just as you had the night prior, being told to tell Steele to 'pay up' once he was awake, and stumbled off to bed in a room on the floor beneath yours.
You, meanwhile, returned to your suite... and immediately fell into a deep sleep.
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>Saturday, August 16th, 1884
It took all your willpower to wake up.
Your sheets were too soft. Too tantalizingly plush. You wanted to just stay underneath the blankets forever, sinking into the luxurious mattress forevermore...
...but duty called, and you forced yourself to get out of bed anyways.
It was a somber thing, keeping yourself awake after such a good night's sleep. You wanted to desperately to return to dreamland! But you couldn't let yourself fall prey to such vices... so you decided to read the one thing you knew would ground you in reality: the newspaper. You leaned over the side of your bed and swung open your haversack, yanking out the paper you'd put in it just the other day, leaning over the side of the bed to read.
As soon as you saw the headline, though, you realized you'd made a mistake.
<span class="mu-s">STRANGE OCCURRENCE at NEW YORK CITY EARTH-QUAKE</span>
