Rewinding the clock about a month or two, Ax'L and his girlfriend Alula are having a dinner at a local Pasta joint. The two of them met at Túl's Space port 2 years back, where he works managing radio equipment used to communicate with incoming and departing space craft. One night, after Ax'L had clocked out for the night, as he was walking through the baggage claim area to his car he caught the eye of an extremely emotive dark-haired woman whose luggage seemed to have been misplaced by the baggage crew. After some deliberation with the late night crew, he was able to get the crafts storage bay searched a second time, where her unluckily-colored suitcase was found shoved into a corner. To escape port taxi fees(cabs charge extra coming in and out of the port), Ax'L offered her a ride home in his little roadster and they hit it off on the long drive down to her place, and they've been together ever since.

While Ax'L moved to planet Vakmerő in his early 20s with the first wave of emigrants from the safe zone closer to planet Hothlen, Alula is a native, losing her parents to the war and later finding a job working as a watchsmith, with a side passion for the local music scene. They are both terrible cooks and go out to eat often, so outings like this are pretty common.

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With this piece I wanted to dial back the clock a little and give some backstory to help explain what lead to the current events in Ax'L's story. Trying to emulate the packed inner citty italian resturant was really tricky but I did the best I could! And I tried to include a bunch more friends in the background!

From left to right: Fuzai-Neko, Meerkat (space photo), Cadet beans (Top photo), BooGz and Kendall , Dootski (skateboard photo) There are some more references to my own personal Hothlen-related work scattered around as well!

Thank you so much for checking out my work, I hope you like it!