Nightshade

Astrid's most striking habit likely is her tendency to come home from work (or, after acquiring lucidity, come home from whatever adventure the day held), nap until her alarm clock wakes her at two in the morning, get up and spend at least an hour walking in near absolute solitude through a nearby stretch of forest, with only moon- and starlight to guide her.

She takes a notepad and pen along and writes down those ideas that appear especially fleeting to her.

On weekends, she writes short stories based on her ideas - ones she doesn't publish or share with anyone, not because she fears they might be objectionable (though many of them certainly might be, wholly independent of her concerns about it, as she frequently tends to write fairly dark stuff), but because she simply has no interest in sharing them with anyone, largely out of lack of knowing anyone that strikes her as the type of person to be interested in her work.

Prior to having her life turned inside-out, Astrid was in the lower management of a logistics company focussed primarily on cargo transportion - a high enough position to consider herself moderately successful in life, with little need to stress about her financial future, but a low enough rung on the ladder to be entirely unnecessary in the greater scheme of things within her company.

Her absence was not noticed (her boss assumes that each time he checks her desk and she is not there that she must be in a meeting, and having no curiosity has never progressed toward any suspicion) and she is not missed by her non-lucid human companions, as she was not part of anyone's daily or weekly routine.

Astrid's parents, while still together, do not live together. Her father works in Bremen, Germany; her mother is currently in Montevideo, Uruguay (not on vacation, but rather working there). She used to be in erratic but approximately weekly contact with her dad by phone until the unfortunate Cheshirepocalypse removed anything erratic, spontaneous and curiosity-based from people's lives. She hasn't thought to resume the almost-a-habit now that she's lucid again - she assumes she really does not want to hear her dad's state.

She owns a scorpion necklace that her brother got her a few months before he died (pre-Cheshirepocalypse). She's been wearing it ever since, even dutifully putting it on for her middle-of-the-night walks, even though the sting of his death has long passed and the symbolism is no longer particularly deeply relevant to her.

When she grew up, Astrid's fondest wish was to be a ranger in a national park somewhere in Africa (she wasn't picky about where). She would still accept such a job if someone were to spontaneously offer it to her, but as she has no relevant qualifications and no connections to anyone in or around that field, she won't.

Astrid is a frustratingly independent creature, in an intensely literal sense of the word. She has no 'badass' vibes going for her whatsoever, but she craves little familial interaction, does not hang out with colleagues outside of work (unless approached by them, in which case she'll happily hang out every single time!), does not keep a circle of friends outside her work, and has no relationships. (That said, were she to have a relationship, it is overwhelmingly likely to be with a woman - she doesn't scorn men, but her attraction tends to gravitate toward other women.)

Despite her independent nature, she is entirely fond of humans and human interactions - she just never managed to wrap her head around the idea that she could perchance initiate those interactions. She has the confidence for it, but the urge is absent.

On most levels of consideration, she's very comfortable with the person she is (and isn't), but one recurring thought during her walks at night has always been whether or not she's doing anything useful with her life, whether she shouldn't be rearranging all of it, whether she's actually happy. In a nutshell, she's one of those people that are happy but don't really seem to fully grasp that fact.

She has a very pragmatic attitude, which often manages to temper her terror around Cheshires - she will think first, act second, and sob in terror only after those prior points have yielded no results.

She knows better than to test the letter of a Cheshire-given law and prudently adheres to the spirit of it, but certainly also not any further than that. Were Deneb to try to play a game with her wherein she's expected to stay silent through miscellaneous light tortures, she would certainly remain quiet and even try to quieten her breathing, but she certainly will continue to struggle and thrash.