Liz and Alice are a pair of older Terrans who run a small clinic and hostel in Titan Garden's A-District. An inseparable duo, they live a quiet life and try to use their wealth of experience together to help lost, frightened and troubled souls find stability and a path forward out of their hardships. Alice- the woman in blue- has a gentle and sunny disposition, always looking to find the upside of an upside-down situation. Her wife Liz- in orange- is the more assertive of the pair, believing in the innate good in all people but never shying away from setting boundaries or confronting caustic or hostile people head-on. The both of them believe in second chances, and if you find yourself adrift in the Outer Belt, they've got a warm bed and a hot meal for you on Titan, with a welcome invitation to stay as long as you need until you can get back on your feet and feel the wind at your back once again.
The Ambling Alleycat is a small hostel tucked away near a train line crossing the Garden's south sector, looking from the outside like any other residential building. A repurposed home, the Ambling Alleycat serves two main functions: on the ground floor, in the back of the house, it's a walk-in health clinic where Alice offers her medical practice to all starfarers, no questions asked. There's a number of reasons someone might choose to visit the Ambling Alleycat instead of Titan General Hospital, and there's a limit to what Alice can offer without needing to refer a patient to Titan General itself if life-saving care is on the line, but Alice's clinic will always do what it can for a visiting patient with compassion, discretion and dignity in mind. The second function of the Ambling Alleycat is its bed-and-breakfast service, offering warm beds and hot meals to anyone who might need it. Liz manages this aspect of the business, maintaining a comfortable and inviting reading room in the front of the house, stocked with shelves of old books she's collected over her lifetime, accented by the soft glow of an old TV set. Upstairs, she maintains two floors of bedrooms, some arranged with bunk beds for multiple guests and some set aside for private accommodations, for those who would prefer the space. She cooks a big breakfast every morning, diner-style, good and filling. Guests are welcome to take a book and a plate up to their room, it's what they're there for. They operate the Ambling Alleycat on a sliding scale, often allowing their guests their services free of charge- for them, some things are more important than credits.
For those who know about it, the Ambling Alleycat has a reputation for being a safe place for starfarers who need to get back up or get away from something or someone else. It's not uncommon for someone looking to get out from under someone else's thumb to turn up at the Ambling Alleycat, where Liz and Alice will provide for their needs and, importantly, keep nosy pursuers out of their business. Privacy and dignity are important to the pair, and whether it's station security, an unfriendly rival or a controlling spouse, neither Liz nor Alice will compromise the safety of the guests under their care for any reason- they can't be bought and they won't be intimidated out of the way. Alice is a healer, she prefers to avoid confrontation where she can; Liz, on the other hand, is a wall between her charges and whoever might be harboring unkind intentions towards them. Some of those folks will see the grey in their hair and take them for pushovers, and they're quick to learn how far a sixty-year-old woman can throw them, with those who don't take the hint quick to find themselves on the business end of an old mop. Those folks hadn't been clued in to the Ambling Alleycat's reputation yet, but when they test their luck, it's often a swift and firm moment of understanding.
They don't often tell their stories, about where they'd been or who they'd met, but occasionally, if you're staying at the Alleycat and the mood seems right, they'll tell you about how they came to be the way they are. A long time ago, when the pair were young, they were both living in a deep space colony- Station 313, a number familiar to some older starfarers. A self-contained Terran mining outpost, Station 313 served as a living space for workers and their families running mineral extraction operations in the Jovian asteroid cluster. It was also the site of a major viral outbreak which claimed the lives of most of the station's inhabitants, an event that found it a footnote in the news of the time. Alice was stationed in the colony's infirmary, and Liz worked in the mess hall; when the virus outbreak took place, the pair ended up meeting each other, banding together and rallying other residents to combine their efforts and stabilize their situation, ensuring as many people could survive a biological catastrophe until help could finally reach Station 313, tucked away in the cold depths of space- they also kinda, sorta, fell in love with each other in the process. It was a long while before anyone reached 313, but when help arrived they were surprised to have found survivors at all; it was by working together and lifting each other up that Liz and Alice lived through the outbreak on 313, but it's clear that the events had imprinted on them in a way that seemed tenaciously hopeful, that they wanted to be a safe haven for starfarers elsewhere to outlive their own crises, whatever that may be. And so they founded the Ambling Alleycat here on Titan, opening their doors to whoever might need a friend in dark times.
Liz and Alice had lived a long and adventurous life together, they'd found truths about themselves together and they've grown old together, and today they live quietly together, out of the spotlight and news cycles their stories had found them in in the past. There's always a light in the window at the Ambling Alleycat; there's always someone at home when safe harbor is needed. They'll tend to your health, feed you a hot meal and let you retreat safely upstairs to a bed that is yours as long as you need it. You may hear rumblings downstairs but they're always quelled. You might stay a while, taking an old book off one of the bookshelves to read in your bed, opening it to find a folded piece of paper tumble out from between the pages. An old mining company worksheet printed on one side, and on the back, a pen-scrawled poem written in cursive; a picture painted in pretty words for a woman who meant the world to the author, misplaced over the decades. A ray of sunlight piercing the gloom. Hope in hard times.
You feel you're in good company, here. Things will work out just fine.