The room settled.
"Everyone here represents a faction that has, at various points, been in opposition to every other faction in this room," she said. "That history is real.
I'm not going to pretend it doesn't exist or that it's going to disappear because we're sitting around the same table." She paused. "What I'm asking is that we set it aside for the work. Not forever. Just for the hours we're in this room." She looked around the table. "The reform we're building is going to outlast all of us. It needs to be built properly. That requires everyone here doing the hard thing of putting the work above the history."
Silence.
Then Petra said....."That's a reasonable ask."
"Thank you," Eve said.
"I said it's reasonable," Petra said. "I didn't say it would be easy."
"Nothing worth doing is easy," Eve said.
Aldous made a sound that might have been a laugh.
