Little Sophie and her family live in a burlesque house, The Imperial, run by Jessica, the mother she and Lorii share. Jessica runs the place as if it's her own noble household, with almost all of the staff living there, and Sophie treats two in particular as members of her family.

These two are a seven-foot tall Etrusean-born clouded leopard, Sylvia (she's bending her knees here), and her girlfriend Raquel, a five-foot-two Aludran-born raccoon. Both work in the club as dancers with Sylvia also taking shifts on the door if she isn't up on stage, and have never minded helping to look after Sophie or having her wander to their room when she's had a nightmare.

Here she's feeding Raquel's pet, a common Continental freshwater trilobite named Dominque, who's getting to be a little big for her tank these days. Sylvia won her as an egg at a fair on her first date with Raquel. They thought she was probably a domesticated Aludran dwarf trilobite, a pet species one-quarter Dominique's size that tend to have pretty mottled patterns, but they certainly don't mind that they were wrong about that. They're currently saving up for a big tank with enough sand for her to burrow in.

Sylvia's surname is Jones, but you can't write that in modern Aludran since nouns that end in S are automatically plural unless they're ancient loanwords (Kulas, Perkunas). J is pronounced like Y, so her name is spoken as "yo-nayes." She had to get used to being called "Selvia," too.