Absalom is, for the most part, going about its daily business trying to be cheerful. Mentioning terms like 'Sevarite' or 'Carissa Sevar' brings a change to people's expressions; fear, nervousness, angry dismissal.
It was claimed to have been prophesized, earlier, that Absalom had until the next lunar eclipse to stay alive. And then another prophecy, supposedly attributed to Ione Sala, said that Absalom was due to be destroyed in sixteen days from today.
Word has now come that the Oracle of Nethys out of Nefreti's Temple, called the Last True Oracle, has categorically denied this claim just yesterday: pronouncing that, if Absalom were to be destroyed, she would not know when it was to happen.
This... hasn't really reassured people. Such official authorities as Absalom possesses, who see their job as being to suppress 'panic' rather than say help evacuate the island, tried to interpret this as 'the day of destruction must be a long time away, or not be particularly likely to happen at all, if we have no idea of when it will happen'. Most people were not foolish enough to go along with this logic.