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	Rolf was running late. He was always running late, but this was a bit moreso than usual. Normally he wouldn't have bothered showing up after finding himself almost an hour behind schedule, but not going wasn't an option. Thankfully, the important part of the opening ceremony hadn't yet started, and he slowly - almost painfully - lurched through the gate, rolling a comically large trunk on wheels along behind him. He was rather tired, as he hadn't slept at all the previous two nights on account of all the packing. An uneven paver stone caught the tail of his greying and wrinkled white coat beneath his boot, and he stumbled some, though less than he would have had he been moving at a reasonable pace.

	People were scattered about the area, illuminated by lamps and moonlight alike, and Rolf took up a position along a wall not too far from the gate. The scene was almost like an old painting, with brilliant contrasting shades between the darkness and the light, the living and the world. The name 'Monet' floated through his head, no doubt because everything was a hazy blur to him. He sat upon the trunk and drifted off almost immediately. Zaria's voice woke him, though, and he promptly stood up again, with the fresh understanding that if he sat or laid down, he wouldn't be getting back up again for at least ten hours. Fear of falling asleep in a place packed with vampires of various temperaments kept him standing for the rest of the ceremony.

	Rolf only vaguely understood everything Zaria was saying. He heard the words just fine, of course, but they felt far-off, as if someone else were listening to them instead. Something about a partner...? More immediate than the words, though, was the light tingling feeling in the hand in which he was tightly gripping the letter handed to him. It was slightly crumpled, but it felt as though something about it had changed, and he gave it a thorough examination. It was finally open. The letters on the page felt scrambled and incomprehensible, but there was a picture of... Someone. He stared at it for several minutes.

[color=0072bc]"Oh."[/color]

	A quick look over the crowd showed that most people had started pairing up, or trying to pair up, and the general idea of what was going on finally popped into his head. He opted to stay standing right where he was, well away from the rest of the crowd. Whoever the guy in the picture was, they probably had a picture of him as well. No sense moving about and wasting energy when he would just be found anyway. Another look at the picture showed that his partner seemed to be almost the same age, and something about Kyran's eyes put Rolf at relative ease. At least, compared to the feeling of intense [i]hunger[/i] he felt from some of the older and more refined vampires wandering about the crowd.