Nothing felt right.  
  
Lionel was, of course, no expert in the affairs of the gentlefolk. He was a simple man of simple means, hardly anyone to play at the delicacies of aristocracy. Thus, it had been utterly baffling when he received an invitation to Lord Fowle's gathering. The man had been gone so long that some people had just assumed that he had died without informing anybody. Now, suddenly, he was holding a Masquerade and inviting farmers and god-knows who else. It certainly couldn't come at a more awkward time, considering that November was harvest month. Still, he decided that an evening at Lord Fowle's manor couldn't do much harm. Lionel had dressed himself in his Sunday Best: a brown suit coat with a black-and-white vest underneath, just a little too large to fit comfortably. His mask was even less extravagant, crudely fashioned from whatever material was available, done only in the span of a week.  
  
Nothing felt right.  
  
Lionel couldn't escape the feeling that he wasn't meant to be here. Even when the caretaker took his coat and invitation without much question or remark, he still felt as though he was here by mistake, as though the invitation had come to him purely by accident. He didn't know the finer points of dining or dancing or dialogue. Not that it seemed to matter: the was hardly anyone around to begin with, and it didn't feel like there were going to be many more. Perhaps his ideas about what these balls entailed were simply incorrect? And yet...  
  
Nothing felt right.  
  
Even despite his simple birth, Lionel knew that something was off. He wasn't sure what, but there was a sort of disquiet that hung over everything like a cloud of miasma. He almost thought to leave before everything began, but decided against it. It would be rude to leave before anything had started, after all. He took to wandering aimlessly around, hoping to be as unnoticed as possible.