Genevieve, mind still whirling, was pulled out of her half-formed plans by the reappearance of Princess Ayleanna. She had to smile at the other girl's enthusiasm, and she was sure it wasn't the carefully-curved smile that peeked from under the cover of her bangs or broad-brimmed hats in her social media photos.

But that was all right. Princess Lea was naturally disarming—and, at this point, the person Gen was least worried about embarrassing herself in front of.

"I don't think you talk too much," she said, "and you have so many guests to attend to, I'm honestly just grateful we get a chance to speak." With a self-conscious flick of her fingers, Genevieve indicated the rhinestones pasted beneath her eyes like a scattering of stars amongst her freckles. "I see we have a shared love of sparkles."

Gesturing to the wide variety of dishes spread out on the nearest table, she added, "Lord Hui-Bawa and I were just admiring the feast you've put out. You're an amazing hostess."

It was then that a diminutive young woman—looking all the tinier, standing so close to Hui-Bawa—appeared in Gen's field of vision. She recognized her as Princess—or was it Lady? the titles were unclear—Liviana Viriatus. Feeling a swell of sympathy for the other girl, but—not sure how much English she had (and therefore, how uncomfortable she might be with a lengthy conversation)—Genevieve offered up the warmest smile she could, and a small nod and curtsey of greeting as she joined their party.

“Lady Genevieve, I hate to interrupt, but are you going to introduce us?” Hui-Bawa asked. He stretched a hand out to the new woman. “Pleased to meet you. I am called Hui-Bawa Du-Butha Hui-Hooseng in my home. And you?” How curious. This woman was of a colour with himself, a stark contrast with the pale faces that dominated the party. “I hope I am not intruding upon this conversation too much. If I am rude, you must forgive me truly. I was not raised with an understanding of such things as . . . etiquette.” At the very least, he congratulated himself in knowing enough to fast-talk himself into and out of situations like these.

Another woman joined this rapidly-growing company they seemed to be accruing. It seems, despite Lady Genevieve’s previous claims to otherwise, she seemed a rather popular figure, at least in this party. The new lady called away the first, and seemed to have little interest in interacting with himself. He certainly does not fault her for it.

Lea grinned cheerfully at Genevieve. “What can I say? You can never have too many sparkles. And aw, you guys give me [i]way[/i] too much credit. I mean, I can’t cook for the [i]life[/i] of me! All I can do is taste stuff and be like ‘wow this is good we should have it at a party’, you know?” Lea giggled and rolled her eyes playfully at her own culinary incompetence. 

Lea then turned to Liviana, who had just arrived. Her eyes quickly took in the other princess’s appearance, diminutive as she was, before-

-[i]Holy shit. Holy fucking shit. Is that a bird on her shoulder?! Oh my gosh, that’s so freaking[/i] adorable[i] and I love love love birds so like...I am here for this?????[/i]

“Hey, Liviana!” Lea responded, beaming at her. “I [i]love[/i] your gown, by the way. And your hair-[i]how[/i] do you ever have the patience to grow it that long?! Oh oh oh also, your bird is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen!!! Do you mind if I take a quick pic?” And before Liviana could object, Lea had whipped out her phone (which had a sparkly pink case-you know, to match her nails, which were almost [i]always[/i] painted sparkly pink) and snapped a picture of Liv’s bird with her Snapchat camera. She saved the original image and put a cute sparkly heart filter over it, before captioning it something like ‘shoutout to Liviana V. for bringing the CUTEST bird EVER!!!!’ and posting it onto her story.

Once that was all taken care of, Lea put her phone away and re-directed her attention to Hui-Bawa. She shook his hand, grinning. “It’s a pleasure to meet you as well! I’m Lea Lynton. And no worries, you’re definitely not intruding on anything!” Lea gave him a sheepish smile. “If anyone’s intruding, it’s me.”

“I hope you all are having fun, by the way,” Lea said brightly to the entire group. “I wanted to do like, a water slide or something. Or a moon bounce. Wouldn’t that have been [i]so[/i] fun??? But my mom and sister said no.” Lea mock-pouted. “Oh well.”

Liv had exactly half a second to figure out who she was speaking to before she was suddenly bombarded by the whirlwind of excitement that was Lea. At least the Aciran princess didn’t even blink at her awkwardness, just plowing right through it with more enthusiasm than should be entirely possible. And asking far more questions than Liv could hope to answer, even in her native Latin. 

After several seconds of blinking hopelessly in the direction of Lea’s phone camera flash, and internally panicking at the thought of being featured on Lea’s [i]Snapchat!!!![/i], she managed to straighten her thoughts out into words enough to reframe her focus to the conversation. The greeting died on her lips, though- of course Lea was already onto a different topic, she always was, and in this case the topic was socializing with the mountain of a man standing beside her.

Nervously, Liv peered up at him, offering a slightly terrified smile. She had not been close enough to hear his introduction, but his accent and overall appearance suggested he might well have been from one of the southern kingdoms - she struggled to remember places and names from the textbooks she’d once fumbled through, but could not come up with anything concrete. And she certainly wasn’t about to ask him his name, afraid he’d take it to be offensive. She vowed she would do nothing to cause him offense - not when it looked like he could crush her in one fist if she angered him!
Lea’s chipper dialogue was nothing short of confusing, as ever. Liv barely managed to puzzle it out, getting quite tripped up on the notion of a ‘moon bounce.’ [i]Seriously, what’s a “moon bounce?”[/i] she wondered. But she didn’t trust herself to say it out loud, instead murmuring something in Latin that sounded vaguely like an apology and pulling her ancient Papyrvs phone out of her clutch, quickly thumbing into Alopix (the firefox knockoff that Athenian electronics came with, complete with a cute fox icon) and typing in the words ‘moon bounce’. As one would expect of Athenian search engines, further “refined” by Lusitanian content restrictions, very few results were returned. Specifically, only one that wasn’t total garbage- a sped-up video of some Aciran moon satellite launch from literal decades ago. 

That made perfect sense. She snapped her phone case closed and frowned slightly, wondering what kind of party Lea had been planning on where there would have been an actual rocket ship. 

Genevieve thanked every god she could think of that Princess Ayleanna—Lea—was one of the least pretentious, most easygoing people she’d ever met. Gen had barely had time for a flash of secondhand mortification and a scramble to figure out how to help Hui-Bawa before Lea had cheerfully introduced herself, without offense or fanfare. And then she was on to the next thing.

Next to Hui-Bawa, Liviana looked not only tiny, but genuinely petrified. Genevieve decided to let Hui-Bawa field Lea’s questions for a while, stepping around him to come up next to the smaller girl. “Christopher,” she murmured, “may I have my phone please?”

Smoothly, Christopher produced it from an inside pocket, and Genevieve held up a finger in what she hoped was the universal gesture for, [i] “One minute, please,”[/i] offering up an apologetic smile. One quick Google search confirmed her guesses about the native language in Liviana’s country. Gen used the translate function to type out what she wanted to say and hoped it wasn’t too garbled.

She held out the phone to Liviana. The message on the right said,[i] “Latine Non est bonum esse meum doleo. Spero te non puto me rude et hoc modo loquitur ad vos. Quod est nice est in occursum tibi ago, Filia Reginae. Nomen meum est Genevieve.”[/i]

In English: “I am sorry that my Latin's not better. I hope you don't think I'm rude for talking to you this way. It is nice to meet you, Princess. My name is Genevieve.”

Hui-Bawa considered Lady Lea’s words for a second. Nobody seemed much interested in responding, so he felt perhaps he ought. “Both sound delightful, Lady Lea,” he said, stroking his chin with an idle finger. “But think of the poor guests. They make such an effort to arrive at your lovely estate dressed in fineries of cloth and metals. A waterslide might ruin their hours of hard work!” He tilted his head back and laughed at his own comment. “Apologies, truly. My brother tells me I am not humorous. He is in no capacity incorrect.” He glanced over at Lady Genevieve. She seemed at the moment occupied with their new acquaintance. That leaves him with their excitable host. “So, this party is yours, then? I am honoured that you found the time to speak to a humble man such as myself. This home, it is the size of a village in my home, and so magnificent besides. You must tell me everything about it.” 

Lea threw back her head and laughed at the point that Hui-Bawa made. “I mean, you’re not wrong,” she said, chuckling. “But a girl can dream, ya feel? And your brother is wrong! Who says that you aren’t funny? [i]I[/i] think that you’re pretty funny.” She flashed him a mischievous grin.

“And yep! I mean, normally I’m not all about balls and fancy schmancy tea parties and whatever-I would have [i]totally[/i] preferred a moon bounce-but this is aight.” Lea paused for a moment and rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “I don’t understand why it’s always fancy shmancy like this, by the way. Like, I’m getting married, so what? But don’t worry, we’ll have some less formal stuff later on.” Another cheerful grin.

At Hui-Bawa’s comment about the palace, Lea rolled her eyes with the same good-natured humor, again. “Oh, gosh, this place is pretty much a village in and of itself, not gonna lie. Like, my sisters and my parents and I obviously don’t need this much space to live. But you know, we’ve got some boring meeting rooms and stuff. The first floor-the one we’re on now, actually-is basically a museum at this point, though obviously it’s closed to the public right now thanks to the ball. I think our libraries are pretty dope, but holy [i]cow[/i] it’s really easy to get lost in them if you aren’t careful. Hit me up if you want, like, a map or something.” Lea laughed, more to herself than anything, wondering how in the world she’d be able to draw up a [i]map[/i] of the libraries. “But yeah, I think my favorite part about living here is the fact that we’ve got enough space on the palace property for animals! My mom and sister let me make some cool animal refuges and stuff by the forest. It’s dope.”

Liv peered up at Genevieve, quirking her mouth as she studied the words. Latin Google Translate was known to be absolutely dreadful (as she had once found out, by trying to ask Edwin to pass the salt at a state dinner - and instead inadvertently asking him about a dead relative!) but having the English written out as well was very helpful. That said, she was still hopeless at verbalizing her thoughts. It took her several seconds before she dared open her mouth, testing the words awkwardly as she spoke them.

“It - is okay. I - I.. the fault is of me - [i]didamnate, verba?[/i] - English. I - reading is more easy, of English, [i]sed-[/i]” She cut herself off, shaking her head and very nearly burying her face in her hands as her cheeks flushed.

Gods damn it all, why was she so [i]stupid?![/i] Everyone else was doing [i]just fine[/i] with the language of Aciras, and here she was, her accent so thick and awkward and the words not making it out of her fat ugly mouth without being horribly butchered. It was no wonder no one would want to marry her. Gods. Father was going to be furious, she just knew that some reporter or another would call her out on her lack of spoken eloquence and then it would be hell to pay when she returned home. All the words were [i]there,[/i] they just would not get out of her head and onto her tongue and out into the air in an orderly fashion. Which of course would mean that no one else would see them forming, and would rather just assume her an idiot.

She just prayed that Genevieve would understand. Picking her own phone out of its clutch for what felt like the hundredth time, she flicked her text size setting to the biggest possible, then opened a note document and started typing. It was awkward and slow, but the words laid themselves out much better when she didn’t have to worry about pronunciation and inflection too.

[i]Apologizing, the English to me is ... unkind. Such it is that I can hear and understand; speech is nonetheless challenging. I do learn but slow. To read is best. Apologizing again - I am happy to meet you, Genevieve.[/i] 

She prayed that the other princess wasn’t judging her for needing to look back at her phone for the spelling - such letter patterns simply didn’t happen in Latin and the last thing she wanted to do was offend someone by misspelling or pronouncing their name! - and also prayed that the judgement didn’t extend to her intensely concentrated expression.

Dammit, she was trying her hardest. [i]To friends I am called Livi or Liv, and I should like to be called a friend of you. From which kingdom are you? If it is permissible to ask.[/i]

[i](Collab between: [@lady horatio] [@ayzrules] [@Amethyst] [@Bloonewb])[/i]