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[h1][color=8493ca][b]Princess Delyndra Allervai[/b][/color][/h1]
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The Festival of Destiny had never been her favorite time of year. Even when she was young, she had never been one for raucous celebration, and the close of the festival and return to quiet normalcy had always been accompanied with a sigh of relief. Of course, now that she had come of age, and was expected to find the love of her life within one week or else the nobles of the city would tut and tut about how her reign was 'cursed', the festival was a good deal worse.

Really, things had lined up very poorly. For the royal heir not to march in their first Festival as an adult with their destined partner was unheard of, but usually they had a few years between festivals; Delyndrah had only come of age just over a year ago, so her timetable had been enormously accelerated. At the very least, she'd been excused from her lessons at the Academy for a week; all the more time to prance about the street, hoping to catch some handsome gentleman's eye like a common... 

No sense complaining about what could not be changed. Her status as a Princess and the most coveted woman in the city would be an impediment towards finding her true partner, and so that would have to be altered. A drab traveling cloak, riding pants, hair tied up in a messy bun and a streak of dirt across her chin, and she had assumed the role of Delilah Farhill, peasant mage, once again. It was something out of a fairy tail, disguising herself as one of the people in the hope of meeting her true love, and when she'd brought it up with her mother, she had been given a very generous 'it might work'. It would work. She would make it work. She would have to.

As Delyndrah wound her way through the crowd, clutching a bag of books to her chest, she was struck with the sensation of facelessness. None of this was foreign to her, not the city streets, not the festive atmosphere, not the strange and diverse collection of people. She was a well-studied young lass, and she had seen stranger. The man with the magic instruments was a bit odd, and Delyndrah favored him with a smile, remembering only a moment later that he would not feel quite as blessed by the gesture as people on the street usually did when she smiled at them. This was insane. She had no idea where to begin. All around her, people were talking, drinking, dancing, making eyes at each other - was that what she should be doing? It seemed -

There was a bellow from behind her, and before she knew it something was colliding with her, knocking her off her feet with the force of a carriage and sending her spilling into the dirty cobblestone. Whatever it was kept going, charging through the crowd like a knight on horseback and bowling people over left and right, before coming to a halt a moment later.

Delyndrah picked herself up off the ground, holding her head where she'd struck it on the cobblestone. There was a small cut on her forehead - not terribly large, but it stung a great deal, and her face pinched with pain. Instinctively, she went over to another person who'd been knocked over, an old halfling woman, and helped pick her up and steady her onto her feet. The woman's basket had spilled out onto the ground, and as Delyndrah waved her hand the various trinkets floated back into it. The princess walked away in the direction of the thing that had assaulted her, irritation on her face, without waiting for thanks. 

She stalked into the alleyway that whatever had knocked her over had turned into, and as she turned the corner she saw it clambering down the side of a building to meet her.'It' was a man - human, by the look of him, tall and powerfully built, with bronzed skin and tattoos on his throat. He was wearing something singularly ridiculous; fine clothes of the kind made in the city, though in the part of her brain that knew about such things she could tell that it had gone out of style at least a season ago, and the brute had an obvious discomfort that would have made even the most fashionable of finery look ridiculous on him.

[color=8493ca]"Bastard,"[/color] she called out as he turned to look at the people he'd stumbled over. [color=8493ca]"Are you in the habit of knocking people over?"[/color] She flicked her hands across her torso, irritation obvious in the gesture, and a wave of soft blue light rippled across her clothes, wiping the dirt off in a soft [i]puff.[/i] She scowled at the man and opened her mouth, clearly intending to continue her tirade.